Community Outreach Through Research Archives

In 2020, the University of Pittsburgh Library System (ULS) acquired the extensive archive of August Wilson, the African American Pulitzer-prize winner who was born in Pittsburgh and who centered the bulk of his work around giving a voice to the African American community in Pittsburgh through his ten-play American Century Cycle. The paper discusses the outreach program to the local communities, aimed at opening up the archive to much more than academic research. Once the archive was processed and opened to the public in 2023, the ULS partnered with the local schools to offer teacher and student scholarships to use the archive for integration into the curricula, for sparking creative student projects, including exhibits, and for creating a sense of celebration of black history and artistic achievement. In addition, we are also offering creative fellowships to local artists who use the archive as an inspiration for their own creative expression.