Steering Share: Digging Into the FamilySearch Inmate Indexing Program

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of Steering Committee member, Burkely Hermann, National Security Archive.

Hello everyone! In today’s post I’d like to share a project that I’ve been working off-and-on since 2019, in my spare time, which relates to digitization, archival ethics, and access. Since then, I have been using MuckRock to request documents from county jails and state prisons about FamilySearch’s program to have inmates index public records, like censuses and military records, which are then used by genealogists and the general public. In order to put this project into context, I’d like to give some background to highlight why this project matters.

In February 2020, in my first article on the closure of the National Archives facility in the Seattle area, I noted that some U.S. legislators criticized the partnership between the National Archives and FamilySearch, who stated that this partnership, meant to digitize records, has not “resulted in actual access to records that have been prioritized by stakeholders.”

Currently, NARA’s webpage on digitized microfilm publications and original records states that digitization partners like Ancestry, Fold3 (owned by Ancestry), and FamilySearch “have digitized microfilm publications and original records from NARA’s holdings and made them available on their websites.” NARA has had a partnership with FamilySearch since 2005, with NARA describing them as having a “clear focus on records of interest to genealogists.” The current partnership agreement with FamilySearch will remain in effect until NARA or FamilySearch terminates it, which is unlikely.

All of this matters because FamilySearch, a division of the Mormon Church (LDS), is using inmates to index many of these public records. This means that the records you might be using on Ancestry, which FamilySearch shares records with, or on the latter site, have likely been indexed by inmates.

It is important to keep in mind that jails and prisons are not the same. Jails are run by counties or cities, housing those with short-term convictions or awaiting trial. Prisons are operated on the federal or state level, with inmates who have longer-term convictions.

I became interested in this topic after reading Shaun Bauer’s short article in Mother Jones in August 2015 entitled “Your Family’s Genealogical Records May Have Been Digitized by a Prisoner”. Unfortunately, Bauer never wrote a follow-up piece, and some genealogists, like assorted people on social media and Megan Smolenyak, more prominently, defended the indexing, claiming that a “few key aspects” were left out.

In contrast, Jarrett M. Drake, a Harvard University PhD candidate who focuses on “archival, educational, and organizing projects that pertain to prison abolition,” argued, in a 2020 book, Paths to Prison: On the Architectures of Carcerality, that the national and state governments that partner with FamilySearch certain “untold millions of dollars” by sharing their records for indexing and digitization, and argued that “millions of archival records have been made available by incarcerated labor.”

Although my research on this subject is still ongoing, there is clear evidence that sometime in the 1980s, LDS opened a Family History Center at Utah State Prison, followed by one at California’s Tehachapi State Prison in 1989. In February 2001, the Chicago Tribune acknowledged that the Freedman’s Bureau records, which are popular especially with Black genealogists, were collected and culled by 550 inmates at the South Point Correctional Facility at Utah State Prison.

Smolenyak’s interview with one of the indexers, Blaine Nelson, said that the indexing of the Freedman’s Bureau records took eleven years, 600 inmates, and “over 700,000 volunteer hours.” He declared proudly that, by February 2001, “some 480,000 Freedman’s Bank records had been extracted and indexed.” This means that one of the “richest databases for African-American research” as Ed Lunt, who helped establish the indexing program at the Utah State Prison in 1990 with his wife Penney, described it, was only possible due to the large amount of unpaid inmate labor.

The indexing did not end there. It has continued since then, with millions of names indexed by inmates, not only in Utah, but in other states, like Idaho and Arizona. Some even declared that this indexing means that prisoners are “working to strengthen everyone’s family tree.”

In 2021, Steve Collings, a product manager for the FamilySearch Correctional Services program, stated that LDS had “35 different facilities” with where inmates do indexing across the Mountain West, including Utah, Wyoming, and Arizona, with plans to expand nationwide, then worldwide. Whether the indexing provides “personal growth” to inmates as LDS claims, or not, LDS has been mostly tight-lipped in providing many details about the indexing and noting the exact locations where LDS has contracted prison indexing.

