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 Share: Meet Burkely Hermann

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of Steering Committee member, Burkely Hermann, National Security Archive, and current I&A Blog Coordinator. Other members currently on the I&A Steering Committee include Danielle Simpkins, Caitlin Rizzo, Sheridan Sayles, Liz Call, Holly Rose McGee, and Claire Gordon.

1) What was your first experience working with archives?

I first worked in an archives after graduating from college with my B.A. in Political Science and History, as a researcher at the Maryland State Archives for a project trying to track down the stories of Maryland Revolutionary War soldiers, called the “Finding the Maryland 400” project, having a flexible start and end time, often either working with a historian on staff or independently. While that job only lasted six months as the grant money from a non-profit ran out, it began my interest in archives, which was rekindled in later years when I started my MLIS degree and worked at NARA’s College Park location as a work study in my last semester.

While I was drawn toward genealogy when working at the Maryland State Archives, I remember digitizing documents, using a push cart to move heavy books from the stacks to my desk, the in-house system I used to input information, or the many databases I used day in and day out. On the other hand, there were mold remediation efforts during the end of my time there. Worst of all, however, was the public transit nightmare I endured to get to the archives. Every day, I went on a light rail train to the end of the line, then a caught bus down to the archives itself. One wrong transfer or traffic would cause delays either by minutes or by hours. One major lesson I learned from the whole experience was to work somewhere that is accessible through public transportation!

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

That is a hard question. I would say precarity in the archives profession is very important, as many of my jobs since graduating have been precarious, whether working at a grant-funded position at the Maryland State Archives, an unpaid internship for NARA, or a graduate assistantship at University of Maryland, where I earned my MLIS degree, focusing on Archives and Digital Curation. Connected to this are those trying to unionize archivists, have fair pay, and safe working conditions, among other efforts to help archival issues.

Currently, I work at a non-profit which relies on grant funding, so in that way, it is a bit of a precarious position, I suppose, as a loss of funding could lead, possibly, to cuts in wages and benefits. I am glad that archival precarity has received a lot of attention in recent years and I hope that it continues to be seen as important by those in the profession, including in the SAA. This seems by the case from what I can gather when filling out the A*Census II.

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

I hope to connect with like-minded archivists who are concerned with various archival issues, such as reparative processing, redescription, institutional sustainability, institutional racism, and preserving social media posts. I’ll be using my perspective to positively contribute to the Issues & Advocacy Section (I&A) to continue existing advocacy and outreach efforts, including continuing to promote the value and importance of the archival profession.

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

Well, read a lot of webcomics and watch a bunch of animated series. And I write reviews of shows and comics I read, some of which have archivists and librarians! Also, for fun, I write fiction and incorporate some archivists into some of my stories. I occasionally do family history research for both sides of my family and have some blogs about that as well. When I’m not doing all of that, and it’s good weather, I go on hikes and read books.

February 7, 2022November 24, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Interviews, Steering ShareTags: A*CENSUS, archival description, archival processing, archives profession, born-digital records, databases, genealogy, institutional racism, institutional sustainability, internships, Interviews, job security, library degrees, NARA, National Security Archive, outreach, popular culture, precarity, redescription, reparative processing, social media, unionization, web archiving 7 Comments

“Far-reaching impacts”: Why the closure of NARA’s Seattle facility still matters

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. The following is from Burkely Hermann, recent graduate of the University of Maryland – College Park’s graduate program in Library and Information Science, with a concentration in Archives and Digital Curation.

Back on February 18, I wrote about the closure of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)’s Seattle facility, NAS for short. Recently this issue came to the fore with the publication of an article by Megan E. Llewellyn and Sarah A. Buchanan titled “Will the Last Archivist in Seattle Please Turn Out the Lights: Value and the National Archives” in the Journal of Western Archives.

The NAS facility is key to many different communities. The official page for the facility specifically highlights information they hold about Chinese immigrants and indigenous affairs, along with land records, court records, and genealogical resources. This includes tribal and treaty records of indigenous people living in the Pacific Northwest, and original case files for Chinese immigrants in the 19th century. Volunteers have been trying to index the Chinese immigrant files and create an “extensive database of family history.” This will be interrupted if the files are moved, making the database incomplete.

The NAS facility itself has regional significance. The property the facility sits on was once the location of  a prospering farm owned by Japanese immigrant Uyeji family from 1910 to 1942. [1] These immigrants were evicted from their land during World War II and put into concentration camps, like the over 120,000 Japanese Americans. The immigrant Uyeji family never returned to their home, and the land was seized by the U.S. Navy in 1945, after it had been condemned in earlier years, in order to build a warehouse. [2] The warehouse was later converted into a facility and began to be occupied by the National Archives after 1963. This transfer of ownership intersected with the history of Seattle’s development which benefited White people above those of other races, from 1923 onward.

