Our Purpose

 

Mission: Provide professional expertise on cultural heritage archiving and preservation practices to document historically underdocumented communities.

Vision: By helping individuals and organizations inventory, document, and preserve all aspects of humanity, we aim to empower people to use the past to speculate on or create through direct action radical, liberatory and inclusive futures for us all.

Values 

  • We value open access to historical materials with respect to community needs.

  • We value best practices in preservation and conservation of materials—digital, analog or ephemeral—and we also value preservation of community narratives.

  • We value the protection of marginalized histories and artifacts

  • We value equitable and explicitly non-exploitative labor practices around the creation, collection, care, description, preservation, and access to and of heritage materials. 

  • We value education and transparent communication with the public about cultural heritage practices and theories.



Lerone Bennett, Senior Editor at Ebony Magazine in his office at Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, 1973. (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.)

Lerone Bennett, Senior Editor at Ebony Magazine in his office at Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago, 1973. Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.