The Black Living Data Booklet
Background and Significance of the BLDB
In July of 2019, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) convened the 2019-2021 cohort of CLIR fellows at Bryn Mawr for a summer seminar where we imagined the future of libraries, cultural institutions, and higher education through a consideration and critique of information, data, digital tools and technology. While all of the talks and discussions were inspiring and instructive, the moment that planted a seed within me was a group meeting of the Data Curation for African and African American Studies cohort fellows and hosting institutions. During this initial meeting, and over the course of the seminar, we brainstormed about what Black Studies and Critical Race Theory could bring to Data Curation. We then crafted the language for the type of work that this new Data Curation cohort would do. Work that existed at the intersection of African and African American Studies and Data Curation, Digital Studies, and/or the Digital Humanities.
Through our brainstorming session, I summarized and presented to the larger seminar group that the Data Curation for African American Studies cohort was invested in “Pinpointing the interrelations between data collection, curation, curriculum, cultures, critique, and custodial models through the centering of African American Communities” and that African and African American Data Curation was “A field and a framework built on ethics, justice, and community mindedness”. These two understandings of the field building and defining work of this CLIR cohort stayed with me as I traveled from Pennsylvania and made my way to Indiana where I would begin my CLIR Fellowship at Purdue University.
As a CLIR Postdoctoral fellow jointly appointed in the Libraries/School of Information Studies (SIS) and the African American Studies department, I was given two supervisors, one for each department. Dr. Marlo David (African American Studies) and Dr. Kendall Roark (Libraries/SIS). Prior to my arrival at Purdue, Dr. David and Dr. Roark crafted their proposal for hosting a CLIR fellow around a shared mission and vision to bring together the African American Studies department and Critical Data Studies at Purdue. I was encouraged to focus my fellowship on producing a critical framework and best practices to ensure an ethical, community based and justice centered understanding of data curation, science, and the digital humanities.
As CLIR Fellows, we were encouraged to view our presence within our respective institutions as a catalyst for positive change within those institutions. The potential impact of this relationship between African American Studies, the Libraries/School of Information Studies, and Critical Data Studies was to build networks of collaboration between African American Studies and Data Science, to build opportunities at Purdue, as well as creating curriculum that infused data studies with a critical and theoretical focus, while making space for conversations on the transdisciplinary nature of research.
My first opportunity to bridge the gap between African American Studies and Data Science began with co-teaching the Honors course in Critical Data Studies with Dr. Roark and Dr. Laura Zanotti (Anthropology). Although my role in this course was that of Co-Instructor, I learned so much through teaching and developing exercises for the students which became crucial to my writing the Black Living Data Booklet. Taking what I learned from the CLIR Seminar, my own research, and engaging with the Critical Data Studies learning community in September 2019, I presented at the Open Seminar with a talk titled “Que-erying the Collection of Black Data”. It was during this talk, which built on the CLIR Summer Seminar presentation, I defined Black Data Studies through the work of Shaka McGlotten and W.E.B. DuBois. This presentation, and the project of creating the curriculum for Black Digital Studies, birthed the concepts that are central to the Black Living Data Booklet. Now, almost one year to the day, I am making this project available as a form of creative expression and an educational tool. I hope that in reading and engaging with this work that you too will make the connection between African American Studies and Data Curation through an understanding of the conceptualization and creation of Black Living Data.
