Tag: BIPOC

ICYMI: Standing Together in AWE

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 Courtney Dean, Head of the Center for Primary Research and Training, UCLA Library Special Collections, and Carli Lowe, University Archivist at San José State University.

AWE Fund Logo

The Archival Workers Emergency Fund (AWE fund) is a mutual aid effort organized by an ad hoc group of archivists and administered by the Society of American Archivists’ (SAA) Foundation. Mutual aid is defined by the Big Door Brigade as people getting together “to meet each other’s basic survival needs with a shared understanding that the systems we live under are not going to meet our needs and we can do it together RIGHT NOW!” The fund launched on April 15, 2020, and at the time of this writing has provided financial support to over 100 archival workers whose livelihoods have been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The AWE Fund aims to address some of the immediate financial implications of the current economic downturn, while also acknowledging broader systemic issues that have contributed to precarious labor in archives. Because workers are facing layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts at different times, the fund is accepting applications on a rolling basis through the end of December 2020. Allied groups and individuals have been collecting and tracking these job losses through circulating spreadsheets such as Library Layoffs, Archives Staff Impact During COVID 19, and Museum Staff Impact During COVID 19.

The authors of this article have personal experiences with financial precarity and contingent employment, and finding ourselves in positions of relative stability during this chaotic time, we were inspired to act. The Organizing Committee, led by Jessica Chapel of the Harvard Law Library and Lydia Tang of Michigan State University, includes nineteen additional archivists, from across the country. We worked together to outline the scope of the fund, create a rubric for evaluating applications, and submit a proposal to SAA. Our discussions wrestled with questions of who would qualify, how to obtain relevant information without invading privacy or making the application unduly burdensome, and how we might prioritize distributing the funds if applications exceeded donations. We made a conscientious effort to lower barriers for receiving aid, and any archival worker regardless of SAA membership, including student workers, may apply for financial support up to $1,000.

Our first moment of exhilaration came when SAA informed us that they had accepted our proposal. This was immediately followed by the news that the SAA Foundation would generously provide $15,000 of seed funding. Once the fund launched, donations from individuals and organizations rapidly surmounted the Organizing Committee’s expectations. At the time of this writing, over 755 individuals have donated to the fund, in addition to several institutions and regional organizations. This has allowed the Review Committee to provide funding to every qualifying applicant in the first few months. The ultimate goal of the AWE Fund is to provide aid to anyone who needs it, and the message to our colleagues is that we truly have each other’s backs and recognize a sense of shared purpose in seeing one another through this impossible moment.

We are still actively fundraising, and to date have distributed over $131,000. This means that archival workers have received critical aid so they can pay their rent, buy food and medicine, and care for loved ones. You can help provide this direct support by making a donation, spreading the word to your networks, and participating in the upcoming Coffee For Colleagues (Tea On Me) campaign launching September 1st. The AWE Fund organizers have also created a Mutual Aid Match-Up Sheet to allow those in need of tech, career advice, and more to connect with other archival workers offering up those services, similar to efforts underway by MARAC and the BIPOC Library Residents group.

The AWE Fund is an example of the impact individuals can have when united in a common purpose. It exists only because of intensive collaboration, and will survive as long as we continue to work together. While it is considered a pilot project at the moment, it is our intention that it will exist in some form beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. We also share a commitment to working towards the moment when the state of archival labor is such that an emergency fund is no longer necessary for archivists’ survival.

We are always open to new partners in these efforts. You can reach us at awefund@gmail.com and learn more about us and our ongoing projects at https://awefund.wordpress.com/. Follow us on Twitter @awefund2020. If you are an archival worker in need, please visit the SAA site to apply.

An earlier version of this article appeared in the Society of California Archivists Newsletter, Summer 2020.

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Steering Shares: Centering BIPOC Voices

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of the past-chair of the I&A committee, Courtney Dean, the head of the Center for Primary Research and Training in UCLA Library Special Collections.

Following the deluge of organizational statements issued in support of racial justice (see this excellent list compiled by Project STAND), many archival institutions are rushing to embark upon antiracist work including description or redescripiton projects and new collecting efforts. While it’s extremely heartening to see mainstream institutions finally reconsider the treatment of BIPOC materials, staff, and communities we serve, rather than repeatedly issuing hollow commitments to EDI, I can’t help but think of a comment made during the recent Workplace Racial Equity Symposium: this urgency is in and of itself a product of white supremacy. So then, how do we ensure that we’re not simply dashing off bespoke projects that appease administrators but do little to enact lasting systemic change? Perhaps we should start by doing our homework.

The inimitable Dorthy Berry recently tweeted, “A new rule for archivists/librarians: before you ask anyone else about how to curate/describe/interpret historical materials related to African American history or racism, first you have to read even a single article about the genre/topic at hand.” I would add to this, take a look around your own institution before scrambling to acquire new collections. What voices and stories may be hidden in your holdings, silenced or erased through past descriptive practices, or lingering in your backlog? What reparative relationships with donors and communities can be made? 

When looking outside your own institution, consider who has been doing this work, probably unrecognized, and most likely unpaid, for years. Does your well-resourced institution really need to complete with existing community archives or reinvent the wheel when it comes to community-centered description? Are there ways to support this work that doesn’t include “hoovering up” materials? Can community members be compensated for their guidance? (Spoiler: NO, YES, YES.) 

I’ve found the following handful of readings and resources extremely helpful when conceptualizing ways that my own work, and the role I hold in my institution, can aid, rather than hinder, the dismantling of white supremacy in the archives. Oftentimes this may mean giving time and space to BIPOC colleagues and student workers to do the work they’ve long been advocating for, and taking their lead in determining the best ways I can support these efforts.

