Guest Post: Alexis Bhagat on Hay Library’s new “Voices of Mass Incarceration in the United States” collection

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.

You can register for the symposium here→ https://www.eventbrite.com/e/voices-of-mass-incarceration-a-symposium-tickets-708797842427?aff=oddtdtcreator

September 15, 2023September 16, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Guest PostsTags: 19th century, acquisition, amnesty, Angola State Penitentiary, anti-racism, archival processing, archival silences, archives are contested, archives are not neutral, archives profession, Austin Reed, biases, Black history, Black people, Brown University, debt, debtor's prison, Dictionary of Archives Terminology, digital access, digitization, Ethridge Knight, Fraternal Order of Police, gender oppression, Guest Posts, John Hay Library, Leonard Peltier, Louisiana, mass incarceration, Mumia Abu-Jamal, NARA, New York City, police, political prisoners, prison construction, prisons, racial oppression, retrieval, SAA, search methods, social justice, symposiums, traditional founders, U.S. history, university archives, William Keteltas Leave a comment

Steering Shares: A Piece of Professional Literature that Impacted Me

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of committee member Genna Duplisea, archivist and special collections librarian at Salve Regina University.

On a class message board during library school, I once remarked that Howard Zinn’s “Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest” (https://minds.wisconsin.edu/handle/1793/44118) was a “mic drop.” I felt his call to action across the decades. Working full-time while taking two summer classes had accelerated the pace of my life and my studies past thoughtfulness, but reading Zinn’s concise connection between archives, power, and justice reminded me why I had chosen to train as an archivist. This piece made clear the importance of “the relation between professing one’s craft and professing one’s humanity” (14). Returning to this speech almost eight years after I first read it, in one of the greatest times of societal, political, and public health upheaval I have experienced, I was stunned by how apropos his words continue to be.

Zinn’s essay, published in The Midwestern Archivist in 1977, draws on an address he gave at the 1970 SAA Annual Meeting called “The Activist Archivist” (https://americanarchivist.org/doi/pdf/10.17723/aarc.34.1.23527290p7mx1w33) He argues that insistence of neutrality as a value of professionalism causes a separation between work and belief and an assumption that the work of archivists is not inherently political (17). Archivists have made progress in embracing the understanding that archives are not neutral, though it is not a universally-held tenet. The maintenance of neutrality “leaves very little time or energy to worry about whether the [information] machine is designed for war or peace, for social need or individual profits, to help us or to poison us” (16).

In recent years, we have seen attempts to erase archival information in support of crimes against humanity and environmental degradation. The routine destruction of ICE records or the removal of Web information on climate change left over from a previous administration could be standard archival practices. However, if we keep our values separate from our assessment of these practices, our will will tend “to maintain the existing social order by perpetuating its values, by legitimizing its priorities, by justifying its wars, perpetuating its prejudices, contributing to its xenophobia, and apologizing for its class order” (18). Such controversies are not quibbles about efficient procedures; they are moves of powerful apparatuses with bearing on people’s lives.

During this pandemic, we all must pause; as Arundhati Roy writes in her recent essay, “The pandemic is a portal,” (https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca)  this rupture forces “humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew.”  We have an opportunity to ask whether the work of archivists resists or endorses harmful narratives, such as American exceptionalism, disease as a third-world problem, immigrants as dangerous, poverty as a just product of meritocracy, or science as suspect. We do not have to look for egregious prejudice to see the impact of archival information and practices on people’s lives.

Zinn remarks that problems in the United States are not problems of excess, but of normalcy; how prescient was his observation that “our economic problem is not a depression but the normal functioning of the economy, dominated by corporate power and profit” (19). We see the coronavirus rip apart people’s lives and livelihoods, and lay bare societal problems and structural inequalities. How do we make sure that we document these phenomena equitably, inclusively, and with careful attention to our own influence?

