David Magier, Director of the Columbia University Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research, will explore the opportunities and challenges in incorporating human rights documentation into teaching and research. Many of the challenges of working with archival collections of the scale, variety, and importance of the Human Rights archives at Columbia (which include organizational archives of Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, etc.) also present learning opportunities. Dr. Magier will describe the types of documentation being collected and examine possible scenarios for how faculty and students might participate in the effort to improve the mechanisms for discovery and analysis of materials, both in print form and on the web, initiating a dialogue about how new human rights content and tools created by CCNMTL could intersect with the work of the library.

This seminar will extend discussions began at the CHRDR's public conference last month, "Human Rights Archives and Documentation: Meeting the Needs of Research, Teaching, Advocacy and Social Justice," a seminal international gathering of over 240 activists, scholars, and librarians.