Engaging Communities: Public Programming in State Universities? Special Collections and Archives

Abstract

Since 1978, when Ann Pederson published “Archival Outreach: SAA’s 1976 Survey,” no systematic attempt has been made to document the extent, challenges, and benefits of the archival profession’s outreach activities. To begin to address this gap, archivists at Georgia State University (GSU) surveyed special collections and archives at state universities nationally about their fund-raising, friend-raising, and educational public programming activities. This article describes some of GSU’s public programming activities and compares them with the results of the survey.