Archives & Social Justice

After more than three decades of working in sacred music and performance, Alvin Blount (’21) says he was bitten by the information sciences bug. At the time, he thought it was only archives that held his interest. All it took was a few classes and four faculty members to forever change the direction of his career and his life.

“My trajectory was archives, I didn’t want to talk about anything else, but when I got influenced by Hank, Fleming-May, Zhu, and Patillo, things just changed and now I’m very happy,” he said.

Coming to SIS

Blount, who earned a degree in organ performance from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1993, had previously sworn he’d never enter a classroom again. But after so many years of doing the same thing, he felt compelled to take on something new.

“I wanted to do something else, but I didn’t want to stop doing what I’m doing completely, I just wanted something in addition. And I guess the politics of the country and the way things have been moving in the last few years, with political division and racial division and almost civil unrest, affected me greatly. I wanted to find some kind of way to work to help with social justice and peace,” he said.

He began volunteering at Spelman College in Atlanta, a top-ranked women’s liberal arts HBCU, where he worked in the college’s archives. He said he fell in love with the work and that was solidified when he was asked to conduct a presentation for visiting faculty on the famous ethnomusicologist Willis Laurence James. It was so exciting and went so well that Blount decided archives was the addition to his work he’d been seeking.

“I figured I want to do something else to help with social justice and peace and yeah, archives is the way to do it,” he said.

Finding a program to facilitate that was also easy. As a UT alumnus, Blount was familiar with the School of Information Sciences and knew about its excellent program. Even with that knowledge, he made it a point to drive to Knoxville and meet with SIS Associate Professor Rachel Fleming-May, who was then the director of graduate studies for SIS, to feel out the program. After meeting with her and sitting in on SIS Associate Professor Awa Zhu’s Information Sciences 512 Information and Retrieval course, Blount knew he belonged in the program and applied.

At SIS

Blount decided to start off slow and took just one core course in spring 2020.

“I took my foundations class from the wonderful Carolyn Hank, and I could just hang on this woman’s every word. She introduced me, just as the class should, to so many concepts that I had not even taken into consideration, and I loved it,” he said.

He followed that with another course in the summer and decided to commit to being a full-time student. He quit his job in Atlanta and lined up a part-time position as music director of an Episcopal church in Knoxville and moved to the city in July 2020. After that, he dove into his school work and discovered his interests were far broader than archives alone.

He really enjoyed Information Sciences 560 Development and Management of Collections, which was introduced to him by Assistant Clinical Professor Ericka Patillo. He similarly enjoyed Information Sciences 565 Digital Libraries with Zhu, and loved doing a final project with another classmate on outreach librarianship and promoting digital libraries of select African-American and Hispanic-American women authors. But the real kicker was when he began taking classes from Fleming-May.

“I warn anyone that you may have a certain tunnel vision of what you want before you start your program, but some of these professors who are so great will have you drinking their Kool-Aid, and I drank the Fleming-May Kool-Aid,” he said.

Two of the three courses he took from Fleming-May were Information Sciences 533 Humanities and Social Sciences Sources, Services, and Scholarship, and 558 Planning and Assessment—the latter of which Blount says he uses almost every day in his current position. These classes prompted him to think about how he could fulfill his desire to promote social justice and peace in ways even beyond archives.

“Everything I planned to do before enrolling into SIS, I’m now able to do it. It’s not in a library, but virtual collection development, archival work, and area studies. SIS just put it all together,”

As he continued to take courses, including a practicum at Knoxville’s Church Street United Methodist Church library that allowed him to create a collection of social justice and peace books, Blount’s interests began to veer from strictly archives. One of his practicums was with the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee, working in their archives. That led to a job offer from the diocese, just a few months prior to Blount’s graduation.

Working for the Diocese

While his official title is as diocesan archivist for the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee, Blount said he does much more than recording and preserving diocesan documentation. He’s been able to take all of those courses that inspired him in the MSIS program and weave them into the work he is currently doing. In particular, he leads the Becoming Beloved Community initiative set by the national Episcopal Church to combat racism within the church.

“What I proposed to do when I came on board was to not just address anti-racism, which is so needed, but I also wanted to address awareness of xenophobia, misogyny. I wanted to find ways to make members of the LGBTQ and non-binary communities welcome in the church. So, I have cast a wider net with social justice and peace, and I love it here because I’ve been allowed to do so,” Blount said.

To do this, he’s called upon many of the skills he learned in the MSIS program. He’s curated resources on social justice and peace and disseminated those through the church’s podcast. He interviews storytellers and is planning to facilitate a lecture series wherein scholars speak about social justice and peace issues, which are then presented in a hybrid form so people can attend in-person and virtually.

Next—and this is the part of his proposal that has him the most excited—he created a collection of children’s books on the topics of anti-racism and social justice to supplement children’s religious education in the church. He plans on driving all over the East Tennessee area to promote what he’s calling “a good old-fashioned story hour.”

“I’m starting with children because we can talk anti-racism and social justice and peace all day long with adults, but we need to start with the children,” Blount said.

It’s a position that merges all of his passions and interests together, and he’s incredibly grateful he found it.

“Everything I planned to do before enrolling into SIS, I’m now able to do it. It’s not in a library, but virtual collection development, archival work, and area studies. SIS just put it all together,” he said.•