About
Lauren Cooper (Akimel O’odham, Muscogee, she/her) is the Digital Scholarship Librarian and the Managing Director for the Center for Black Digital Research at The Pennsylvania State University.
Before becoming a librarian in 2018, Lauren worked in the publishing field, primarily at non-profit and education organizations, for more than 20 years amplifying underrepresented voices, communities, and histories while gaining vast experience in community engagement, publishing, promotion, and accounting. Her prior position for nearly 11 years was at Teaching for Change as the founding Coordinator for the Zinn Education Project. In this work to feature the history and stories of women, people of color, and social movements often missing from the curriculum, she managed the website, IT development projects, and outreach communications and began delving into archives and digital collections to search for images to pair with books, articles, and lessons. Through this work, she experienced publishing’s digital evolution and how this transforms the way we communicate ideas, stories, and histories.
While at the Zinn Education Project, her role evolved to encompass managing the HowardZinn.org website. She currently serves as the HowardZinn.org Digital Curator, an advisory role as well as an avenue to experiment and engage in community archiving activities including archival research, data curation, digitization, transcription, and digital collection development.
As the Center for Black Digital Research Librarian, she works with students, colleagues, and partners to research, develop, and implement digital scholarship and publishing projects. As Managing Director, she drives the implementation of the Center’s strategic goals, managing the delivery on Center partnerships and collaborations, participates in grant writing and management, and oversees that the organizational, financial, and technological infrastructures meet the immediate and long-term needs. Community building and engagement across and between different audiences is critical to the Center’s collective and collaborative framework for scholarly production. In collaboration with the Center directors, Lauren works to establish and maintain trust, understanding, and reciprocity with external institutional partners and community members associated with digital projects, ensuring the ethical curation and stewardship of digital projects, especially with communities historically excluded, silenced, or underrepresented in academia.
Upcoming Events
Instructor, “DH Project Maintenance, Care, and Migration: An Experiment with the Colored Conventions Project,” DreamLab Workshop, May 2025
Selected Highlights
Selected Highlights
Awards and Research Grants
July 1, 2024-June 30, 2027: Sally W. Kalin Librarian for Technological Innovations, Penn State University Libraries
Three-year appointment and research funds to pilot a community archiving program. Proposal includes: 1) Researching the history of community archiving projects, methods and technologies, challenges, and achievements; 2) Developing a training curriculum with colleagues; 3) Launching a paid 2-year student fellowship program to learn the history of community archives, gain skill sets in digital curation and digital scholarship methods, and test technologies, equipment, and processes to assess how these could map onto the institution’s digital ecosystem; and 4) Organizing a symposium featuring student work, invited speakers from community archiving projects, and presenting recommendations for a Digital Community Archives program.
March 2024: Nancy L. Eaton Libraries Endowment Award, Penn State Libraries
Award to support travel to attend “Arrangement and Description: Fundamentals” to re-familiarize with current archival practices and utilize in future contributions to PSU Libraries and the field.
2024-2027: Sponsored Research, Howard Zinn Revocable Trust
Part II of “Item Level Cataloging and Outreach.” Three-year grant to complete item-level cataloging and promote digital collection materials at community and academic conferences. Item-level catalogued the remaining 65 of 73 archival cartons, completed in 11 weeks (8 weeks with 2 people and 3 weeks with 1 person). Presenting and promoting physical and digital collection at the National Council for the Social Studies Conference 2024-2027, American Historical Association (AHA) Conference 2025, Organization of Historians Association (OHA) Conference 2026, and public/community conferences where available. Additionally, this research will inform a future toolkit/guide for how communities, stakeholders, historians, and researchers can prepare to conduct item-level cataloging themselves to inform their particular needs and encourage the potential contribution to enhancing the finding aid in order to increase access, use, and engagement with archival material.
2022-2023: Library Faculty Organization Research Grant, Penn State Libraries
One-year grant to experiment and pilot a do-it-yourself item-level cataloging guide for communities, researchers, and stakeholders. Secured additional funding to hire two research assistants.
Community Engagement and Project Management
Multi-year Projects
Douglass Day Transcribe-a-thon at PSU Libraries • 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024: Building on previous PSU Libraries Douglass Day committee work, I facilitate the interlocking logistics of a local University Park transcribe-a-thon event with the National Douglass Day Broadcast Team, and support liaising to the commonwealth campuses hosting events.
