Today’s post comes from Alexis Bhagat, a student at SUNY University of Albany, currently studying for a Master of Science in Information Science, with a concentration in Archives & Records Management. If you would like to write a guest post, please use the guidelines here. It has been edited for brevity and length before publication on the I&A Blog by the current blog coordinator, Burkely Hermann.
Promotional image for symposium discussed in this post. The Artwork: “Change Our Worlds” by Shyama Kuver in collaboration with The People’s Paper Co-op, which was created for the 2023 Black Mama’s Bail Out
During Brown University’s announcement of their acquisition of the papers of the celebrated, and long-incarcerated, writer Mumia Abu-Jamal, Amanda E. Strauss, director of the John Hay Library, remarked that “the carceral system touches millions of Americans’ lives, yet the historical archive has a scarcity of stories of incarcerated people.” This glaring absence of incarcerated voices in the historical record is precisely what the Hay Library seeks to address with their groundbreaking collecting initiative, Voices of Mass Incarceration in the United States. This initiative is aimed at providing researchers with first-person accounts from individuals who have endured the harsh realities of prisons and jails in the era of mass incarceration.
At the heart of this new initiative are the Mumia Abu-Jamal papers. There are “more than 60 boxes of letters, notebooks, manuscripts, pamphlets, personal artifacts, books, and other items.” These invaluable documents, previously in the custody of historian Johanna Fernandez, will be made available to researchers starting September 27, 2023, when the John Hay Library at Brown University officially unveils this collection. The finding aid is currently accessible online through the RIAMCO online inventory, allowing scholars and the public to explore its contents.
To celebrate the inauguration of this vital collection, the Hay Library has organized an exhibition that will span the Brown University campus. The exhibition will be complemented by a three-day symposium that will bring together over two dozen artists and experts, each offering unique perspectives on the multifaceted impacts of mass incarceration, from its effects on health and policing to issues of gender and racial justice. Together, the symposium and exhibition are designed to shed light on the daily realities of incarceration. They offer a catalyst for a broader discussion on American history and culture, as seen through the material records of one man. Thus, the exhibition and symposium both exemplify the power of archives to illuminate history while also exemplifying a historic flaw of the archives profession in collecting the papers of prominent individuals.
Mumia Abu-Jamal occupies a singular place in American history. He is a rallying point for a global movement advocating for his amnesty, the object of organized outrage from the Fraternal Order of Police and their supporters. Given his status, and the controversies around his case, it’s undeniable that Mumia Abu-Jamal is a “prominent individual” whose papers would be coveted by any repository in the United States. The Voices of Mass Incarceration project aims to move beyond collecting the papers of prominent individuals and to collect the papers of incarcerated individuals more broadly. Last year, Mary Murphy of the Hay Library said that her team has identified a mere 25 archival holdings in American libraries related to first-person experiences of incarcerated individuals. The Voices of Mass Incarceration project aims to address this archival silence. I am curious if Murphy has reassessed her statement over the past year. Is the silence of the voices of incarcerated individuals primarily a problem of acquisition? Or is it also not a problem of retrieval?
Consider, for instance, other ways to search: The first newspaper published within a prison by an incarcerated person was “Forlorn Hope,” released in 1800 by William Keteltas (1765–1812) while he was in a New York City debtor’s prison. This occurred two decades before the first surge in American prison construction from 1816 to 1825. There are no “Keteltas Papers” in American repositories, but correspondence between William Keteltas and other individuals can be found in various archives. This includes letters to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams, from 1801 to 1812, found on the National Archives’ Founders Online website.
By using different frameworks to search, users can uncover writings and artwork created behind bars, which is scattered throughout America’s archives. In this respect, the curation of a digital collection, by the Beinecke Library in 2020, is an exemplary project. It features writings and artwork by incarcerated individuals drawn from the library’s extensive holdings. The collection includes notable pieces such as Austin Reed’s memoir manuscript, poems by Ethridge Knight and Leonard Peltier, and periodicals like “The Shadow” monthly, produced by Oregon prisoners, and “The Angolite,” produced by inmates at Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary.
In conclusion, the Voices of Mass Incarceration project, anchored by the Mumia Abu-Jamal papers, represents a pivotal moment in archival collections. It not only seeks to bridge the historical gap by bringing forth the narratives of those incarcerated but also underscores the urgency of acknowledging and addressing the myriad challenges faced by millions of prisoners in America. This initiative serves as a powerful testament to the transformative potential of archives, revealing both the past and present contradictions within the Mumia Abu-Jamal papers and offering a promising path toward a more inclusive historical record.
Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Burkely Hermann, Metadata Librarian for the National Security Archive and current I&A Blog Coordinator. There will be spoilers for each of the books, animated series, films, and other media he will be discussing.
This organizational chart of the National Archives and Records Administration is an example of an archival bureaucracy
Large government, corporate, and private archives are bureaucratic. Even though the so-called Information Revolution threatened to upend existing practices within archival bureaucracies, and structures of these institutions, new records management strategies developed, in Europe and U.S., which are as hierarchical as previous methods. [1] Bureaucracy remains firmly entrenched, in language, practices, and strategies of collecting institutions, whether the National Archives or Library of Congress. In this post, I’ll discuss the role of bureaucracies in archival institutions and connect my findings to fictional depictions.