I take Zinn’s words as an argument not to return to “normal” after the pandemic, and Roy argues that nothing would be worse. The disruption of operations is an opportunity to decide how we want to remake our work. Zinn notes several biases in archives — the wealthy and powerful over the marginalized, the domination of the written word, past over present, preservation over documentation, among others — that are still challenges today. How do we want to contend with these biases in the future? To what, and to whom, do we want to give our attention? Archivists have roles to play in guiding for more equitable and activist documentation and access to information. Each of us will have to decide what that means, and I encourage everyone to take this strange time to meditate on how we can further humanize our work.

April 20, 2020June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: archives profession, biases, class oppression, climate change, corporate power, environmental degradation, erasure, immigration, library school, professionalism, record destruction, SAA 1 Comment

Steering Share: Meet Genna Duplisea

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of committee member Genna Duplisea, archivist and special collections librarian at Salve Regina University.

1) What was your first experience working with archives?

After working in the library stacks my first year of college, I transferred my work-study to the Special Collections and Archives department because when I often walked by its glass doors and beautiful sculptural gates, I thought it looked interesting. For the rest of my time at Bowdoin, I was an assistant there, learning how to handle and organize everything from architectural plans to brittle folded nineteenth-century correspondence to newspaper clippings to masses of trophies. The collection was robust and the department busy, so I got to see the variety of research primary sources could provide. My supervisors encouraged enthusiasm about the collection and the environment allowed me to take joy in my work. One year for my grandfather’s birthday I found for him the alumnus file for a doctor from our family lore – he had delivered one of my ancestors on a kitchen table!

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

Much of my reasoning for pursuing a career in archives is my desire to contribute positively to human rights and the environment. It can be difficult and overwhelming at work to stay grounded in the ever-changing landscape of concerns and ideas linking archives to social justice. Attending to the role of archives in combating prejudice and harm means advocating for our labor, too. Serving on the I&A Steering Committee will, I hope, help me do the things I entered this profession to do, by connecting me more closely to the work addressing social and environmental justice issues and placing me in a position to support or join in archival activism.

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

I see climate change as underpinning every problem and political issue because it affects every community. Archivists have a role in helping communities preserve and protect their heritage as the climate becomes more unpredictable, and we also have lot to do in addressing our profession’s carbon footprint. How do we perform memory work for changing and disappearing communities without further contributing to the source of that change? As part of Archivists Responding to Climate Change (ProjectARCC), I recently collaborated with other archivists on hosting Climate Teach-ins and hope to contribute to the growing body of writing on archives and climate change in the coming year.

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

Reading, writing, and basic fiber crafting are also among my hobbies, which almost goes without saying in this profession. It cracks me up to around the room of archivists and seeing a bunch of people knitting during a presentation, which I have been known to do. Additionally, I’m not very sporty, but I love going for walks. There is a land trust in my community that maintains beautiful walking trails. I’m trying to learn more about the plants and birds I see and develop a stronger knowledge of the natural world. My houseplants are also doing all right.

December 9, 2019November 24, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Interviews, Steering ShareTags: archives profession, biases, climate change, environmental justice, Interviews, memory institutions, memory work, Project ARCC Leave a comment

End of Year Steering Share: Thoughts on the Archival Job Market

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This end-of-the-year post is from Steering Committee member Samantha Brown, Assistant Archivist at the New-York Historical Society.

As this committee year comes to an end, I have begun thinking about the issues that our committee and SAA at large will be facing in the coming years. While questions of accessibility and preservation will still be looming far into the future, the biggest problem our profession will face in the years to come is retention. How does our field retain talented and enthusiastic young archivists when their career prospects are so uncertain?

While many of us enter the field with big hopes and dreams, we’re soon confronted with the reality of the limited positions available in our profession. Job applicants soon discover that jobs are hard to come by and the ones that are available are either part-time or contract gigs. Even though securing one these positions feels like a success the reality of the position soon becomes evident. You might have a job now but positions is temporary and you need to start applying for new positions immediately. Unless you’re lucky enough to find a permanent job, you’re constantly in a cycle of applying and reapplying for new positions. This situation begs the question of whether it’s ethical to have a field that largely consists of part-time and temporary positions. Is it right to allow people to enter a field that has such limited options?