2024
Fall 2023–Spring 2024: Project manager at-large, “Digitizing Black Women’s Records Day,” Black Women’s Organizing Archive, Center for Black Digital Research. Advise faculty and students on event planning, broadcast logistics, and administration. Mentored and trained students on digital publishing, ethical graphic communications. Tested plugins for YouTube stream directly on the BWOA site.
2023
Dec. 2023: Booth display representing the Center for Black Digital Research at the National Council for the Social Studies Conference, Nashville. Designed materials to engage attendees including: a “Curriculum for K-to-College” webpage that features the teaching guides created across our projects by our Curriculum Committee and highlights digital exhibits, books, and classroom activities to engage students with 19th-century Black organizing history; display poster set; and two-sided postcards distributed to attendees.
Sept. 2023: Designed “Mary Ann Shadd Cary at 200: Commemorating Her Life and Legacy” resource page that features multiple ways for people to learn about Shadd Cary through previous CBDR events, new publications, a digital exhibit, and upcoming events.
2022
Dec. 2022: Represented the Colored Conventions Project at the National Council for the Social Studies Conference, Philadelphia; coordinated talk and booksigning for The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century.
Jan.–Oct. 2022: Project manager for hybrid two-day symposium, “The Making of a Social Movement: The Oratorical and Rhetorical Legacies of the Colored Convention Movement” comprised of 8 scholars, historians, and archivists from the U.S. and Canada on 5 scholarly panels and 1 keynote speaker. Coordinated logistics, broadcast, and outreach ((Zoom, YouTube stream, and in-person).
Aug. 2022: Organized, moderated, and presented at virtual panel, “Radicalizing the Archives: Compiling a whole new world about the lives, desires, and needs of ordinary people” (Zoom) for the Howard Zinn Centennial.
2022: Co-chair of the Howard Zinn Centennial Committee, promoting activities by publishers and organizations, and coordinating 3 days of virtual workshops and panels (Zoom).
2021
May-Oct. 2021: Managed the calls for proposal process and production of “Mary Ann Shadd Cary In the Here and Now,” a two-day virtual symposium on Mary Ann Shadd Cary (an antislavery activist, educator, and lawyer as well as a pioneering newspaper editor, journalist, and publisher) comprised of 2 scholarly panels, 2 keynote speakers, 1 archivist roundtable, 1 community planning session, that brought together 17 scholars, historians, and archivists from the U.S. and Canada.
2020
Sept.–Dec. 2020: Joined planning committee as project manager to re-calibrate production and ensure a shared scope of goals for two public community events about Mary Ann Shadd Cary, liaised between four faculty members at three institutions and managed logistics of 52-person production for “Mary Ann Shadd Cary and the Power of Black Art” (Oct. 9) and “Dancing Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s Activist Legacies” (Dec. 10).
May-Oct. 2021: Managed the calls for proposal process and production of “Mary Ann Shadd Cary In the Here and Now,” a two-day virtual symposium on Mary Ann Shadd Cary (an antislavery activist, educator, and lawyer as well as a pioneering newspaper editor, journalist, and publisher) comprised of 2 scholarly panels, 2 keynote speakers, 1 archivist roundtable, 1 community planning session, that brought together 17 scholars, historians, and archivists from the U.S. and Canada.
Scholarship, Research & Service
Multi-year Roles
2024-2026: Newsletter Editor, Society of American Archivists, Archivists and Archives of Color Steering Committee, Elected.
2022, 2023, 2024: Co-instructor, “Nuts and Bolts of DH Project Development” at Dream Lab, a week-long digital humanities training course
July 2022-Present: Prototyping a DIY Process of Item-Level Cataloging of Archival Material: Research to gather metrics, document process, and attend to questions that arise. Secured grant and external funding to conduct three on-site visits to the Howard Zinn Papers at NYU’s Tamiment Library.
2021–2023: Member, Native American Learning Group, Outreach Subcommittee. Co-led team to produce a Native American Women Activist Wikipedia edit-a-thon in collaboration with Indigenous students, Native American historians, and others that have a mutual commitment to deepen the understanding of Indigenous peoples.
