UCI Libraries (UC Irvine) Receives $800,000 Grant From Mellon Foundation

The UCI Libraries have been awarded $800,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support Community-Centered Archives Practice: Transforming Education, Archives and Community History (C-CAP TEACH).

The project will contribute to social justice-focused scholarship, train students and build partnerships between academic libraries and their local communities. Audra Eagle Yun, head of Special Collections & Archives, will direct the project, in conjunction with project leads Krystal Tribbett, curator for Orange County Regional History, and Thuy Vo Dang, curator for the Southeast Asian Archive.

“With the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we are honored to empower students and underrepresented communities through the creation, preservation and distribution of knowledge and histories on their own terms,” said Eagle Yun. “Our hands-on training provides students with skills in ethical archival stewardship and collaborative documentation projects. This generous funding from the Mellon Foundation enables the UCI Libraries to expand and share our methods at a national level.”

The 48-month long project features several interconnected components:

• Training and compensating UCI students for intensive educational experiences
• Providing direct payments to community-based organizations in the Orange County, California region
• Implementing two assessment projects with the California Digital Library to support ethical and responsible representation of marginalized histories in digital collections
• Redistributing funding to academic libraries to apply Community-Centered Archives Practice (C-CAP) models
• Developing a comprehensive Community-Centered Archives Practice (C-CAP) Hub website
• Building a coalition of community-centered archives practitioners in the United States.

Learn More, Read the Complete Announcement