When discussing this dilemma, people have suggested that universities should limit the amount of students allowed to enter archival studies tracks. As of right now, it’s unknown whether less students entering the archival field would fix the jobs problem. However, what we do know is that limiting entry into the field creates a whole new set of problems. When setting limits, universities must create a set of criteria that students must meet to enter a university’s program. Unless universities develop a way to do blind admissions, these criteria could very well reinforce biases that already exist within the profession and prevent underrepresented groups from being able to enter the profession.

Another issue with limiting entry into archival studies programs is that it just deals with the surface issue of our profession. While there will be less people fighting and competing for jobs, there is no guarantee that more permanent, full-time jobs will be created or that higher wages will be offered. While there is definitely a pool of people applying for archives positions, the issue isn’t the number of people searching or the number of jobs available but how institutions value archival labor. Since archival work isn’t seen as valuable to the institutions that employ us, our employers don’t see the need to provide decent compensations. Unless we can convince people that the work we do is important and contributes something positive to the world, no one will want to create jobs for us. In order for our profession to thrive and grow, we need others to see our value and desire to employ us so that archivists can stay in the field rather than having to leave and find other work to support themselves.

May 24, 2019June 23, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: archives profession, biases, fair compensation, job security, library degrees, SAA, temporary labor, underrepresented communities Leave a comment

Steering Share: A Reading List for Practicing Allyship in Archives

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes from I&A Chair Courtney Dean, Head of the Center for Primary Research and Training in UCLA Library Special Collections.

For the final Steering Share of my term as I&A Chair I was planning to provide an update on our section’s temporary labor survey which closed earlier this month. (We had 412 responses!) Instead, when I sat down to write last evening, I quickly found myself going down the wormhole of comments about a recent blog post that was shared via Library Journal’s Twitter account. I won’t go into too much detail (you can look it up yourself) but for those unfamiliar with the situation, a WOC librarian wrote a blog post about the whiteness of library collections, and as so often happens when POC speak truth about racism, the internet trolls came out en masse. (I encourage those of you on Twitter to go in and report them. It’s a quick and somewhat satisfying process.) Appalling enough as it is to have THOUSANDS of strangers leaving vitriolic, hateful, and blatantly racist comments, while also posting photos of the author and details about her workplace, it was especially reprehensible to see other librarians attacking her.

As archivists we’re sometimes inclined to think we don’t have a similar whiteness problem in our field, however one only needs to look at the numbers, or recall the backlash to Dr. Michelle Caswell’s Dismantling White Supremacy session at SAA a few years ago. For all of our talk of diversity, equity, and inclusion, we still struggle to recruit and retain archivists of color, and to acknowledge bias in our collecting practices. To this day I have colleagues who refuse to recognize that archives are not neutral.

Instead of continuing to rely on the on the intellectual and emotional labor of POC colleagues to tirelessly critique and challenge this problematic myth of neutrality, I encourage my fellow white archivists to check out the reading list below and start practicing allyship. We can all be doing better.

Below is a brief reading list in no particular order:

Issues and Advocacy: Archivists On The Issues: Answering The Call For Inclusivity, Summer Espinoza https://issuesandadvocacy.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/archivists-on-the-issues-answering-the-call-for-inclusivity/

Issues and Advocacy: Archivists on the Issues: Reflections on Privilege in the Archives, Summer Espinoza https://issuesandadvocacy.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/archivists-on-the-issues-reflections-on-privilege-in-the-archives/

Issues and Advocacy: #ARCHIVESSOWHITE In The Words Of Jarrett Drake  https://issuesandadvocacy.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/archivessowhite-in-the-words-of-jarrett-drake/

Honma, T. (2005). Trippin’ Over the Color Line: The Invisibility of Race in Library and Information Studies. InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 1(2). Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4nj0w1mp

Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook, “Archives, records, and power: The making of modern memory” Archival Science (2002) 2: 1, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02435628.

Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, “Moving Toward a Reparative Archive: A Roadmap for a Holistic Approach to Disrupting Homogenous Histories in Academic Repositories and Creating Inclusive Spaces for Marginalized Voices” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies vol. 5, (2018) https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol5/iss1/6/

Nicole A. Cook Information Services to Diverse Populations: Developing Culturally Competent Library Professionals (California: ABC-CLIO, 2017)

Mario H. Ramirez (2015) Being Assumed Not to Be: A Critique of Whiteness as an Archival Imperative. The American Archivist: Fall/Winter 2015, Vol. 78, No. 2, pp. 339-356. https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.339

Expanding #ArchivesForBlackLives to Traditional Archival Repositories, Jarrett Drake, June 27, 2016. https://medium.com/on-archivy/expanding-archivesforblacklives-to-traditional-archival-repositories-b88641e2daf6

Caswell, Michelle (2017).  Teaching to Dismantle White Supremacy in Archives.Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 87(3) 223-235. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu.libproxy.csudh.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/692299

Caswell, Michelle & Brilmyer, Gracen (2016).  Identifying & Dismantling White Supremacy in Archives: An Incomplete List of White Privileges in Archives and Action Items for Dismantling Them.  http://www.gracenbrilmyer.com/dismantling_whiteSupremacy_archives3.pdf  

Taylor, Chris (2017). Getting Our House in Order: Moving from Diversity to Inclusion. The American Archivist, 80(1), 19-29. https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081.80.1.19

April 22, 2019June 23, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: anti-racism, archives profession, biases, cultural competence, inclusion, institutional racism, invisibility, memory institutions, racial diversity, racial oppression, SAA, temporary labor, White supremacy, Whiteness Leave a comment

Archivists on the News: “Hidden in Plain Sight”: Institutional Amnesia and the Archives

Archivists on the News is a series where archivists share their perspectives on current news topics. This post comes courtesy of Alex Bisio, Lead Processing Archivist and Assistant Librarian at the University of Oregon.

Late February’s news cycle was dominated by yet another political scandal. Rather than the now familiar chorus of collusion, corruption, and congressional gridlock, this state-level scandal turned the national conversation toward personal accountability and the pervasiveness of racism in American culture, particularly in the recent past. The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, was discovered having allegedly appeared in blackface with a classmate dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan at a medical school party, which was documented in a photograph that was later published in the school’s 1984 yearbook.  Northam first confirmed and then denied that he was the individual in the yearbook picture. It was later discovered that two other individuals in the Virginia government had their racist actions preserved in their own college yearbooks.

White America took yet another moment to be aghast at the “revelation” that even as recently as the 1980s blatant celebrations of racism have been, and still are, incredibly common on college campuses all over the country. In this case, it could be cynically said, white America may have been more aghast at the revelation that evidence of these celebrations can easily be found by anyone at any college library or archive.

Indeed, this event in Virginia politics sent scores of student journalists to their own libraries and institutional archives, where many learned not only about past campus culture’s ties to racism, but about where that information could be located. “These documents are easily available,” wrote the editorial board of the Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, “All yearbooks are available publically, free of charge, in the basement of the Anderson Library. Examples of racial bigotry are hidden in plain sight and no one really talks about them.” ¹

Students weren’t the only ones who were prompted to start looking at how evidence of racism has been preserved in the historical record on college campuses. Administrators at several universities, possibly eager to “get out in front” of a potential scandal of their own, were quick to make statements condemning their institution’s racist past. A few universities have set up taskforces of administrators, faculty, and librarians to specifically examine yearbooks, both digitized and print, for what one university euphemistically termed “images of concern.” ² It is unclear, however, what will be done with the images when the reviews are completed. Other institutions preemptively published statements regarding the potential for offensive content in their holdings while defending the practices of preserving their history. ³

Perhaps surprisingly, none of the institutions that reviewed yearbook content suggested removing historical student publications from the web or the stacks. On the contrary, many were vehemently opposed to doing so. “The offensive and racist images in our yearbooks cannot be erased any more than they can be forgotten. They are a permanent part of our record,” wrote Emory University President Claire E. Sterk in an email to her campus community, “Much as I despise what those images represent, I think it is important that Emory’s yearbooks continue to be accessible online.” ⁴