2020, 2021, 2023: Forum Program Committee, Forum Proposal Review Committee, Digital Library Federation (DLF), Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)
2025
May 2025: Instructor, ““DH Project Maintenance, Care, and Migration: An Experiment with the Colored Conventions Project,” DreamLab, a week-long digital humanities training course.
Nov. 2024-April 2025: Open Social Incubator Cohort (11 selected out of 180), Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder
2024
July 2024-June 2025: Mentor, Project Manager Mentoring Committee, Digital Library Federation (DLF)
July 2024-Present: Member, Diversity Engagement and Promotion Team, Penn State University Libraries
May 2024: DH Training Sessions at Penn State • Organized three tracks of 2-day training sessions • Teaching “Digital Storytelling: Intro to Omeka and WordPress”
Feb. 2024: Co-presenter, “Bringing Black Activism of the 1800s to Digital Life: Digital Scholarship, Collective Action, and Community Engagement,” Penn State Hershey College of Medicine
2023
Jan. 2022-Dec. 2023: Chairperson, Showcasing Diverse Collections Strategic Action Team, Penn State University Libraries
Nov. 2023: Panelist, “Mapping Current and Future Roles in Humanities Publishing Projects,” Center for 21st Century Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
September 2023: Contributor on Community Building and Project Building, Q&A, “Ask An Archivist: Colored Conventions Movement,” Choice, American Library Association
August 2023: Co-instructor, Radical Librarianship Institute, modules on Community Building, Principle-led Work, and Project Management/Planning/Implementing,California Rare Book School, University of California, Los Angeles
June 2023: Co-teaching, “Nuts and Bolts of DH Project Development,” at Dream Lab Digital Humanities Training Institute, University of Pennsyvlania, Philadelphia
June 2023: Panelist, “Ethics of Digital Stewardship in Digital Projects,” Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) Conference, Virtual
June 2023: Member, Digital Strategy Working Group, American Antiquarian Society
April 2023: Presentation, “Prototyping a DIY Process of Item Level Cataloging of Archival Material,” PSU Libraries Research Symposium, PSU Libraries, Virtual
March 2023: Poster session co-presentation, “DH Decoded: Designing a Digital Humanities Training for Academic Librarians and Researchers,” Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Conference, Pittsburgh
February 2023: Invited co-presentation, “Research, Scholarship & Collaboration at the Center for Black Digital Research” for “Black Memory and Student Activism in the Archives,” Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies, Virtual
2023: Peer reviewer, Digital Humanities Advancement Grants, National Endowment for the Humanities. Review and make recommendations (funding and project planning) for 15 applications across three levels of funding ($75,000-$350,000) from a wide range of humanities disciplines, all grouped around a particular focus on innovation in or experimental approaches to scholarly communications
2020-2022
March 2022: Invited panelist, “Anti-racist and Anti-sexist Praxis in the Development of the Colored Conventions Project Interfaces and Search Tools,” Cultural Heritage Symposium 2022, Rare Book School and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Virtual
March 2021: Invited panelist, “Visual Representation and Why It Matters for Engaging Audiences in Archival Materials,” Diversity in Collections Care: Many Voices, The Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts, Virtual
December 2020: Co-presenter, “Let’s Get (Feasibly) Digital: Connecting Big Ideas to Realistic Outcomes,” Delaware and Maryland Library Associations Conference, The College & Research Libraries Division (CRLD) of the Delaware Library Association, Virtual
January 2020: Co-author, “#DivBlk: Principles in Action During a Website Migration.” A 6-part blog series reflecting on our biggest challenges to bring our two new digital platforms to completion, how we addressed them, the conversations and decision-making behind the process, and what we learned. Topics include: Project Management, Platform Decisions and Implementation, Quality Assurance, Ensuring Digital Space for Black Women and Access to Black Histories, and URLs and Scholarly Implications (Parts I and II)
Digital Scholarship & Digital Publishing
Projects in Process
Nov. 2023–Present: Advising graduate student co-chairs on the development of Frances E. W. Harper digital exhibit to launch in spring 2025.
2023
Nov. 2022–Dec. 2023: Advised Univ. of Iowa Satellite Partners on final stage of publishing 109-page digital exhibit; project managing team of graduate students, librarian, and admin assistant to review layouts, proofreading, and guiding on the technical infrastructure building to improve search engine optimization and discoverability. Uncompleted and published.