Call to Action: Archiving State-Sanctioned Violence Against Black People by Zakiya Collier

The Blackivists’ Five Tips for Organizers, Protestors, and Anyone Documenting Movements by The Blackivists

The Blackivists’ Five Tips for Donating Your Materials by The Blackivists

We Already Are by Yusef Omowale

Confronting Our Failure of Care Around the Legacies of Marginalized People in the Archives by Bergis Jules

Supporting our colleagues: Black archives, libraries, museums, and related organizations Google sheet created by the AWE Fund Organizing Committee

Black Excellence in LIS collaborative syllabus created by T-Kay Sangwand 

Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia Anti-Racist Description Resources by Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s Anti-Racist Description Working Group

SAA Community Reflection on Black Lives and Archives

Struggling to Breathe: Covid-19, Protest, and the LIS Response by Amelia N. Gibson, Renate Chancellor, Nicole A. Cooke, Sarah Park Dahlen, Beth Patin, and Yasmeen Shorish

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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.

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News Highlights: 2018 May

The I&A News Monitoring Research Team has compiled this list of recent news stories relating to archives, archivists, archival issues, and archival representations. This list was curated by SAA Issues & Advocacy News Monitoring Team, which includes Dana Bronson, Rachel Cohen, Samantha Cross, Shaun Hayes, and Beth Nevarez; it is managed by Steve Duckworth. More links and information are available in this month’s Google doc.

 

Acquisition, Preservation, & Access

Archival Finds & Stories

Exhibits & Museums

Human & Civil Rights, Equality, & Health

Security & Privacy

The Profession

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Archivists on the Issues: Access and Inclusion in the Reading Room

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.

For my second in a series on Access and Accessibility in Archives, I will discuss physical access to collections and spaces. I did not want to cover physical accessibility since there was an SAA AMRT/RMRT Joint Working Group on Accessibility in Archives and Records Management that covered this in depth and has created excellent documentation for working with both patrons and professionals with disabilities.

My initial thoughts were unfocused, though I knew I wanted to touch on this idea of who is, and more importantly, feels welcome in our spaces. I have been thinking about this since last spring, when I attended a presentation on art education and museum outreach, and last summer, when I read Cecilia Caballero’s blog post, “Mothering While Brown in White Spaces, Or, When I Took My Son to Octavia Butler’s Exhibit.” My thoughts congealed into a more digestible mass in my brain after I attended a fabulous session at the Midwest Archives Conference annual meeting titled “Beyond Description: Toward Critical Praxis in Public Services,” featuring Anna Trammell, Cinda Nofziger, and Rachael Dreyer as panelists.

These three occurrences gave me a lot to think about regarding the people in our reading rooms and what we can do to increase access and inclusion to a wider range of patrons. I hope we as a profession can come up with solutions to improve access to our physical spaces.

Director Dialogue: In Conversation with Brian Kennedy

Last March I attended a public discussion between three art museum directors about how they approach art education at their respective institutions: Brian Kennedy, director of my local art museum, the Toledo Museum of Art; Gretchen Dietrich from the Utah Museum of Fine Arts; and Lori Fogarty of the Oakland Museum of California. Though I went looking for outreach ideas, I came out with many questions, which I summarized on my own [sadly neglected] personal blog shortly after the event.

The directors discussed how they conduct outreach to make their museums into community spaces, better anticipate user needs, and invite more of the people from their respective neighborhoods into their buildings. Libraries, especially public libraries, have served the role of community centers for decades and museums are now getting on board, but where does this leave archives among our GLAM counterparts?

Archival public spaces tend to be limited to utilitarian reading rooms and maybe exhibit space. What would it look like if we tried to build new kinds of spaces where people could interact with our collections in different ways? What if we focused on more than research needs and looked at other information needs we could fill? What if we built spaces that are comfortable and appealing to spend time in? What if people didn’t have to sit at an uncomfortable table in a silent, surveilled room to get access to our collections? I am sure some of you reading this are thinking, “We’re doing something like this!” I want to hear about it! Do you have a good model others can follow? Shout it from the rooftops (or @librarypaste on Twitter)!

Beyond Description: Toward Critical Praxis in Public Services

During the MAC session, Trammel, Nofziger, and Dreyer began by presenting the idea of taking a critical look not only at our collections and our profession, but also the public services our staffs provide, using Michelle Caswell’s instant classic “Teaching to Dismantle White Supremacy” as a basis to examine the barriers that keep some users from accessing archives. Caswell’s article provides a useful diagram to provoke thinking about ways white supremacy shows up in our work; the area on Access/Use is particularly relevant to this discussion, but it only scratches the surface.

The second part of the MAC session was an interactive activity where the room broke into groups and filled out a rubric that had a much longer list of types of barriers along with space to include a description of specific barriers to help guide the group discussions. The categories listed were as follows:

  • Technology (i.e. digital literacy)
  • Physical (i.e. vision or mobility challenges presented by public spaces)
  • Time (i.e. public hours, length of time required to conduct research, request and recall materials)
  • Financial (i.e. costs involved with accessing archives)
  • Documentation (i.e. registration requirements, identification required)
  • Policy (i.e. restrictions)
  • Identity (i.e. gender, sexuality, race)
  • Institutional/Systemic (i.e. whose interests & history are represented by holdings?)
  • Human Factor (i.e. customer service issues, approachability, etc.)

I found these categories to be excellent starting points to brainstorm.  For the sake of (comparative) brevity, I will not go into all of them here, but I want to talk through a few to give examples of how to use them as inspiration for brainstorming. Full disclosure: some of these came up or were inspired by my group’s discussion and did not spring fully formed from my own brain.