Certainly, it is encouraging to see college students and administrators working with librarians, archivists, and historians to confront the sins of the past rather than bury or deny them. However, the documents that reveal evidence of the often racist, sexist, and classist culture that has flourished in some of the most hallowed halls of higher education in America, were never hidden. College and university archives have been actively maintaining these kinds of documents and making them available to the concerned, or simply curious, for decades. Archivists are, furthermore, becoming more visible participants in these important conversations about the preservation and presentation of American history and culture. Is the specter of scandal, and the desire to control the media narrative surrounding that scandal, really the only time stakeholders will highlight the value of archival resources and demonstrate how institutional archives inform, and sometimes complicate, the place of campus culture in broader conversations about race, sex, and class in American history?

While it seems as if little has truly resulted from February’s media frenzy, (Ralph Northam, for example, has refused to resign from office) we can hope that white Americans will not settle back into a kind of collective amnesia about racism’s fervent hold on American institutions, even the progressive intuitions that claim to know better. We must also hope that if and when this kind of scandal floods media outlets again, that people in higher education, particularly administrators, will not suffer from the same amnesia. If we are genuine about our commitment to confronting the history of prejudice and inequality on American college campuses and dealing with the legacy in a tangible way, we cannot act surprised that these problematic documents exist and attempt to deal with the fallout as a public relations crisis. We cannot distance ourselves from the past and forget about the pain we have inflicted, only to remember when it is politically convenient to do so.

Footnotes:

¹ “Editorial: Acknowledging Racial, Discriminatory Historical Practices on UMN Campus.” The Minnesota Daily. February 17, 2019. https://www.mndaily.com/article/2019/02/o-editorial-acknowledging-racial-discriminatory-historical-practices-on-umn-campus.

² Samsel, Haley. “In Review of Yearbooks, American University Officials Uncover Fifteen Photos ‘of Concern.’” The Eagle. February 12, 2019. https://www.theeagleonline.com/article/2019/02/in-review-of-yearbooks-american-university-officials-uncover-fifteen-photos-of-concern.

³ “Offensive Content in Our Collections.” UMD Special Collections & University Archives (blog), February 26, 2019.   https://hornbakelibrary.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/offensive-content-in-our-collections/.

⁴ Stirgus, Eric. “Emory University to Create Commission to Review Racist Yearbook Photos.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 20, 2019. https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/emory-university-creates-commission-review-racist-yearbook-photos/fmIbZdVCMdt2jAhhpUsKtK/.

March 22, 2019June 22, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the NewsTags: anti-racism, biases, Black history, class oppression, gender oppression, institutional records, racial oppression, record destruction, students, U.S. history, Whiteness Leave a comment

Steering Share: The Spousal Subsidy: Gender and Low Wages in the Archives Profession

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of I&A committee member, Sara DeCaro, University Archivist and Old Castle Museum Director at Baker University Library.

One of the things I have enjoyed most about Issues and Advocacy Steering Committee meetings is the interest we all seem to have in labor and wage issues. I can attest from personal experience that this is something that needs to be addressed throughout our profession. I also wonder frequently why this is still an issue. Most archivist positions require at least one advanced degree and a very specific skill set, so why aren’t wages on par with education and abilities?

I don’t believe there is just one answer to the question above. There are a number of factors contributing to low wages in the archives profession. The Society of Southwest Archivist’s recently released an article that addresses the inequity in pay between directors and staff, which is certainly one explanation. I’m sure that the survey our section recently released will shed light on other factors, too, but in the meantime, I wanted to know if there was more information already out there. When I did some digging, I found out that low wages are, unsurprisingly, an issue among museum professionals as well. And although there are obvious differences between our professions, there is also some overlap, and one author mentioned something that rang true for archivists, museum workers, and librarians: the spousal subsidy.

The spousal subsidy is the idea that some jobs can have a lower salary because the person in that position is married to someone else in a higher-paying career. Most of the time, in the past, the man made a higher salary, so women could afford to take jobs with lower pay.