Recordkeeping often lends itself to bureaucracy, whether in non-profit organizations, corporations, or governments. Sometimes practices change and reinforce the bureaucracy of these institutions. This can include discouraging creation of “rich narrative reports”, while supporting archival classification and arrangement as an “infrastructural tool”. Furthermore, some bureaucracies are repressive, affecting restitution of captured wartime records. [2]
Unsurprisingly, culture of documentation has changed from being transactional to bureaucratic as organizationally sophisticated bureaucracies first developed in the 19th century. Scholar Francis Blouin called for new principles about diplomatics, referring to study of form, creation, and transmission of records, and their relation to facts within them, and their creators, to order to “identify, evaluate, and communicate their nature and authenticity.” [3] Blouin argued that bureaucratic culture produces transactional and literary records, systematic recordkeeping, analytic records, and records created in respect to “sovereignty of people in democratic societies”. In Blouin’s view, in such societies, public accountability necessitates “particular forms and genres of recordkeeping.” [4]
Other scholars have noted growing complexity, changing nature, and interrelatedness of government bureaucracies. Recently there has been a tendency to “free up” bureaucracy while encouraging entrepreneurship and risk-taking. The latter undermines archival missions. [5] Modern bureaucracies have defined existing file systems, even as archivists and historians are presented with many challenges. This includes influence on archival theory, especially by Weberian bureaucratic thinking, and controlling access to records. This was even the case in Eastern Europe, with political shifts in latter years of the Cold War caused archival access procedures to change. [6]
Modern bureaucracies have produced a “sheer mass of records”. In the past, this caused archivists to use sampling in order to determine “research potential” of records and appraise them. Even so, archivists continued to experience frustrations when “dealing with” bureaucracy, while being a part of complex bureaucratic structures, which can include competing groups. [7] More recently, there has been discussion of how various technologies can change bureaucratic processes, including in the United Nations and Vatican. Other scholars have asked whether the role of archives in the life-cycle of government records is a way of “holding democratic governments accountable”. The latter is the case in Germany, which has a strict division between records management and archival functions, with records remaining in custody of government bureaucracies. [8]
Fictional depictions of bureaucracies reflect some of these realities. One of the best known examples are the Vogans in Douglas Adams’ TheHitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, who destroy Earth because the planet is in the way of a hyperspace freeway. They are the embodiment of bureaucrats. The Vogans are inefficient, with absurdly lengthy official processes, and their continued efforts to thwart “any real progress in the galaxy.” Adams’ makes clear a metaphor: the house of protagonist Arthur Dent will be destroyed by an uncaring (and extremist) bureaucracy, just as the Vogans are doing to the planet. [9] Archives are not directly shown, but characters in the 2005 film view a restricted archival record from the Magrathean Public Archive. The record cuts off before revealing the name of a supercomputer, with a message stating that information has been deleted, as I noted in my post on the Issues & Advocacy blog back in December.
While bureaucracies are famously criticized in novels like Catch-22 and The Trial, they are a major part of other media, like the acclaimed animated series, Futurama. In the series, Hermes Conrad (voiced by Phil LaMarr), is a bureaucrat who works for the Central Bureaucracy, which manages legal, financial, and business matters in the city of New New York. In one episode, “Lethal Inspection”, a physical file archive is shown, with Hermes taking a folder out of a file cabinet. It is later revealed that he was the inspector who approved a defective robot named Bender (voiced by John DiMaggio), after be burns the file.
Brad Houston, a Document Services Manager for the city of Milwaukee, said the physical file archive is really a records center because it has semi-active records. He described how the Milwaukee records center works, noting the importance of filling out transfer forms correctly, pointing out that records are organized by box with specific assigned numbers, and importance of records management training. As another archivist put it, information and records management is as much about understanding bureaucratic processes and human behavior as it is about the records and information.
While there are many other examples of fictional bureaucracies, [10] one specifically comes to mind: the Elven bureauacracy in the children’s adventure and supernatural comedy-drama animated series, Hilda. An elf named Alfur (voiced by Rasmus Hardiker) is a series protagonist. Like the other elves in the series, they can only be seen if their tiny paperwork is signed and filled out. In the first episode, the protagonist, Hilda (voiced by Bella Ramsey), tries to come to peace with the elves, who see her as a menace because she stepped through their houses for years without realizing it. In the process, she goes through various Elven political officials who declare there is nothing that can be done and that the matter is out of their hands.
As the series continues, Alfur becomes a correspondent in the city of Trolberg, and files reports about his daily activities in the city, where Hilda is now living. Characters such as Frida (voiced by Ameerah Falzon-Ojo) and Deputy Gerda (voiced by Lucy Montgomery) are shown to care about the paperwork as much as him, as does the witchy librarian named Kaisa (voiced by Kaisa Hammarlund). In other episodes, Alfur proudly tells a legendary Elf story about a fight over a real estate contract, he meets a society which doesn’t use paperwork, and emphasizes the importance of reading the fine print. The series also features elf-mail, known as “email”, which is sent from the countryside into the city with various couriers, Alfur saying that elves pride themselves on the accuracy of historical records, and impressed by how Hilda is able to use loopholes. In the next to last episode of the show’s second season, Alfur is able to convince an elf sent as his replacement to write an eyewitness confirmation form, confirming that his reports from Trolberg, said to be “the most requested from the official archive”, are accurate and true.
Hilda, emphasizes importance of accountability within hierarchies more than fictional bureaucracies shown in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Futurama. Alfur is graded on a performance management system and experiences some level of bureaucratic accountability. The latter is achieved, within institutions, through strategies, administrative rules, budget reviews, and performance management. It can also be accompanied by citizen accountability, which attempts to hold government administrators accountable through forums and laws, using communication technologies to directly access bureaucratic information, monitor government activities, and give feedback on delivery of public services. However, Futurama and Hilda make clear the value of records managers (and archivists) who have developed strategies and experience with relationship-building and negotiating bureaucratic politics.