There is more to be considered. As Llewellyn and Buchanan argue in the Journal of Western Archives, the closure of NAS is harmful, a failure at “multiple levels of government,” and was made without considering how valuable marginalized communities in the area see the records held at the facility. [3] 58,000 cubic feet are permanent records of federal agencies in the Pacific Northwest, while 6,600 cubic feet are occupied by records from the Bureau of Indian Affairs alone. [4] Neither should be destroyed per NARA guidance. This amount of cubic feet is equivalent to about 1,871 side-by-side refrigerators or about 1,234 top-mount refrigerators. [5] No matter how the size is measured, the NAS facility is well-used, as is its digital resources, by Asian-Americans, indigenous people, and various researchers. [6] Some indigenous people even called the closure and movement of records to other locations a “paper genocide.” As Bob Ferguson, the Washington State Attorney General, stated in February, moving the records from the NAS facility, to states such as California and Missouri, contradicts the purpose of the archives and impedes efforts by local families to research their ancestors.

There are other problems with the closure. Llewellyn and Buchanan pointed out, for one, the errors in the Public Buildings Reform Board (PBRB)’s assessment to close the facility, noting the significant level of foot traffic, the lack of public hearings on the closure, and NARA management agreeing with the decision to close. [7] There is also  concern that not all the records held at the NAS facility could be digitized. Some news outlets, like MyNorthwest, have rightly pointed out that large items like bound books and maps might not be “properly scanned” or digitized at all. Llewellyn and Buchanan further note the involved process of digitization, and extra costs researchers will have to pay if the records from the NAS facility are moved. [8]

Readers may be asking what can be done about the closure. Now is not the time to sit back and let the Washington State government to the heavy lifting, nor the Seattle media. In the latter case, the Seattle Times opined against the decision to close the NAS facility. In the case of Washington State, Ferguson, mentioned earlier, proposed a compromise to keep the regional facility of NARA in Washington State, worrying, like others, of the prospect of losing access to “over a century of history.” But his noble efforts have been for naught. The closure is on track, with NARA justifying it based on experience with the COVID-19 pandemic, saying the agency will be “less location dependent” in the future, with users accessing resources remotely rather than in-person. On the legal front, in August, Ferguson filed federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for public records against NARA, the Office of Management & Budget (OMB), and the General Services Administration (GSA). He also requested documents from the PBRB the same month. He stated that NARA and OMB failed to respond to requests he made in early February, while the GSA has not sent records it promised in the summer of this year. The PBRB, on the other hand, wanted taxpayers to pay about $65,000 to redact information from documents even though no sensitive information is present, as stated in various articles in the Seattle Times, HeraldNet, and Seattle Weekly. These efforts will likely go forward as Ferguson won the race to be the Attorney General of Washington State against Republican challenger Matt Larkin.

In the short-term, readers should email the OMB Director Russell Vought at Russell.t.vought@omb.eop.gov, the GSA Administrator Emily Murphy at emily.murphy@gsa.gov, Archivist David Ferriero at David.Ferriero@nara.gov, and the PBRB at fastainfo@pbrb.gov, opposing the closure of the NAS facility. Currently, the NAS facility has not been listed by the GSA for sale, whether on its database of real property or its database displaying federal properties being auctioned off. While COVID-19 makes the push for more remote learning attractive, it is still possible and vital to open in-person facilities, in line with existing rules and regulations to ensure the safety of the staff and patrons at specific facilities. In the long-term, if the NAS facility is closed, it could put other NARA facilities in jeopardy, as Llewellyn and Buchanan point out. [9] At the same time, archivists should advocate for a “massive investment in time, money, and planning” to digitize more of NARA’s holdings, as the aforementioned scholars argue for, [10] with not even 1% digitized at the present! Whether the facility is closed or not, there are dark times ahead for NARA, as less government spending may be on the horizon, unless the proposed budget for NARA is approved by the House of Representatives and Senate.

Notes

[1] Llewellyn, Megan E., and Sarah A. Buchanan, “Will the Last Archivist in Seattle Please Turn Out the Lights: Value and the National Archives and the National Archives,” Journal of Western Archives 11, no. 1 (October 12, 2020): 7, https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1125&context=westernarchives.  

[2] Llewellyn and Buchanan, 7-9.

[3] Ibid, 3-4.

[4] Ibid, 4-5.

[5] Karie Lapham Fay, “Dimensions of a Standard Size Refrigerator,” SFGate, December 17, 2018, https://homeguides.sfgate.com/dimensions-standard-size-refrigerator-82262.html. I used the largest size of a side-by-side refrigerator (31 cubic feet) and largest size of a top-mount refrigerator is 47 cubic feet when using the highest numbers in Fay’s article.

[6] Llewellyn and Buchanan,  5-6.

[7] Ibid, 11-17.

[8] Ibid, 17-19.