2022
Dec. 2022: Worked with third-party IT company in migration of HowardZinn.org to a new server and a new WordPress theme to streamline plugin management, improve site health, and offer future development opportunities.
July 2022: Published Howard Zinn Audiovisual Timeline (TimelineJS), reflecting two years of research, web scraping, data curation, and metadata refining; hand coded custom HTML to display buttons and hyperlinks.
Jan. 2022: Launched the HowardZinn.org Digital Collection (Custom Post Type and FacetWP plugins), a faceted search interface to guide historians, researchers, activists to scattered archival holdings. Led front-end development in collaboration with former undergraduate handling back-end development.
Sept. 2021–Feb. 2022: Advised Northwestern University Satellite Partners on final stage of preparing for the launch of “Black Organizing in Pre-Civil War Illinois: Creating Community, Demanding Justice” a 50-page digital exhibit (WordPress Multisite); project managing a team of graduate students and librarians on layout review, proofreading, and technical infrastructure.
2021
March–May 2021 – Publishing 16 Classroom Lessons for K-12 and College/AP Classes: Advised a committee of 4 students (3 graduate, 1 undergraduate) on design and publishing of 16 classroom lessons produced in 3 formats (web, PDF, Google Doc) for K-12 and College/AP Classes to promote engagement and use of 8 Colored Conventions Project exhibits and the book The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century. coloredconventions.org/curriculum/
July-Sept. 2021 – Development of Black Women’s Organizing Archive Website: Led project management and served as website developer for the Black Women’s Organizing Archive Website (BWOA) 1.0 that established a web presence to address multiple needs: serve as a pilot/template for the project pages for key figures/organizations of the BWOA; provide a basis for conversations with institutional partners on building the BWOA scattered archives; produce stable web page URLs for digital content related to Dr. Moody Turner’s (CBDR co-director) edited volume, The Portable Anna Julia Cooper (August 2022). Train graduate student on user testing, and supervised 8 user testing sessions led by graduate student.
2020
July-Sept. 2020 – Development of Voting Rights Campaign Website: Collaborated with an interdisciplinary, cross-rank team of 7 that to develop a multimedia campaign focused on the topics of Women’s Suffrage, Voting Suppression, Voting Successes, Civic Engagement – People of Color, Civic Engagement – Diaspora, and Black Uprisings to build public knowledge of the history of U.S. and global voting rights of people of color. Advised on the curation and the metadata structure of 90+ digital images. Researched, tested, and launched Importer WPML Pro Plugin to streamline uploading process. Designed a lightweight website to feature 5 slideshows/image galleries and 1 video gallery. coloredconventions.org/voting-rights-campaign
Oct. 2018–Jan. 2020: Launched two new Colored Conventions Project platforms: one housing the convention documents and one housing the exhibits and general project information. Website development began in 2016; took over project management and development in 2018 to bring project to completion. coloredconventions.org and omeka.coloredconventions.org
Organizational Management & Finance
2020–Present – Budget Management: Managing Director for a core team of 25-40 students, faculty, and librarians plus partners and collaborators. Supervise $740,000-$1.5 million annual budget from multiple streams including grants across institutions and departments. Project manager for annual narrative and financial reports to college, organize writing sessions, frame report outlines, assigned directorate to areas, and advise on related/adjacent grant budgets.
2020–Present – Administration: Manage and mentor an administrative team on implementing daily administrative activities (i.e. budget and finance, outreach and engagement, recruiting and hiring, space and equipment, project management) embued with the guiding principles of the Center for Black Digital Research.
2022–2023 – Securing Center Space: Collaborated with the Libraries and the Center for Black Digital Research Directorate to negotiate centralized physical center space that provides more visibility and accommodates hybrid meetings, events, and collaborative work.
2018–2023 – Grant Management: Project and financial manager for all activities related to Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Council on Library and Information Resources, and Delaware Humanities, including tracking expenses and payments, ensuring compliance with related cost-share account requirements, transferring between institutions, collaborating with the Primary Investigator (PI) and faculty directors to re-calibrate activities impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and directing process to complete grant reporting (narrative and financial) and extension requests.
Education
2018 • Masters in Library and Information Science, specialization in Archives and Digital Curation • University of Maryland, College Park
1998 • Bachelors in Visual Sociology: Struggle and Resistance • Johnston Center for Integrative Studies, University of Redlands, California