Subject Area
Education, Information/Library Science
Abstract
Academic librarians play a critical role in shaping access to scholarly information. However, the intellectual contributions of African American scholars have often been marginalized in academia through structural inequities, archival gaps, and historical patterns of exclusion. This qualitative study explores how academic librarians understand and use their roles to advance access to African American scholarly contributions. This study is guided by Black Critical Race Theory (Dumas & Ross, 2016) and Ray’s (2019) Theory of Racialized Organizations, and examines how institutional structures, professional norms, and resource allocation influence librarians’ efforts to curate, preserve, and promote Black knowledge. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with twenty academic librarians across a range of institutional contexts, supplemented by a pre-interview survey to provide professional and organizational context. Findings reveal three central themes: librarianship as advocacy, community-centered partnerships, and the development of Black epicenters. Participants described both constraints and opportunities related to institutional priorities, leadership support, and organizational culture. This study contributes to the literature on equity in academic librarianship by highlighting the strategies librarians use to challenge the marginalization of Black scholarly materials and promote more inclusive knowledge systems. Implications for policy, professional practice, and future research are discussed, with particular attention to the role of academic libraries in supporting Black intellectual discourse.
Degree Date
Spring 2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ed.D.
Department
Eucation, Policy, & Leadership
Advisor
Ashley Stone
Second Advisor
Xiaodan Hu
Number of Pages
181
Format
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Christian-Long, Monique, "Curating Black Knowledge In Academic Libraries: A Qualitative Study" (2026). Education Policy and Leadership Theses and Dissertations. 25.
https://scholar.smu.edu/simmons_depl_etds/25
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