Steering Share: Meet Claire V. Gordon

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of our newest Steering Committee member, Claire V. Gordon. Other members currently on the I&A Steering Committee include: Elizabeth “Liz” Call, Holly Rose McGee, Danielle Simpkins, Caitlin Rizzo, Burkely Hermann, Jacqueline Devereaux, and Marissa Friedman.

1) What was your first experience working with archives?

I have always had a fascination with the materiality and meaning embodied in artifacts, so when I was given the chance to work directly with artifacts as a volunteer at the Autry National Center, it set the stage to becoming an archivist. Over time, after speaking to archivists in the museum and library sector, I decided to earn my MLIS and focus on archival theory. My first archival work was during my graduate studies at UCLA as an archival assistant for the Barbara and Willard Morgan Archive, processing Willard’s working papers, and Barbara’s prints and artwork.

 

2) What is an archival issue that means a lot to you? 

I believe that investing in and prioritizing the processing of under-represented and mis-represented archival materials should be work that is centered and supported by institutions and fellow professionals alike.

 

3) What do you hope to gain by being on the I&A Steering Committee? 

As an early career archivist, I look forward to learning from my colleagues about the nuanced issues that persist in the archives profession and having open-minded discussions about how to address them.

 

4) What can we find you doing outside of the archival profession? 

I am an avid hiker, and can often be found communing with local flora and fauna. I also enjoy creative expression through cooking, art and crochet.

September 27, 2023November 24, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Interviews, Steering ShareTags: archival description, archival labor, archival theory, archives profession, Interviews, misrepresented materials, new professionals, redescription, underrepresented communities Leave a comment

Archivists on the Issues: A Defense of Institutions in the Pandemic

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. The following post is from Bradley J. Wiles, a PhD student in Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Information Studies. 

The COVID-19 pandemic promises to be a game changer in many areas of contemporary society moving forward. Aside from the devastating mortality currently unfolding, the most immediate impact involves severe disruptions in healthcare systems, economic activity, and supply chain management, all of which have short and long term consequences for communities depending on the depth and scale of the damage in a given location. A major outcome so far is that the pandemic has forced people and organizations to rethink and reconfigure daily interactions previously taken for granted, both as a response to stemming the spread of the virus in real time and in preparation for future disruptions. For many individuals and organizations, virtual interaction through networked digital technologies has been the main route of accessing or retaining some sense of normalcy during this trying time.

In some instances, the ability (and often privilege) to utilize online communications and cloud-based applications offer the only possibility of keeping employed, delivering education, receiving medical treatment, reaching out to loved ones, and participating in other aspects of everyday life. Although the drastic modification of these and other social activities is likely temporary, the pandemic demonstrates that the value of the internet to maintain social cohesion is beyond question (if often problematic) and that many people and organizations can no longer get by without it. Ideally, this era will spark productive conversations and activity on digital infrastructure development that extends from matters of life and death during the pandemic to more prosaic cultural interests in less extraordinary times.

For better or worse, the cultural world has experienced something of a digital flourishing during this extended social distancing period. Concerts, plays, lectures, book readings, and other cultural events that were previously accessible to limited audiences are now offered regularly and freely in real time via various conferencing platforms, social media outlets, and streaming services. Approximating normalcy, staving off boredom, and raising spirits seem to be the main motivations of these efforts, but these also serve to bolster online communities and their cultural correspondents by keeping the focus of cultural interests within the online environment where so much other activity already occurs.

For their part, many individuals and organizations in the archives sector have tried to maintain their regular duties and transition further to online delivery of services. A recent post in Atlas Obscura described several notable projects aimed at engaging new and existing user communities through the web. These and other ongoing institutional efforts reflect theoretical discussions and practical trends in the archives discipline that emphasize the growing importance of community-based initiatives to expand their scope and direction toward greater inclusion and representation, while also supporting the network of non-institutional cultural heritage interests in documenting an increasingly diverse society.

The proliferation of web-based technologies has helped facilitate the growth of independent community archives, as well as enabling traditional archives to establish more targeted documentation strategies and projects that incorporate the expertise, perspectives, and labor of non-archivist collaborators in everything from collection development to public programming to archival description. The prevailing notion is that archival work can no longer discount the people, groups, cultures, and identities reflected in the collections and that, whenever possible, those who might legitimately speak on their behalf should be involved. Often these are current or prospective audiences that can bring a fuller understanding to the collections–a process made more immediate and accessible by mobile digital networks and social media utilities.

Undoubtedly, sustained effort to engage new and diverse publics is a moral and practical necessity for all archives institutions in this emergent digital reality heightened by the pandemic, regardless of one’s location in the overarching network of cultural interests. The pandemic also offers an opportunity for American archivists and other records and information professionals to advocate on behalf of our institutions and our shared principles as a bulwark against the entrenched difficulties of reaching common ground on facts, evidence, and truth in a tribalist and politically polarized society. Journalist David Roberts has spent the past several years tracking this “epistemic crisis,” which he links to comprehensive right-wing attempts at undermining public faith in government, academia, media, and science¹. We see firsthand how dangerous this is in the current administration’s woefully inadequate, dishonest, and fatalistic approach to a national and global emergency.