Many archives, these days, are not “faceless” or “nameless” as those in fiction, nor do they encourage falsification of information to protect individuals. Instead, some likely came into existence during the Progressive Era to “lessen anxiety” about issues such as race. While some bureaucratic records, within archives, may be considered “cold”, there have been efforts to humanize the files, especially those about human atrocities. Even so, some archivists remain impatient with “inanities” of bureaucracies they are part of. [11]
Bureaucracy remains part and parcel of archives. There have been efforts, in recent years, to reduce bureaucracies said to be “overlapping” and related claims that government by bureaucracy is dead or no longer necessary. Despite this, committing information to paper, then managing, or shuffling, that paper within a bureaucracy remains a “source of an essential power.” After all, records have the power to legitimize bureaucracy, while promoting political hegemony and constructing social memory. In fact, in the 1985 film, Brazil, a controlling bureaucracy rules people’s lives and crushes spirits. [12] The film’s protagonist, Sam Lowry, has been described by some as an archivist who has “dreamlike moments” and sees himself as a winged superhero. He tries to tamper with data in order to save the woman he loves before his vision is shown to be an illusion.
While there won’t be any “bureaucratic cock-ups” or Vogan Constructor Fleets demolishing Earth to make way for a hyperspace expressway, [13] sophisticated and complex bureaucracy will remain an integral part of archives, whether we like it or not.
[10] The Wikipedia category “Bureaucracy in fiction” lists 50 entries, including Loki TV series, the anti-communist novel 1984, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Pale King.
[13] Adams, Douglas. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” In The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide, 16, 25-26. New York: Gramercy Books, 2005. Vogans are also described, on page 38, as “one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy…[not] evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous”.
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of Steering Committee member, Burkely Hermann, National Security Archive, and current I&A Blog Coordinator. Other members currently on the I&A Steering Committee include Danielle Simpkins, Caitlin Rizzo, Sheridan Sayles, Liz Call, Holly Rose McGee, and Claire Gordon.
1) What was your first experience working with archives?
I first worked in an archives after graduating from college with my B.A. in Political Science and History, as a researcher at the Maryland State Archives for a project trying to track down the stories of Maryland Revolutionary War soldiers, called the “Finding the Maryland 400” project, having a flexible start and end time, often either working with a historian on staff or independently. While that job only lasted six months as the grant money from a non-profit ran out, it began my interest in archives, which was rekindled in later years when I started my MLIS degree and worked at NARA’s College Park location as a work study in my last semester.
While I was drawn toward genealogy when working at the Maryland State Archives, I remember digitizing documents, using a push cart to move heavy books from the stacks to my desk, the in-house system I used to input information, or the many databases I used day in and day out. On the other hand, there were mold remediation efforts during the end of my time there. Worst of all, however, was the public transit nightmare I endured to get to the archives. Every day, I went on a light rail train to the end of the line, then a caught bus down to the archives itself. One wrong transfer or traffic would cause delays either by minutes or by hours. One major lesson I learned from the whole experience was to work somewhere that is accessible through public transportation!
2) What is an archival issue that means a lot to you?
That is a hard question. I would say precarity in the archives profession is very important, as many of my jobs since graduating have been precarious, whether working at a grant-funded position at the Maryland State Archives, an unpaid internship for NARA, or a graduate assistantship at University of Maryland, where I earned my MLIS degree, focusing on Archives and Digital Curation. Connected to this are those trying to unionize archivists, have fair pay, and safe working conditions, among other efforts to help archival issues.
Currently, I work at a non-profit which relies on grant funding, so in that way, it is a bit of a precarious position, I suppose, as a loss of funding could lead, possibly, to cuts in wages and benefits. I am glad that archival precarity has received a lot of attention in recent years and I hope that it continues to be seen as important by those in the profession, including in the SAA. This seems by the case from what I can gather when filling out the A*Census II.
3) What do you hope to gain by being on the I&A Steering Committee?
I hope to connect with like-minded archivists who are concerned with various archival issues, such as reparative processing, redescription, institutional sustainability, institutional racism, and preserving social media posts. I’ll be using my perspective to positively contribute to the Issues & Advocacy Section (I&A) to continue existing advocacy and outreach efforts, including continuing to promote the value and importance of the archival profession.
4) What can we find you doing outside of the archival profession?
Well, read a lot of webcomics and watch a bunch of animated series. And I write reviews of shows and comics I read, some of which have archivists and librarians! Also, for fun, I write fiction and incorporate some archivists into some of my stories. I occasionally do family history research for both sides of my family and have some blogs about that as well. When I’m not doing all of that, and it’s good weather, I go on hikes and read books.
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of new Vice Chair / Chair-Elect Andrea Belair, Library Project Specialist at the Clark Art Institute. She is left her position as chair in Sept. 2022, upon accepting a new job as a school librarian near her record store.
What was your first experience working with archives?
I wish I could say that I’d had experience in an archive before I was in graduate school, but I can’t remember any. They always sounded cool and mysterious, but I didn’t really work with archives much until my first internship during graduate school, where I processed a small collection of records of the local fire department. The internship was at the North Jersey History and Genealogical Center in Morristown, New Jersey, and I had to travel there by train from Rutgers in New Brunswick. I created a finding aid in EAD, the records themselves were very dirty, so I had to clean them off and asked tons of questions about everything I did. The archivist there was great as a person and as a professional. This was only a part of an internship that had many facets, but I think processing that collection made me feel that I’d like a goal of becoming an archivist, although I was often told back then that I’d never find a job in archiving so I was trying to keep my hopes minimal.
2) What is an archival issue that means a lot to you?