First example: Cost is a huge barrier. Obvious costs include memberships to private libraries and historical societies, photocopying or other reproduction services, or private researcher time, but hidden costs like parking, transportation, childcare, time off work, food and accommodations if researchers are coming from out of town are also present. It is great to collect materials from underrepresented communities, but if members of those communities cannot afford to come see and use materials from their own lives and experiences, we are still only serving people with the means to visit. To mitigate this, archives could provide research grants to members of the communities targeted in collection development projects. Institutions could also take their work directly to those communities, rather than continuing on relying on patrons to do all the work of coming to them.

A second barrier: Time. Many repositories have limited hours, often because of limited staffing or other concerns that are seemingly insurmountable, but we should take a closer look at ways to make ourselves more available outside “normal working hours” (or 9-12 and 1-4, or afternoons two days a week, etc.). People who work have to take time from jobs to visit, and if they have limited or no paid time off, this is a costly proposition, especially if their research needs require multiple visits. Archives can at least test extended or flexible hours as their circumstances allow. What if a repository closed on Wednesday afternoons in order to open Saturday afternoons instead? What if academic archives used students to stay open on weekends? My repository is somewhat unusual in that we have a circulating collection in addition to our special collections; so we have longer hours than most special collections – when school is in session, we’re open until 10pm five days a week and Saturdays and Sundays). We only have four full-time and one part-time staff in our department, so our terrific student employees keep things running on evenings and weekends. Sometimes staff members take an evening shift, but we flex that time and take it off during the week.

“Mothering While Brown in White Spaces, Or, When I Took My Son to Octavia Butler’s Exhibit”

I stumbled across Cecilia Cabellero’s post via Twitter last fall and it hit me hard. It is worth a read, because we can see some of these issues in action in a real person’s real life. Rather than try to rephrase her words with my own [white] words, take a minute to read her post and reflect on the issues she raises.

Cabellero mentions a specific library, but let’s be honest: this could be many of our repositories. She identifies it as being in a white space, as many archives and special collections are. Started by a wealthy white man for the use of other wealthy white men. A place where researchers need to have advanced degrees or letters of reference to access collections. Who is served by these policies? What is protected? For those of us with less stringent admission guidelines, what groups are we still keeping out? Do you require photo identification? Do you charge membership or usage fees? Many of our policies have good reasoning behind them and we are not likely to update them anytime soon. Are there better ways to communicate that to our users?

Cabellero was visiting an exhibit about Octavia Butler, a woman of color who wrote science fiction at a time when neither women nor people of color were particularly welcome in that genre (I am sure many would argue they still are not, but things have improved). Regardless of the library’s intentions, they created an environment in which a female writer of color did not feel comfortable or welcome or allowed to visit an exhibit with personal resonance.

One of Cabellero’s main points, as evidenced by the title, is her experience parenting in our spaces. This deserves some examination for archivists. Do you allow children in the reading room? If not, do parents who want to use your collections have other options? Childcare is expensive and may not always be available at convenient times. This disproportionately affects mothers, who often take on more childcare labor, especially during weekdays when archives tend to be open.

How often do we exclude as Caballero was excluded, or on similar but smaller scales? How often do our minor interactions with patrons leave them feeling unwelcome? I am sure I have unintentionally done this in my work. What kind of image do we project and how does that keep people away? How do we make archival spaces that are really for everyone?

It Take a Long Pull to Get There

I do not have nearly as many answers as questions, but let us have these discussions and attempt solutions that better serve all potential users. It won’t be quick or easy, but it will be worthwhile.

I’ll leave you with one final illustration. I studied musicology in graduate school and I often think back to a point that one of my professors, Dr. Gayle Sherwood Magee, made about the importance of representation and access, as illustrated by the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. A little background if you’re unfamiliar: it is very controversial because a group of privileged white men wrote about poor black characters so the script play into a lot of negative stereotypes: characters are beggars, drug dealers, abusive partners, etc. It gave African-American singers the opportunity to perform on Broadway, something that was still remarkable when Hamilton premiered with a diverse cast 80 years later, but none of the characters portrayed in the opera had access to be in the audience and watch their stories playing out on stage. Are we doing the same thing in archives by focusing our diversity efforts on our staffs and collections, and not the people coming into our reading rooms?

 

References

 

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Research Post: The Evolving Landscape of Collecting Protest Material, Part 1

I&A Research Teams are groups of dedicated volunteers who monitor breaking news and delve into ongoing topics affecting archives and the archival profession. Under the leadership of the I&A Steering Committee, the Research Teams compile their findings into Research Posts. Each post offers a summary and coverage of an issue. This post, part one of a two-part series, comes from the General News Media Research Team, which monitors the news for issues affecting archivists and archives.

Please be aware that the sources cited have not been vetted and do not indicate an official stance of SAA or the Issues and Advocacy Section.

Protest materials have long found their way into archival repositories, and collecting initiatives such as the gathering of signs from January’s Women’s March are not unsurprising in our currently volatile political climate. While still fraught with their own set of ethical considerations, as was evidenced by Occupy Wall Street archive custody concerns, traditional protest ephemera does not harbor the explicit privacy and legal consequences that have arisen as a result of the increasing online presence of protest movements.

The internet is a richly generative arena where movements are born and developed, either with or without a coincident physical presence. The way it is mobilized for protests can vary–from coordinating and publicizing traditional actions, to communication and information sharing, community building, fundraising, and movement organizing. Its rapid and reactive nature means that the parameters of a movement can be constantly adjusted and redefined, often across social media networks. Social media content by design yields much more information about its creators and can therefore be harvested and analyzed differently than traditional material, and due to its increasing ubiquity, it warrants new conversations where traditional legal and social notions of the public and private domain may no longer be adequate. As the volume and variety of this content grows on an unprecedented scale, so, too, do the tools and methods by which it is subjected to scrutiny.