However, this only tells part of the story. Various strains of the skeptical relativism that characterize the current social and political landscape are residual holdovers of intellectual movements originating in the academic left during the 1960s and 1970s. Although many of these movements were focused on peace, justice, equality, and liberation, they were fundamentally based on mistrust of institutions. It is most definitely a stretch to draw moral equivalency between armed protestors railing against social distancing measures in 2020 with activists marching to protest the Vietnam War in 1968, but the impulse to react and respond to real and perceived threats from powerful institutions transcends political identification and ideology.

The personalized information universes enabled by the web now make it easier for groups and individuals to coalesce around a narrow agenda or set of beliefs without having to engage in wider discussions that contradict these. Everybody has their own unfalsifiable truth and nobody can deny anyone else’s reality. In this setting, facts and evidence supported by verifiable information and reliable records are meaningless, or rather they hold only situational meaning and arbitrary relevance. Institutions are suspect because they are gatekeepers incapable of serving all equally or effectively.

Undermining an institution involves discrediting its experts, rejecting its animating ideas or mission, disparaging its central functions, and casting doubt on its social value and historical legitimacy. In most instances, this arises against an institution’s authority from an external oppositional standpoint, but with archives the opposition and skepticism frequently originate within the profession. This often takes the form of critical evaluation and deliberative efforts by scholars and practitioners to improve institutions. But there are several intellectual and activist strands that seem equally intent on categorizing mainstream archives institutions as just another tool of systemic oppression, an irredeemable cog in the larger framework of white supremacy, colonialism, misogyny, economic exclusivity, heteronormativity, etc.

Certainly, there are many instances over time that justify a skeptical or even pessimistic position on mainstream or traditional archives. There’s no doubt that the prominence of community-centered models based around intersectionality and social justice in recent disciplinary conversations reflects attempts to redress such historical marginalization. Although there seems to be general consensus in the profession that this is a net positive for archives, I don’t think anyone can determine with any certainty what the long-term impact of this shifting focus might be on the mainstream institutional networks or on the historical record more generally. That said, precarity related to funding, technology, and administration all present more of a threat to traditional archives than the muddled postmodern criticisms of scholars, but the lack of any comprehensive defense of institutions in the face of inward criticism and outward threats is still very unfortunate.

It is my belief that a positive defense of institutions must be made to internal skeptics and external parties that are unaware of the value that archives provide. This is not a “you’re either for us or against us” proposition, but rather a reminder of the important role that institutions play in cultural memory and democratic stability. If the past few years have revealed anything about power and authority, it is how easily norms can be discarded by unprincipled leadership. If the COVID-19 pandemic teaches us anything, it is that information, facts, and evidence are a matter of life and death. It should be clear by now that our institutions are largely responsible for holding the line against historical threats, both those posed by rare natural phenomena and others resulting from the epistemological free-for-all of the digital age. Archives institutions are flawed but essential social assets that still offer the possibility of finding common ground and preserving the truth.

¹ See the following articles for more reportage and details on Roberts’ view: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/14762030/donald-trump-tribal-epistemology; https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16588964/america-epistemic-crisis; https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/16/20964281/impeachment-hearings-trump-america-epistemic-crisis

May 11, 2020June 22, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: archival description, archival theory, archives profession, collection development, COVID-19, gatekeeping, memory institutions, U.S. history, White supremacy, Whiteness 1 Comment

ICYMI: Introducing the A4BLiP Anti-Racist Description Resources

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.

December 5, 2019June 22, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: ICYMITags: anti-racism, archival description, archival processing, archival theory, archives profession, erasure, inclusion, redescription, reparative processing, sexual violence, White supremacy, Whiteness 1 Comment

Archivists on the Issues: The Values First Approach

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Emily Gibson, a processing archivist at Hoover Institution Library & Archives on the campus of Stanford University. She has also worked as an archivist in the U.K. at Roehampton University, and in Miami Florida at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, the University of Miami, and the Black Archives, History and Research Foundation of South Florida, Inc. 

Whenever I see Elsevier in the headlines I think back to a symposium I attended a few years ago on the publishing house’s namesake, Elzevir. Presentations by book historians from St. Andrews and Oxford, among other well-known British universities, were given in a combination of English, Latin and French. I had hoped to brush up on my knowledge of the history of the book, but what I took away from the experience was how esoteric the study of the history of the book is.

Fast forward to December 2018 and Elsevier was in the headlines as universities across Europe ended their contracts with the notorious science publishing house. I gathered that the two Elseviers had more in common than their name – that the history of the subscription model of distributing primary source research may end up a sub-branch of the study of the history of the book.