[9] Ibid, 24-25.

[10] Ibid, 21.

November 18, 2020December 5, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: archives closure, databases, digitization, federal records, genealogy, government archives, immigration, maps, NARA, National Archives at Seattle, patrons, records management, U.S. history, volunteering, Whiteness 2 Comments

Archivists on the Issues: Archives and the Rural-Urban Divide

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

In recent years, the fate of rural American communities has been prominently featured in national press coverage and soul-searching public discourse about the United States’ changing social, economic, and demographic realities. Rural communities, we have often heard, have failed to adapt to the new global economy and suffer from irreversible brain drain; they are close-minded, cultural wastelands characterized by aging populations and despair-induced morbidity; the biggest incentive they offer to would-be transplants is cheap property and good but under sourced school systems. Urban and suburban communities, by contrast, are growing steadily and have been for decades. They possess in abundance the desirable quality-of-life amenities and economic opportunities that rural communities lack, and examples abound of renewal and persistence in large cities previously written off by critics of contemporary urban policy. The biggest losers in this comprehensive demographic and economic reshuffling appear to be remote agricultural communities. Although this narrative is generally supported by the available evidence, the factors driving rural decline are complicated and often the narrative fails to capture this complexity.

So much of the recent decline narrative about rural America is related to demographic and economic trends extending from the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. Numerous writings have detailed the collusion between government, food conglomerates, and the financial sector to push maximum production and corporate models of efficiency throughout the entire American agricultural system. Unfortunately, these efforts brought about a perfect storm of conditions that resulted in massive bankruptcies and property foreclosures, rural suicide levels higher than in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the decimation of the family farm system that had been a cornerstone of rural life for over a century. Although the rural-to-urban population shift was well underway by the 1980s, this trend accelerated in all subsequent economic downturns and became virtually irreversible in the wake of the Great Recession. Similarly, rural poverty has equaled or exceeded that of urban areas for decades, and the recovery from the Great Recession has mostly bypassed rural communities, especially those in remote and sparsely populated areas. Recent reference statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture on rural recovery show that the urban-rural poverty gap has widened since the end of the recession, with employment in rural areas still not up to pre-recession levels and overall income growing at a much slower rate than non-rural locations. Additionally, the majority of remote agricultural and micropolitan areas have lost significant population since 2010, a reality that is increasingly both the cause and result of widespread economic woes.

Some recent analyses suggest that the rural population decline is a relative measure that is more reflective of the changing designations of areas and communities from rural to suburban or urban. Indeed, in some areas with remarkable geographical features or that are accessible to urban amenities, rural areas have experienced a net population growth. However, remote rural areas have experienced a near fatal combination of declining in-migration, increasing out-migration, and lower natural replacement levels related to resident fertility and aging. Lower fertility rates and higher average ages exacerbate resource-depleted remote rural areas that already have trouble attracting adequate health care services, funding public works, and providing other basic needs for its residents. Because of larger economic trends that afford more opportunities in cities and suburbs, young people who grow up in rural communities are less likely to move back once they have left. Those who never leave or who do return often find themselves in settings that are ill-prepared to nurture families, develop human capital, and take advantage of the experience and skills that these people bring to the community.

Despite the overarching demographic and socioeconomic trends, rural residents are generally optimistic about their lives and futures in their communities. According to recent surveys conducted by the Harvard Opinion Research Program, the majority of rural Americans hold negative views about their local economy and a large portion experience financial insecurity, but they also feel engaged in their communities and are hopeful that most issues can be corrected in the near future. The surveys identify a host of problems related to employment, housing, substance abuse, health care, and social isolation but respondents generally expressed appreciation for the safety and quality of life in their communities. Of course, the relative level of satisfaction likely has as much to do with the racial, cultural, and economic background of the survey’s respondents. The study reported more difficulties from members of racial or ethnic minority groups and people with disabilities living in these communities, including a significant discrepancy between how minorities and non-minorities view discrimination and general treatment of non-majority residents.

This blinkered view of rural America–both from its residents and from those observing at a distance–is likely what makes the real problems of decline seem so intractable. Certainly it contributes to the variance of the narrative based on where it is coming from. What emerges from countless books, reports, policy papers, articles, opinion pieces, and blog entries is subject to interpretation through a variety of political, social, and cultural filters. On the one hand, it is easy to believe that rural America is doomed, especially the really hard-hit areas that cannot seem to catch a break. On the other hand, there are many indications of resilience and a willingness of these communities to adjust, adapt, and fight on despite the odds. For many people, both urban and rural, geography is destiny and the ability to stay, leave, or return is largely a matter of relative means and privilege. The affective impact of the narrative often becomes one of cautionary wistfulness: what do we lose as a country when such a significant part of it is clearly threatened by trends we understand but appear to have no power to control?  How bad does it have to get before we muster the political will for substantive collective action to fix things? With few exceptions, the consensus around the narrative seems to be that rural America is worth saving, but there is little agreement about how this might be accomplished without further enabling the urbanization trends that harm remote rural areas in the first place.