Curt Ellis, “Woman holds up her fist ,” Preserve the Baltimore Uprising: Your Stories. Your Pictures. Your Stuff. Your History., accessed March 15, 2017. 

Legal consequences and privacy issues

In response to this ever-growing body of online material, archivists and archival institutions have been initiating and developing best practices for web archiving projects. Web archiving and data harvesting provide opportunities to study metadata as well as content, in order to better understand the context of creation. For example, researchers may be interested in studying tweets across time, by geographic origin, or as part of a larger network of contacts.

This information is also of interest to law enforcement agencies, some of which have partnered with companies that sell tools for tracking and monitoring social media content culled from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media companies that offer programs which allow app makers to create third-party tools. One such company, Geofeedia, counts more than 500 such clients and has advertised services that were used by officials in Baltimore to monitor and respond to the protests that followed Freddie Gray’s death in police custody in April 2015. Using such tools, Baltimore County Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Unit was able to discover and arrest protesters with outstanding warrants by collecting and filtering social media photos through facial recognition software, a practice that has been shown to have serious technical flaws and to disproportionately affect people of color. Such tools are also used to assemble dossiers on targeted individuals as part of a strategy of long-term surveillance, as evidenced in the Cook County Sheriff’s Office records.

Use of social networks by third parties and law enforcement agencies has been met with opposition by many, including activists and the American Civil Liberties Union. Companies including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram cut ties with Geofeedia last year, according to the Washington Post, and on March 13, Facebook announced that police departments cannot use data to “provide tools that are used for surveillance,” a move that some consider a first step in curbing the online surveillance and targeting of activists and people of color.

Given this context, it is important for archivists to be aware of the potential ramifications of collecting contemporary protest material. For example, lawmakers in several states have recently introduced legislation that would target and criminalize protests, in some cases creating or greatly stiffening existing penalties and in others going so far as to give drivers legal license to hit protesters blocking traffic. Regardless of whether or not such pieces of legislation are passed, their existence is a testament to a political atmosphere that is fraught with serious issues for people who exercise their right to protest. As protest and movement organizing moves to an online and increasingly public sphere, the potential reach of such legislation, in conjunction with increased surveillance and data collection, could expand significantly.

Archivists should also be cognizant that many communities have complicated histories with the legal apparatus of this country. Different movements stem from different contexts, and as such the needs and aims of communities may differ with regards to visibility and their own safety. For the indigenous communities at Standing Rock, for example, the violent response of law enforcement towards protesters is the latest in a long history of dispossession.

Communities of color also often find themselves at the convergence of government surveillance and the rhetoric of legality. Some police departments, which respond to and monitor protests, have formed partnerships with the FBI, DEA, and federal immigration agencies such as ICE. These task forces facilitate information exchange between local officers and federal agencies through data-sharing agreements that provide reciprocal access to local and federal databases. Such partnerships have serious consequences for the activity of targeted communities, whether they are Muslim communities that are subject to surveillance by Joint Terrorism Task Forces, or undocumented and immigrant communities that are fearful of local officers deputized as ICE agents.

Archivists can navigate these concerns through the appraisal and reappraisal of their roles and documentation strategies, and by opening dialogues about consent. One model for ethical collecting could be the solicitation of community materials via online digital platforms. In A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland, for example, professional archivists worked in conjunction with community members to develop “a safe and secure space to share any testimony, documents, or accounts that narrate or reflect on encounters or effects of police violence in their lives and communities.” In other words, members of the community self-select what to contribute, while professional archivists serve to make that material accessible.

Harvesting does not need to be inherently problematic, however. In fact, ethical concerns can inform the development of technologies themselves. DocNow, a collaborative project between the University of Maryland, University of California at Riverside, and Washington University in St. Louis, has created a suite of tools for working with Twitter data related to Black Lives Matter and other social justice actions. As part of their mission they explicitly affirm, “a strong commitment to prioritizing ethical practices when working with social media content, especially in terms of collection and long-term preservation. This commitment extends to Twitter’s notion of honoring user intent and the rights of content creators.”

A recent American History Association article by Kritika Agarwal further acknowledges technology’s potential to dismantle problematic archival constraints and to “rectify injustices associated with historic collection and archiving practices.” The article cites collaborative content management system Murkutu, which allows indigenous communities to limit access in accordance with community practice, as another example of a digital tool that places ethics at the forefront.

Issues of narrative and interpretation

In any collecting effort, archivists must consider whose stories are being preserved and why. As has been pointed out previously here, historically repositories tended to focus on rehashing, and thus elevating, hegemonic narratives. While now there is a greater acknowledgement of the power in appraisal, description, and access decisions made by archivists, and the position of privilege these often come from, issues of representation still persist.

A recent thread on the Women Archivists Section listserv spoke to issues of counter-narrative in the Women’s March on Washington Archives Project, specifically concerns over actively trying to document voices of women who chose not to participate, and the tension between respecting “intentional archival silence” and including a variety of voices in oral histories and other event documentation (Danielle Russell, e-mail message, February 15, 2017). However, narratives and collections no longer need to be limited by traditional single repository/project models. As WArS co-chair Stacie Williams pointed out, “Let’s not assume that they don’t want to be a part of the larger narrative happening here, however well-meaning our intent as archivists; they may have their own ideas for how they want to be represented.” (e-mail message, February 15, 2017)

While digital collecting brings with it a host of new challenges such as security and privacy, it also carries the potential to create tools and projects that possess community-centric values. These are not mutually exclusive imperatives. As Jarrett Drake stated in his #ArchivesForBlackLives talk, “We have an opportunity before us to transform archive-making, history-making, and memory-making into processes that are radically inclusive and accountable to the people most directly impacted by state violence.” Now more than ever, archivists need to consider the ethical ramifications of our work.

