In the wake of a series of events, including the death of George Floyd last summer, the entire country yet again, started to discuss the challenges of racial justice in our communities. In response to this ongoing conversation was the decision by the UC Berkeley Library leadership to formally create a taskforce to look into the issue of racial justice in our Library environment, services and practices. The Task Force on Racial Justice is composed of 13 members of the UC Berkeley Library community, representing a wide range of departments, and inclusive of staff, librarians and a faculty member. 

The task force convenes this panel as an opportunity to share insights into the process, challenges and opportunities inherent in doing this sort of work in a Library organizational structure. We will provide staff and librarians to discuss the issues we identified in our work; the challenges we faced and the strategies we used in narrowing our focus with such a large and complicated topic. Given the novelty of returning to campus in-person and rebooting Library services, we will also discuss the impacts of general overcommitment to projects and the additional emotional labor of working on this sort of reform work amidst other competing obligations. We hope sharing our experiences can be educational to our fellow UC colleagues, and recommendations will inspire others to adopt similar approaches and continue the advance of racial justice work in their own communities; and/or partner with parallel efforts across campuses, and throughout the UC System.


Addressing Systemic Racism in the UC Berkeley Libraries: The formation and experiences of the Racial Justice Task Force

Blockeley University is the collaborative effort of hundreds of students who in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, sustained their community by building the UC Berkeley campus in Minecraft, a sandbox video game. Their extraordinary effort is being preserved by The Bancroft Library. This presentation will discuss the selection of the collection and the challenges and opportunities in preserving this unique project.

The Blockeley effort was recognized by the Chancellor’s Office and a virtual commencement ceremony was conducted in the Blockeley University Minecraft server. Other universities have built their campuses in Minecraft before but what was extraordinary about this build was that it was an innovative effort to specifically keep the UC Berkeley community together during the shelter-in-place period. The Bancroft Library felt this was an effort worth preserving.

In this presentation, Kathryn M. Neal, The Bancroft Library’s Associate University Archivist, will discuss how she identified components of this project that should be preserved as historical evidence and Christina Velazquez Fidler, The Bancroft Library’s Digital Archivist will address the technical challenges in preserving the Blockeley server and all of its modifications, and lastly, the solution of a single player world file bundled with the texture packs that enabled the many modifications made. This solution resolved many questions including concerns surrounding the maintenance of the Blockeley server.

Together the world file, the promotional videos, the website, planning documents among other materials collectively make up the Blockeley University collection. The Blockeley University collection is a forward thinking collection, recording the work of hundreds of students and their efforts to maintain community during the Covid-19 pandemic.


One block at a time: selecting and preserving Blockeley University, a sandbox video game and community response to the COVID-19 pandemic;

panel

This  conference will explore the intersection of technology and service, the lessons learned through the past extraordinary year, and the value of change management. In light of the challenging times, we are coming together virtually to share our work under the theme 'Leading with Innovation, Stronger through Collaboration'.

The UC Libraries Forum will serve as an opportunity for UC library colleagues to meet virtually, share, learn and find opportunities for new collaborations and projects across the UC system. Presentations and conversation will note existing collaborations and spark ideas for new ones. This forum builds on and extends the scope of UC DLFx 2018 and 2019 beyond digital initiatives to all library employees to include themes such as research data, scholarly communications, the current-COVID academic library and others.




This event requires a registration to attend. To register, please click [here](https://ucl2021registration.paperform.co/) if you have not aleady done so.

Please register for UCLF 2021 to be able to enter the conference on Underline.io. Attendance is free, but registration is required.  We will contact you when the complete information about the conference and schedule becomes available. You would then need to login to Underline.io to be able to see the full content and build out your schedule. In case you do not have an Underline account, please create one. Thank you. 


UC Libraries Forum: Leading with Innovation, Stronger through Collaboration

This  conference will explore the intersection of technology and service, the lessons learned through the past extraordinary year, and the value of change management. In light of the challenging times, we are coming together virtually to share our work under the theme 'Leading with Innovation, Stronger through Collaboration'.

The UC Libraries Forum will serve as an opportunity for UC library colleagues to meet virtually, share, learn and find opportunities for new collaborations and projects across the UC system. Presentations and conversation will note existing collaborations and spark ideas for new ones. This forum builds on and extends the scope of UC DLFx 2018 and 2019 beyond digital initiatives to all library employees to include themes such as research data, scholarly communications, the current-COVID academic library and others.

Christina Velazquez Fidler

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Addressing Systemic Racism in the UC Berkeley Libraries: The formation and experiences of the Racial Justice Task Force

One block at a time: selecting and preserving Blockeley University, a sandbox video game and community response to the COVID-19 pandemic;

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