Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library, is the globally identified, standard bearer among research libraries collecting primarily African American and African diasporic materials. The Schomburg is a “hybrid” institution. It is the premier research library in the field for scholars and a museum that collects, documents, preserves, researches, exhibits, and presents educational and public programs.

Lord Cultural Resources was contracted to assist the Schomburg in the planning, facilitation, and execution of a Strategic Visioning process providing direction for the Center’s growth and development for the next five to ten years. The Visioning process included an Environmental Scan, Contextual Analysis and Market Brief to inform a day-long Charette, facilitated by Lord. The resulting discussion led to recommendations for the strategic use of resources and institutional capacity to design and develop a new Schomburg Center for the 21st Century.

In 2011, Lord Cultural Resources was further engaged by the new leadership of the Schomburg to develop a Program and Communications Strategy to engage new audiences for the Center. This plan included recommendations for incorporation of the collection into innovative and active user programs.

In 2013, Lord Cultural Resources was engaged to complete a Conference Planning process for the Planning of the State of Black Collections conference held at the Schomburg Library. Work elements included: recommendations and vetting of panel members for the conference panel, benchmarking and trends research, conference scheduling, coordination and facilitation. Lord wrote a white paper as a final outcome of the very successful conference.