ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena is hosting an online symposium from 1 to 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11, on “Reimagining Access: Inclusive Technology for Archives and Special Collections,” featuring sessions about the current challenges of access to archives, industry design practices and initiatives, and emerging directions.
Robert Dirig, director of archives and special collections at ArtCenter, said the symposium targets an audience of educators, access-centered designers, technologists, students, and the disability community.
The symposium is a kickoff to an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant project to explore how digital archives can be made more accessible. ArtCenter received this IMLS National Leadership Grant of almost $200,000 in 2020.
“The two-year grant project started late last year,” Dirig said. “In conjunction with that, we started a class in January for our spring term studio class, which is a huge part of this project. Essentially, during the 14-week studio class, the faculty works with students to learn about archives and learn about disabilities. They’re going to be designing, they’re going to be doing a lot of research, and they’re going to be looking at how do we improve access to archives, especially digital archives, for people with disabilities.”
ArtCenter’s project is a joint undertaking between the ArtCenter Library and the Interaction Design Department. Dirig is the project director, and Maggie Hendrie, chair of ArtCenter’s Interaction Design and Graduate Media Design Practices programs, is the co-principal investigator.
The program was developed through a collaboration between Jennifer May, executive director of ArtCenter’s Designmatters, and the connected ArtCenter studio class taught by Associate Professors Elise Co and Todd Masilko, with Assistant Professor Josh Halstead.
Throughout the 14-week course, students will design prototypes of design solutions. They’ve actually been working on the project for a few weeks already, Dirig said. These students will be part of the symposium Thursday so they can hear from different people who are working in various fields related to improving access to archives.
“I’m looking forward to bringing together the people that we have speaking in one event,” Dirig continued. “I think it’s great they’re taking this kind of multidisciplinary approach. The people will be talking certainly about the challenges of accessing archives, but there’ll also be people that don’t necessarily work directly with archives but might be talking about emerging technology or disability studies. I’m excited about the conversation that’ll come out of bringing the people that we invited altogether to speak.”
Some of the speakers in the symposium include Jasmine Clark, digital scholarship librarian at Temple University in Philadelphia; Michelle Ganz, archivist at History Factory; Elizabeth Guffey, professor of Art and Design History and head of the MA Program in Art History at the State University of New York; Josh Halstead, assistant professor at ArtCenter; Sara Hendren, artist, design researcher, writer and professor at Olin College of Engineering; and Crystal Lee, Ph.D. candidate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The other speakers are Dr. Jeffrey Swada, director of the Undergraduate Food Science Program and the liaison to the Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities within the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University; Dr. Lydia Tang, archivist of the Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections at Michigan State University; and Sara White, disability rights activist and archivist.
“We have people with disabilities giving their personal experiences of using archives and working with archives talking,” Dirig said. “We’ve got a couple of scholars and educators talking about their research in this area, and talking about ideas of inclusion is really something that’s important to our class.”
To RSVP for the free symposium, visit www.artcenter.edu/
For more information on ArtCenter’s Reimagining Access project, visit this page on the ArtCenter College of Design website.