In September of 2019, the European Commission and the European Research Council initiated a project to put in place systems that would make all publicly funded research freely accessible at the point of publication by 2020, called “Plan S.” The “S” stands for “science” and includes the humanities as well as hard sciences. It’s slogan is, “Making full and immediate open access a reality,” and their goal is to eliminate the publication paywalls associated with subscription-based publishing models in order to promote “universality,” which is a fundamental scientific principle that declares that “only results that can be discussed, challenged, and, where appropriate, tested and reproduced by others qualify as scientific.”

Driven by this initiative, around 300 European universities and institutions were ending their contracts with Elsevier. Germany’s Max Planck Society said upon ending their contract that, “The system of scholarly publishing today is a relic of the print era […] We want to activate a real paradigm shift in order to finally utilise the opportunities of the digital age.”

In the United States a similar shift is taking place. In April 2018, Florida State University announced that it would be ending its comprehensive subscription to Elsevier journals. And in March 2019, the University of California announced that they too were ending their contract. The University of California publishes nearly 10% of US research papers and 18% of them are in Elsevier journals. Both universities cited excessive subscription fees as the reason for ending their contracts.

“Within scholarly communications, Elsevier has perhaps the single worst reputation,” according to an article published by the Guardian in June of 2018. “With profit margins around 37%, larger than Apple and big oil companies, Elsevier dominate the publishing landscape by selling research back to the same institutes that carried out the work.”

It’s all hands on deck at the archive where I work, where a “Digital First” initiative is slowly transforming the landscape. Space, equipment, staff, workflows and the terminology we use to talk about them are evolving to meet the needs of a community of users seeking the paradigm shift the Max Planck Society articulated so well: a system of radically expanded access to primary source documents that utilizes the opportunities of the digital age. Scrawled somewhere in the middle of a page of notes that I took during a meeting on “Systems Infrastructure/Conceptual Design,” are the words “access is our ultimate goal.” As I wrote them, I remember thinking, “Hasn’t access always been our goal?”

To answer my question, I consulted the Theodore Calvin Pease Award-winning article by Judith Panitch, “Liberty, Equality, Posterity?: Some Archival Lessons from the Case of the French Revolution.” Pantich explains that the term “archives,” as it was used from the 10th through the 15th century, described the titles or charters upon which rested the entire legal, political, and economic legitimacy of the monarchy and nobility, and that these documents were maintained in secrecy. “State archives were understood to constitute the personal documentation of the sovereign and to remain at his personal disposition,” Pantich explained.

In the United States, the National Archives formulated a “forceful enunciation of a theory of access to records” in the 1960s, according to Trudy Huskamp Peterson. In “The National Archives and the Archival Theorist Revisited, 1954-1984,” Peterson explains that the theory had two major premises: researchers have a right to know what records exist, and researchers have a right to know which extant records are available for research use and which are restricted for some period of time. According to Peterson, “These premises culminated in the assertion that records are available on terms of equal access for all users […] and a philosophic commitment to the free exchange of information and ideas as the underpinning of society.”

As a method of distributing knowledge, American archives have been practicing a doctrine of equal access that resembles Plan S for many decades. A co-leader of the task force to implement Plan S described its goal as “making publicly funded research a global public good that can be utilized by anyone.” Today, the SAA’s statement on access and use described in its “Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics” reflects the values formulated in the 1960s and also asks us to be cognizant of the goal of access and use – to provide a public good: “Even individuals who do not directly use archival materials benefit indirectly from research, public programs, and other forms of archival use, including the symbolic value of knowing that such records exist and can be accessed when needed.”

In an online world of post-truth, alternative facts, disinformation and personalized click-bait, archival values are more important than ever. I often hear colleagues say that we’re behind the game, that the technology we employ to create access to our collections is not as good as the technology employed by other sectors, but I would argue that we’re ahead of the game, that values like equal access ensure that our work contributes to the public good as we grapple with the challenges and opportunities of the digital age, so that primary source information can continue to be discussed, challenged, and tested no matter how esoteric the subject matter.

Resources Consulted:

Akst, Jef. “Open-Access Program Plan S Relaxes Rules.” The Scientist, May 31, 2019. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/open-access-program-plan-s-relaxes-rules-65955

Buranyi, Stephen. “Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?” The Guardian, Jun 27, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science

Kwon, Diana. “Plan S: The Ambitious Initiative to End the Reign of Paywalls.” The Scientist, Dec 19, 2019. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/plan-s–the-ambitious-initiative-to-end-the-reign-of-paywalls-65231

Lippard, Kelsey Lovewell. “Open Archives.” UARK Libraries, Oct 26, 2017. https://librariesblog.uark.edu/open-archives/

Panitch, Judith. “Liberty, Equality, Posterity?: Some Archival Lessons from the Case of the French Revolution.” The American Archivist 59, no. 1 (1996): 30-47. https://americanarchivist.org/doi/pdf/10.17723/aarc.59.1.an67076131u104kj

Peterson, Trudy. “The National Archives and the Archival Theorist Revisited, 1954-1984.” The American Archivist 49, no. 2 (1986): 125-33. https://americanarchivist.org/doi/pdf/10.17723/aarc.49.2.kp004u5716652n40