The spousal subsidy is a result of the perception that certain jobs are “women’s work.” The phrase “pink-collar” was coined to describe professions that have a large percentage of female workers. Sometimes, that term was applied because the job had a large caretaking component; nurses and teachers are the obvious examples. Caretaking and child-rearing were seen as something inherently female, so these jobs were feminized. Other jobs with large percentages of women workers fell victim to this mentality as well; libraries, which have had a majority of female workers for years, are the classic example, but since the 1980s, this has also been true of archives.

Marital status is obviously no reason to discriminate against anyone. As someone who is divorced and has had the experience of living in both two-income and one-income households, however, I can tell you that the second income makes a big difference. Many employers have taken advantage of gender gap in wages over the years, and the majority of women in archives jobs has undoubtedly contributed to low salaries. Positions that are perceived as being “women’s work” fall victim to the spousal subsidy mentality: women can be paid less, because they have the support of their husband’s income. This type of archaic thinking may be one factor that continues to drive down wages and keep new employees’ pay low.

The spousal subsidy attitude hits emerging professionals particularly hard. Many recent graduates are young, single adults. Student loan debt is also a problem among this group, which has been saddled with this burden more than previous generations. On top of these issues, new professionals are facing outdated and sexist attitudes about salaries. When institutions have been able to get away with offering low wages for decades, convincing them to change is difficult.

I believe I have demonstrated that there is some deeply entrenched gender bias behind archivists’ low pay. I also think, from what I’ve observed on SAA listservs, that there are plenty of people within our profession that agree that these antiquated notions about wages need to go. I hope we can come together to affect positive change within our profession for everyone.

 

March 15, 2019June 23, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: archival labor, archives profession, biases, discrimination, fair compensation, gender oppression, gender pay gap, SAA 1 Comment

Steering Share: Lisa Calahan

The Steering Shares series provides an opportunity to learn more about the I&A Steering Committee and the issues that committee members care about. This introduction post comes courtesy of Steering Committee member Lisa Calahan, Head of Archival Processing at the University of Minnesota.

Steering Committee member Lisa Calahan

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOUR JOB OR THE ARCHIVES PROFESSION?

My favorite thing about my job is that every collection is different and I can never get bored. As Head of Archival Processing, I lead a lot of processing projects and there are never two collections that are the same. For example, I am currently managing processing projects for a collection of comic books, a social welfare organization, a civil rights activist’s papers, a theater company, two rare book collections, a collection on youth work, a historic architect’s records, and a partridge in a pear tree. I love assessing each collection, discovering (or attempting to discover) what clues the material and original order convey and piecing the information together in a cohesive way that can be useful to researchers. I also like seeing history “in the raw.” When I’m appraising new archival collections, very few others have peaked into the boxes and the collections have yet to be subjected to interpretations. It’s an incredible opportunity to be reminded how powerful and sneaky bias can be and try to remember to check my own before creating processing plans.

WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO JOIN THE I&A STEERING COMMITTEE?

I’m a long-time member and listserv lurker. I&A is one of the most active sections I’ve been involved with; I wanted to be a part of the activity and help keep the section successful!

WHAT IS AN ARCHIVAL ISSUE THAT MEANS A LOT TO YOU?

An issue that means a lot to me is valuing the concept of “shared authority” and how our profession can better collaborate with communities. The professional model that archivists are taught, at least I was taught, involve removing the historical record from the community and keeping the records in a “safe” place. By doing so, we also alter the ability for communities, especially historically disenfranchised communities, to retain ownership and power over their histories. I think a lot about how we as archivists can use our knowledge to support community based archival efforts to build relationships rather than building collections.

December 22, 2017November 24, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Interviews, Steering ShareTags: archival processing, archives profession, biases, historical interpretation, Interviews, professionalism, short blogs Leave a comment

Steering Share: Stephanie Bennett

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 come courtesy of committee member Stephanie Bennett, Collections Archivist at Wake Forest University.

What is your favorite thing about the archives profession?