In my research, I’ve found that five jurisdictions in Utah currently have contracts with LDS to have inmates index records: Box Elder County, Cache County, Duchesne County, Kane County, and Summit County, as I note on the “Documents received” sheet within my “FamilySearch and prisons” spreadsheet. Sevier County presumably also has a contract, but I have not received documents from them. The most recent one I received, for Box Elder, shows that FamilySearch is all in on the inmate indexing as it was signed earlier this year by Stephen Valentine, who is the Senior Vice President of FamilySearch International!

From my requests I also learned that there are genealogy programs in Idaho prisons, but they reportedly have no policy related to the program. The same is the case for the Utah Department of Corrections. I also received redacted emails from the Washington Department of Corrections showing communications about Mormon volunteers coming to the state’s prison facilities. Otherwise, I learned that Beaver and Washington counties have volunteer programs but reportedly do not have records of that program.

In order to do these requests, I’ve been using MuckRock, which allows you to submit freedom of information requests to any governmental agency within their databases and keep all of the interactions public, or even private. Unfortunately, it has been somewhat costly to do this work, costing $5.00 per record request, making it hard for those without adequate financial resources to make these record requests and hopefully receive documents which can become public, even if they are heavily redacted. Where I work, the National Security Archive, has the same goal, but on a much larger scale, with various projects and experts on certain subject areas.

As I continue my research, with the impending end of requests to county jails in Utah, I’ll be trying to find out more about this program beyond Utah, to other states. I’ve done this a little with requests to counties in Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada, and other states such as Colorado and Arkansas. Although I’m not sure what I will learn about this indexing program going forward, and how widespread it is, I am confident that it will remain a learning experience which will inform people, particularly archivists and librarians, about those who index the public records which are used on a daily basis. Hopefully, it will also encourage a push for a larger NARA budget, so that more digitization of their records can be done in-house rather than contracted out to FamilySearch or for conditions be put on the next agreement to prohibit indexing by inmates.

May 27, 2022September 3, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: archives closure, budgeting, classified records, corporate power, databases, declassification, emails, FamilySearch, FOIA, genealogy, Google Workspace, government archives, indexing, inmates, military history, Mormons, NARA, National Security Archive, non-profits, prison abolition, prison labor, volunteering 7 Comments

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

Archivists on the Issues: The Values First Approach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resources Consulted:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Sources:

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

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

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

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

Archivists on the Issues: Reflections on Gender and Hospital Archives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Archivists on the Issues: Net Freedom and the Federal Communication Commission

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s  post comes from Section intern Samantha Brown, an Assistant Archivist at the New-York Historical Society.

 

On December 14, the Federal Communication Commission, also known as the FCC, is expected to hold a vote that will decide the fate of Net Neutrality. This vote will likely change the landscape of the internet (Giles 2017). After hearing about this vote, SAA’s President, Tanya Zanish-Belcher, wrote a letter to the FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. In this letter, she writes that the removal of Net Neutrality rules undermined “…the ability of archives to provide equitable and unfettered access to our shared cultural heritage and will penalize users of archival information from many research communities…” (SAA 2017). To understand the gravity of this vote and how it will directly affect archives, we first must understand what Net Neutrality is.

When someone gets on their computer and wants to visit a website, their browser is connected to their chosen site by their internet provider, also known as the ISP. Currently, the user understands that they will be connected to their chosen site without the ISP interfering with the data they are receiving. This is the main idea behind Net Neutrality (Save the Internet). The rules that the FCC currently have in place guarantee that all websites operate on a level playing field (Feldman 2017). An ISP cannot provide a fast lane to those companies that have the ability to pay more for prioritization (Giles 2017).

Without Net Neutrality rules in place, many fear that ISPs like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon could “…block websites or content they don’t like or applications that compete with their own offerings” (Save the Internet). Services from libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage organizations that are increasingly providing access in a digital environment could easily be disrupted (Peterson 2014). Many of these organizations work with and provide voices to groups that express dissenting viewpoints. The fear is internet providers could be pressured to block websites that feature content that opposes the government or major companies (Newton 2017).

