Hazine was started by two Ottoman historians, to provide archives and library guides for researchers working on the Middle East, North Africa, and Islamicate societies. Since ‘relaunching’ in 2018 with Heather Hughes and N.A. Mansour as co-editors, Hazine has continued to provide the research community with archive reviews, but Hughes and Mansour have since reworked the website to be more broadly inclusive of cultural heritage workers and highlight their contributions to research, while also addressing the unique challenges to Islamic and Middle East Studies research. They hope to continue to build the site as an inclusive space where conversations can happen about the research process from all angles.

While Hazine has already been highlighting the many digital resources available, Hazine has continued to do so with the intention of supporting research during the pandemic. In our roundtable presentation, we will discuss how we work to build community, support equitable access to research materials, and platform underrepresented voices in academia and library and information science (LIS). We will share the ethics that guide our work, particularly in a context where there are often extraction approaches to cultural heritage in the Middle East. We will also discuss the infrastructure and work that makes this project sustainable.

Panelists:
+Shabbir Agha Abbas, Graduate Student, Columbia University
+Marwa Gadallah, Graphic Designer
+Heather Hughes, Co-editor, Hazine; Middle Eastern Studies Librarian at Penn University
+N.A. Mansour, Co-editor, Hazine; PhD Candidate, Princeton University

The Kitab Talk series is a program of the University Libraries and the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Feb 4, 2021 12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)