A list of tools and related bibliography will be in the next post.

This post is courtesy of the General News Media Research Team, and in particular Courtney Dean and Lori Dedeyan. The General News Media Team is: Courtney Dean, Lori Dedeyan, Audrey Lengel, Sean McConnell, and Daria Labinsky, team leader.

If you are aware of an issue that might benefit from a Research Post, please get in touch with us: archivesissues@gmail.com.

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Response from I&A Poll: Discriminatory Legislation & Annual Meetings

On April 5, 2016, in conjunction with an Archivists on the Issues Post, “A Case of Conscience,” we launched the I&A Poll : Discriminatory Legislation & Annual meetings. The poll remained open until 5pm PST April 8, 2016 and received 30 responses. Of those 30 responses, 70% identified themselves as a member of the I&A Roundtable, 10% as members of SAA, but not of the I&A Roundtable, 10% as archivists, but not members of SAA, and 10% as concerned citizens.

Respondents were asked whether discriminatory legislation in the state where the annual meeting is to be held would affect their decision to attend on a scale from 1 to 5 with 1 not affecting the decision and 5 being a deciding factor for the decision, the results are as follows:

Poll Pic 1

Respondents were asked how they would like to see SAA Council react to the issue of discriminatory legislation in the state where the annual meeting is held. Respondents were permitted to choose more than one option. The options were:

  • Negotiate to have a clause that will allow SAA to break its contract and find another venue
  • Issue a statement against the legislation
  • I do not expect the SAA Council to take a stance on this issue
  • Other

The results are as follows:

Poll Pic 2

Respondents were asked what issues would be important enough to sway their decision as to whether or not to attend an annual meeting. Responses have been redacted to remove any potentially identifying information and have not been edited to fix any typos. The responses were:

  • Discrimination against classes of people; discrimination for religious reasons
  • Anything involving discrimination
  • discrimination towards POC/LGBTQ persons, unfair labor practices at venue or by vendors/sponsors
  • I don’t know that I have a good answer to this question because I have a hard time holding all the residents of a state responsible for bad legislation, and am especially sympathetic to the fact that not everyone can move because they don’t like the party in charge at any given moment.
  • Attendance is determined by my bosses. I would always attend if they would always pay.
  • Labor disputes [redacted]
  • Discriminatory practices, policies, and laws in the host city/state or venue, which create a climate dangerous or threatening to LGTB, PoC, or other non white non male non cis persons, members of SAA or not
  • The biggest factor that goes into my decision making is money & whether I can afford it, honestly.
  • They keep coming up with new ways to discriminate, so who’s to say? But the anti-LGBT laws make me furious. OTOH I don’t want SAA to lose money.
  • None politics need to stay out of or at least be consistent. Don’t just focus on issues that are hot points for the left. Why has Saad not issued a statement about the IRS record problem or the Clinton email issue. I’ve seen no statement from Saad about the lack of transparency by the current administration. Will they?
  • Civil rights of all kinds
  • race, police brutality, women’s rights, sexuality rights
  • None. I didn’t support breaking hotel contract when it was about unions and potential picket lines and I don’t care what the state’s legislate. You can never please everyone.
  • They decide to defund or close th State Archives.
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#ArchivesSoWhite in the words of Ariel Schudson

I&A Research Teams are groups of dedicated volunteers who monitor breaking news and delve into ongoing topics affecting archives and the archival profession. Under the leadership of the I&A Steering Committee, the Research Teams compile their findings into Research Posts for the I&A blog. Each Research Post offers a summary and coverage of an issue. This Research Post comes from On-Call Research Team #1, which is mobilized to investigate issues as they arise.

Please be aware that the sources cited have not been vetted and do not indicate an official stance of SAA or the Issues and Advocacy Roundtable.

Due to the amount of information Research Team #1 gathered, this will be a 4-part series, with the Intro & Bibliography and then interviews with Jarrett Drake, Samantha Winn, and Ariel Schudson.

Ariel Schudson has been a Woman In Film and advocate for positive change and activism for the majority of her life. As a teenager, she was an HIV/AIDS educator, prioritizing outreach to facilities as diverse as high schools and homes for teen sex workers. She has received two Master of the Arts degrees from UCLA- one in Cinema and Media Studies and one in Moving Image Archive Studies, and has chosen to concentrate in archival studies. Her past accomplishments include programming a film series at the New Beverly Cinema a weekly column on masculinity/gender and various writings on film preservation. She regularly participates in film festivals like TCM and AFI Fest, and is the Chair of the Access Committee for the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA).  Ariel is currently working for Post Haste Digital as their Archival Specialist, actively seeking out at-risk AV collections for preservation and restoration. She enjoys coffee, Kodachrome film stock and well-managed databases. Her two adorable cats named Wallach and Eartha Kitten rock her world.

What does #archivessowhite mean to you?

This is a tricky question. The “meaning” of #archivessowhite is complex. There is the technical meaning in each individuated archival landscape- how varied is your content? Does it have a history of being diverse? Are you (as a responsible archivist) doing your part to keep up with it? If it isn’t relevant to the content, #archivessowhite also is applicable to the employment. Is your archive making certain to diversify your staff?

This meaning is what I see as one of the most salient: #archivessowhite is a hashtag and movement that has grown out of the strong feeling of discontent and aggravation at the willful and continued lack of representation of communities of color within archival content. Even if the materials themselves and the histories exist, it has come to light, time and time again, that there are overtures to keep current power structures (basically Rich Straight White Dudes) in power. To add insult to injury, the meaning is itself extended by reaffirming the white supremacist structures inherent within archival content and histories by the severe lack of archivists/librarians/historians of color in the profession and limiting their power or reach either economically or socially in the same manner that POC are marginalized on a larger professional scale in non-archival contexts. White male cis-structures abound in academia and seek to squish. And that sucks!!

