All workshops are interactive and designed to teach you concrete skills that you can use to tell untold histories.
All six workshops will run concurrently. When you arrive at the unconference, you will choose which workshop to attend.
Radical Archiving: Creating Sustainable Wikipedia Entries that Fill Historical Gaps
Mobilize direct impact on the most commonly accessed archive today. Join Heather Hart, co-founder of the Black Lunch Table (BLT) project to learn how to create, update, and improve Wikipedia articles through hands-on practice improving or adding information on the lives and works of visual artists from the African Diaspora on Wikipedia. Together we will discuss the challenges and benefits of the Wikipedia archive and respond to the urgent need for a reconstruction of the art historical record. All are invited, with no specialized knowledge of the subject or Wikipedia editing experience required. Bring your laptop to participate.
Heather Hart is a visual artist based in Brooklyn. Her work lies at the intersection of oral history, public art and liminal space. She founded The Black Lunch Table (BLT) with Jina Valentine in 2005. BLT intends to fill holes in the documentation of art history and has taken a variety of forms including the Wikipedia edit-a-thon. BLT’s aim is the production of discursive sites (at literal and metaphorical lunch tables), one of which asks cultural producers of color engage in critical dialogue on topics directly affecting our communities. BLT endeavors to create spaces, online and off, mirroring the activity and creativity present in sites where Blackness and Art are discussed and performed, ultimately empowering people with the awareness that no history is static.
Diverse City: Environments of Equity & Inclusion for All
Many cultural and heritage practitioners are on a learning curve with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, stuck with questions about how they can take the right steps to move forward. DEI Consultant Monica O. Montgomery of Museum Hue, will share successful examples and workshop approaches to institutionalize inclusivity into (operations, recruitment, company culture, community engagement and programs) to strengthen the underpinning of your organizational DNA.
Monica O. Montgomery is an international speaker, museum director and cultural consultant, curating media and museums to be in service to society. She is the Strategic Director of Museum Hue a multicultural platform, advancing people of color, in arts, culture, museums and creative economy. As a sought after public speaker and coach she trains leaders and partners with universities and museums to facilitate diversity, leadership and equity initiatives. She leads, Museum Hue in building diverse representation through social justice and arts. Follow her @monica_muses
Mapping the Sounds of Newark – CANCELLED
Newark has a rich jazz history with many recordings available in Rutgers’ Institute for Jazz Studies archives. Join Mia Tootill, musicologist and digital humanist, for a session on mapping the music of the city, using these recordings and the HATEngine tool. You’ll learn how to create your own audio map of the local music venues in this interactive workshop. Unconference participants will then be able to take a musical tour of the area using your creations! No musical knowledge needed. Please bring a laptop, if possible.
Coping With Copyright in Public History
Join April Hathcock, former lawyer and current Scholarly Communication Librarian at NYU, for a session on navigating the ins and outs of copyright issues that arise when working with public history material. We will practice making public domain determinations, conducting fair use analyses, working with Creative Commons licenses, and completing due diligence searches for owners of orphan works. There will also be plenty of time for in-depth Q&A, so come prepared with your thorniest copyright questions!
April Hathcock, a former corporate attorney, is Librarian for Scholarly Communications at New York University and educates the research community about issues relating to ownership, rights, and access in the scholarly lifecycle.
Making your Museum Relevant
Museums and historic sites struggle with being relevant to multiple communities. Many sites find they need to think outside the box to bring in younger and more diverse audiences. The Montclair History Center and the Alice Paul Institute have successfully introduced new programs that have broadened their audiences and deepened their engagement. Join your peers Kris Myers and Jane Eliasof as they lead you through a series of questions that will help you think about your historic site or museum in new and different ways in this interactive and collaborative workshop.
Jane Eliasof, the Executive Director of the Montclair History Center, has led the organization through a series of changes including a permanent reinterpretation of the Crane House and Historic YWCA and the addition of a Community microfarm that is reaching new audiences. Kris Myers, Director of Programs at the Alice Paul Institute, leads history programs and teen girls’ leadership development programs at Alice Paul’s historic home, Paulsdale, connecting historic narratives with contemporary girls’ and women’s issues.
Community Archiving and Exhibits with Omeka
Learn to use the free, online OMEKA exhibit software to showcase collections of digital images, documents, audio or short movies. Participants will learn to use the Omeka dashboard, understand the difference between Items, Collections and Exhibits, create basic metadata or items and Simple Pages to build Omeka sites. You will learn to use OMEKA.net, the free, hosted version of the software and begin creating a small exhibit right away to share online. Great for digital history, oral history and civic engagement projects. Participants should bring a flash drive or have access to cloud storage with images, audio or video they wish to use for the demonstration.
This workshop will take place in Dana Library.
Krista White, MLIS, M.Phil., M.A., is the Digital Humanities Librarian at the John Cotton Dana Library, Rutgers University-Newark. Her research focuses on digital preservation, metadata, taxonomies, ontologies and ethics and privacy in digital library collections.
That’s a load of CRAAP: Informational Literacy for the New Political Climate
Information comes at us fast and furiously these days, and usually without a lot of context. Whether from a legitimate news source, malicious actor, or politically-charged pundit, it’s important to understand the difference between bias, facts, and misinformation. Not even the best journalists are immune to the siren-song of stories that align with their biases. Fortunately, there is something to be done about it. In this workshop, participants will learn how to build a better-informed community through careful analysis of media content and sources.
T.J. Lamanna is the Emerging Technologies Librarian at the Cherry Hill Public Library. His focus is in informational literacy, patron privacy, and, of course, emerging technologies.
Telling Untold Histories 