Schlitz, Marc. “Why Plan S: Open Access is Foundational to the Scientific Enterprise.” Coalition S, Sept 4, 2018. https://www.coalition-s.org/why-plan-s/

Taylor, Ashley P. “Max Planck Society Ends Elsevier Subscription.” The Scientist, Dec 20, 2018. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/max-planck-society-ends-elsevier-subscription-65258

June 11, 2019June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: archival theory, corporate power, patrons, personal papers, SAA, SAA Code of Ethics, SAA Core Values of Archivists, terminology Leave a comment

Steering Share: Thoughts on the Idea of Professionalism

Steering Shares  provide an opportunity to learn more about the I&A Steering Committee and the issues that the committee members care about. This post comes courtesy of committee member Steve Duckworth, University Archivist at Oregon Health & Science University.

I want to talk about professionalism, or more specifically, the idea of professionalism and how it can (and often is) used to make people conform and can be a tool that hinders diversity and creativity. I’ve wanted to talk about this for a while – partly due to personal experiences – and then “the incident” with April Hathcock took place at ALA Midwinter. I knew it wasn’t just me and felt this post could take one of her many salient points and focus on a large set of the archival profession.

I, like many of you, work in academia. And even many of you who don’t work in academia are likely impacted by the practices of it. I often find myself rubbing up against some of these norms. The ones that work slowly and through long conversations in multiple committees and working groups. The ones that use policies to explain choices, but break those policies when they really want something. The ones where people like to complain about people, but not to people. And yes, these are gross generalizations, but they are also sometimes just gross.

Our profession also talks all the time about how homogenous we are and struggles to find ways to change it, ways to diversify the profession or our collections or our outreach. But I’m not sure if the desire for more diversity is stronger than the desire to maintain this air of academic … politeness.

I say this because I see many of our attempts at diversity as a form of tokenism, with the most frequent offering being something like a two-year “diversity” position for people fresh out of their Master’s program. While it’s helpful, it doesn’t change our culture. It looks at this “diverse” person and says, ‘We’re going to teach you how to be one of us’ or ‘We’re going to hire you to solve all of our diversity problems,’ but we’re not going to commit to you. It doesn’t look at our practices and offer ‘Perhaps we should be more accepting of different styles of interaction’ or ‘Let’s listen to some new ideas and actually try them out.’ It doesn’t change us, it just looks good on paper and makes us feel like we’re helping.

We invite people for day-long (sometimes 2!) interviews and see it as a test of their endurance or stamina, but we don’t make the effort to inform the candidates about this practice they may never have been through. We continue to ask surprise questions in interviews, and then judge people who are likely nervous (and quite possibly introverted) if they can’t come up with perfect answers on the spot. Our MLIS programs overwhelmingly do not to teach any aspect of the job searching and interviewing process. They teach the theory, sometimes the practice, and send you out without even a functional résumé or any clue about just how many jobs you may apply for before even getting an interview.

What we need is more compassion and more care about the people we say we want as our colleagues. As someone in a position to hire a new librarian, recall your own job search and look for new ways to make the interview process more inviting. Be more open-minded about professional backgrounds and embrace ideas that may be unfamiliar to you. When someone directly speaks to an offense against them, investigate it; if they offer an opposing viewpoint, consider it before dismissing it. If you are witness to bigotry, speak up. All of these things can be done respectfully if we respect each other. But respect comes in many forms, and that, too, should be respected.

February 1, 2019June 22, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: ALA, archival theory, archives profession, BIPOC, library degrees, outreach Leave a comment

Archivists on the Issues: Intellectual Access to Archives

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from regular writer for I&A’s blog, Lindy Smith, Reference Archivist at Bowling Green State University’s Music Library and Bill Schurk Sound Archives.

In my final post on access and accessibility in archives, I am examining intellectual access. By this, I mean the language, theory, practices, and other non-physical barriers that exist in archives. Once a patron has navigated the obstacles of digital access and physical access that I discussed in my previous posts, they finally make it to our reading rooms either in person or virtually and want to use our collections. What gets in the way of this process?

Description can often get in the way, sometimes through its absence and sometimes through its presence. When description is non-existent or not online or not accessible or too minimal to be useful, it is detrimental to access. This is not news to anyone. But sometimes seemingly great description can also be a barrier to access. Say you have an important, highly used collection and you decide to write a DACs-compliant EAD finding aid at the item level, post it online with excellent SEO and cross list it in all appropriate union catalogs. It is a thing of beauty. It has extensive notes, a detailed inventory, and follows archival standards. It is easy to find. If you know where to look.

But then you have an ESL patron who speaks limited English and cannot read it all. Or a seventh grader working on a History Day project who has a middle school reading level and does not understand some of the terminology. Or a patron who is completely unfamiliar with archival description and does not understand the complicated series structure or how to use the detailed information you have painstakingly input. Based on my experience in various reading rooms, these kinds of casual patrons make up a significant portion of our users.

