United for a Common Cause: Mapping the Past and Future of U.S. Baltic Collections [roundtable]

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Cultural and diaspora heritage preservation themes are common in archive and museum conference programming. This conference roundtable session will explore the landscape of support for and promotion of Baltic Studies, from the different perspectives of speakers from three U.S.-based institutions that have Baltic collections -Stanford University, Wingate University, and the Lithuanian Research & Studies Center. Guided by moderator-initiated questions, participants will share their experiences and insights regarding rewards, challenges, and opportunities in this landscape- initiating, building, maintaining, publicizing, and future planning.
Speakers will be invited to describe their professional interests and roles. They will overview their institutions’ Baltic focus (book collections, archives, education and research support, other initiatives), and what they feel is unique or noteworthy. Discussants will share success scenarios and challenging realities involved in this work. Incorporating the 2024 AABS conference theme and its concepts of “unity and giving aid”, participants will also be challenged to share examples of support for Baltic scholarship that have involved initiatives or projects with local communities (diaspora or other), national and international groups, or other institutions. The roundtable discussion will spotlight not only current but also aspirational cooperative and collaborative, collection-related or other initiatives, that can originate in the United States to support Baltic Studies research and scholarship. In an increasingly virtual scholarly information era, the impact of digitization and technologies on Baltic collections work also cannot be left out of a discussion about the future. Session audience members will be invited to join in a dialog with roundtable participants.

Short Bio

Moderator:

Ramune Kubilius, MALS, is a longtime academic health sciences librarian who is active in professional library organizations and in the Lithuanian American community. Her work and independent research interests include following ever evolving scholarly publishing and research trends, as well as the intersectionality and partnership opportunities they provide for those who support research needs and build collections or services. She has presented at past AABS conferences, also at two Conferences on Baltic Studies in Europe (CBSE), on topics related to Lithuanian American cultural organizations, publications, and memory institutions, and was on the local arrangements committee for AABS 2013 in Chicago, IL.


Speakers:

Joseph M. Ellis is a Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean in the Cannon College of Arts and Sciences at Wingate University in Wingate, North Carolina. He received his B.A. from Winthrop University and his M.A. and Ph.D from Temple University, all in the discipline of political science. His research interests include the Baltic States, Scandinavia, and Russia. He is the organizer of the Baltic Studies Workshop, hosted biennially at Wingate University, and helped to develop the Baltic Studies Reading Room at Wingate, one of the largest collections of Baltic texts in the Southeast.


Liisi Esse works as Curator for Estonian and Baltic Studies at Stanford University Libraries since 2013. She develops Stanford’s collection of Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Finnish material in all formats, including books, periodicals, manuscripts, and electronic resources. She runs various Baltic projects, including digitization projects, and organizes Baltic events and exhibits at Stanford. She also serves as the Administrative Executive Director of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) and as Reviews Editor for the Journal of Baltic Studies. She served as AABS’ Vice President for Conferences from 2016–2018 and organized the 2018 AABS Conference at Stanford University. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Tartu in 2016.


Kristina Lapienytė is President & CEO, Lithuanian Research & Studies Center, which has sites in Lemont, IL and Chicago, IL. She oversees collection, cataloguing, and digitizing of Lithuanian heritage materials at LRSC. Her focus is to make archival materials available for public research. She has presented about diaspora memory institutions at conferences in Lithuania and in Chicago, IL. She has a master’s degree from Vilnius Pedagogical University in Linguistics and BSN from Purdue University.


Kory Paulus is the Collections Management Librarian at Wingate University’s Ethel K. Smith Library. Kory has her MLIS from Drexel University and her BA in History from UNCC. Kory began building the Baltic Studies Reading Room Collection and its policies in 2022, with a focus on collecting books, periodicals, artifacts, and audio-visual content from the Baltic region. Kory oversees the preservation and development of the collection, which includes cataloging in 5+ languages. Rotating displays bring awareness of the collection to faculty, students, staff, and potential donors.

Sub Unit

• History, Memory, and Identity

Chair

• Ramune Kubilius, Northwestern University

Participants

• Joseph M. Ellis, Wingate University

• Liisi Esse, Stanford University

• Kristina Lapienytė, Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, Inc.

• Kory Paulus, Wingate University