Black lives in America, especially as they play out in Facebook exchanges, tweets, memes, gifs, pictures, videos and chats, are increasingly vital to understanding the history of now.
As this ephemeral information speeds past us in binary bits, untethered to anything lasting and permanent, is it possible to capture and archive it for future generations?
Foster came to the Fort Lauderdale library in May 2019 from the acclaimed Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, a division of the New York Public Library, where she served as the assistant chief librarian and established a groundbreaking web-archiving program. Scholars from around the world are drawn to the Schomburg, which Foster calls “the mecca” for research in Black studies.
The Schomburg and the Fort Lauderdale center are two of three libraries in the United States with archival collections dedicated to the culture and history of African Americans and others of African descent. The third is the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