As many others have said with this question, it’s hard to answer because there are so many issues that are so important. I am always thinking about climate change but I’m not sure what archivists really can do about it, and I think about decolonization a lot. However, one issue that has been hitting close to home lately for me is that of mental health. I know that archivists are not alone in this whatsoever. Lots of archivists take a beating when it comes to their mental health, and this is one area in which much of the general workforce became more aware of during the pandemic. I have just changed jobs, but the toxicity of some of my former workplaces, combined with things like the stress of a low salary, and especially the lack of recognition for your work, can really take their toll on one’s mental health. I have been in situations where supervisors didn’t understand what I did and didn’t trust that I understood it either, and that could be very stressful and taxing. It’s hard to constantly feel the need to prove yourself and your worth, and it has led me into some very dark places mentally. Once I even asked a supervisor outright to try to trust me because I’d like their support, to which the response was that they hadn’t been the one to hire me (although they had indeed hired me) and that was rather demoralizing. It takes advocacy to an entirely new level when you need to try to uphold respect for the profession while trying to advocate for recognition for yourself as an individual who deserves respect as a human being. This really comes down to workplaces in general, but many archivists are employed in academia, which can sometimes have tendencies to maintain a toxic hierarchy that can be hard to change. I cannot imagine how frustrating this must be for others who don’t have the levels of privileges that I’ve had.
3) What do you hope to gain by being on the I&A Steering Committee?
I would very much like to regain my focus and become more involved in advocacy for the archival profession. As I said in the last question, I think I’ve become a bit out of the loop and focused a lot on my personal circumstances lately, and I’d really like to connect my experiences with the profession in general again. I am now working in a museum, which is quite different from the academic environments that I’ve been involved in for some time, so it will be interesting to be able to see issues and advocacy that arise within this framework. I’m already seeing a lot of differences.
4) What can we find you doing outside of the archival profession?
I love hiking and I co-own a record store with my husband. Now that winter is here, I’m outside a little less often and inside the record store more often.
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of the Steering Committee member, Caitlin Rozzo, Archivist at the Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. Other members currently on the I&A Steering Committee include Danielle Simpkins, Burkely Hermann, Sheridan Sayles, Liz Call, Holly Rose McGee, and Claire Gordon.
What was your first experience working with archives? This is always a favorite question of mine! The first time I encountered the archive, I was a sophomore in college. In the spring, I decided to launch myself head first into a project that I was objective unqualified to perform and I applied for a summer job as a Research Assistant for a professor on campus, Dr. Marguerite Rippy. I spent what felt like a magical summer researching an all-black production of Macbeth that Orson Welles directed as part of his work with the Federal Theatre Project, which required me to go to places like the Library of Congress and National Archives and Records Association. I remember very distinctly my first ever trip to an archive was the Library of Congress. The day before I met with Dr. Rippy who told me very plainly that the goal for the first day was simply to get my research card and warned me that the first day of research you always feel very lost and a little like an idiot, so as long as I got the card I should celebrate my success. Fast forward to a very confused 19 year old wondering in the tunnels (I am not even sure how I got there) at 3:00 p.m. so desperate to leave and so terrified of asking for help that I followed a group of people with suitcases around for about ten minutes hoping somehow that suitcases signified an intent to leave a building. (Truly, who would drag around suitcases if they were just planning to Sorkin walk through the tunnel? This part of the story remains a mystery.) The good news is that an hour later, I did manage to find the exit and, utterly disoriented, make my way to the metro. I kept coming back and about a week later I made my first archival “discovery”—a little advertisement for the show in Texas where the black-cast was segregated from white production staff. Two years later, when I was searching for internships I applied to the Library of Congress Junior Fellowship program. I ended up staying there for three fabulous years (and, reader, I still wound up lost in those tunnels again and again, but seriously it remains very worth it.)
What is an archival issue that means a lot to you? This is difficult for me to answer because there are a lot of things that concern me in archives. I was incredibly fortunate to get my MLIS at the University of Maryland when Dr. Ricardo Punzalan was teaching there and I often repeat a phrase he would say that feels central to my engagement with and love of archives: “History is offensive. If it doesn’t offend you, then you might not be looking that closely.” He is such an amazing example of how a critical approach to a subject is born out of a great love for that subject and a belief in that subject’s value. This is a nice way to say that many things concern me, but that’s probably because I actively strive to be a person who is concerned and who is attentive to the struggles of others.
I would say if I had to pick one thing to talk about in this moment that issue would be divestment and prison abolition in archives and special collections. I am part of a wonderful group that meets regularly to talk about the ways the ideologies of the prison-industrial-complex pervade special collections and the ways that we benefit as a profession from prisons and prison labor. I recently have been working on a statement and thinking about how to phrase this for folks that might think that Special Collections exists in another universe from the systemic oppression of millions of the most vulnerable populations and communities around us. I think for me the idea that right now in the United States about 2.3 million people are desperately in need of evidence, of records, of proof to set themselves free should feel sinister to us as archivists. How does that word ‘evidence’ that sustains our positions (our jobs, our material wealth, and our freedom) condemn others? What do we have to do with that if we benefit from it? And truly how do two worlds seem at first so completely separate? I know of several librarians that work with incarcerated populations but very few archivists have anything to do with the incarcerated. Why is that? There are researchers, users, scholars (whatever you would like to call them that would connote to you their worthiness) who happen to be incarcerated. I have read their poetry, transcribed their letters, and maintained their work in the archive. I think we owe these individuals something better.
What do you hope to gain by being on the I&A Steering Committee? I hope to gain a sense of how advocacy can work in technical services. I’ve actually just started a new position that is a little more capacious, but previously all of my archival experience centered on technical or collection services. Most recently, I served as the Head of Collection Services for the Eberly Family Special Collections Library, but I often find that the work can sometimes feel unconnected from the conversations that seem the most interesting and necessary for the profession. I think largely that’s been changing with the incredible work of archivists that are tackling issues like redescription and reparative processing; however, I have found that it can be challenging to argue for advocacy in technical services. There is always the backlog, there is always software that need refinement or managing. I think of the words technical debt which always weigh heavy on your shoulders in technical services. Sometimes I think technical services gets too weighed down by those burdens of the “traditional” work of processing, description, and digitization to get to participate fully in these conversations, but the best professional development work I ever got to do was attend a Project STAND conference in Chicago and hear former Black Panthers speak to their experience with archives and activism. Those kinds of experiences feel vital and necessary to the work I do. The technology and the archival labor is not neutral. When you are so stuck trying to catch up with other institutions or new rules, it can feel really challenging to engage in what some people might cast as “value-added” work. The truth is that engaging critically with the issues and advocacy around the practice is foundational and necessary work for all of us. I firmly believe it cannot be additional or optional.
