Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) encourages students, staff, faculty, organizations, and community members to collaborate with us. With your help, we can use our collections to introduce new audiences to archives and the stories they tell. Together, we can learn, connect, and grow.

Outreach activities

Outreach activities are a great way to bring the archives to life. Through these activities, you and your communities can connect with the past and learn more about the resources SCUA offers. Successful outreach activities with partners have included

  • speaking engagements 
  • workshops
  • exhibits
  • events
  • tours

We are happy to collaborate with you on these and other outreach activities that support our mission and help you achieve your goals. Please contact us with your interest and ideas!

Exhibits 

Collaborating with SCUA on an exhibit can be a great way to highlight what you are most interested in on campus. Learn more about exhibiting with us. 

Grants

To further our mission to collect, preserve, and provide access to our rare and unique collections, SCUA occasionally takes part in grant projects. “History at Home: Community Archival Film Screenings,” a grant project funded by Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area Program in 2019, was a project that digitized, restored, and screened archival agricultural films from SCUA collections. 

Currently, SCUA is collaborating with seven partner institutions throughout Iowa on “Amplifying Black Voices in Iowa,” a grant project funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to digitize and provide unified access to a variety of complementary collections that will elevate the histories, shared experiences, and achievements of Black communities throughout the state of Iowa.

Projects

SCUA staff are happy to support the use of our collections and partner with individuals and groups to take on collaborative projects. Currently, we are engaged in efforts to document the ISU community through oral history, with a focus on the student experience and underrepresented communities on campus. We also continue to support the Tracing Race at Iowa State University initiative, which began in 2020 and still accepts proposals today.

Contact us with your ideas for collaborative projects.

Featured Projects

  • Rufus B Atwood page on HBCU Connections project

    HBCU Connections at ISU

    The University Library's first Residency Librarian, Shaina Destine, created the HBCU Connections at ISU in 2018. This wiki profiles Black ISU alumni who went on to serve as faculty, staff, and administrators at HBCUs. This project was created to bridge the gap between SCUA and the special collections departments of the HBCUs in these profiles. Another important goal for this project is to represent Black students in our collections because their history is ISU history.

  • Covid-19 slide introducing project

    COVID-19 Stories Project

    SCUA invites you to help us gather and preserve our communities’ experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic. ISU students, faculty, and staff, as well as community members throughout Iowa and the Midwest, are invited to share their experiences and thoughts from this unprecedented time. Materials submitted will be gathered into a collection and made available to the public as a contribution to the historical record of these events.

  • Oral History Toolkit screenshot

    Oral History Toolkit

    The goal of this project is to provide Iowa State community members with the opportunity and means to plan, conduct, and share oral history projects. While SCUA is fortunate to have conducted many oral histories, it is a fraction of all the stories that can and should be preserved. This project seeks to expand those stories to provide a fuller, more inclusive representation of the Iowa State community. All Iowa State stories are welcome.

    In achieving this goal, we recognize that a balance must be made between quality recordings and providing low-barrier, easy-to-use means for capture. As a result, we outline a variety of options so that projects can get carried out with available means yet still maintain a sufficient level of quality for long-term research use.

  • Home page of the voices in color website

    Voices in Color

    Voices in Color seeks to collect, preserve, and share the history of racial and ethnic diversity at Iowa State University through the lens of communities of color, inserting these stories in to Iowa State's historical narrative and archival record.

    SCUA is involved with the oral history element of Voices in Color. Completed oral histories are available via Aviary, a cloud-based platform for publishing searchable audio and video content.

    This project is administered by Harrison Inefuku, Scholarly Publishing Services Librarian. Please contact him for more information on this project.