Robert Wuthnow described how the rural experience manifests in a patchwork of moral communities throughout the country centered around education, faith, and work, and embodied in the disappearing rural institutions of the schoolhouse, church, and farmstead.^[1] These moral communities are bound by common experience and values developed across generations, which helps them weather disruptions and adapt to change. However, the ability of communities to exist in the relative autonomy and independence of previous eras is rapidly disintegrating and many of the resulting changes are unwelcome. A recurring theme throughout rural American  history–in areas entirely settled by outsiders–is the resistance to newcomers. Although the demographic composition of rural communities varies throughout the United States, with the exception of Native American reservations and other anomalous communities, rural residents tend to be white and of European descent, with increasing numbers of people from Latin America settling into these areas on a temporary or permanent basis. This growing diversity in rural America represents one of the clearest links between the urban and rural cultural dichotomy, which, in combination with language and other cultural differences, engenders a potent strain of identity-based resentment among the majority population. Ugly and violent distortions of traditional white masculinity have been present for decades in rural America, but its recent outward activity is mostly relegated to the political fringes.

However, American history is full of examples of community identity being tied to and expressed through political activity, and as the real or perceived impact of decline advances, a more rigid political landscape across rural America appears to be developing. According to Jon Lauck, the 2016 election offered evidence of a growing rural identity or consciousness that seeks less to highlight issues important to its communities, than to cast themselves in opposition to the interests in Washington D.C., New York City, Hollywood, and other urban areas that have appeared to ignore their plight and assist their demise.^[2] This seems to be driven by a last-stand mentality, a final striking out against the enemies of a way of life that was at one time the defining model of the American experiment. Thus, the decline narrative finds rural communities looking backward and preoccupied with capturing the essence, if not the substance, of lifeways that have passed. The prospect of actual annihilation increasingly overshadows the symbolic annihilation or misrepresentation that these communities have always experienced to some degree, if not to the exaggerated extent that some political opportunists claim. To many communities and their inhabitants, the current moment represents a historical tipping point, made more real by the ongoing upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, the overdue reckoning on racial justice, the possibility of a long recession, and the certainty of a contentious national election.

So what does this mean for archives and archivists? In researching her memoir of growing up poor in rural Kansas, Sarah Smarsh refers to the difficulty of locating adequate resources “to piece together a family history from the ill-documented chaos that poverty begets.”^[3] Smarsh’s account spans the Farm Crisis years to present day and surfaces important issues around the lack of understanding of marginal communities that seem, on the surface, to be adequately represented in the public consciousness. However, the representation of the rural poor–regardless of what other intersectional identity categories they embody–in archives and other collecting institutions is equally problematic. Memory and cultural institutions have long documented agriculture, agribusiness, small towns, and rural life to some degree, but this tends to focus on official records and notable or powerful residents who are almost always men. As such, the stories of working poor, women, minority groups, immigrants, non-mainstream subcultures, and others lacking political, social, and economic capital are typically lost through neglect, hostility, or indifference. Anne Effland attributes this lack of historical understanding to the limited scope given to the domain of what we consider to be rural, which is undoubtedly reflected in the documentation of rural communities.^[4] Certainly nowadays “rural” no longer equates strictly to “farming,” and it has not for some time now. Understanding the complex identities and issues associated with the decline of rural communities requires archival efforts that acknowledge the political, demographic, and socioeconomic variation in and among those communities.

But even with the archives profession turning more toward community focused approaches to research and practice, rural communities have been largely absent from the disciplinary literature. Searches for articles in all major archival studies publication databases turned up scant reportage on documenting rural communities, subjects, issues, or historical trends, even in the region-specific journals. This sentiment was captured in a panel session called “Documenting Flyover Land” for the Midwest Archives Conference annual meeting in 2018, which sought to highlight specific archival projects related to the rural Midwest. In the introduction to the session, panel chair Christina Hansen spoke about the urban bubble that even most Midwesterners live in suddenly bursting after the 2016 election results.^[5] What was described by many pundits and politicos (and certainly many liberal-learning archivists) as the horrific outcome of resentment-based politics only partially reflected the reality; it also signalled something deeper about rural America and its desire to make its voice heard. It should also have signaled to archivists that the call for a truly representative record and profession is disingenuous if the rural perspective continues to be pushed aside in our work and discussions. The response from archivists is yet to be determined.