There’s something to be said for gaining familiarity with the systems in place, but for the patron who only wants to make one visit to see something for personal reasons or the student using it for one class, or the patron who is frustrated by a first visit and never comes back, our systems are exclusionary. We cannot write description for everyone, but it is important to recognize that language, reading level, structure, jargon, and many other factors can hinder access for some users.

Many of these issues can be mitigated with good reference help, but this leads to another question I think about often: how do we determine an appropriate balance of labor between patrons and archivists? How much do we require them to do and how much are we willing to do for them? What is policy mandated and what is grey area? What can we change to improve the patron experience? Obviously, patrons need to take the first step to make contact. They need to provide information about the subject of their interest or the items they’d like to request. They need to adhere to any established policies regarding registration information, payment for reproduction, collection handling, etc. Archivists have to respond to requests, pull requested materials, and explain necessary paperwork and policies.

But between this is a whole world of negotiation, personal preference, and available resources. How much time do (can) we spend with a single patron? Where do we draw the line? I like to think that we should be willing to take more on ourselves as the gatekeepers to make things easier and more pleasant for our patrons, but that is not fair when so many of us are already overloaded with work. On the other hand, it is not fair to put all of the work on our users, especially when it is our policies that are creating extra work for everyone.

Many archives have policies regarding remote research time, but what about patrons who require additional assistance with finding aids or computers or microfilm readers or handling fragile collections or the photocopier? How do we ensure smooth hand offs to other archivists when schedules require that multiple staff members be involved? How do we enforce policies that require official ID cards when we are trying to reach out to user groups that may not possess them? How do we respond to concerns about patron confidentiality when we are storing information about patrons and their research topics? How do we reassure patrons who feel targeted by security policies that require surveillance?

How might we rethink our policies and procedures to make things easier for everyone involved? While it is not a magic bullet or a possibility for everyone, there is something to be said for tapping into aspects of industry or libraries that are already familiar to our patrons. Along these lines, there are some technological solutions to help streamline the reading room experience. The biggest and best known in Aeon, which is a great product, but prohibitively expensive for most of us. Other archives have come up with in-house solutions using existing free products, like Trello or Google Forms.

At my institution, we have been working with our web developer, access services department, and catalogers to come up with a solution that allows us to treat special collections materials like ordinary library materials. Briefly, our web developer came up with a button that is enabled in our catalog on materials that have the Lib[rary] Use Only status that allows users to request items for future use. It generates a form that collects name and contact information as well as the date they would like to use the item(s) that is emailed to the appropriate collection. Patrons can also request items on site without scheduling them ahead of time. We use the emails as pull slips and place the items on our hold shelf. When the patrons arrive, we set up a courtesy card in our ILS (Integrated Library System- we use Sierra) that allows them to use only special collections materials (a proper courtesy card with ordinary borrowing privileges has an associated fee but a special collections card is free). We then check the materials out to their account while they’re using it on site and check it back in once they’ve finished. We explain at the time of checkout that they are not allowed to leave our floor with the items and we have not had any issues with this. The one drawback is that we do not yet have all of our special collections in the catalog, which is where our fabulous catalogers come in to create records. We are also in the process of implementing ArchivesSpace and are hoping that our developer will be able to create a similar request feature for use there. All special collections will eventually be represented in both places.

Obviously, a solution like this is only available to archives with access to an ILS and some developer time. If you are interested, our web developer has made the request button code available on GitHub. But if you think outside the box, you may be able to come up with your won solution with the resources available to you. Libraries have been using similar systems for decades to track use and it is past time for archives to do the same.

My posts here have been much more question-based than answer-filled, but these are important issues with lots of room for discussion. I look forward to continuing that discussion with any of you who are interested and hope you will take the opportunity to use some of these questions to help examine your own work.

August 8, 2018June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: archival description, archival theory, archives security, digital access, digitization, emails, gatekeeping, Googlization, intellectual access, patrons, physical access, reproduction, surveillance, technology, terminology Leave a comment

Archivists on the Issues: Archives as Art, Part 1

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from a regular writer for I&A’s blog, Cate Peebles. Cate is the NDSR Art fellow at the Yale Center for British Art, where she works with permanent-collection-related born-digital records. This is part 1 of a 2-part essay.

To conclude my blog series about archives as prominent cultural and artistic influences, I’ll turn to the visual arts, a broad and varied category, to be sure. As an archivist at an art museum, I am highly aware of the importance institutional archives can have within museums as historical records of the museum itself, or as repositories for artists’ archives, but there are also countless examples of archives, archival materials, and archival practices as major forces within an artwork, or the artwork itself.

To consider the archive as an artistic medium in and of itself, it is helpful to begin with James O’Toole’s essay, “The Symbolic Significance of Archives,” an important piece of writing by an archivist on the aesthetic and transformative qualities inherent in the role of some documents. His examination of archives as symbolic entities casts light on a side of the archival profession that had not yet been given much attention by archivists themselves, although many visual artists have been working in “the archival mode” since the early 20th century. Archivists are trained to care for records of enduring value and emphasis is placed on “utilitarian motivations for the making of written records” [1]. O’Toole begins his discussion with an invocation of Frank Burke’s 1981 essay, “The Future Course of Archival Theory in the United States,” in which he provokes archivists to consider archives beyond their practical operations and use, and to ask larger, more philosophical questions of the profession, such as “what is the motivation for the act” of recordkeeping and making.