Right now it’s hard to know how many of these fears are justified since no one really knows what the internet will be like in the United States without Net Neutrality. The best way we can currently form an idea of what to expect is to look at other countries that operate without the rules we currently have in place. Fears about the suppression of dissenting viewpoints may not be completely unjustified. In 2005, a Canadian telecom company, Telsus, blocked access to a union website that was working to promote a strike against the company. If companies are able to privilege access to specific apps and websites without oversight, then certain brands and ideas may be granted dominance over others (Glaser 2017). This begs the question, what would happen to the voices of marginalized groups in America without the protections of Net Neutrality (Save the Internet)?  Would organizations working to preserve the history of marginalized groups have access to their websites and online resources limited?

 

Sources

Feldman, Brian. “Without Net Neutrality, What Happens to My Netflix?” Select All, New York Magazine, 21 Nov. 2017, nymag.com/selectall/2017/11/what-happens-to-netflix-when-net-neutrality-is-gone.html

Glaser, April. “What the Internet Is Like in Countries Without Net Neutrality.” Slate Magazine, 8 Dec. 2017, www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/12/what_the_internet_is_like_in_countries_without_net_neutrality.html

Giles, Martin. “Killing net neutrality is bad news for startups-and the customers they want to serve.” MIT Technology Review, MIT Technology Review, 7 Dec. 2017, www.technologyreview.com/s/609594/the-demise-of-net-neutrality-will-harm-innovation-in-america/

“Net Neutrality: What You Need to Know Now.” Save the Internet, Free Press, www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now

Newton, Creede. “Digital advocates decry US plan to end net neutrality.” Al Jazeera News, Al Jazeera, 22 Nov. 2017, www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/digital-advocates-decry-plan-net-neutrality-171121200634860.html

Peterson, Andrea. “Why the death of net neutrality would be a disaster for libraries.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 16 May 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/05/16/why-the-death-of-net-neutrality-would-be-a-disaster-for-libraries/?utm_term=.975c4a77d720

“SAA Urges FCC to Preserve Existing Net Neutrality Provisions.” Archivists.org, Society of American Archivists, 4 Dec. 2017, www2.archivists.org/news/2017/saa-urges-fcc-to-preserve-existing-net-neutrality-provisions

December 12, 2017June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: corporate power, internet, net neutrality, patrons, SAA Leave a comment

Mid-Year Steering Share: Breaking the Silence

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post is from Daria Labinsky, an archivist at the National Archives in St. Louis, who works primarily with 20^thcentury military personal data records. The Mid-Year Steering Share was developed to discuss projects currently active or recently completed, either personal or professional.

In my first Steering Share, I mentioned that one of my greatest concerns is the deliberate or accidental creation of archival silences by record creators and keepers. When I wrote that post, I did not foresee how relevant this concern would become. Tweets that may be federal records are being deleted, and White House staff may be using private email accounts and encryption/deletion software to conduct government business.

And it’s possible (probable?) that efforts to hide or destroy information concerning the operations and motives of the administration will only increase. As the group Concerned Archivists has pointed out in A Statement to the Archival Community, the president’s corporations destroyed emails in defiance of court orders before he was elected.

The Federal Records Act states, “Electronic messages created or received in a personal account meeting the definition of a Federal record must be forwarded to an official electronic messaging account within 20 days.”  Likewise, the Presidential Records Act, states that the president, vice president, or member of their immediate staff may not create or send a presidential or vice presidential record using a non-official electronic message account unless they copy it to an official account or resend it via an official account within 20 days.

Some of the president’s tweets on his personal account, but not all, have been retweeted on @POTUS, the official account.

As for the deleted tweets, under 44 U.S. Code § 2209 the president could argue that they are personal records of “purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.”

Shontavia Johnson, professor of intellectual property law at Drake University, offers a well written and thorough dissection of the relevant issues in “Donald Trump’s tweets are now presidential records.” She closes with, “To create a full digital picture of Trump’s presidency, we may have to rely on the screenshots from private citizens or others.” Entities such as Pro Publica, whose Politwoops is capturing deleted tweets to the best of its ability, and the Internet Archive, which launched the Trump Archive to collect televised material, are among those answering her call. While these wouldn’t be federal records covered under the laws pertaining to them, they are admirable attempts to keep history from vanishing.

