Dr. Lydia Tang is working to make archives more accessible and break down access barriers for people with disabilities. Lydia, who is the special collections archivist at Michigan State University, talks about her work on the SAA Task Force to Revise Best Practices on Accessibility and the SAA-ACRL/RBMS Task Force to Revise the Joint Statement on Access to Research Materials in Archives and Special Collections Libraries. Lydia underscores the importance of putting people first in all archival accessibility decisions and how this informed her work to revise the Guidelines for Accessible Archives for People with Disabilities. Lydia is the recipient of the 2020 Mark A. Greene Emerging Leader Award.

Episode Extras

Lydia offers further advice for creating accessible archives spaces in her article “Engaging Users with Disabilities for Accessible Spaces,” and for hiring archivists with disabilities in her co-authored article “Toward Inclusion: Best Practices for Hiring People with Disabilities.” Both articles appear in the July/August 2019 and 2020 issues of Archival Outlook, respectively.