What conversations do you wish to hear archivists having, and where? Better yet, what action do you want archivists to be taking?

I want to hear white archivists having conversations about how they are going to fix the system. I want to hear White Feminist Librarians start listening to the Women Librarians of Color when they actually are talking about the same issues but the White Feminists (not the same as white feminists) are so afraid that they are going to lose something (and I’m really not sure what they are going to lose…I’ll give them my number, we can go try to find it together). Archivists are one of the most COMMUNITY-CENTERED fields. We need each other. What does it say about us when we are being exclusionary and not listening? One of the things that we do is oral history, right? The thing we need to do is start listening to the Archivists of Color who want to a) contribute and b) have themselves be heard.  We need to be having these conversations at conferences, Meet-ups, online Tweet-ups. Of note: it is not the responsibility of Archivists of Color to educate white archivists on How To Be An Ally. We have to make a decision that we want to have our future reflect a more accurate past. And that has to also be pressed upon why we do these things too. We do not become archivists to make taste decisions or to (really) have opinions. We become archivists so that the past is well documented and preserved. And in order to do this, we MUST reject the way the archives have been leaning (ie totally white).

In what moment did it dawn on you that archives had failed diversity and inclusion, or did you always see this enormous gap/lack in the profession?

It didn’t always dawn on me that our archives were failing us. I am grateful to the #archivessowhite hashtag (as well as a few other amazing archivists that I follow on twitter) because they really got me thinking about how our materials are preserved and what works we save. I’m fairly lucky. I work in moving image archiving and race and privilege has certainly been a huge discussion in that landscape, due to some people that I have personally worked with like Professor Allyson Field. I have recognized that my archival colleagues are primarily white.  Inter-archival outreach is something that I feel really strongly about because I feel like we deal with similar issues on a meta-level but we may not talk about it (ie #archivessowhite).  I am grateful that I believe: “You’re an archivist? I’m an archivist! We’re all archivists!” no matter what the materials so that I have added people on social media and been able to capture these online conversations & acquire valuable colleagues.

What would you like the archives, and the archivists, of the future to be? What actions do you see helping the field move on that direction?

We clearly need archivists of the future to be more racially varied and rework the power system. Let’s break down present structures and be less frightened of change (it’s going to come whether you like it or not and we’re in the field that is prepping for change). I hope that the archivist population of the future will get to a point where they will receive materials from Stonewall and Ferguson and just know that they are critically valuable and have their supervisors be as joyful and passionate about their preservation as they are. I hope there will be no arguments about how to preserve legal documents from the Trayvon Martin case or Black Lives Matter flyers. This is the kind of archivist landscape that we need. I do worry that there is a segment of people who, while I respect and value them for their hard work and intelligence, may not be able to evolve to this level. I hope that we can all work together to get to a higher ground. The thing I love the most about archiving is our community-ness but we have a problem that needs to be fixed.

What readings (up to 3) do you recommend to archivists who need to up their knowledge around archives and race?

Three (well, more…) basic readings about archives and race I would suggest:

This is just necessary: http://www.cirtl.net/files/PartI_CreatingAwareness_WhitePrivilegeUnpackingtheInvisibleKnapsack.pdf

There are some great articles in here, but in particular, Adrienne Harling’s What to do About Privilege

http://www2.archivists.org/sites/all/files/2012-6-AO.pdf

Diversity & Librarian Conversation:

http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2015/why-diversity-matters-a-roundtable-discussion-on-racial-and-ethnic-diversity-in-librarianship/#comment-40788

Can we find another word for Diversity?

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/26/diversity_is_for_white_people_the_big_lie_behind_a_well_intended_word/

April Hathcock – multiple writings on diversity & inclusion. ALL very good!

https://aprilhathcock.wordpress.com/category/diversity-and-inclusion/

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#ArchivesSoWhite in the Words of Samantha Winn

I&A Research Teams are groups of dedicated volunteers who monitor breaking news and delve into ongoing topics affecting archives and the archival profession. Under the leadership of the I&A Steering Committee, the Research Teams compile their findings into Research Posts for the I&A blog. Each Research Post offers a summary and coverage of an issue. This Research Post comes from On-Call Research Team #1, which is mobilized to investigate issues as they arise.

Please be aware that the sources cited have not been vetted and do not indicate an official stance of SAA or the Issues and Advocacy Roundtable.

Due to the amount of information Research Team #1 gathered, this will be a 4-part series, with the Intro & Bibliography and then interviews with Jarrett Drake, Samantha Winn, and Ariel Schudson.

Samantha Winn serves as the Collections Archivist for Virginia Tech, where she helps to document the cultural heritage and experiences of traditionally marginalized groups. Samantha graduated from Drexel University with an MLIS and concentration in archival studies. She is currently chair of SAA’s Students and New Archives Professionals (SNAP) Roundtable. She was one of the first people to engage with #ArchivesSoWhite on Twitter

What does #ArchivesSoWhite mean to you?

With #ArchivesSoWhite, Jarrett Drake leveraged broader cultural conversations around representation for people of color at the Oscars to pithily draw attention to parallel failings in archives. For me, #ArchivesSoWhite was a mechanism to spotlight pervasive and deeply entrenched patterns of exclusion in our collection development practices and the recruitment, hiring, and retention of archival professionals. Generations of cultural heritage and information professionals have engaged this issue of marginalization in our institutions. Whatever progress we’ve made, we still have a long way to go.

