For the past decade, the UCLA Library’s International Digital Ephemera Project and Modern Endangered Archives Program have worked to create open access collections of international content through post-custodial partnerships. This paper details the work of those initiatives to support communities, archivists, librarians and researchers around the world to set priorities, understand complex legal issues and provide training and technology for cultural heritage preservation where content is at most risk. This paper describes how the UCLA Library works alongside a growing network of partners to preserve and present diverse voices and perspectives on global events and ensure community narratives about individual and collective experiences are accessible. This paper details both the ethic of care that informs the library’s work and the infrastructure that enables access and discovery to these community collections as it improves and expands the scope of these programmes.

COVID-19 has exposed fissures, frictions, and tensions in library resource sharing models. Will we convert this crisis into an opportunity for collectively determining international collections and their access? This panel examines new and old models for collaboration to ensure that the UC Libraries’ international collections responsibly retain their “distinctiveness”—and their excellence, as we head deeper into the future.