Michael Levine-Clark
Dean of Libraries
University of Denver
Rhonda Manzanares
Dean, Library Services
Colorado State University – Pueblo
Jasmine Wilson
Program Administrator, Behind The Scenes of the Civil Rights Movements
Reveal Digital
Academic and cultural institutions around the world are stewards of valuable but often hidden primary source and special collections content that can be of great use for teaching, learning, and research. More and more faculty want to teach with primary source/special collections, and more and more students and early career researchers need to conduct their research using these same materials. For the past decade, Reveal Digital has been offering a library crowdfunding (Fund2Open) and crowdsourcing approach to publishing open access scholarly collections of primary source material focused on social movements, hidden voices, and marginalized communities. Collections such as Independent Voices, Student Activism, American Prison Newspapers, and others have been built (funded and sourced) by librarians for a broad range of potential users, while being hosted on JSTOR and preserved in Portico. The presentation will include discussion about some important lessons learned from trying to develop and deliver collections in this model, and why this model is an appealing funding option as well as a useful sourcing alternative with regard to collections that have traditionally been marginalized or not seen as commercially viable.