There are also efforts under way by public officials to fight potential historical silences. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) introduced a bill to strengthen federal records laws. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who co-chairs the Congressional Transparency Caucus, has emphasized the need to demand transparency from the presidential administration as well as from Congress.  Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) are investigating whether any laws were broken by administration staffers who were using the private email accounts.

It’s sad that any of this has to be dealt with in the first place, but it is refreshing that vigilance is not defined by party lines. The efforts of these and other people and organizations give me hope that we can turn the silence into noise.

The contents of this message are Daria’s personally and do not necessarily reflect any position of the Federal government or the National Archives and Records Administration.

February 16, 2017June 23, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: archival silences, corporate power, emails, federal records, Federal Records Act, Internet Archive, personal papers, presidential records, Presidential Records Act, public records laws Leave a comment

Research Post: The Right to Be Forgotten

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 the Other Professional Associations’ Communications Research Team, which monitors the communications of other associations, for issues related to 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 Roundtable.

This is the first in a series of posts about the Right to Be Forgotten. Stay tuned for additional coverage.

SUMMARY OF THE ISSUE

The Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) is a 2014 legal ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that gives individuals the right to have information found on the Internet regarding themselves delisted (be made difficult to find) in search engines and in other data providers (such as websites). The CJEU’s ruling stems from a 2010 legal case in Spain in which a Spanish citizen filed a complaint with Spain’s national data protection agency against a Spanish newspaper, which published a true fact about the person, and Google Spain/Google Inc., whose search engine results linked to the information about the person. The citizen argued that the information about him was no longer relevant and that the search engine results infringed upon his privacy rights. (3) In February 2016, the French Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), which chairs the Article 29 Working Group (European Union privacy regulators), extended the implementation of the RTBF law to all domains (extensions) of a search engine. (7) Previously, the delisting would only happen in the country of the individual who requested (and was approved) the delisting. In February 2015, the Guardian reported that Google said it had “received 386,038 ‘right to be forgotten’ removal requests since the ruling, and has accepted approximately 42% of them.” (4)  A year later, the Guardian further reported that Google had delisted 600,000 search results. (7)

Some main points of the RTBF ruling:

1. Individuals have the right to request information about themselves found on the Internet be delisted if the “information is inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive for the purposes of the data processing.” (3)
2. According to the CJEU’s ruling the request for delisting needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis because neither the right to the protection of personal data nor the right to freedom of expression are absolute rights. Therefore each case needs to be assessed individually considering the personal privacy of the individual versus the freedom of expression and access to information. (3)
3. The data providers (for example Google, Inc.) are tasked with the application of the RTBF ruling. Delisting of information on the Internet will be decided by the data providers, not legal or governmental bodies.
4. Data providers cannot disclose internal processes, or what has been subject to delisting on the Internet. The original publisher or owner of a website cannot be notified when something is delisted.
5. There are previous rulings in the European Union that prefigured the 2014 ruling, such as the European Union Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC of 1995. In Germany, an individual has the right to privacy and to rehabilitation after they have paid their debts to society (for example after completing a term of a prison sentence).
6. Public figures are not (usually) subject to the RTBF ruling.
7. The CJEU believes that the RTBF ruling “strikes the balance between the right to the protection of personal data and freedom of expression.” (3)

In February 2016, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), issued an official statement regarding the 2014 RTBF ruling. In the statement, IFLA addressed the issues of the RTBF ruling and its implications for libraries and urged its members to participate in policy discussion regarding RTBF. (1)

IFLA’s list of issues for libraries concerning the RTBF ruling:

1. Integrity of and access to the historical record.
2. Freedom of access to information and freedom of expression. This is based upon Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” (6)
3. Privacy of the individual.

The RTBF ruling strikes at some of our core values as archivists, librarians, and information professionals. We strive to protect privacy rights of the individual, yet we also strive to protect the integrity of our information sources, support the freedom of expression, and advocate for access to information. Further, the delisting of information, especially information that is truthful and accurate, goes against some of the core values and code of ethics outlined in the Society of American Archivists’ “Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics.” (8)

In 2015, a public debate was held in New York City on the RTBF ruling titled “The U.S. should adopt the Right to be Forgotten Online.” (5) [The video is available online.] One of the participants of the debate, Jonathan Zittrain of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said that the United States should not adopt the RTBF because he felt that the RTBF ruling was “a very bad solution to a very real problem.” He gave the following analogy that we as archivists, librarians, and information professionals can relate to regarding the delisting of information on the Internet: “It’s like saying the books can stay in the library, but you have to set fire to the card catalogs.” (5)