What can we find you doing outside of the archival profession? Well, lately my love of loafing and people watching has been cut short by the pandemic. I am at my core such a literature nerd, but somehow this also translates to a deep love for really “bad art.” I love bad poetry, strange/awkward one man shows, bad movies—I like seeing the things that don’t quite work out or materialize the way you thought they would. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the podcast “How Did This Get Made?” but I could listen to that endlessly. I also love podcasts from this moment deep in quarantine. The “Still Processing” podcast just came back and I could listen to the episode that breaks down the culture of public apologies a million times over. Other than that, I am generally playing around with one of my own failed crafting projects and loving on my furry family (one dog, two bunnies, and many unrealized plans for expansion of the pack).
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of the Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, Lauren McDaniel, Special Collections Archivist at the Getty Research Institute.
1) What was your first experience working with archives?
Half by chance, I got a student job at UCLA Library Special Collections–20 years ago now! That experience dovetailed perfectly with my undergraduate studies in history and art history, leading me to realize I wanted to work with special collections materials professionally. Staff encouraged me to apply to library school and I began UCLA’s MLIS program planning to become a rare book cataloger. But my introductory coursework introduced me to archival studies and I realized that archival processing is what I was really interested in, particularly of arts-related and material culture collections. The many dual aspects of the job–cerebral/physical, detailed/big-picture, solitary/service-oriented, innovative/reparative–fit my skills, goals, and values really well. I feel very lucky to have found work I love. #ILoveBeingAnArchivist
2) What is an archival issue that means a lot to you?
But although we love and value our own work as archivists, those whom we work for often do not. This has become painfully obvious in the past decade or so as contract positions have become the norm, and has had an especially devastating effect on our lives over the past year. It is more important than ever that we collectively advocate for ourselves. Fortunately, many of us are already hard at work resisting vocational awe, establishing guidelines for more ethical hiring practices, and taking care of each other during the pandemic through mutual aid campaigns!
In my previous contract position, my colleagues and I used the collective power of our union to push back against the misuse of temporary appointments in UCLA Library Special Collections. Two years in, we are still fighting, and it has been powerful to see the positive effect of our organizing beyond our library: from receiving public support and professional recognition to raising more awareness of the widespread problem of precarious labor in the cultural heritage and education fields.
3) What do you hope to gain by being on the I&A Steering Committee?
My union experience inspired me to step up my labor activism by running for a leadership position in the Issues & Advocacy Section. Since joining the Steering Committee in August, I have met a range of committed archivists from across the country (albeit virtually) and learned more about the issues they and their colleagues are facing. During the pandemic, workplace safety has been the biggest concern, of course, with furloughs and layoffs a close second. I have observed that this Section is a crucial network for sharing information, collaborating, and providing support as well as a platform for members’ interests. Over my next 2+ years serving on this committee, I hope to help us become an even more important resource and an even louder voice for everyone in the profession.
4) What can we find you doing outside of the archival profession?
Organizing my own stuff, for fun(!); endlessly searching for and looking at objects, art, and ephemera (mostly online these days, of course–sigh); listening to Agatha Christie audiobooks (favorite narrator: Hugh Fraser); and hanging out with (you guessed it) my cat!
Archivists on the Issuesis a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. The following post is from David A. Spriegel, Certified Archivist.
My name is David Spriegel. I’m a Certified Archivist with two, unrelated, disabilities: central auditory processing disorder and mild cerebral palsy.
Earning the Certified Archivist credential is important during one’s career because it “provides the only available standard by which employers are able to judge the qualifications of prospective staff members.” In a broader sense, the Academy of Certified Archivists (ACA) “participates in the definition and advancement of professional archival education, concepts, and issues. It identifies and promotes understanding of archival goals, ethics, and standards” (The Academy of Certified Archivists, “About Us”). Achieving the Certified Archivist credential, while dealing with the complications of any disability, demonstrates the strength to be successful in the archival field.
Stated simply, my two disabilities, though mild, affect my ability to do basic tasks, such as completing the ACA recertification worksheet. Cerebral palsy “is [a] group of neurological disorders that appear in infancy or early childhood and permanently affect body movement, muscle coordination, posture, and balance” (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Cerebral Palsy “Definition”). Cerebral palsy affects my ability to “access [my] strong cognitive and academic functioning” (Physco-Educational Re-Evaluation, June 2012). Central auditory processing disorder is a condition where the brain is wired slightly differently to process sound signals. For example, I have trouble with “recogniz[ing] subtle differences between sounds in words…tell[ing] where sounds are coming from…mak[ing] sense of the order of sounds…[and] block[ing] out competing background noises” (Learning Disabilities Association of America, “Auditory Processing Disorder”). Perhaps both conditions make my approach to completing tasks, such as the ACA recertification worksheet, overly literal; such as the ability to interpret and apply the directions in an orderly manner. Being overly literal and unsure when completing a self-directed task impacted the time and energy it took to determine what to include as experience.
I believe that my disabilities, particularly the processing disorder, make the recertification process harder than anticipated. I’m writing this statement so that my experience may benefit others who are in similar circumstances.
What I found challenging when filling out the recertification worksheet was: 1) identifying and recording all my experiences from different personal records; and 2) quantifying and translating those experiences, using the official guidelines, into the correct point values. Both these issues led me to “become anxious when completing tasks that are unfamiliar and without delineation” (Physco-Educational Re-Evaluation, June 2012). Working in the quiet, distraction free-environment of my kitchen assisted me in filling out the form. I found it easier to concentrate in familiar surroundings with some music to increase my mood and energy; overhearing verbal conversations and being around people (such as in coffee shops or public libraries) distracts me and makes it more difficult to focus.
