Map of Little Traverse Bay & Mackinac with Native place names added
“Scenic shore drive Petoskey, Harbor Springs, Cross Village = Ne-naw-bing te-baw me-dah-ba-nick : Be-das-sa-ga-ing, We-kwe-do-ing, Ah-na-maw-wa-te-zo-ing [map].” Scale not given.
Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections
Towards Community-Based Shared Stewardship, a project at the Bentley Historical Library in collaboration with the School of Information, focuses on the history of U-M and the complexities of its impact, but the project goal is to develop both a deeper understanding and a working model for community-based shared stewardship work that can be employed in most local contexts. Unlike most of the other IHP project sites, this project is not focused on a single archive, community, topic, or context. Rather, we seek to develop a repertoire of best practices for shared stewardship that can be applied to multiple types of sources and adapted for each collection through collaboration with a range of community partners. Our hope is that this deepened understanding of shared stewardship will inform reparative actions archivists can take to improve the present and future.
Attendees at the banquet of the Sixth Annual Convention of the Federation of Islamic Associations in the US & Canada, 1957
Attendees at the banquet of the Sixth Annual Convention of the Federation of Islamic Associations in the US & Canada, August 2, 3 & 4, 1957 held in Detroit, MI, 1957. Mary A. Cuardy Photograph. Bentley Historical Library. University of Michigan Library.
Allen Hamood (left), President of the Youth Group of Islamic Associations, chats with Besma Useen, third Secretary, and Edward Mahfuz, third Vice President, at a banquet at the Federation of Islamic Associations annual convention in Detroit | Federation of Islamic Associations–Photographs. Bentley Historical Library. University of Michigan Library.
The project centers around three core practices of shared stewardship: cultivating relationships, creative engagement, and collaborative stewardship. The project goal is to identify best practices within each of these core areas of shared stewardship.
Shared stewardship begins with creating relationships built on trust and mutual respect when community members visit the Bentley Historical Library and engage with its materials. Reading through documents and correspondence and physically holding the materials and photographs are ways to spark conversations among community members and with library archivists. In this early phase of shared stewardship, the aim is for people to discover personal and community connections to the past and envision ways the materials can inform and support the current needs and interests of communities throughout Michigan.
Once community members review archival materials and discuss their interests, questions, and connections, the Bentley and IHP can support creative engagement with the materials. There are many possibilities for doing so, including reparative description, public exhibits and installations, publications, or anything that can serve communities and their work around Michigan. These forms of creative engagement not only broaden archival practice into public scholarship but also bring multiple perspectives and voices to the collections. Creative engagement with the archives in the present moment enhances our understanding of the past while looking ahead to stories that will be told in the future.
Continued collaboration sustains the shared stewardship of archival collections and ensures that more voices and perspectives are included in our understanding of the past. The Bentley Historical Library aims to foster enduring relationships, cultivating them through in-depth projects over time with community partners and organizations.
The Towards Community-Based Shared Stewardship project team is cultivating shared stewardship practices by engaging with source communities whose lives are documented in archival materials held by the Bentley Historical Library. Activities have included developing a research guide for the Asian American collections, an oral history collaboration with a student organization, and a creative writing workshop with a community-engaged course. In 2025-26, the team arranged a research visit with curators from the Arab American National Museum and hosted an event with the Lao American Community of Michigan (LACM) and Ova Saopeng, a Lao American playwright, on language and resettlement.
In May 2026, the Communities in Conversation: Towards Community-Based Shared Stewardship in Michigan Archives Symposium mobilized experts and practitioners around the state of Michigan to share and explore the opportunities and challenges in supporting community-based stewardship of archival materials. The symposium was well-attended and displayed the considerable interest in ensuring communities decide how archives are understood and managed. Learn more about the symposium.
Upcoming plans include collaborating with the Detroit Chinatown Revitalization Project and sharing an extensive review of the Bentley’s Native American collections with Indigenous communities.
The initial phases of the community-based shared stewardship project have brought attention to community members’ experiences while working with archival records. Collaborations such as the oral histories on Asian American activism with the United Asian American Organizations (UAAO) and explorations of language and resettlement with the Lao American Community of Michigan highlighted several ways community groups can engage with, activate, and make decisions about stewarding archival records. Similarly, conversations at the statewide shared stewardship symposium identified what institutions and the archival profession can do to strengthen shared stewardship collaborations.
Taken together, the Bentley Historical Library and the School of Information are seeking to better understand the emotions people experience when engaging with archival collections. These individuals may include people whose lives or experiences are documented in the collections, their descendants, community or institutional archivists who have assumed professional responsibility or who have an interest in the ongoing care of these materials, or researchers interested in telling stories about, through, or in collaboration with communities and their collections. School of Information archival studies faculty Dr. Anthea Josias and Dr. David Wallace will lead the next phase of this qualitative research.
Following the aims of the Inclusive History Project, the research team recognizes that telling a comprehensive history of the University of Michigan involves being attuned to the affective experiences of community members as they navigate the ways histories have been documented in archival records and supporting their decisions about how their stories should be told.
International Center Group Members | International Center (University of Michigan) Records, Bentley Historical Library. University of Michigan Library.
Co-Principal Investigator, Director, Bentley Historical Library
Co-Principal Investigator, Clinical Assistant Professor, School of Information
Project Affiliate, Associate Director of Public Engagement, Bentley Historical Library
Research Affiliate, Lecturer IV, School of Information
Joanna Meijer Magoon Principal Archivist for Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library
Research Affiliate, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Information
Graduate Research Associate
Graduate Research Associate
Graduate Research Associate
Graduate Research Associate