Some critiques of the RTBF ruling include:

• The rules (of the RTBF ruling) are vague and unclear.
• The decisions for delisting/erasure are left to corporations.
• There is no transparency or accountability to the delisting of information.
• Due to the vagueness of the ruling, the principle could expand beyond search engines.
• RTBF is censorship (particularly when delisted information is true/factual/accurate).
• The territorial scope of the RTBF ruling goes beyond the European Union.

As the IFLA statement on the RTBF ruling advised, we need to monitor how the RTBF ruling is being applied in Europe and around the world and how it affects the integrity of and access to the historical record on the Internet. Countries outside of Europe, including Japan, Colombia, Brazil, and the United States have implemented similar rulings or have delisted information on the Internet. (2) In 2018, the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will supersede previous data protection laws In Europe. (9) Understanding the new 2018 regulations and how they may affect privacy rights of the individual, freedom of expression, access to information, and the integrity of the historical record on the Internet will be crucial.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF COVERAGE OF THE ISSUE:

Sources cited:

(1) “IFLA Statement on the Right to be Forgotten.” International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. Accessed 2016 April 26. http://www.ifla.org/node/10272?og=29

(2) “Background on the Right to be Forgotten in National and Regional Contexts.” International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.  Accessed 2016 April 26. http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/clm/statements/rtbf_background.pdf

(3) Fact Sheet on the “Right to be Forgotten” ruling (c-131/12). European Commission. Accessed 2016 April 26. http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/files/factsheets/factsheet_data_protection_en.pdf

(4) Gibbs, Samuel. “Google to Extend ‘Right to be Forgotten’ to all its Domains Accessed in EU.” The Guardian. (February 11, 2016). Accessed 2016 April 26. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/11/google-extend-right-to-be-forgotten-googlecom

(5) “The U.S. should adopt the “Right to be Forgotten Online.” Intelligence Squared Debates. (March 17, 2015) Video accessed 2016 April 26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvDzW-2q1ZQ

(6) United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. United Nations. Accessed 2016 April 26. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

(7) Hern, Alex. “Google takes right to be forgotten battle to France’s highest court.” The Guardian. (May 19, 2016). Accessed 2016 June 2. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/19/google-right-to-be-forgotten-fight-france-highest-court

(8) “SAA Statement of  Core Values and Code of Ethics.” Society of American Archivists. Accessed 2016 June 2. http://www2.archivists.org/statements/saa-core-values-statement-and-code-of-ethics#.V1GPnzUrKUm

(9) “Reform of EU Data Protection Rules.” European Commission. Accessed 2016 June 2. http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/reform/index_en.htm

Other sources regarding the RTBF:

Toobin, Jeffrey. “The Solace of Oblivion.” The New Yorker. (September 24, 2014). Accessed 2016 April 26. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/29/solace-oblivion

Scott, Mark. “Europe Tried to Reign in Google. It Backfired.” The New York Times. (April 18, 2016). Accessed 2016 April 26. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/19/technology/google-europe-privacy-watchdog.html

“Freedom: the right to be forgotten.” My Digital Rights. British Library. Accessed 2016 April 26. http://www.bl.uk/my-digital-rights/videos/freedom-the-right-to-be-forgotten

Google Transparency Report. “European privacy requests for search removals.” Google. Accessed 2016 June 2. https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europeprivacy/?hl=en

The I&A Steering Committee would like to thank Patricia Glowinski and Blake Relle for writing this post.

The Other Professional Associations’ Communications Research Team is:

Tara Kelley, Leader
Jamillah Gabriel
Patricia Glowinski
Jasmine Jones
Blake Relle

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

July 11, 2016June 24, 2022 by wendyhagenmaier Categories: Research PostTags: archival processing, archives profession, corporate power, data mining, data protection, erasure, France, Google Workspace, Googlization, human rights, privacy, Research Teams, SAA Code of Ethics, SAA Core Values of Archivists, The Right to Be Forgotten 3 Comments

A Case of Conscience

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Below is a post from Jeremy Brett addressing the issue of discriminatory legislation and SAA annual meetings. At the end of this post, please take a moment to partake in an I&A Poll on the issue. 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.