Recertifying by petition is a self-directed process; that self-direction increased my nervousness during the process. The structure for a self-directed assignment comes from within the individual, whereas I seek the structure for an assignment externally; for me, the structure came through reading and re-reading the guidelines and making notes before entering data in the spreadsheet. Creating the structure by re-reading the guidelines allowed me to absorb the finer points of each detailed section and then recalculate the point values. Similarly, making notes allowed me to visually see the calculations behind translating my freelance projects into the appropriate point values. The question of where and how to begin an unfamiliar assignment is a normal uncertainty for everyone, but my learning disability makes it more difficult. My mind conceives of instructions too literally, and thus the necessary quick abstraction to form new ideas and connections comes more slowly. Despite these two complicating issues, I was able to complete the recertification form and continue with the larger recertification process.
Some of the useful solutions during this process were:
Solutions: I created a word document to track my professional activities, because it’s immediately more familiar for me to use than a spreadsheet. I connected with a long-time ACA member to review my form and help me fill things out. I emailed staff at the ACA to get confirmation on certain areas where further clarification was needed. I wish I had known to use the ACA spreadsheet from the beginning, so as not to have to transfer information from one place to another.
Areas for Improvement: I would have liked to have had an option of a formal mentor to help me through the process; alternate forms/worksheets; a webinar or instructional video would have made it easier for me to get confirmation for myself.
I contacted the ACA’s Regents to share my experiences and potential solutions. I appreciated their willingness to listen and move these issues forward.
Our ICYMI series provide summaries of presentations, publications, webinars, and other educational opportunities that are of interest to I&A members. If you have an issue you would like to write about for this blog series or a previous post that you would like to respond to, please email archivesissues@gmail.com. The following is from Annalise Berdini, Digital Archivist at Princeton University’s Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library and member of A4BLiP.
Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia (A4BLiP) is a loose association of archivists, librarians, and allied professionals in the Philadelphia region responding to the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement. The A4BLiP Anti-Racist Description Resources project began as an initiative formed by various A4BLiP members in fall of 2017, specifically after a presentation they collaborated on at the 2017 SAA Liberated Archive forum with Teressa Raiford. Teressa is a Portland-based activist and founder of the organization Don’t Shoot PDX. Following the presentation, Teressa asked the group for recommendations for how she might approach a catalog audit. She wanted to initiate a project at Oregon State Library after learning about a racist subject catalog card there that a staff member had posted on Twitter. (The card read, “Negroes see also Crime and criminals. Portland.”)
After some discussion, A4BLiP members realized that this was an area that lacked guidance for those doing archival description; many could recount instances of seeing description applied in ways that were racist, but none of us knew of any specific recommendations for how to address this in a programmatic way. As a way to both provide a framework for our own audits of racist description and to hopefully provide guidance that would be useful to other (white) archivists, we decided to create a set of recommendations collated from existing resources that we gathered for an extensive literature review, and enhanced by some of our own experiences. Additionally, the working group felt strongly that due to the fact that most of us were white women, we needed to ask for help from Black archivists to ensure that our recommendations did not cause harm and that we were, in fact, helping other archivists create more inclusive description. We created a GoFundMe for the project so that we could pay these reviewers for their time and expertise, and successfully funded enough to recruit nine reviewers, who contributed extensive recommendations and additional resources to the project. We are incredibly grateful for their assistance, which created a much stronger and more thoughtful product.
The A4BLiP Anti-Racist Description Resources are broken up into three sections: a set of metadata recommendations, an annotated bibliography, and an extensive bibliography. The extensive bibliography was gathered first, reviewed in detail by members of the working group, and informed the other two sections.
The metadata recommendations are comprised of practical examples for anti-racist description that we hope can be put into practice across a wide array of institutions. The section is broken up into seven areas of focus, including Voice and Style, Community Collaboration and Expanding Audiences, Auditing Legacy Description and Reparative Processing, Handling Racist Folder Titles and Creator-Supplied Description, Describing Slavery Records, Subjects and Classification, and Transparency. Our recommendations in each of these sections were informed by our literature review as well as examples from our own experiences and the experiences and recommendations of our reviewers. Some recommendations should be fairly easy to apply day-to-day, like removing flowery and valorizing language in biographical notes or using accurate strong language like ‘rape’ or ‘lynching’ when appropriate. Others are more difficult and will require institutional change, like developing and maintaining ongoing relationships with collection creators in order to learn the language they use to describe themselves — and to use that language in our description of their records. We hope that these recommendations will give others practical places from which to start their own descriptive review processes. They are by no means exhaustive, but include what we thought to be the most helpful and important recommendations.
The annotated bibliography includes a selection of theory-focused articles from the extensive bibliography that we chose to highlight based on their critique of descriptive practice and theory. Some of the articles, blogs, and presentations included do not necessarily focus on Black experiences or collections in the pursuit of highlighting shared strategies for anti-oppressive description. Our review in preparation for developing this resource reinforced our understanding that there is a wealth of research and dozens of important contributions to rectifying archival erasure and white supremacist description. But we recognize that few of us have as much time as we would like to read all of these works, and so we created the annotated bibliography in the hopes that it would help others quickly find resources that would help them rethink archival description.
For those looking to get started on creating more inclusive description, we recommend checking out the metadata recommendations first, particularly the sections on Voice and Style, Auditing Legacy Description, and Handling Racist Folder Titles and Creator-Supplied Description. These are probably the sections that will be most immediately applicable to most archives — how many of us have seen overly flowery and glowing biography notes of ‘great white men’, or passive language used to describe atrocities or distance humanity? How often do slavery records prioritize the enslavers before the enslaved? This is work that we as archivists can address quickly and which (hopefully) does not require overarching institutional change.
