What We Don’t Have In Our Archives
CMU Libraries expands initiatives to document more inclusive history. Most people consider library archives - records of old materials, categorized and easy to search - as the definitive records of an institution's history. And yet archives are not neutral. Increasingly, organizations are recognizing that archives do not tell a complete story. At Carnegie Mellon University, the collections of preserved records skew heavily white and male, giving the impression that CMU's history lacked diversity. In fact, people of many ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, sexual orientations and gender presentations have been members of the community since Carnegie Technical Schools first opened in 1905. In recognition of this absence in recordkeeping, University Libraries has assembled an exhibit entitled "What We Don't Have” that aims to fill the holes in CMU's history.
