Lighting the Way: A National Forum on Archival Discovery and Delivery took place over 2.5 days at Stanford University in Stanford, California from February 10-12, 2020. The event included approximately 70 participants, and focused on information sharing and collaborative problem solving around improving how user-facing systems support discovery and delivery for archives and special collections.

Plenary presentations and question and answer sessions on Day 1 of the Forum were livestreamed and recorded. To view presentations, visit the Presentations page. The project team synthesized the outputs of the Forum into Lighting the Way: A Preliminary Report on the National Forum on Archival Discovery and Delivery, a report published in November 2020.

The Forum leveraged proven exercises and techniques drawn from existing methodologies used in ideation sessions for human-centered design to address three primary goals:

• To visualize, map, and build connections – between participants, their work, the systems they rely on, and the communities they serve.

• To identify and organize around shared opportunities and challenges, identified by participants during group activities.

• To provide a platform for engagement with the project, leading to participation in future project activities.