Amara Osei
Howard University
This felt like the first room where I didn't have to explain why this work matters.
Belonging
LineageOn their shoulders
On their shoulders
we stand
Librarians. Memory keepers. Archive builders. Educators. Technologists. Counter-mappers. Data protectors. Digital space makers. People who made a way out of no way—doing Black information work in families, institutions, communities, movements. We trace the lineage to move forward.
Community map
View the mapRooted everywhere
The cities, institutions, and regions where people are doing Black information work.
Roll Call
Browse Roll CallBrowse the Community
The people building Black Information Futures. Search by person, location, or institution.
What is a Black Information Future?
“The ability of Black people to create, attain, interpret, and apply the information they need for agency and authorship in the remainder of the 21st century.”
From the symposium
Read all →Reflections.
Jerome Baptiste
New York Public Library
HBCU libraries have been holding Black information futures for over a century. It's long past time we named it.
LegacyUrgency
Darius Knowles
Tulane University
The AI turn in library science is happening right now. We need Black practitioners at that table — not consulting, leading.
TechnologyUrgency
Participant
Jackson, MS
My grandmother was a school librarian for thirty years in Mississippi. She never got a room like this. I'm here for her.
LegacyBelonging
Participant
Virtual — international
Black information futures is not an American conversation. Wherever Black people have been — we have been building archives, oral traditions, counter-records. This work belongs to all of us.
GlobalLegacy
Participant
Washington, DC
We are not a niche. We are the center of something the whole field needs to reckon with.
Urgency