O’Toole’s very question suggests that there is more to records than their practical uses, however dismissed these uses may have been by the majority of archivists who agreed with Lester Cappon’s conjecture that there is nothing to theorize about; the job of the archivist is to “shuffle the damn papers.”[2] Indeed, the conversation about archival theory that Burke began in the late 20th century seems to have caused some rancor among many archivists who stick firmly to the school of thought that archival records are purely practical. This, O’Toole argues extensively, excludes the role of archives and records as symbolic objects. By examining examples from history, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Domesday Book, O’Toole demonstrates the manner in which a document can change from being a record that is useful in the traditional sense, into a record whose use extends beyond practicality and conveys meaning symbolically. Since the very essence of an archival document lies in its having transitioned from primary to secondary use, it follows that the secondary use is not necessarily always going to be practical in the evidentiary sense.  O’Toole’s discussion concludes, significantly, by affirming that archival records can have both practical and symbolic uses; one side is not more important than the other, and if we value archives and archival materials solely for their practical features, we are missing half the picture.

In the twentieth century, the use of archival materials as artistic media became increasingly popular, particularly with the arrival of conceptual art and structuralism on the scene. In her seminal lecture, A Voyage on the North Sea” Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition, art critic and professor of art history at Columbia University, Rosalind Krauss presents a discussion of art that does not belong to classical modes and mediums like painting and sculpture, but incorporates any number of expressive modes.[5]  She describes a break from traditional classifications and a movement toward mixed media, video art, installations, readymades (like those made by Marcel Duchamp), collections, and conceptual art. The latter might even lack physical form; the ideas and contextual performance are the artwork.

Krauss focuses on the work of Belgian poet and artist Marcel Broodthaers, who created a fictitious museum called “The Museum of Modern Art, Eagles Division” around which he built collections of objects, such as an installation of stuffed eagles and other objects pertaining to the eagle, much like one might see presented in a natural history museum. Each object is labeled, not with information about its species, but with the admission (joke?): “This Is Not a Work of Art.” Broodtaears picks up where Duchamp left off, creating an imaginary museum, structured around readymades and antiquated modes of display, poking fun at art world expectations and conventions. Broodthaers’ work is often referred to as “institutional critique,” a form that attempts to call out the inner workings of establishments such as the museum and archive; official spaces that command respect, embody some degree of power (financial, intellectual), and authority.

This shift has made the work of many contemporary artists possible such as the work of Lebanese-American artist, Walid Raad. While Broodthaers re-envisions the colonialist structure that names, categorizes and capitalizes upon fine arts, Raad reimagines the archive as a structure wherein truth is not tied to fact while still relying on archives’ hydra-like power to tell many stories at once.

References

[1] O’Toole, James. “The Symbolic Significance of Archives,” The American Archivist, 1982, 234-255

[2] Ibid., 235

[3] Craig and O’Toole, 98

[4] Ibid., 98

[5] Krauss, Rosalind, A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 5

July 26, 2018June 23, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: archival theory, archives profession, art history, decolonizing archives, institutional records, memory institutions, Wikipedia 1 Comment

Steering Share: Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen (for now)

Steering Shares  provide an opportunity to learn more about the I&A Steering Committee and the issues that the committee members care about. This final post comes from committee member Stephanie Bennett, Collections Archivist at Wake Forest University.

I signed up for I&A elections back in 2016 with a cavalier “I probably won’t win.” But I was very excited by I&A’s level of activity and the importance of our work buoying archivists and our work in so many ways: socially and governmentally, our use and language of labor, etc etc. When I managed to win and join the Steering Committee, I was – and have been – thrilled to continue this work and the level of activity that has come to be the norm for the I&A Section.

Over the last two years, I’ve learned more about how the Society of American Archivists works as part of my steering committee work. It’s an imperfect institution (aren’t all institutions?) but it’s populated by us – archivists who are pushing our profession to contribute to society in useful, unique ways, open new avenues of research and theory, move toward equity and justice in our institutional and professional practices. Corporate bodies are best reserved for name authority files, in my view, but I am warmed and spurred on by the individuals who populate and inhabit SAA in order to leave the profession better than they found it.

I look forward to continuing the work, though off this committee. Archivists, whether we pay SAA dues or attend national meetings, whether we work within the section or external to it, are a powerful community of knowledgeable experts. Our daily work, our records expertise, our historical perspectives are all powerful assets and activities. These we can share with one another, with our local non-archivists, with communities that have long been harmed through enforced invisibility and/or mistreatment.

