Career At-a-Glance
OVERVIEW: Amplifying underrepresented and marginalized voices to foster inclusion and deepen engagement with history has been the throughline of my career.
- 2026-Present: Community Archivist and Digital Scholarship Librarian, Penn State University Libraries (Associate Librarian)
- 2020-2026: Managing Director and Digital Scholarship Librarian, Penn State University Libraries (Assistant Librarian)
- 2018-2020: Project Manager and Digital Scholarship Librarian, Colored Conventions Project, University of Delaware
- 2007-2018: Project Coordinator, Zinn Education Project
- 2000-2005: Senior Account Executive / Account Executive, Independent Press Association
- 1998–2000: Editorial Administrator / Editorial Assistant, Phoenix New Times
About
Lauren Cooper (Akimel O’odham, Muscogee, she/her) is a Community Archivist and Digital Scholarship Librarian in the Eberly Family Special Collections Library at Penn State University at the rank of Associate Librarian. She works at the cross-sections of digital scholarship, emerging technologies, and archival research, especially concerning the materials related to marginalized and underrepresented communities. From 2020-2026, she was the Managing Director and the Digital Scholarship Librarian and the Managing Director for the Center for Black Digital Research (CBDR) and currently advises ex officio on CBDR’s administration and technology infrastructure.
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 where she helped grow the community from 4,000 to 84,000 registered teachers, build an email list of 70K+ contacts, and whose website had 4.7 million visitors and 217K downloaded lessons. [To date, building on the groundwork Lauren helped lay, these numbers have more than doubled.] 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 while also 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.
When the Center for Black Digital Research Librarian from 2020-2026, she worked with students, colleagues, and partners to research, develop, and implement digital scholarship and publishing projects. As Managing Director, she drove the implementation of the Center’s strategic goals, managing the delivery on Center partnerships and collaborations, participating in grant writing and management, and overseeing 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. With the Center directors, Lauren worked 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.
In her new role as the Community Archivist & Digital Scholarship (CADS) Librarian, Lauren leads Penn State University Libraries’ efforts to build ethical, reciprocal, and sustainable partnerships whose histories, knowledge, and lived experiences have been underrepresented or undocumented within Penn State and the broader historical record.
While continue to advise CBDR on administrative and technological infrastructure, Lauren works collaboratively with community partners, students, faculty, and colleagues across the University Libraries to advance community-centered archival practice through relationship building, shared stewardship, digital scholarship, and experiential learning. Lauren provides leadership in developing innovative approaches to community archiving that integrate established and emerging technologies while centering community priorities, ethical practice, and an ethics of care to digital access, engagement, and exploration of archival material.
Selected Highlights
Awards and Research Grants
2024-2027: Sally W. Kalin Librarian for Technological Innovations, Penn State Libraries
Three-year appointment and research funds to pilot a community archiving program composed of an undergraduate student cadre and librarian cadre with distinct and overlapping study tracts to gain an understanding of the history of community archive projects through readings, studying websites, and guest speakers. Students will explore methodologies for designing and implementing community archives projects, gaining familiarity with digital tools and methods, help identity collections to be digitized, and produce a digital project. Librarians will compare digital tools and methods, assessing opportunities and challenges of mapping public/consumer products onto an institutional environment, and consider the flexibility and constraints in administering a student-engaged, community archives focused project in the Penn State Libraries and make recommendations for what that would look like.
2025-2026: Proposal for Project Management and Community Building Graduate Assistant, Penn State Libraries
One-year funding for a graduate assistant to support, participate in, and contribute ideas to the development of the Community Archives Pilot Project.
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).
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
Annual Projects
Douglass Day Transcribe-a-thon at PSU Libraries • 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025: Building on previous PSU Libraries Douglass Day committee work, 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.
2025
Fall 2023–Fall 2025: Project and finance manager at-large for 17-person team planning “Frances E. W. Harper at 200: Commemorating Her Life and Legacy,” a 7-part commemoration event that includes a symposium, dance performance and tour, digital exhibit, read-a-thon, public mural, and poetry performance and publication.
2024
Fall 2023–Spring 2024: Project manager at-large for “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; 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
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).
Winter – Fall 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 with 5 scholarly panels and 1 keynote speaker. Coordinated logistics, broadcast, and outreach (Zoom, YouTube stream, and in-person).
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.
2021
Spring – Fall 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 composed of 2 scholarly panels, 2 keynote speakers, 1 archivist round table, 1 community planning session, that brought together 17 scholars, historians, and archivists from the U.S. and Canada.
2020
Fall 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).
Digital Scholarship & Digital Publishing
2026
May – August 2026: Migrated the ColoredConventions.org (exhibits and general info) to fresh WordPress Multisite instance: Led team of 4 postdocs and graduate students to migration 23 digital exhibits (650 pages) and main site (50 pages) to a lightweight, out-of-the-box WordPress instance that complies with ADA standards. Recreated and mirrored current site using free Twenty Twenty-Five theme and scaling down to minimal number of plugins. Piloted project at DreamLab Summer Institute in May 2025 to gather metrics and make resource estimations.
