Libraries house rich archival collections devoted to their communities’ histories. The same institutions also foster civic literacy among diverse populations. Too seldom do these activities overlap or enrich one another. As the ULC notes, “Balancing traditional services with new leadership responsibilities” presents a critical challenge (Civic Engagement: Stepping Up to the Civic Engagement Challenge, 2012). The matter of how to meaningfully integrate libraries’ new civic activities with traditional heritage collections is one such challenge. Hartford Public Library’s Hartford History Center and UConn’s Digital Media Center are engaged in a long-term effort to devise and share solutions to this issue. At the core is an interpretive website that facilitates in-library and off-site encounters that empower patrons to discover how they, too, can find their civic voices.

Find Your Voice is being shaped by input from its core audiences: the city’s Millennials (born between 1981 to about 1998) and, in tandem with existing civic literacy programs, Millennials who are also members of Hartford’s immigrant communities. By drawing the Contemporary Voices from the audiences it serves, Find Your Voice has inspired a new collecting focus. Immigrant voices related to humanities- and arts-inspired civic activism were under-represented in the archives. Going forward, materials collected in conjunction with each Contemporary Voice profiled ensures future generations have access to a richer cross-section of individuals whose work and communities shaped 21st-century Hartford.

A first outcome, supported by IMLS and NEH grants, is a now-in-development video, online exhibit, and skills-building tutorial related to the first Historic Voice: Gwen Reed (1912-1974). An actress in the Federal Theatre Project’s “Negro Unit,” Reed championed local community theater and founded a childhood literacy program in her housing project. Throughout, she made ends meet by playing Aunt Jemima for the Quaker Oats Company and working seasonally in Connecticut’s tobacco fields. Her life opens inquiry into contemporary issues: How do stereotypes shape our sense of self and of others? In what ways can drama and other forms of expression be used to reveal and unravel the power of stereotypes? What role has literacy played in social mobility? What forms of literacy are important today?