If you have an axe to grind, an archival issue that is not discussed enough in our field, I hope that you find the I&A committee and its tools a welcoming place to share information and build community around that concern. We offer this blog, social media feeds, an annual meeting, and anything else you want to build or make use of in order to education and organize. I am grateful every day for the work of my colleagues around labor, for example. I did not grow up steeped in those concepts or language around work and solidarity, but being an archivist helped me become aware of imbalances and issues. By reading my colleagues’ articles and Twitter musings, and then beginning to join conversations and act, I am able to be a better advocate for the hours of labor we put in to make our corner of the internet rich in information and beautiful (or at least useful) metadata.

Thank you for the space you provide for these discussions, Issues & Advocacy, and thank you for your contributions, archivists and archives workers! I am a proud alumna of this steering committee.

June 11, 2018June 23, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: archival labor, archival theory, archives profession, candidates, invisibility, metadata, social media Leave a comment

Archivists on the Issues: Societal Logic from Archives, a Dying Concept

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from a new regular writer for I&A’s blog, Summer Espinoza. Summer is the digital archivist at California State University, Dominguez Hills where she is working on a California State University Archives project.

The archives’ role in collective memory making is hardly a new topic, but how does that translate into actual social concepts? The article “History, Society, and Institutions: The Role of Collective Memory in the Emergence and Evolution of Societal Logics” in the Academy of Management Review (2016) theorizes that archival documents have something to do with what emerges as widely accepted logic.

In their article, authors Ocasio, Mauskapf, and Steele define the various concepts, occurrences, documents, archives, and historical events, that lead to the formation of societal logics. Societal logics itself is defined by the authors as “historically constituted cultural structures generated through the collective memory of historical events.” Some of the more widely accepted societal logics are defined in the following categories: family, religion, the state, the market, professions, community, and corporation.

In this model, occurrences yield documents, some of which make it to archives, and historical events are where it all comes together. Historical events are created through the retrieval and interpretation of materials in the archives on a larger scale. What we archivists do in our classification, general handling, and other processing activities is create metanarratives. To Ocasio, Mauskapf, and Steele, these metanarratives are the foundation for the creation and normalization of societal logics. Metanarratives can create both common and conflicting stories or perspectives of historical events; again, historical events are the retrieval and analysis of materials in the archives.

In their larger hypothesis, the authors trace the beginnings and acceptance of institutions formed from historical events and societal logics. Some examples include business models and companies created during the Civil War, the transcontinental railroad’s effect on collective memory and corporate logic, and legal cases affecting the interpretation of law.

Sure, this is a great elevator speech – “my work affects societal logics” – but can we really look to historical practices in the archives to continue this hypothesized influence of archival processes in the creation of metanarratives, historical events, and societal logics? What do the effects of self-publishing and even the stronger influences of “the self” in 2018 societal logics have on archival resources human and otherwise? Are archivists really “in the game” now, or are there other professions with more agile processes who will maintain historical events?

Will strong, and sometimes conflicting metanarratives of movements like #metoo, #takeaknee, and #marchforourlives be sought as historical documents in archives? In Kenneth E. Foote’s 1990 article “To Remember and Forget” in The American Archivist similarly acknowledges the temporal and spatial bridges archives support in collective memory. In this same article though, Foote acknowledges radical historian Howard Zinn’s 1970 statement that archivists neglect collections outside mainstream society. Here we are as a Society of American Archivists, forty years later,  identifying non-mainstream collection-building as “radical” and “inclusive.” That is not to say that mainstream societal logics haven’t changed and grown as well.

Collective memory, as a concept of study, is multidisciplinary and wide-ranging.  In their article, “The Memory Remains: Understanding Collective Memory in the Digital Age” in Science Advances (2017), the authors observe that the Internet, and more broadly, digital technologies, has impacted the way in which occurrences are recorded and also the Internet’s impact on the way in which collective memory – and therefore societal logics in the longer term – can be observed and measured “at-scale.” Where do and when do archivists and archives meet information systems professionals and data scientists to be relevant in data-driven or digital societal logics?  How do such studies impact the theorization that societal logics are derived from metanarratives interpreted and analyzed by historical events in the archives? Perhaps there is a future in theory-building in archives for such interdisciplinary work on a larger scale.

I hope in this small attempt to take a peek outside of my day-to-day work, I have stumbled upon something worth investigating– the future of the sources of historical events and metanarratives. Does the professional archivist have a responsibility, as a matter of advocacy for the profession today, to contribute to the field of collective memory theory in the digital age of self-centric and wider spheres of societal logics categories?  I do believe relevant as a matter of issue and advocacy in the Society.

 

Sources:

Foote, Kenneth (1990). To Remember and Forget: Archives, Memory, and Culture. The American Archivist: Summer 1990, 53(3), 378-392.

García-Gavilanes, R., Mollgaard, A., Tsvetkova, M., & Yasseri, T. (2017). The Memory Remains: Understanding Collective Memory in the Digital Age. Science Advances, 3(4).

Ocasio, W., Mauskapf, M., & Steele, C. (2016). History, Society, and Institutions: The Role of Collective Memory in the Emergence and Evolution of Societal Logics. Academy of Management Review, 41(4), 676-699.

