Steven D. Booth

Image of Steven sitting on a boulder wearing lime green frames, a grey sweatshirt, and cutoff denim.

Steven De'Juan Booth (he/him) is an archivist, independent researcher, and member of The Blackivists, a collective of trained Black memory workers who provide expertise on archiving and preservation practices to communities in the Chicagoland area.

His work and research interests include photographic materials, Black cultural heritage preservation, archival history, and digital humanities. He is currently Archive Manager of the Johnson Publishing Company Archive for the Getty Research Institute, where he leads a staff of seven archivists who dynamically contribute to the preservation, discovery, and activation of the collection.

From 2009-2021, Steven worked at the US National Archives and Records Administration for the Presidential Materials Division, Office of Presidential Libraries, and the Barack Obama Presidential Library. He has also held positions at Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center and JPMorgan & Chase cataloging the archive of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Steven is an active member of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) having served on SAA Council from 2017-2020 and in 2022 was inducted as a Distinguished Fellow. He is currently a member of the Steering Committee for the Archives Leadership Institute at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

He has been an invited speaker at the Library of Congress, the Bentley Historical Library at University of Michigan, the Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University, the 2021 Visual Resources Association Annual Conference, and the 2023 Project STAND residency program. In 2020, Steven co-edited with Stacie Williams Loss/Capture, a digital editorial project exploring the state of Black cultural archives in and beyond Chicago, presented by Sixty Inches From Center, a Chicago-based arts publication and archiving initiative.

He is currently working on a book project, under contract with SAA Publications, with Barrye Brown documenting the history and impact of the Archivists & Archives of Color member affinity group. He is also a co-PI on the Archival Revolutions Project, along with Brenda Gunn, funded by the SAA Foundation, which explores transitional shifts in the archival profession from 1980-2020. They will be publishing their research findings in 2024 as part of the CLIR Pocket Burgundy series.

Steven comes from a long lineage of Black cultural heritage professionals who have also matriculated from Morehouse College (BA in Music) and Simmons College (MS in Library Science).