We’ve all seen the recent uptick across the nation in nauseatingly unjust legislation laughingly designed to protect “religious freedom” and “public safety” but which is clearly motivated to sanction prejudice against the LGBT community. The legislature of North Carolina just passed, and Governor Pat McCrory signed, a new law blocking transgender individuals from using public restrooms that match their gender identity and stops cities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances to protect gay and transgender people. The Georgia legislature just passed a law that would have allowed pastors to refuse to perform gay marriages and allow churches and faith-based groups, on the basis of religious belief, to refuse to hire or provide services to gays. The bill was vetoed by Governor Nathan Deal as discriminatory, and was met before the veto with a hail of protests from both LGBT groups and major corporations. Similar bills have been proposed over the last several years. In 2015 the Human Rights Campaign noted that more than 85 anti-LGBT bills had been filed in 28 states, though fortunately most of these have failed to pass or have been challenged in court.

Of course, such legislation is repugnant – or it should be – to any thinking human being who possesses any discernable degree of compassion or common sense. However, the question before us now is, what can we as a professional association do to challenge or protest these kinds of laws? This question loomed large recently because it did appear that the law in Georgia would pass, and that would leave SAA in a position where we would have to hold our 2016 Annual Meeting (site: Atlanta) in a state actively and vocally hostile to LGBT individuals. SAA members would be obliged to spend money in the economy of a state that would have enshrined fear and prejudice and ignorance into law. Fortunately, Governor Deal’s veto prevented this. However, I consider this sort of situation unjust and a violation of personal conscience.

We are archivists. We are information professionals and we are custodians of history. As such, we are agents of preserving and transmitting knowledge for the good of society, and I do not believe that we should be compromising that responsibility by providing money to governments and public officials who do not have society’s best interests at heart. Nor as a professional organization should we be tacitly granting second-class citizenship to our LGBT members, which we would be doing by giving our dollars and our time to a state or municipality that choses to wage war against a minority group. I think that one of the most effective things we can do is to cease holding Annual Meetings or any other significant SAA-sponsored activity in any state or municipality that enacts this kind of hateful legislation.

Of course there are objections that can be raised to this proposal.

1. Contracts for Annual Meeting sites are negotiated years in advance, and it is difficult to not only break these contracts but to locate a new and appropriate venue in a reasonable amount of time.

True enough, but I would argue that, going forward, SAA could insist on a ‘conscience clause’ in its contracts with venues that would allow for us to break the contract should the host state or municipality enact noxious legislation. In addition, host selectors should be required to research potential sites for future meetings to see whether these kinds of laws are present and being enforced.

 I would also note that, yes, it’s not easy to turn on a dime and find a new venue on short notice, but it does and can happen. In 2011 the American Sociological Association (a group bigger than we are, by the way) was scheduled to have its Annual Meeting (held in August) in Chicago, but a short nine months before the meeting, the ASA decided to cancel its contracts because of a protracted labor dispute between Chicago hotels and the hotel workers’ union. Within one month they had negotiated a contract and moved the conference venue to Las Vegas, with minimal disruption.

2. Conference venues are selected to ensure a variety of locations in order that more members, some of whom may have trouble attending far-distant events, may be able to attend.

That’s a fair point, and I realize that this could prove a hardship to members living in places like North Carolina or other states where these kinds of laws have been passed. I live in Texas, and am perfectly aware that there are reasonable objections to holding events in my own state and if SAA were to stop having events here it would make it more expensive and difficult for me to attend them elsewhere. But I believe that we owe it to ourselves and citizens and to our colleagues who are LGBT (or any other persecuted group) and are affected by these kinds of laws to take a stand and to make sacrifices when necessary. Perhaps this kind of policy I propose could motivate SAA to develop more effective ways for members to attend and participate in SAA events remotely, and make physical attendance less necessary.