We acknowledge that our recommendations are a starting point that highlights the work that other archivists have already done, but we hope that by gathering some of these practical recommendations, more of us can begin to undo the harm that our description often causes. The recommendations can be found through the A4BLiP site.
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of committee member Samantha Brown, Assistant Archivist at the New-York Historical Society.
1) What was your first experience working with archives?
My first experience working in an archive was in graduate school. During my second semester, I had taken a processing class where you split your time between the classroom and a field site. While at the field site, I had a friendly relationship with the archivists and assisted them with a project. A few months after the class ended, out of the blue, I received an email from the supervisory archivist at the field site asking if I was interested in a job. Being a grad student, and constantly in need of money, I excitedly jumped at the chance to gain more experience in my chosen profession while also gaining a bit of money to help pay my mounting bills.
The job itself gave me a wide range of experiences. The focus of the job was on processing but I also gained experience providing reference services in a university setting and digitizing a wide range of documents. Getting to work in a professional setting during grad school was incredibly help. I was able to learn what the job was like on a day to day basis and learn about what parts of the profession fit me and my skills best.
2) What do you hope to gain by being on the I&A Steering Committee?
During my first year on the committee, I feel like I was just trying to get a hold on what the expectations for me were. While I had previously served on the committee as an intern, being a full committee member is a different experience and comes with a new set of rules. Now that I’m in my second year, I want to work on building connections between archivists. Many of us seem to be struggling with our jobs for one reason or another and it would be great if we could find a way to support each other, to help others out during times of strife.
3) What is an archival issue that means a lot to you?
As a profession, I feel like there are many issues that were facing. One problem that I was confronted with recently is legitimizing our profession to people that don’t use our services. Of course historians, social scientists, and genealogists will see the value of archives and archivists but how do you get scientists or engineers to care about what your doing. Historical records aren’t things they need to deal with on a daily basis and, because of this, many people in those fields see our work as something unimportant.If we want to continue our work and receive the funding that we so desperately need then we need to find a way to reach people who don’t use archives and teach them about the inherent value of historical records. We can’t spend all of our time educating people, of course, but if people keep thinking of history as an unknowable and unreachable thing then they won’t value what we can provide them.
4) What can we find you doing outside of the archival profession?
Outside of work, I’m a bit of a nerd. I enjoy playing Dungeons Dragons, reading scifi and fantasy novels, and playing video games. Nothing beats getting together with a group of friends and fighting off a dragon.
Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Genna Duplisea, the Archivist and Special Collections Librarian at Salve Regina University. Genna would like to send special thanks to Caitlin Birch, Jaimie Fritz, and Olivia Mandica-Hart for reading and commenting on this piece, and to Suzy Morgan and everyone else who gave feedback during the initial data collection phase.
At the university where I currently work, there is a small but enthusiastic contingent of undergraduate students in the cultural and historic preservation and history majors interested in pursuing library school. As I am asked to give a picture of the archives profession to newly-declared majors every year, I think of the inadequate job market and question whether I am advising them well. This spring, feeling disheartened by what seemed like very few job postings and a rash of term positions, I found myself wondering if the data supported my perception that there weren’t enough opportunities for all the archivists in the region.
Methodology
I compiled information on full-time archives positions in the six New England states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont) posted between April 1, 2018 and April 1, 2019. My sources were the Simmons University Jobline (http://blogs.simmons.edu/slis/jobline/), ArchivesGig (https://archivesgig.com/), and the New England Archivists and Society of American Archivists listservs.
Compiling this data required making decisions about what constituted an archives job. I included any position shared through archivist professional venues, even if it was unclear whether most archival training would be appropriate to the position. I included museum positions that related to collections care, digital collections, or other skill sets that overlap with archives training (but not positions unrelated to archives work, such as development). I included corporate positions as well as public, academic, government, or non-profit positions. A position needed to dedicate at least half of its time to archival work to be included. Temporary positions were included if those postings were full-time, as were positions that did not require a Master’s degree.
Because I began this project after many job postings had expired, some information is missing. In some cases I had to make assumptions about whether a salary grade was posted, after reviewing the institution’s general practices in job postings. (For example, I knew several larger institutions (such as Harvard and Yale Universities) always post salary grades; conversely, if a review of an institution’s current positions generally did not include salary information, then I assumed that there had not been any in the post I was researching.) Future research would be more effective if job posting information were to be downloaded and recorded as it is posted, so that original postings can serve as reference points and more information can be gathered before the removal of inactive positions from job boards.
This study is a snapshot of a year in the New England archives profession, allowing for some broad conclusions rather than a statistically significant analysis. Undoubtedly, I have still missed a few, but positions I hope to draw useful conclusions from the data. The full table is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YglMlu_SOIUXyknVzTvxiJSj_VC9v-Pb/view?usp=sharing.
The survey found 115 full-time archives jobs at institutions within the six New England states posted between April 1, 2018 and April 1, 2019.
Salary information
Most of the job postings did not include any salary information at all, whether a flat number, a grade, or a range. Of the 115 total positions, posting information was insufficient in 30 of them and it was impossible to tell whether salary information had originally been present. Of the remaining 85 positions, 47 (55.3%) included salary information, and 38 (44.7%) did not.
If we exclude Harvard and Yale, the two largest employers in this survey, then the salary information becomes paltry — only 17 positions at other institutions included salary information. There was not enough information on salary amounts to conclude anything substantial.
Location
Of the 115 positions, 30 of them (26%) were at Harvard or Yale Universities, meaning that over a quarter of all archives jobs posted in New England last year were at one of those institutions. The state with the highest number of postings was Massachusetts with 73 (63.4%). Connecticut had 25 (21.7%) postings, and Rhode Island had nine (8%). Vermont and Maine each had three postings (2.6% each) for the entire year, and New Hampshire had two (1.7%).
