Title: Preserving International Relationships & Items in a Time of Covid
Description: In 2018, The Libraries became a partner with the Narrative Art & Visual Storytelling in Holocaust & Human Rights Education Project through new services offered through UVIC Libraries’ “Grants Menu,” which offers librarian and archivist expertise in digitizing, preserving, and making accessible project material. The Narrative Art Project pairs together Holocaust Survivors and graphic artists from across the world in order to co-create a graphic novel that provides witness to the Survivors’ experiences. A close relationship formed between the artists and survivors as they talked, listened, and created together. In 2020, the close collaboration among the participants went online as a result of the COVID epidemic. This talk will address the promises and challenges of working on an international project, including issues of building capacity, digitization, working remotely, and training stakeholders in best practices for preservation and access. https://holocaustgraphicnovels.org/
Presenter: Dr. J. Matthew Huculak is Head of Advanced Research Services & Digital Scholarship Librarian at the University of Victoria Libraries He holds a PhD in English Language & Literature and an MLIS with a concentration on archives and preservation. He is the founding Managing Editor of Modernism/modernity’s Print Plus platform, which won the Association of American Publishers 2019 PROSE Awards for “Innovation in Publishing.” His research focuses on libraries, 20th-century English literature, book history, and periodicals. He has served as Editorial Assistant for the James Joyce Quarterly, Project Director of the National Endowment for the Humanities funded Modernist Journals Project and is currently Director of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded Modernist Versions Project and Co-Director of BC Open Textbook-funded Open Modernisms. orcid.org/0000-0002-2717-1112