Fostering a sense of place, representation, and belonging may not be enough to reverse decades of unfavorable trends, but memory institutions have a distinct role to play in how rural communities conceive of themselves in various regional, national, and global contexts. As such, these institutions have an opportunity to exert an affective and intellectual influence on their communities, grounded in shared history and experience, as its members look toward their uncertain individual and collective futures. By helping communities understand, document, and celebrate their past, archives and other memory institutions can serve as change agents that provide reassurance of a community’s role in its own destiny. By providing an outlet to and for information, education, and culture they can help these communities articulate their stories and values, and help ease the transition to different modes of living. And another big transition is already underway, whether or not anyone involved is ready.

^[1] Wuthnow, R. (2018). The left behind: Decline and rage in rural America. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

^[2] Lauck, J. K. (2017). Trump and the Midwest: The 2016 presidential election and the avenues of Midwestern historiography. Studies In Midwestern History, 3(1), 1-24.

^[3] Smarsh, S. (2018). Heartland: A memoir of working hard and being broke in the richest country on earth. New York: Scribner.

^[4] Effland, A. B. W. (2000). When rural does not equal agricultural. Agricultural History, 74(2), 489-501.

^[5] Hansen, C., Anderson, M., Beckey, J., Chumachenko, V., & Dunn, R. (2018, March). Documenting flyover land. In C. Hansen (Chair), Blurring boundaries, crossing lines: The 2018 Midwest Archives Conference annual meeting. Panel session conducted at the meeting of the Midwest Archives Conference, Chicago, Illinois.

July 20, 2020December 5, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: archives profession, COVID-19, databases, disabilities, discrimination, genealogy, immigration, Indigenous people, job security, Latino people, memory institutions, statistics, U.S. history, urban areas, Whiteness 1 Comment

Archivists on the News: The Archivist in an Accountable World

Archivists on the News is a new series featuring perspectives on current news. Our first post comes from Joel Horowitz, Special Collections Librarian at the Alexandria Library, Local History/Special Collections Branch. You can follow him on Twitter @PurpleArchivist.

“It is your duty to make sure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees.” So concludes the introductory video of Canary Mission, which seeks to document students and faculty expressing what it classifies as extremist views on college campuses. Users who have chosen to “defend freedom” are invited to submit video and social media evidence and open source records to their site because otherwise “a few years later these individuals are applying for jobs within your company.” Decades-old information has long been sought about political candidates, but preventive collection from college students with the stated goal of creating a blacklist or inspiring retractions is a significant step in that direction, and might face enormous challenges in proving authenticity in the face of politically motivated skepticism (Canary Mission would not comment on the length of time it plans to preserve information).

Header image from Canary Mission’s website

In a previous era, personal papers were exactly that, personal. In fact, they were often purged (or “organized”) to remove embarrassing material before becoming available to the public through a professional organization. Today, more and more of our personal records are available in real time, and our lives examined as we live them to be treated as public records by those who choose. SAA advocacy guidelines have long focused on the privacy of information in government hands and letting “public leaders,” “public officials,” and “agencies” be held accountable by citizens. But we must also consider the accountability of citizens by citizens according to their own subjective values through the collection of our records to be preserved for our lifetimes, if not beyond, in public view.

Moving in the opposite direction, some states have banned the practice of demanding access to the social media accounts of job applicants or even taking off-duty political activities into consideration. More notably, groups like Ban the Box have sought to limit the consideration of even criminal records in hiring.

But are there costs to a highly private society? Recent years have seen a rise in the practice of “doxing,” in which an ordinary individual is exposed to public retaliation for acts they performed anonymously or in private. It’s typically associated with outing people from Unite the Right rallies or otherwise deemed racists, but a similar approach has been used for other things like being a gamer or, in an earlier era, being gay. Obviously, the level of stigma attached to the many behaviors and characteristics people are reluctant to admit publicly vary, which can obscure how common they are. A less private “accountability society” could make some stigmas disappear (as gay pride has helped to do), while making others more impactful (as Canary’s slogan hopes). In this way, privacy can be a question of trust in social norms.

Historians of privacy remind us that it is in many ways a relatively new thing, a creation of the 19th and 20th centuries that earlier ancestors had limited knowledge or experience with as we understand it. Privacy as a right in the United States has its origins in an 1890 law review article. Balloting became secret in America only gradually over the second half of the 19^th century, but is now covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet political parties and their allies have massive databases of public and corporate information that they will probably keep on us forever, eroding the privacy of our political opinions. In a lengthy 2015 piece, Greg Ferenstein argues that privacy was once rare because it was difficult and inconvenient to maintain and is likely to be abandoned if those conditions return, as he expects to result from advances in medicine and other personalization technologies.

Such an outcome is not inevitable, and Europe is at the forefront of cementing the current order through its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The European “right to be forgotten” is essentially a right to erase the history of one’s life, even when lived in public, so long as it is not yet vitally important to that public. Through the GDPR, Europeans are once again able to purge the modern version of their “papers” and present a curated, up-to-date, image of themselves, unless they fall under one of its exceptions.