Steering Committee member Stephanie Bennett

There are lots of things that I enjoy about our profession – providing access to unique materials that tell stories and demonstrate history outside of rare books; working with our students, who brighten my days with their good-natured smiles and 90s renaissance denim; researchers full of questions; finding aids with well-structured, clear information. But my favorite thing is archivists! I have so much respect for my coworkers and professional colleagues – interesting people who are invested in our work and who also have developed other aspects of life, deeply. We are archivists and also artists, activists, bakers, gardeners, hikers, many adoring pet owners, movie buffs, sports enthusiasts, woodworkers, and on. I thank y’all for being generous with your skills and passions – archival or otherwise – on the clock, on the internet, and over lunch at SAA annual meetings. I do my best to pay your goodwill forward!

What made you want to join the I&A Steering Committee?

I admired the work of Issues & Advocacy and wanted to help make it happen! It can be a struggle to fit professional work into busy lives (see above), for all of us who have the means to join committees and those who do not. But committees are so useful for helping us all advance goals at work and on a broader societal level. They – we – take on some of the bigger questions or issues that I am too tired to tackle alone after a day on the job, days when I struggle to go for a run or eat some pizza (or both). Individually I’m not going to think deeply about innovative ways to talk to various communities about archives and archivists, advocating for work that confronts our biases instead of concealing them, finding sparks of inspiration from conferences that I haven’t gone to. But that’s what I&A is for! My time on the section’s steering committee has been as rewarding as I had hoped when I put myself up for nomination.

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

Most things that are intrinsic to archives are important to me. As a Collections Archivist, my day job centers around providing access to all, eliminating backlogs, and introducing people unfamiliar with archives to our field (not sure how many archivists can get away with not having to explain our work to the uninitiated!). But I am really, really, passionate about archives salaries and other things wrapped up in the “people at work” part of our profession: salary and other benefit negotiations, well-developed leadership in archives and libraries, fair pay for us and our paraprofessional colleagues, and all that jazz. One day, I would love to do proper research and  advocacy in this area, because I think these topics are tied up in how archivists advocate within our institutions and in our communities and countries. But my brain and my planning skills haven’t caught up with my ambitions yet! I’ll let I&A know when they do.

October 31, 2017November 24, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Interviews, Steering ShareTags: archives profession, biases, Interviews, job security, precarity, professionalism Leave a comment

Archivists on the Issues: The Neutrality Lie and Archiving in the Now

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Samantha “Sam” Cross, the Assistant Archivist for CallisonRTKL.

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. Please note that opinions expressed in Archivists on the Issues posts do not indicate an official stance of SAA or the Issues and Advocacy Section.

 

Neutrality is a lie. The sooner archivists agree on that matter, the better the profession will be. It’s not even a good lie, considering the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Howard Zinn’s infamous 1977 speech to the archival community called us out, stating: “The archivist, even more than the historian and the political scientist, tends to be scrupulous about his neutrality, and to see his job as a technical job, free from the nasty world of political interest: a job of collecting, sorting, preserving, making available, the records of society.”

Echoing Zinn, archivists ourselves have revealed the facade of neutrality built into every step of the archiving process. Terry Cook, Helen Samuels, Mark Greene, and Richard J. Cox all consider appraisal “the critical archival act,” the step from which other aspects follow.[1] The selective nature of collecting and retention policies allow archivists to claim that they cannot collect anything outside of the established boundaries. Vernon Harris pointed out that even collection description is a byproduct of cultural and societal biases that construct their own narrative.[2] Last February, in an interview with the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA), Jarrett Drake bluntly stated that “Archives have never been neutral – they are the creation of human beings, who have politics in their nature.”

Claims of neutrality distance archives and archivists from the Now. In his book, Flowers After the Funeral: Reflections on the Post-9/11 Digital Age, Cox anxiously critiqued the purpose of digital and physical collecting in 9/11’s immediate aftermath. From his perspective, the compulsion to archive as a means of remembrance negates the “necessary” distance that the archival act supposedly demand.[3] That distance is where neutrality lives, allegedly, a convenient barrier between archivists and the real world. However, as Randall Jimerson states, “neutrality is the abdication of responsibility.”[4] It deters active archiving and reduces archivists to passive recipients. In reality, archivists have the potential, if not the responsibility, to act and explore other options of collecting and serving their communities.