Yes, this policy would mean a (hopefully temporary) end to holding our Annual Meetings in certain states, and as a result we would be favoring others. To which I say: Exactly. States with progressive legislation or that have the moral courage to stand against prejudice and injustice should be rewarded with our commerce; those who give in to hate and fear should be punished by the withdrawal from them of our dollars and our attention.

3. “But where will this end? I can find objectionable laws in probably every state. Why should certain laws be declared more evil than others? Where do we draw the line? And who are we to judge?”

 I know there are people reading this that are thinking this very thing. And I confess that I’m not sure: this is a question that would benefit from consulting the membership at large. But I am optimistic that we can establish a baseline of common human decency where we can all agree that certain laws are unquestionably terrible and unworthy of a thinking society and our American ideals. Let’s have this debate, and at the end of it all, let’s stand up for what’s right and not support hate and fear and downright evil merely out of economic and logistical expedience.

Jeremy Brett is the Curator of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection at the Cushing Memorial Library & Archives at Texas A&M University. He is a past Chair and current Steering Committee member of the Issues & Advocacy Roundtable.

Now we’d like to know what you think. Please take a moment and go to our I&A Poll on Discriminatory Legislation and Annual Meetings. The poll will remain open until 5pm PST Friday, April 8.

April 5, 2016June 23, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: archival labor, archives profession, biases, corporate power, discrimination, Google Workspace, legislation, LGBTQ+, lobbying, professionalism, SAA, unionization 1 Comment

Steering Share: Wendy Hagenmaier

 

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. Our first Steering Share is with I&A Chair, Wendy Hagenmaier.

How did you get involved in archives?

I have always been fascinated by objects, stories, people, and places associated with the past–from family photo boxes and my first copy of Math Blaster to history class lectures and movie theaters that show classic films. It wasn’t until I heard former SAA President Dr. David Gracy speak during orientation at the University of Texas at Austin’s iSchool, however, that I knew archives were for me. “Records!” he exclaimed with his marvelous Texas accent. “Records are with you from the day you’re born!” I mean, really, who could resist? Pieces of the past had always seemed valuable to me–emotionally valuable, nostalgic, grounding me in a sense of context and purpose. But I began to see the “recordness” in everything around me, and the fundamental power of those records as evidence and indexes of lived experience. Working with digital archives is the most delicious challenge I could imagine. I love the constant change, the drive to learn new things every day, and the opportunity to exercise both sides of my brain.

Why did you get involved with the Issues & Advocacy Roundtable?

I moved to Georgia in 2012, when the Georgia Archives was threatened with closure. As a new archives professional and a new resident of Georgia, I found that experience profoundly transformative. It has shaped the way I view the archives profession and the importance of advocating for the value of our institutions, our work, our collections, and our users’ needs. I believe the Issues & Advocacy Roundtable can play crucial roles both in furthering SAA’s strategic goals for advocacy and in supporting the advocacy efforts of individual archivists and citizens.

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

I am concerned about the present and future of digital archives at the level of the individual. Every day, individuals all over the world agree to terms of service with giant corporations that are not in the business of being archives. We are granting these corporations perpetual, irrevocable licenses to our histories and identities. I want to advocate for digital archives at the level of the individual and partner with record creators to develop solutions that empower people to retain their rights to control, share, and preserve their stories and experiences. If you’re interested in this issue, too, tune in to an interview with University of British Columbia iSchool scholar Jessica Bushey on the Lost in the Stacks podcast episode that premiered on 12/4! Her research on these issues is amazing.

How would you define advocacy?

I like this definition of the verb “advocate” from the OED: “To defend or serve (a cause) through action.” That action piece seems integral to successful advocacy efforts. The action could be ongoing or brief, public or local or peer-to-peer. But no matter what, it’s an effort to make an impact–writing an op-ed, talking with a legislator, encouraging a friend over coffee, drafting a proposal for library administrators, researching the backstory behind an issue, marching in a demonstration, etc. And I think a crucial piece of that action is understanding your audience–getting into the mindset of the person or group you’re striving to impact and developing a strategy for action that has the greatest chance of resonating.

January 8, 2016November 24, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Interviews, Steering ShareTags: archives closure, archives profession, born-digital records, corporate power, digital access, digital archives, films, genealogy, Interviews, library school, patrons, podcasts, SAA Leave a comment