History Maker

Not only does Makiba Foster run her own library’s African American Research Library and Cultural Center, she is also a key convener of such centers across the country. She leads Archiving the Black Web, a project that brings together Black collecting institutions, from public libraries to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, to map out the future of digitally curating the Black experience. This first-of-its-kind initiative launched during the pandemic—funded by a $150,000 National Leadership Grant—focuses on how to best archive the plethora of digitally born Black culture and content.

Foster also led the development of Documenting Ferguson, an archive of digital images and video from the aftermath of the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, in 2014 and the subsequent protests.

Nominator Maira Liriano, chief librarian at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where Foster worked before moving to Broward, says Foster “is willing to test assumptions about what is and isn’t possible within libraries. She is focused on leaving her community and the library profession better for those that come after her.”

Foster believes that information literacy, digital literacy, and historical literacy are all pillars of library work: “As a profession we tend to emphasize information and digital literacy, but with the current state of our world and attacks on efforts that work to better understand and not romanticize the history of our country, places that center marginalized voices, like the African American Research Library and Cultural Center, are now more critical than ever.”