Easier said than done, but if we want to fight against the perception of neutrality, we have to make a greater case, as a profession, for active, deliberate archiving. A stereotype remains that archivists are basement-dwellers covered in dust, gatekeepers of documents that have long surpassed their use. In truth, archivists have been agents of political disruption and social activism since the beginning of our profession. But whereas archivists of the past were limited by fledgling technology, archivists today can utilize technology to our advantage for the specific purpose of archiving the Now.

While Cox reflected on emerging digital spaces with caution in 2003, archivists in 2017 embrace the tools at our disposal. The ubiquity of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and tumblr has turned the average person into an amateur historian or archivist. We openly document ourselves via tweets, vlogs, and status updates. For those in marginalized communities, the opportunities for visibility – evidence of existence – are enormous.

One of the first online platforms to formulate a response to deliberately archiving digital content was Documenting the Now (DocNow), a suite of tools designed to help researchers mine social media datasets as well as collecting and preserving digital content. The group began in 2014 in response to the Ferguson protests and the Black Lives Matter movement that chronicled events in real time and disseminated information quickly via Twitter and other platforms. DocNow’s mission is to put archiving power into the hands of those within marginalized and activist communities, offering ownership and access that traditional archives cannot provide. That power allows communities to hold others accountable, bypassing distance and neutrality for active and speedy responses, whether from law enforcement or a global community of witnesses.

Archiving the Now has naturally extended into “guerilla archiving events,” intent on swiftly preserving content of all kinds. One example is the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative efforts to preserve public data regarding climate change in danger of disappearing under the current presidential administration.

Another is the Women’s March on Washington Archives Project. As stated by coordinators Danielle Russell and Katrina Vandeven, the Project evolved from a desire to “ensure the preservation of women’s voices and responses to politics and legislation in wake of the intensely controversial 2016 elections.” Though materials aren’t immediately accessible, the project goal was to make available for future research the evidence and first-person accounts. Had archivists not acted, those voices would be lost and efforts to understand marchers’ motives would be at the mercy of speculation.

Even the Internet Archive, a repository of online content, has positioned itself as a tool of accountability through the Wayback Machine and its recent endeavor to collect the 45th president’s online statements, interviews, and sound bites. Like DocNow, the Internet Archive made deliberate efforts to provide evidence and access for the explicit, immediate purpose of use by journalists and citizens. These are efforts of people who understand the luxury of neutrality and the power of inaction. If they chose to remain neutral, the historical record would remain ever incomplete. Keeping up with the current pace of “historical” events is no easy feat, nor will archivists capture everything. But as archivists choose to act, we leave a far more encouraging and greater history in our wake.

Samantha “Sam” Cross is the Assistant Archivist for CallisonRTKL in their Seattle office where she oversees the physical and digital documents and drawings of the global architectural firm. A graduate of Western Washington University, Sam has a Bachelor’s in History and a Master’s in History with an emphasis in Archive and Records Management. In her free time she runs and writes for The Maniacal Geek and hosts That Girl with the Curls podcast where she talks with guests and friends about geek culture, comics, movies, and whatever weird thoughts pop into her head.

 

Citations

[1] Terry Cook, “Documenting Society and Institutions: The Influence of Helen Willa Samuels” in Controlling the Past: Documenting Society and Institutions, Essays In Honor of Helen Willa Samuels, ed. Terry Cook (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2011): 2.

[2] Verne Harris, Archives and Justice: A South African Perspective (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2007): 142-143

[3] Richard J. Cox, Flowers After the Funeral: Reflections on the Post-9/11 Digital Age (Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2003): 4-5.

[4] Randall C. Jimerson, Archives Power: Memory, Accountability, and Social Justice (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2009): 294

March 27, 2017June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: archival description, archives are not neutral, archives profession, biases, climate change, Documenting the Now, environmental data, gatekeeping, Internet Archive, legislation 3 Comments