Temporary & Contingent Positions
The permanency of 11 positions was unclear. Of the remaining 104 positions, 72 (69.2%) were permanent. The rest were temporary positions, with terms ranging from two months to five years but mostly appointments lasting less than two years.
The value of the MS or MSLIS
Of the 115 positions, it was unclear in 25 of them whether a Master’s degree was required. Of the remaining 90, 61 (67.7%) required a Master’s or higher (one position required a Ph. D). Twenty-nine positions (27.7%) did not require it, and of those, 12 positions did not require a Master’s but preferred it.
Archives grads
For context, I was interested in finding out how many new archivists there were every year. The only archives management degree in an ALA-accredited LIS program in the New England region is at Simmons University in Boston. The Simmons University Office of Institutional Research provided information regarding the number of graduates with the archives management concentration. This includes graduates who earned the concentration in-person or online, and also includes graduates who pursued the dual-Master’s MS/MA program in Archives Management and History. (I myself am a graduate of this program.) Of course, not all archivists have Master’s degrees; not all Simmons University graduates stay in the region; not all archives graduates seek jobs in the archives field; and not all archivists in New England went to Simmons. The University of Rhode Island also has a library school (though not an archives-focused degree), and there are several public history Master’s programs in the region; all of these, as well as online programs, also train area professionals who work in archives, but the number of archivist graduates would be more difficult to track. Still, Simmons’s data provides an idea of how many new archivists enter the job market in the region annually.
Graph created by the author using data from the Simmons University Office of Institutional Research.
For the past ten years, the annual number of Simmons archives graduates has more than doubled, from 56 in 2008 to 121 in 2017. (The latest figure for archives degrees awarded in academic year 2018-2019 is 38, but this does not include the 2019 spring semester.) The increase has not been steady, with a drop between 2012 and 2014, but the program has consistently grown since then. The online program began awarding degrees in 2014, and represents a substantial minority of those degrees. All told, 872 professionals have graduated with archives degrees from Simmons in the past decade.
Discussion
It does not seem that the job market in New England is supporting the influx of new graduates, or emerging and seasoned professionals. The exponential annual increase of digital information alone means, in my view, that society needs more archivists. A separate but related conversation with current archivists would surely conclude that people in this profession are overworked and understaffed, with job responsibilities ranging from processing to digitization to records management to teaching to digital preservation.
The Society of Southwest Archivists (SSA) has demonstrated concern for a dearth of salary information and low pay. SSA President Mark Lambert has published a series on the failure of national organizations and top archives directors are failing the profession (https://www.southwestarchivists.org/poor-pay-in-archives-how-top-archives-directors-and-our-national-organizations-are-failing-us/). Lack of transparency about archivist salaries allows institutions to avoid providing competitive compensation, and can generate huge wastes of time for candidates and hiring committees when applicants do not know whether a position will compensate them adequately. Last fall, SSA began collecting regional salary data (https://www.southwestarchivists.org/home/archives-regional-salary-research/). At its spring 2019 meeting, the Society of Southwest Archivists voted to stop posting or sharing job advertisements that did not include salary information (https://www.southwestarchivists.org/salary-information-now-required-in-job-postings/). As of this writing, a group of archivists is collecting information for a proposal to SAA Council to require the organization to require salaries in job postings (https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_efCj42MurbrLAj3), and New England Archivists is considering a similar change. More regional and national organizations, not to mention library schools, could make similar statements and take action to support its communities of learners and professionals.
It has been a decade and a half since the Society of American Archivists conducted A*CENSUS (Archival Census and Education Needs Survey in the United States), which revealed trends about the archival profession and archival education. The SAA annual meeting this year includes a task force on A*CENSUS II. Pre-planning for the survey will be complete by early 2020, with the Committee on Research, Data, and Assessment (CoRDA) implementing it thereafter. (https://www2.archivists.org/news/2018/saa-council-affirms-strategic-goals-creates-research-committee)
The frequency of temporary and project postings demonstrates how dependent the archives profession is on external or limited funding. It is alarming that nearly a third of the archives positions posted last year were term-limited. I focused on full-time positions because I wanted to get a grasp on the types of positions people graduating from archives programs ideally want — secure, full-time, in a relevant field. Yet even this set of supposedly ideal positions show that job insecurity prevails. Professional organizations have a role to play in supporting the creation of stable, benefited, appropriately-compensated positions for its members. New England Archivists supported a study on contingent employment, released in January 2017 (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aFVWuA6zJsrTGFoPuKeU8K6SJ1Sggv2h/view). In response to the UCLA Special Collections Librarians open letter on contingent employment published in June 2018, NEA released a statement later that year (https://www.newenglandarchivists.org/Official-Statements/6814976).
A trend of precarious stewardship threatens archival collections, to say nothing of the impact on individuals struggling for economic stability. Eira Tansey’s recent May Day blog post pointed out that the best way to protect collections is to secure stable, ongoing support for staff (http://eiratansey.com/2018/05/01/mayday-on-may-day/). Yet the inadequate number of new positions, combined with the trends of salary secrecy and contingent positions, seem to demonstrate that archives are not valued as core functions necessitating ongoing operational funding within an organization. If the collections that archivists steward have enduring value to their institutions, then the staff should experience similar value and respect for their work.
My first experience working in an archive was in graduate school. During my second semester, I had taken a processing class where you split your time between the classroom and a field site. While at the field site, I had a friendly relationship with the archivists and assisted them with a project. A few months after the class ended, out of the blue, I received an email from the supervisory archivist at the field site asking if I was interested in a job. Being a grad student, and constantly in need of money, I excitedly jumped at the chance to gain more experience in my chosen profession while also gaining a bit of money to help pay my mounting bills. 
Issues & Advocacy 