Threading Community Resources into an Encyclopedic View on Our 125-Year Collective Milestone

The Archival / Preservation Education SIG session offers pedagogical insights on master’s-level information science and archival education. Four fifteen-minute individual presentations and audience discussion examine how the educators engage with agency, identity, and practices in their pedagogy; presenters bring perspectives from multiple states. “Creative Interdisciplinary Archival Content Delivery” by Sarah Buchanan reflects on graduate archival classwork navigating through interdisciplinary source content in archival collections. In teaching with both holistic identity expression and community care at the foreground of student guidance, this work examines pedagogical strategies to empower local and global change. “Promoting Representation in the Audiovisual Archives Field: The AMIA Salary and Demographics Survey and Pathways Fellowship Program” by Brian Real reviews data from the recently concluded 2025 cycle of the ongoing Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) Salary and Demographics Survey of the Field, which builds on prior cycles of 2021 and 2020 (published with Teague Schneiter in The Moving Image) and collects information that the association uses in its advocacy efforts. This work analyzes recent challenges that have had a disproportionate impact on the profession. In addition to the survey and resulting data, it will also briefly discuss other related initiatives from AMIA that can serve as meaningful models for substantive improvements, such as the IMLS-funded Pathways Fellowship program which is currently supporting its fourth cohort. “Attributes Mapping to Generate Pathways of Archival Studies and Social Justice Intersections: The SJ4A Community-Embedded Experience” by Bharat Mehra and Robert Riter explores attributes mapping, based on the IMLS-funded “Archival Studies Social Justice Master’s Scholarship Program (SJ4A).” The grant program recruited and trained 17 community-embedded paraprofessional archivists to begin their MLIS program in January 2023, who graduated in December 2024. This work highlights intersecting attributes related to professional motivations and demographic characteristics, workplace dynamics and patron communities, and career growth values, competences, and vision; providing an exploration into appropriate solutions, and insights into operationalizing the how-to’s of social justice in archival practice and agency in LIS education. “Empowering Rural Voices: Teaching Archival Practices in Community Contexts” by Vanessa Reyes and ALISE President Vanessa Irvin reflects the development of a new concentration in archives and cultural heritage, aimed at preserving the local heritage of rural communities through a place-based education (PBE) approach. Based on recent research, this presentation will showcase a curriculum focused on relationship-building, critical thinking and partnerships with rural communities and archive and heritage professionals, and its dual impact on student development and community empowerment. The moderator will facilitate Q&A within and across the presentations.