China appears to be taking the opposite path from Europe. A place where social norms and social cohesion are highly prized, China is promising to restore “trust” in society by assigning a Social Credit Score to every citizen based on an analysis of available data. While a uniform government score based on our histories might prove tyrannical (and China’s isn’t yet), one could theoretically allow a variety of groups, interests, and communities to offer their own methods of scoring data, and each individual to choose the system whose opinion they value or need, which is not far from how we are privately evaluated today for things like credit, jobs, insurance, and dating. American society, too, is still grappling with the basic question of what, if anything, we should know about each other and when.

While a recent article by Ashlyn Velte on activist social media archives does point to emerging ethical debates and standards for donated materials, it may prove difficult for the profession to try to impose these standards on politically motivated collecting organizations pursuing goals many archivists support. Is it unethical for an archivist to participate in an accountability project or a public service for them to do so? Does it depend on the goals? The methods? Is it even our right to shape society so fundamentally by boycotting organizations that operate outside our guidelines, but within our laws? It isn’t clear the profession has official answers to these questions. But if these privately managed public digital archives might end up being assembled for long-term preservation by archival tools, archival methods, and ultimately digital archivists trained for the purpose, how can it not?

Editor’s note: I&A posted about the Right to Be Forgotten in 2016 in this research post.

December 10, 2018June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the NewsTags: archives profession, China, data protection, databases, digital archives, human rights, personal papers, technology, The Right to Be Forgotten Leave a comment

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.

April 6, 2017June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Research PostTags: A People’s Archive of Police Violence, ACLU, appraisal, archival description, archival silences, archives profession, BIPOC, born-digital records, community archives, data analysis, data mining, databases, Documenting the Now, FBI, federal records, historical interpretation, immigration policy, Indigenous people, legislation, memory institutions, memory work, oral history, privacy, professionalism, racial oppression, Research Teams, selection, social justice, social media, state violence, surveillance, underrepresented communities, undocumented immigrants, web archiving, women archivists 4 Comments

End of Year Steering Share: My Ever-Evolving Elevator Pitch, Thanks to Student Assistants

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This mid-year post is from I&A Steering Committee member Stephanie Bennett, Collections Archivist at Wake Forest University.

I had never heard of an elevator pitch before I became an archivist. I likely was first introduced to the phrase in grad school, and since then, it’s part of my bread and butter. I feel like every archivist has an array of elevator pitches, for donors, students,  administrators, their loved ones – heck, maybe even their favorite bartender.

As a collections archivist, I spend most of my time with my immediate colleagues, most of whom are well-schooled in the arts of Special Collections is not archival collections, or undergraduate student workers, whose interests are a bit less mercurial than I remember mine being at 20 (but not by much).

I do get out of the archives, of course: I have friends in departments around the university (I’m not above feigning casual interest as I ask pointed questions about department recordkeeping practices), and I meet with donors, prospective or current, who may be giving collections, attention, or financial donations to the institution.

In these conversations outside of my more routine archives duties, I find myself increasingly grateful for my work with those kind-hearted but ever-preoccupied undergraduate assistants. I’ve learned new descriptions and metaphors for the work that I do, because students are curious – either naturally or because it’s time for them to craft a resume – but even after some time working alongside me, they don’t have the vocabulary. (Don’t worry, they have the range.)

I still need a second to recover when someone asks that perennial favorite question, why can’t everything be digitized. But I recover and list, with a minimum amount of jargon, the labor of digitization. My answer to that question looks more like this now:

“We are able to do digitization work with the help of students: you would be surprised at the amount of time it takes to physically scan items, even with fancy scanners. To get high resolution images and not damage the physical item, we can’t simply run then through the copier. And even with training, things go wrong in scanning – you remember being a college student. So a librarian runs quality checks and has to re-do some scans. While the scans are being cooked up, or maybe before, a librarian creates metadata: describing that single item, or group of items, giving them dates. What’s your favorite picture of the university? Do you know the date, or the location, or maybe the people in it? We need as much of that information as possible about a photograph, say, since every person remembers it a little differently.”

In my answers, I aim to highlight the skills and number of people involved in the labor, and I skip over new vocabulary words.

First, the laborers: We do a lot with less, and it’s thanks to our student workers, but I want to impress upon them that students cannot do this all themselves. I am a skilled laborer, due to my Master’s degree, so I am agile in employing uniform names; but also, sometimes I renumber folders because a student missed something and every correctly numbered folder saves my reference colleagues time and energy. To drive this home, I may introduce controlled vocabularies – I often call them uniform vocabularies or taxonomies. Biscuits in the South mean something entirely from the biscuits of England, and if there’s time I tell the story of looking for biscuits at a KFC in Central London, for added punch. “In a world run by librarians, the biscuits in London would be just like Grandad’s!” Most folks can nod along with that, and in turn understand when I say, it takes training and experience to recognize when you should employ a controlled language and when you’re free-wheeling.