2025
Spring 2022 – Summer 2025: Advised on the final development stage of exhibits created by graduate students and faculty started in 2019 – “Music in the Colored Conventions,” “Radical Black Activists and John Brown,” and “For Generations To Come: Southern HBCUs and Their Colored Conventions Roots” including proofreading; updating overall look and design to match current theme; completing final technical and design review; creating promotional graphic for social media; and launching for public viewing.
Nov. 2023–April 2025: Advised on the design and development of the “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper at 200” digital exhibit; led month-long work sprints with 4 graduate student team to migrate previous draft to a new template and restructure menu; conducted final technical and design review; coordinated proofreading; created promotional graphic for social media; and launched for public viewing.
2024
Summer-Fall 2024: Implemented item-level cataloging project of the Howard Zinn Papers at NYU’s Tamiment LIbrary, completing in October 2024 with preliminary counts of 29,871 items and 183,229 pages in 73 cartons.
2023
Spring – Fall 2023: Advised faculty partner and graduate student on bringing to completion the “Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s Herstory in the Colored Conventions” digital exhibit; assigned a team of 5 to proofread pages; created promotional graphics for social media; conducted technical and design review; and launched for public viewing.
March 2023: Trip 3 of pilot project to item-level catalogue the Howard Zinn Papers at NYU’s Tamiment Library.
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.
Spring – Fall2022: Assigned a team of 5 to proofread pages of “Mural Exhibit: The Colored Conventions Movement and Beyond in Philadelphia”; conducted technical and design review; launched for public viewing; and created promotional graphics for social media and printed matter including an 11×17 two-sided poster.
July and Dec. 2022: Launched pilot project with two trips to item-level catalogue the Howard Zinn Papers at NYU’s Tamiment Library.
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.
Fall 2021–Spring 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; project managing a team of graduate students and librarians on layout review, proofreading, and technical infrastructure.
2021
Spring 2021: Publishing 16 Classroom Lessons for K-12 and College/AP Classes: Advised a team of 4 students 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/
Summer 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 scholarly needs; train graduate student on user testing; and supervised 8 user testing sessions led by graduate student.
2020
Summer 2020 – Development of “Voting Rights Campaign” website: Collaborated with an interdisciplinary, cross-rank team of 7 that to develop a multimedia campaign; advised on the curation and the metadata structure of 90+ digital images; researched, tested, and launched Importer WPML Pro Plugin to streamline uploading process; and designed a lightweight website to feature 5 slideshows/image galleries and 1 video gallery.
Fall 2018–Winter 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
Scholarship, Research & Service
Published Works
Book Chapter, Academic/Scholarly
Cooper, L. R. (July 2026). ‘We See How You See Us’: Visual Representation and Why It Matters for Engaging Audiences in Archival Material. In Cuellar, Jillian and Agnieszka Czeblakow (Eds.), Radical Visions: New Perspectives in Special Collections Curatorship. Society of American Archivists. Peer-reviewed/refereed.
Journal Article, Academic/Scholarly
Cooper, L. R. (2022). Review: W. Paul Reeve, Century of Black Mormons. Mormon Studies Review (2022), 88–91. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5406/21568030.9.1.09
Magazine/Trade Publication, Professional
Cooper, L. R.,Casey, J., Burgher, D., Foreman, P. G., Locke, B., Murray, C. L., Robinson, M., & Rudisell, C. (2023). “Ask an Archivist: The Colored Conventions Project.” Choice. American Library Association. https://www.choice360.org/feature/the-colored-conventions-project/
Blog, Non-Academic/Non-Scholarly
Cooper, L. R. (November 2025). Being Open, Social, and Protective: A Safety Guide for Curating an Online Public Network. In Glickstein, Adina and Antoinette Kendrick (Eds.), Open Social Cookbook. Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado.
Cooper, L. R., Byrnes, M. , & Coles, K. (2020). #DivBlk: Principles in Action During a Website Migration. A 6-part blog series reflecting on the biggest challenges to bring two new digital platforms to completion, how the challenges were addressed, the conversations and decision-making behind the process, and what was 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) https://coloredconventions.org/news/website-wednesdays/
Accepted Manuscripts
Cooper, L. R. The Metrics of Item-Level Cataloging the Howard Zinn Papers: An Experiment to Offer New Possibilities. Archival Issues. Peer-reviewed/refereed.[Accepted in October 2025. Anticipated publication in fall 2026].
Workshops, Presentations, Posters, and Exhibitions
Workshops
June 2026: Co-instructor, “Nuts and Bolts of DH Project Development” at Dream Lab, a week-long digital humanities training course.
May 2025: Instructor, ““DH Project Maintenance, Care, and Migration: An Experiment with the Colored Conventions Project,” DreamLab, a week-long digital humanities training course.
May 2024: Organizer and co-instructor, DH Training Sessions at Penn State • Organized three tracks of 2-day training sessions • Taught “Digital Storytelling: Intro to Omeka and WordPress” track.
2022, 2023, 2024: Co-instructor, “Nuts and Bolts of DH Project Development” at Dream Lab, a week-long digital humanities training course.
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.
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.
