Brown Bag Lunch #3 – Archives and libraries following up on the Legacies of Enslavement report

On Friday 2nd December, 2022, the Decolonising through Critical Librarianship group together with the Cambridge Archivists Group held a Brown Bag Lunch, following up on the recent publication of the Legacies of Enslavement Report .

We asked attendees to read the website and/or report beforehand if possible, and also to engage with these questions, to inspire enriching discussions:

• Has supporting this research changed or helped archivists interrogate the way archives are normally described?
• Would a research guide on account books and similar be of help? Can we collaborate towards this?
• Where else in their records have institutions been looking at?
• How much support are archivists getting from their wider College structure? Has the publication of the report changed attitudes towards the topic of the research?
• Looking into the legacies of enslavement in our institutions is an ongoing project. How can Colleges continue to support this?
• What next? Where would archivists like to see this go?

Below is a summary of the thoughts and discussions that were shared, and a list of useful resources. Thank you very much to all who attended and to Melendra Sanders for her notes.

Brown Bag Lunch #2 – Decolonising implications in Open access

On Friday 12^th February 2021, we hosted our second Brown Bag Lunch (this time online) on the topic of decolonisation and Open Access. The event started with a presentation from the DTCL intern, Mark Harding, on the work he carried out to update our platform. Niamh Tumelty, Head of Open Research Services, then gave an introduction to Open Access and Plan S. The points below were raised in the group and general discussions that followed. Below, we will first present the issues discussed and then list the ideas raised that might help in dealing with some of these issues. Many thanks to Alina Wanitzek from Homerton College Library for her notes, on which this post is based. At the end of the post, we provide some links to resources for further reading. Do get in touch if you would like us to add anything to the list! 

ISSUES 

• How can countries outside the West/Global North compete on the international stage in terms of research and career progression, if they are not able to pay APCs (Article Processing Charges)? Different institutions and departments worldwide may or may not be able to access the funds needed for these charges, which are crucial now that the financial burden seems to have been shifted from reading to publishing. This leads to broader inequality, with research from some countries not being regarded as highly, due to their research outcomes not featuring prominently in mainstream publications. 
• It was noted that selection decisions for historical journals can be biased, in some cases rejecting many articles by non-native English speakers. But what then is the role of the editor? Some researchers seem not to trust any open access published research, instead placing their trust in authority figures with sometimes outdated opinions (e.g., trusting supervisors over librarians). The importance of open peer review is a factor in this outlook. 

Brown Bag Lunch #1 – FACILITATING RESEARCH ON THE LEGACIES OF SLAVERY

A group of librarians and archivists met on 8th January 2020 at the University Library to discuss the ways in which we might facilitate student research into the legacies of slavery at the University and Colleges.  

Preliminary reading material was a blog post from the Legacies of Slavery archival workshop and the ARA Support Guide.  

Staff from colleges that had already conducted enquiries shared their experiences. The format of their investigations took different forms, with one college employing four students for four weeks to research direct historic links to the economy of the slave trade alongside more recent intellectual and cultural legacies, while another college employed to one researcher with archival training for 50 hours to conduct an initial survey of material and present a report to the college’s governing body with recommendations on how to move forward.