I was raised to seek out, listen to, and respect other people’s stories. This early training prepared me in many ways to be an archivist. When I entered the field as a paraprofessional in 2011, I made it a priority to build an inclusive and diverse network of peers and mentors (I talked about this work as a student writing for Hack Library School).

I happened to catch #ArchivesSoWhite while grappling with broader social justice/anti-racism work in my immediate community. I have considered this work a deep personal priority for many years, but I’ve only recently felt sufficiently equipped to engage with it in a public and meaningful way. Several resources exist for this. My own path involved a lot of reading, a lot of listening , and many professional development workshops.

Now that I have a deeper reservoir of expertise, I’ve been working to balance two competing priorities. The first is a need to decenter myself and step back from the podium to give other voices a space. The second is a responsibility to leverage my own privilege – by which I mean my position of influence online and in personal spaces, my access to decision makers, and my relative professional security – to initiate, sustain, and act upon hard conversations about representation in archives. I joined the #ArchivesSoWhite conversation because I felt convicted by one of Jarrett’s tweets, which lamented the reality that people from traditionally marginalized groups are expected to carry these burdens with limited support, resources, or recognition. In addition to being exploitative and irresponsible, this practice diminishes our collective ability to retain  archivists from these groups.

What conversations do you wish to hear archivists having, and where?

Rather than jump right into the conversation, many of us may need to step back and listen first. I recommend seeking out research and literature from across the cultural heritage professions, attending workshops in your area, and intentionally listening to the lived experiences of our POC colleagues (without excuse, argument, or evasion). Then, and only then, will we be equipped to make change in our individual spheres of influence. Once we get there, I want to hear archivists talk about our responsibility for diversity and inclusion in our role as cultural heritage professionals. I also want to hear recommendations from across the broad archives community about how folks have incorporated these values into collection development, arrangement and description, outreach, scholarship, mentoring, recruitment and retention, and so on.

The question of recruitment and retention should be a key priority, especially for SAA leaders and archives managers. I have seen a distinct and undeniable whitewashing of the profession at every step of the career ladder. My colleagues today (broadly speaking) do not look like my classmates from high school and college, and they don’t look like the paraprofessionals I worked with before I graduated. In the 2010 US census, about 64% of respondents identified as “white, non-hispanic.” If our profession was representative of the US population, 1 in 3 archivists would be a person of color.

One broad conversation that needs to happen is for our profession as a whole to explicitly agree that we care about equitable representation for people of color in the ranks of archivists and in the historic record. I’m not certain we’re there yet. Studies of corporate and academic initiatives have shown that diversity and inclusion policies are effectively meaningless when goals are watered down. It is profoundly counterproductive (however well-intentioned) to equivocate difference of opinions, geographic distribution, and institution type with ethnic and racial diversity.

Better yet, what action do you want archivists to be taking?

I challenge anyone who claims that they lack the capacity to achieve meaningful progress in this work. The truth is that there are so many steps we can take, regardless of our job description or tenure in the profession. Here is a narrow sample of things we can do:

1. Seek out literature and personal stories about the experiences of marginalized groups around archives, including archivists, cultural heritage creators/donors, and researchers.

2. Strive to broaden our professional networks to include more people of color.

3. Attend continuing education workshops on diversity and inclusion practices.

4. For hiring managers, seek out training on unconscious/implicit bias. Research best practices for hiring policies that measurably reduce discrimination by effect (regardless of intent).

5. Personally encourage students (K-12 and college) from traditionally marginalized groups to consider archives as a profession.

6. Recruit people of color to run for SAA positions, serve on committees, and pursue leadership roles across the organization.

7. Bring a diversity/inclusion lens to collection development, exhibits, and scholarly research. Regardless of who we are or what kind of institution we work in (unless we literally work for the Institute for the History of Rich Older White Protestant Married Men with Ivy League Degrees), anyone can do this.

8. Actively and explicitly invite the participation of traditionally marginalized groups in collection development and documentation strategies.

9. Deliberately and intentionally mentor students and new professionals from traditionally marginalized communities.

10. Seek out and invite people of color to speak on panels, author book chapters, give keynotes, and teach workshops on topics that reflect their professional expertise (e.g. not just for diversity panels).

In what moment did it dawn on you that archives had failed diversity and inclusion, or did you always see this enormous gap/lack in the profession?

It was pretty clear to me as a student of history from a young age, but several experiences as a researcher, archives staff member,  conference attendee, and roundtable leader have reinforced this understanding.

What would you like the archives, and the archivists, of the future to be? What actions do you see helping the field move on that direction?

I am excited to see the Council’s new cultural competency training roll out. I would like to see all archival professionals take on responsibility for this work in our repositories and our professional organizations. I would like to see stronger diversity/inclusion mandates adopted and implemented across SAA. I would particularly like to see permanent funding for the Mosaic Scholarship and a renewal of the Mosaic Program.

What readings (up to 3) do you recommend to archivists who need to up their knowledge around archives and race?

April Hathcock’s “White Librarianship in Blackface: Diversity Initiatives in LIS”, http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2015/lis-diversity/

Jennifer Vinopal’s “The Quest for Diversity in Library Staffing: From Awareness to Action”,http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2016/quest-for-diversity/

Fobazi Ettarh’s “Black or Queer? Life at the Intersection”, http://hacklibraryschool.com/2013/11/19/black-or-queer-life-at-the-intersection/

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#ArchivesSoWhite Intro & Bibliography

I&A Research Teams are groups of dedicated volunteers who monitor breaking news and delve into ongoing topics affecting archives and the archival profession. Under the leadership of the I&A Steering Committee, the Research Teams compile their findings into Research Posts for the I&A blog. Each Research Post offers a summary and coverage of an issue. This Research Post comes from On-Call Research Team #1, which is mobilized to investigate issues as they arise.