Secondly, I have mostly given up “finding aid” and such terminology when I’m talking to non-archivists; apologies to my professor, Kathy Wisser, who insisted (correctly!) that every professional field has its own jargon and few abdicate that pleasure. But I would rather the student assistants learn the concepts and not focus on the words. So they’re collection inventories, or collection overviews if it’s an MPLP finding aid without a box listing – a hierarchical inventory, I tell them, with parents and children, like a family tree. They know about our DSpace instance, searchable on our landing page – but I don’t call it a content management system or a digital repository, I call it our processed collections database. It’s not right, but for initial conversations, it is enough. I can drop some more knowledge on them later – and thankfully, most of these interactions are the first of many, not one-and-done.

Above all: I keep my initial answer as short as possible initially. “I’m an archivist; I work at the University in the library with rare materials and University records” because I want to draw out their comments and questions. If zines come up, or recent activism and related recordkeeping, or family photos: I’m in. Repetitive though a question like “but what about digitization” is, I take the opportunity to regale them with tales of the immense digitized photo collections, or videocassettes that my students treat like cuneiform. I may even invite them to a “Hop into History” event (hat tip to Erin Lawrimore, UNCG) at one of the local breweries, if they’re lucky!

April 4, 2017June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: academia, archival labor, archives profession, controlled vocabularies, databases, digitization, donors, institutional records, intellectual access, library degrees, metadata, professionalism, special collections, students, terminology Leave a comment

Research Post: the National Security Entry Exit Registration System, past, present, and future

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 comes from On-Call Research Team #2, which looks into real-time 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.

In 2002, the National Security Entry Exit Registration System (NSEERS) established a national registry for foreign visitors from 25 predominantly Middle Eastern countries (Gamboa 2003). NSEERS, also referred to as “Special Registration,” was a post-9/11 program that consisted of three components:

• non-citizens had to register when they entered the U.S.
• they had to regularly check in with immigration officials
• and those leaving the country were tracked to ensure that people did not remain in the country illegally

Registering entailed getting fingerprinted, photographed, and interrogated. Those in violation of this program would be arrested, fined, and possibly deported (Muaddi 2016).

The program did not operate fully, even early on; parts of the program were dropped beginning in 2003. At that time, the registration portion of NSEERS ended because it was made redundant by other programs in place or being developed (Gamboa 2003). The Obama administration suspended NSEERS in 2011, though it technically remained in place, and finally ended it in December 2016.

While in place, NSEERS resulted in zero terrorism convictions and even the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) thought the program was redundant and ineffective (Mauddi 2016). In his letter to President Obama calling for the end of the NSEERS program, Eric Schneiderman, New York State Attorney General, wrote that not only did it not reduce terrorist activity, but it encouraged mistrust and fear towards law enforcement in some communities (Liptak & Peled 2016).

The United States enacted similar programs in the recent past. From 1942-1946, the U.S. incarcerated as many as 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese descent in ten concentration camps following the bombing of Pearl Harbor during World War II. This program has been widely panned as unjust and a national disgrace, yet some supporters of a national Muslim registry have referred to this program as precedent (Ford 2015; Hawkins 2016). Similarly cited, Carter’s efforts during the Iran hostage crisis, 1979-1981, banned Iranians from entering the U.S. (with some exceptions for religious minorities and those with medical emergencies) and required the registration of roughly 60,000 Iranian students already in America. Experts find the comparisons don’t hold up (Jacobson 2015).

Other modern programs that are reminiscent of NSEERS include the influence of “see something, say something” initiatives in the U.S. (Mirza 2016) that mirror a DHS initiative begun around 2010; the growing network of facial recognition databases being used by law enforcement agencies across the country and globally (Newman 2016; Beaumont 2013); and the terrorist watch list, which is notorious for incorrectly including people on its various manifestations (Zetter 2016).

The Trump administration may roll back the Obama administration’s full NSEERS cancellation. Should NSEERS prove to be gone forever, the historic record demonstrates that future programs will follow.

 

