The Oregon Multicultural Archives and OSU Queer Archives were interviewed by Choice, a source of reviews of new books and digital resources for academic libraries that publishes a bi-monthly feature called “Ask an Archivist” to profile select special collections. The feature is intended to introduce readers to the treasure trove of materials housed in all kinds of archives and libraries. 

Be sure to check out the interview “Oregon State University’s Oregon Multicultural Archives and OSU Queer Archives: A conversation with curator Natalia Fernández about the collections and how they center marginalized communities in Oregon” to see the responses to the questions posed below!

• Oregon State University (OSU) houses the Oregon Multicultural Archives (OMA) and OSU Queer Archives (OSQA). Can you provide an overview of the two collections and the types of materials they include?
• Both the OMA and OSQA contain a substantial number of university records, including meeting minutes and photographs from student organizations and documentation on the activities carried out by cultural centers on campus. Could you speak more about these records? How do documents from university groups and initiatives help center and amplify student voices?
• The OMA and OSQA also feature oral history interviews with students, staff, and members of the wider Oregon community on their histories and experiences. Could you speak to the importance of oral histories, particularly for communities that are currently facing erasure? What does the transcription and cataloging process for the OMA and OSQA’s audio files entail?
• The Oregon Tribal Archives Institute resulted from a grant project created by the Oregon Multicultural Archives. Can you describe the project and your work with Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes? How does the Institute support the tribes’ autonomy when it comes to preserving and cataloging their histories?
• I understand that the OSU Queer Archives are overseen by you, an archivist, and Bradley Boovy, a professor. What is the value of archivist-professor partnerships? How can they enrich the development and use of archival collections?
• What outreach efforts do the OMA and OSQA engage in? How do the collections build community among students and faculty, other universities, and the wider public?
• In an article about the OSU Queer Archives titled “Co-Founding a Queer Archives,” you and Boovy write that, “…archives have the ability to shift the culture at institutions of higher education towards greater visibility and acceptance by acknowledging and validating the experience of marginalized students and other members of communities connected with universities including faculty, staff, alumni, and administrators.” Can you speak more about archives’ ability to “shift the culture at institutions of higher education” and how they can create opportunities for new stories and modes of understanding?
• The Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center (SCARC) recently held an exhibit called “Anti-Racist Description Activities in the OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center.” What does this exhibit entail, and how does OMA center anti-racist decision-making?

During winter 2025, the Oregon Multicultural Archives (OMA) collaborated with OSU Professor Adam Schwartz to gather materials from his course SPAN 399 “Bilingüismo local y personal” as an addition to the Oregon Multicultural Communities Research Collection. The set of materials includes course materials, documents pertaining to a book launch, an OSU Today article, and a sample of student projects.

About SPAN 399 “Bilingüismo local y personal”

“This course explores Spanish language education as a deeply personal, local (as opposed to foreign), and lifelong practice. Distinct from a survey course that introduces that thesis through published and multimodal texts, this class challenges students to realize their own bilingualisms as lived, dynamic experiences, and in ways that do not organize neatly into academic categorizations. Students will individually and collectively write, share, reflect, interview, sit in conversation, and present Spanish-English bilingualisms as lifelong relationships with and through teaching and learning.

Our work will be guided by the contents of Aquí Se Habla: Centering the Local and Personal in Spanish Language Education, a co-edited volume to be published this term. One of the co-editors of this text is the course instructor, and the other three will visit our classroom to invite students in as additional contributors. Over the course of ten weeks, students will read the text and learn about its foundational theoretical framework: The tension point. Aquí Se Habla raises awareness about long-standing points of tension that organize as ideological binaries (e.g. “home” vs. “abroad”) which relegate local and personal Spanish to marginalized status in academic spaces. Students will make the case for a tension point of their choosing, one that concerns not just themselves, but their families, friends and bilingual communities. In so doing, their own voices and testimonios will warrant inclusion alongside Aquí Se Habla’s diverse set of contributors, whose perspectives help to deconstruct disciplinary boundaries and elevate the knowledge and lived experiences of U.S. Spanish speakers. Final work in this course will prepare students to showcase how their local and personal bilingualisms may double as calls to linguistic justice. As such, students are invited to co-present with Aquí Se Habla’s co-editors at the volume’s official book launch at OSU in May.”

~ SPAN 399 “Bilingüismo local y personal” Syllabus

About the OMA and SPAN 399 Collaboration

Professor Schwartz shared the tension point the class selected to explore was “self-identity / imposed identity” — a tension point that resonated greatly with archival materials. As part of the students’ first of three visits to the archives, we talked about how archives can be a place in which people choose how their stories are represented on their terms as a form of empowerment and how archives can also be a place in which materials about but not by a community or individual can sometimes cause a great deal of harm. During their second visit, the students engaged with a curated set of materials that showcased the variety of ways in which communities and individuals have represented their identities — examples included diaries, songbooks, collective works of art, scrapbooks, and zines. On the third visit, we discussed the students’ ideas and questions for them to determine if they planned to donate their final projects to the archives. We discussed the importance of choice, representation, and consent, not only from them but for those who they interviewed for their projects. Of about a dozen students, five decided to share their final projects. At the end of the term, the students gave presentations of their findings and reflections, and many again shared their work as part of the Aquí Se Habla book launch on May 21, 2025.

On May 23rd SCARC was delighted to host the archivists of the Albina Community Archive for an amazing musical experience! Earlier this year Dr. Kelly Bosworth, Horning Assistant Professor, Public History & Ethnomusicology, proposed the idea and SCARC worked with her to organize the event — we set up a record player in the reading room, projectors in the exhibit space, and a welcome + merchandise table in the lobby area.

About the Albina Music Trust:

“Albina Music Trust is the only full-service community archive in the United States, dedicated to the restoration of a Black community’s historic musical culture. Our programs amplify the legacy of Albina’s musician community through archival media preservation, events and exhibitions, a record label, a radio program, oral history publications, and a sound walk. In collaboration with community members, we are the stewards of a digital repository documenting Albina’s arts and culture legacy, the Albina Community Archive.”

About the Event:

We hosted a pre-public event for Dr. Bosworth’s music history students to engage in a conversation with the Albina Community Archive archivists and then hosted an open house for the public to join in the fun! Participants selected records to play on the record player, explored the online archive via large projectors, and as a connection to SCARC materials, attendees also had the opportunity to view content from the Urban League of Portland Records, specifically the Albina neighborhood materials, as well as materials from the Obo Addy Legacy Project.

Event Photos:

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