Please be aware that the sources cited have not been vetted and do not indicate an official stance of SAA or the Issues and Advocacy Roundtable.

Due to the amount of information Research Team #1 gathered, this will be a 4-part series, with the Intro & Bibliography and then interviews with Jarrett Drake, Samantha Winn, and Ariel Schudson.

In January 2016 protesters sparked a conversation about the ongoing exclusion of people of color from nomination for Academy Awards with the Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. Although specifically focused on a single awards ceremony, the message it represented has far broader implications for how society grapples with institutional and structural racism. For archivists, the issues of cultural hegemony and representation #OscarsSoWhite addressed are ongoing concerns as we deal with our own legacy of a white, patriarchal system.

In response, archivist Jarrett Drake expanded the dialog through his own adaptation of the hashtag, #ArchivesSoWhite. Drake calls the archival profession to task for continuing to prioritize narratives of white supremacy and restricting opportunities for people of color in the profession. The ensuing Twitter conversation brought several other voices into the discussion, but also emphasized that these issues need to be addressed at a far deeper level as we strive for critical self-examination and real change.

Members of the Issues & Advocacy Roundtable On-Call Research #1 team reached out to Jarrett, as well as several other archivists involved in the dialog to gain additional perspective on their use of the hashtag #ArchivesSoWhite and potential next steps for the profession. Jarrett Drake, Sam Winn, and Ariel Schudson all graciously agreed to be interviewed for this blog.

The full text of those interviews will follow, but there are several key takeaways reiterated by each archivist worth noting here. The problems of a lack of diversity and the shaping of history based upon the records of the wealthy and powerful have been discussed among archivists for years. We can build upon the momentum of #ArchivesSoWhite to move beyond talk to action. From the collections our repositories acquire to the outreach we conduct, exhibits we mount, and classes we teach, a fundamental shift in how archivists conceptualize their mandate is coming. In addition, we need to reevaluate how we train, hire, support, and retain diverse staff who truly represent the materials for which they care.

Above all, this is not a solitary effort. Both Jarrett and Sam emphasize the twin goals of education and collaboration. We have compiled a brief bibliography with articles and books that provide context and background, allowing us to approach these problems as informed practitioners. Scholars, activists, researchers, and the public all have a stake in this conversation. We will use mechanisms that allow us to seek out and listen to the concerns of our colleagues across disciplines.

Acknowledgement of the lack of diversity in the profession, the realization that personal biases affect our work, and widespread recognition of the gaps in the historical record are not new developments. The question now is how we can take advantage of this particular moment of reflection and cultural consciousness.

Bibliography

Referenced in the #ArchivesSoWhite Dialogue

Zimrig, Carl. Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States. New York: NYU Press, 2016.

Recommended by Interviewees

Berrey, Ellen. “Diversity is for what people: The big lie behind a well-intended word,” Salon, October 26, 2015.

Ettarh, Fobazi. “Black or Queer? Life at the Intersection” Hack Library School, November 19, 2013.

Haris, Verene. “The Archival Sliver: Power, Memory, and Archives in South Africa,” Archival Science 2 (2002): 63.

Harling, Adrienne, “What to Do about Privilege,” Archival Outlook (November/December 2012): 13.

Hathcock, April. Diversity and Inclusion writings on At the Intersection: Blog about the intersection of libraries, law, feminism, and diversity.

Hathcock, April. “White Librarianship in Blackface: Diversity Initiatives in LIS”, In the Library With the Lead Pipe, October 7, 2015.

McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Independent School (Winter 1990).

Ramierz, Mario. “Being Assumed Not to Be: A Critique of Whiteness as an Archival Imperative,” American Archivist 78 no. 2 (2015): 339.

Swanson, Juleah, Ione Damasco, Isabel Gonzalez-Smith, Dracine Hodges, Todd Honma, and Azusa Tanaka. “Why Diversity Matters: A Roundtable Discussion on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Librarianship,” In the Library With the Lead Pipe, July 29, 2015.

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph  Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History Boston: Beacon Press, 1997.

Vinopal, Jennifer. “The Quest for Diversity in Library Staffing: From Awareness to Action”, In the Library With the Lead Pipe, January 13, 2016.

Additional Sources

Dewey, Barbara I., and Loretta Parham. Achieving diversity : a how-to-do-it manual for librarians. New York : Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2006.

Hastings, Samantha Kelly. “If Diversity Is a Natural State, Why Don’t Our Libraries Mirror the Populations They Serve?.” Library Quarterly 85, no. 2 (April 2015): 133.

Maxey-Harris, Charlene, and Toni Anaya. Diversity plans and programs. Washington, DC : Association of Research Libraries, 2010.

Neely, Teresa Y., and Kuang-Hwei Lee-Smeltzer. Diversity now : people, collections, and services in academic libraries : selected papers from the Big 12 Plus Libraries Consortium Diversity Conference. New York : Haworth Information Press, 2002.

Ryan, Marianne, and Sarah Leadley. “Reflections on Diversity and Organizational Development.” Reference & User Services Quarterly 54, no. 4 (Summer 2015): 6-10.

Wheeler, Ronald. “We All Do It: Unconscious Behavior, Bias, and Diversity.” Law Library Journal 107, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 325-331.

The I&A Steering Committee would like to thank Heather Oswald for writing this post, and Stephanie Bennett and Christine Anne George for coordinating interviews.

I&A On-Call Research Team #1 is:

Christine Anne George, Leader
Stephanie Bennett
Maureen Harlow
Heather Oswald
Linda Reynolds
Kristen Weischedel

If you are aware of an issue that might benefit from a Research Post, please get in touch with us: archivesissues@gmail.com.

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