February 14, 2017
by Kelsey Grimm, Library/Archive Coordinator
The Glenn A. Black Laboratory, in partnership with several federally recognized tribes, is interested in knowing what American Indian resources and services are located at its home institution. Indiana University houses numerous American Indian resources and research materials at various collecting and service-providing units across its Bloomington campus; each separately housed and administrated. These resources offer a wide array of media and programming and represent the history and heritage of recognized tribes from across North America.
Tribal researchers have expressed interest in these many collections, though current access methods can be confusing, daunting, and time-consuming. In an effort to better understand the variety and number of these collections and services, staff at the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology circulated a survey to IU Bloomington repositories. A preliminary report summarizing the initial findings was written and the GBL team set out to personally contact tribes in order to gain perspective on how these IU collections can better serve their communities.
April Sievert, Director of the GBL; Jennifer St. Germain, Collections Manager; and Kelsey (Emmons) Grimm, Librarian, spent February 7th through February 9th in Oklahoma meeting with cultural heritage personnel from seven tribes. Information gathered during these meetings will remain anonymous during reporting, but was incredibly helpful when thinking about how the resources and services at Indiana University could be presented to audiences outside the University.
Our hope for this grant’s outcome is a webpage that describes and points to the many repositories and service-providing units at Indiana University with American Indian materials; think of this like a sign post that links out to those institutions’ webpages and makes understanding and accessing their collections a little easier.
We hope this trip is the first of many conversations, and that our relationships with our tribal partners are strengthened by future collaboration.