May 10, 2018June 22, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: archival processing, archival theory, archives are not neutral, archives profession, corporate power, historical interpretation, memory institutions, SAA, U.S. history Leave a comment

Archivists on the Issues: Reflections on Gender and Hospital Archives

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from François Dansereau, Archivist at the McGill University Health Centre, in Montreal, Quebec.

Postmodern archivists have learned the value of diplomatics and provenance in order to contextualize records, to assess the hierarchical organization between units and offices, and to determine their impact on archival practices. Moreover, studies have emphasized the power associated with the control of information and the means of record creation. Michel Rolf-Trouillot expressed this idea brilliantly, writing that “the production of historical narratives involves the uneven contribution of competing groups and individuals who have unequal access to the means for such production.”[1] The eminent archivist Verne Harris has also demonstrated the extent of information control in his studies of South Africa’s apartheid regime.[2] Other authors have explored the power of photographs in the mapping of territories, to imagine a landscape, and in connection with the elaboration of national identity.[3]

Traditional archival institutions are currently being challenged on issues related to archival literacy in the digital world, and by the emergence and growing importance of community archives and participatory archives that seek to address social justice. These concerns and endeavors are crucial and resonate on how we think about institutional impacts on the creation of records, and how we give access to them. These institutions, and recent studies, allow us to think about the constantly evolving interpretations of historical records, the importance of reading “records against the grain,”[4] in all sectors, and the need to study the “sociohistorical context” of provenance.[5]

It is with these themes in mind that I propose to challenge interpretations of the hospital records of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), in Montreal, Quebec, and attempt to gather as much information as possible on the context of the production of these records, the preservation of documents, and the dissemination of historical traces of MUHC hospitals.

From this starting point, I began to think about archival theory and hospital record-creation and record-keeping practices. What type of records did North American modern hospitals produce when they established their organizational functioning in the late-19th century? With what kind of care and organization were archival records managed? Were official documents and photographs circulated internally and externally? What purposes did the production of official documents achieve? All of these factors, I argue, influenced how doctors, nurses, founders, and volunteers were represented in hospital photographic records of the late-19th- and early-20th-century.

In a forthcoming article, I explore these themes and look at hospital record-creation and record-keeping frameworks – or rather, the absence of standardized archival policies and procedures. My main argument around interpretation of hospital records rests on the larger picture of hospital organizational structure. Organizations, nation-states, corporations, and others instill a particular identity in the records they produce, based on conscious decision-making processes. Large-scale institutions, such as hospitals, are no different. Traditionally, institutional archives naturally reflect the particular identity of their larger institution. After all, it seems evident that archives should be aligned with their parent organization’s identity. Historical records allow institutions to construct and maintain their collective memory, but power dynamics are reflected in the records institutions create and disseminate, and that is what I intend to examine.

Hospitals of the late-19th century needed to forge their own medical and administrative structures. In addition to responding to hospital growth and increased access, they needed not only to establish their way of functioning, but to manage the arrival of dozens and eventually hundreds of women into the public sphere. I ask, what is the impact of the delineations of professional boundaries between health care workers on the identity of hospitals? More precisely, how do these elements affect the production and dissemination of institutional records? I am interested in how these aspects are translated in the depiction of health care workers, founders, and volunteers in institutional documents. What immediately struck me in my research were the social and cultural indicators permeating hospital records.

The content and context of historical records, I suggest, play a role in how archivists should approach past archival practices and how contemporary postmodern archivists can assess their current activities and professional development. I argue that hospitals’ historical power structures and record-keeping practices have an impact on the present management of historical records and archival practices. I believe it is crucial for postmodern archivists to contextualize the origins of their institutional structures in order to grasp what shaped and continues to shape the production of institutional records.

My research proposes to use a gender analytical framework, including the growing importance of the theme of masculinity in social studies, in order to contextualize hospitals’ historical traces and archival practices. The subject of gender and archives needs, I think, to be studied more extensively. A gender analytical framework for the study of traditional large-scale institutions, and their records, allows past archival practices to be put in perspective and can help present and future archivists in how they approach, give access, disseminate, and study archival documents.

[1] Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1995), xix.

[2] Verne Harris, “The Archival Silver: Power, Memory, and Archives in South Africa,” Archival Science 2 (2002): 63–86; Verne Harris, Archives and Justice: A South African Perspective (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2006).

[3] See, for example, Picturing Place: Photography and the Geographical Imagination, ed. Joan M. Shwartz and James R. Ryan, (New York: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2003).

[4] Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

[5] Jennifer Douglas, “Origins: Evolving Ideas about the Principle of Provenance,” in Currents of Archival Thinking, 2nd ed., ed. Heather MacNeil and Terry Eastwood (Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2010), 23–43.

April 4, 2018June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: archival theory, archives profession, corporate power, gender oppression, historical interpretation, institutional records, memory institutions, photography, professionalism, provenance, racial oppression, volunteering Leave a comment