On behalf of the Collective Responsibility project team, we are pleased to announce the release of our white paper, Collective Responsibility: Seeking Equity for Contingent Labor in Libraries, Archives, and Museums. You may download the paper at: http://laborforum.diglib.org/white-paper/ (or directly at http://laborforum.diglib.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2019/09/Collective_Responsibility_White_Paper.pdf) and view it and more project documents in our OSF repo: https://osf.io/af9hz/


The Collective Responsibility project seeks to address the specific problems of precarity that grant-funded positions in digital library, archive, and museum work create and reproduce, and how those positions impact the lives and careers of workers, particularly workers from marginalized and underrepresented populations. The project’s work consists of two phases:


  *   Developing a collective understanding of worker experiences

  *   Constructing best practices, recommendations, and benchmarks appropriate to participating institutions and funders


This white paper presents the outcomes of the first phase. It draws worker experiences from a pre-forum survey and outcomes of Meeting 1: Experience, which took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, over 1.5 days, April 24-25, 2019. Goals for this forum were:


  *   To provide a space for workers to share their experiences and thoughts.

  *   To better understand each other’s experiences and build solidarity.

  *   To identify commonly-shared negative experiences and reflect on the structures and systems that perpetuate them.

  *   To identify structures that promoted wholeness or minimize harm.

  *   To reflect on how we may use what we’ve learned to create structural change.


This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services LG-73-18-0236. We are deeply grateful for the assistance of our advisory board, the engagement of the participants and white paper reviewers, and those at our institutions who made this project and paper possible. Page 2 of the white paper contains a fuller acknowledgment of this work.


In solidarity,

Sandy Rodriguez & Ruth Tillman, Co-PIs

Emily Drabinski, Amy Wickner, & Stacie Williams, Co-Investigators



Ruth Kitchin Tillman
Cataloging Systems & Linked Data Strategist
Penn State University Libraries
Paterno Library 006 | 814-867-1038
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