Presentations
April 2025: Presenter, “Visual/Digital: Centering the Humanity in Digital Humanities,” Black Arts Movement class, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma.
Feb. 2025: Co-presenter. “Black Activism in the 1800s: A Virtual Tour of Resources through PSU’s Center for Black Digital Research,” Penn State World Campus. International. Invited.
May 2024: Co-presenter, “Showcasing Diverse Collections: A Journey through Creating a Guide for the Libraries,” Diversity Week, Penn State Libraries.
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.
April 2023: Presenter, “Prototyping a DIY Process of Item Level Cataloging of Archival Material,” PSU Libraries Research Symposium, PSU Libraries, Virtual.
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.
August 2022: Moderator and co-presenter, “Radicalizing the Archives: Compiling a Whole New World About the Lives, Desires, and Needs of Ordinary People,” Howard Zinn at 100 Archivist Panel, Teaching for Change, Zinn Education Project, New York University Tamiment Library, Howard Zinn Revocable Trust, Online.
August 2022: Co-presenter, “People’s History Commemoration of Howard Zinn’s 100th Anniversary,” People’s Historians and Artists Panel, Teaching for Change, Zinn Education Project, New York University Tamiment Library, Howard Zinn Revocable Trust, Online.
August 2022: Co-presenter, “Process of Defining ‘Diverse Collections,’” Dean’s Forum, Penn State Libraries.
Panels
Nov. 2023: Panelist, “Mapping Current and Future Roles in Humanities Publishing Projects,” Center for 21st Century Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
June 2023: Panelist, “Ethics of Digital Stewardship in Digital Projects,” Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) Conference, Virtual.
March 2022: 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. Invited.
March 2021: 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. Invited.
Poster
March 2023: Poster session co-presenter, “DH Decoded: Designing a Digital Humanities Training for Academic Librarians and Researchers,” Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Conference, Pittsburgh
Conference Booth Exhibitions
April 2026: “People’s History in the Digital Age: HowardZinn.org, SNCC, and the Colored Conventions Project,” Organization of American Historians Conferences, Philadelphia, PA
December 2025: “People’s History in the Digital Age,” an exhibition of 12 digital humanities projects, National Council for the Social Studies Conference, Washington, D.C.
January 2025: “Item-Level Cataloging the Howard Zinn Papers at New York University,” American Historical Association Conference, New York, NY.
November 2024: “The Howard Zinn Digital Collection,” National Council for the Social Studies Conference, Boston, MA.
Consulting, Advising, Peer Review, and Other Intellectual Contributions
April 2025: Digital Humanities, Black Artists of Oklahoma Research Team, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK.
Fall 2024-Spring 2025: Open Social Incubator Cohort (11 selected out of 180), Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder.
2024-2025: Peer reviewer, National Archives and Records Administration, Capacity Building for HBCU Archives Grants.
June-Dec. 2023: Member, Digital Strategy Working Group, American Antiquarian Society.
2023: Peer reviewer, Digital Humanities Advancement Grants, National Endowment for the Humanities.
June 2022: Participant, Listening Session, Library of Congress, Digital Strategy Office.
2021: Digital Collections Advisor and Researcher, Savage Mountain Punk Arts.
2018–Present: Digital Collections Curator, Teaching for Change/Howard Zinn Revocable Trust.
Service
2024 – Present: Society of American Archivists, Archivists and Archives of Color Steering Committee
- 2026-2028: Senior Co-Chair, Elected.
- 2025-2026: Interim Co-Chair, Appointed.
- 2024-2026: Newsletter Editor, Elected.
2024-2025: Member, Diverse Engagement and Promotion Team, Penn State University Libraries
2024-2025: Mentor, Project Manager Mentoring Committee, Digital Library Federation (DLF).
2021–2023: Member, Native American Learning Group, Outreach Subcommittee.
2020, 2021, 2023: Forum Program Committee, Forum Proposal Review Committee, Digital Library Federation (DLF), Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).
2022-2023: Chairperson, Showcasing Diverse Collections Strategic Action Team, Penn State University Libraries.
Organizational Management & Finance
2020–2026: 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.
2020–2026: 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.
Conferences and Training
Sept. 2026: Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM) Conference
Sept. 2026: Advancing Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Summit • Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM) Pre-Conference
Sept. 2026: Fantastic Futures • AI for Libraries, Archives, and Museums (AI4LAM)
August 2026: WordCamp: WordPress Conference
July – Aug 2026: Society of American Archivists (SAA) Conference
Feb. 2025: Queer South Conference • Invisible Histories
Aug. 2025: Community Archives Workshop
Aug. 2025: Society of American Archivists (SAA) Conference
Oct. 2024: Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM) Conference
April 2024: Arrangement and Description: Fundamentals • Society of American Archivists (SAA) Workshop
Nov. 2023: Digital Library Federation (DLF) Conference
June 2023: Keystone DH Conference
March 2023: Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Conference
Nov. 2022: Facing Race Conference • Race Forward
Oct. 2021: Digital Library Federation (DLF) Forum – Digitizing Hidden Collections
June 2021: Introduction to Audiovisual Archives Management • Rare Book School (RBS)
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