Sources Cited

• Beaumont, P. “NSA leaks: US and Britain team up on mass surveillance.” The Guardian, 2013 June 22. Retrieved 2017 February 27.
• Ford, M. “The Return of Korematsu.” The Atlantic, 2015 November 19. Retrieved 2017 January 29.
• Gamboa, S. “Homeland Security Ends Registration.” Associated Press, 2003 December 1.
• Hawkins, D. “Japanese American internment is ‘precedent’ for national Muslim registry, prominent Trump backer says.” Washington Post, 2016 November 17. Retrieved 2017 January 29.
• Jacobson, L. “Why Trump’s Muslim Ban Isn’t Like Jimmy Carter’s Actions on Iranians.” Politifact, 2015 December 17. Retrieved 2017 January 29.
• Liptak, K. & Peled, S. “Obama administration ending program once used to track mostly Arab and Muslim men.” CNN, 2016 December 22. Retrieved 2017 February 27.
• Mirza, W. “‘See something, say something’ culture is dangerous: How it spawns Islamophobia and keeps America insecure.” Salon, 2016 August 20. Retrieved 2017 January 29.
• Muaddi, N. “The Bush-era Muslim registry failed. Yet the US could be trying it again.” CNN, 2016 December 22. Retrieved 2017 February 27.
• Newman, K.H. “Cops Have a Database of 117M Faces. You’re Probably In It.” Wired, 2016 October 18. Retrieved 2017 January 29.
• Zetter, K. “How Does the FBI Watch List Work? And Could It Have Prevented Orlando?” Wired, 2016 June 17. Retrieved 2017 January 29.

March 7, 2017June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Research PostTags: databases, FBI, gun violence, guns, Iran, Japanese internment, Muslim ban, Research Teams, surveillance, U.S. history, volunteering Leave a comment

Research Post: “Protect from Potential Grizzlies”: How Local, State and Federal Concealed Carry Rules Apply to Libraries, Archives, and Museums

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 looks into real-time 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 Roundtable.

Proposed and already enacted concealed carry legislation in numerous states has spurred questions regarding policies for libraries, archives, and museums. What can – and cannot – individual institutions and organizations do regarding patrons and guns given their locally applicable bills? Concerns vary not just by state and institution type, but even by possible need for concealed weapons.  For example, Wyoming’s need for weapons in primary and secondary schools may be affected by the potential for grizzly bears nearby, a suggestion posed by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

On American college campuses, various state rules apply to concealed carry. Four states allow guns on campuses, six states allow for guns on campus in restricted areas, 10 states allow campuses to choose, 10 states allow storage of weapons in vehicles, and 20 states prohibit guns on all campuses. Employment status can be a factor, as well. In Tennessee, although students can only store weapons in vehicles, faculty and staff are allowed concealed carry. While these variations only apply to college campuses, laws can be more convoluted with other institutions: public or federal buildings and state parks, for example. Since libraries, archives, and museums can be within public, state, corporate, federal, or college entities, we will all be affected by concealed carry laws differently.

Proponents for concealed carry argue that states that allow it on campuses, provide improved safety and that threats to the learning environment are false. These proponents argue instead that active shooter incidents such as the Virginia Tech massacre may have ended more quickly and safely with an armed student body on hand.

People working in libraries, archives, and museums voice concerns that guns can create more violence rather than less, but they are also concerned that concealed carry can limit free speech and introduces complicated security issues. Faculty and students may not safe practicing academic freedom under the new rules. In one instance in Utah, a feminist speaker backed out of a campus event after threats were made on her life and the Utah State University could not provide increased support for her safety. Concealed carry proponents believe that such situations can be mitigated and that the university could have provided better security, albeit at increased cost and intrusiveness of individual searches.

Another, more common example of security complications can be found in archives and manuscript repositories. They typically have patrons place bulky materials, such as jackets and bags, in lockers, but having patrons remove guns can violate state laws and possibly be illegal.

Many states have been in the news for legislation regarding concealed weapons on college campuses, which covers Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Texas. At the University of Texas at Austin, guns are restricted in its Tower area, due to the 1966 sniper attacks by Charles Whitman. Often, libraries are not included as restricted areas on college campuses. Some areas can be negotiated, but if a state wholly allows for concealed carry, then libraries and archives cannot create rules or policies that negate the relevant legislation. Virginia’s Richmond Public Library found this out when they posted that guns were prohibited and the Virginia’s Citizens Defense League (rightly) disagreed. After changing the rule to read that it was prohibited “except as permitted by the law,” the League still determined the language was not acceptable and protested.

Overall, it is the burden of each library, archives, and museum to determine what policies they are allowed to enact based on the laws and regulations of their state and the rules within their affiliated institutions. This poses issues for creating standards and for enacting and managing policies effectively. After all, your institution may need protection from a grizzly.

A bibliography is provided below. Of course, this is not an exhaustive list and some articles may require a subscription.

All States

• Michael Kelly, “No Guns in the Library: Curbing the Second Amendment in the Stacks.” Library Journal (January 9, 2013), 8. Accessed on January 3, 2017. http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/01/opinion/editorial/no-guns-in-the-library-curbing-the-second-amendment-in-the-stacks-editorial/#_
• Joshua Gillin, “Oregon College Shooting was on a Gun-Free Campus, Lawmakers Say.” Tampa Bay Times, (November 24, 2015) Accessed on January 3, 2017. http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/nov/24/greg-steube/oregon-college-shooting-was-gun-free-campus-lawmak/
• Katherine Mangan, “Campus-carry rules vary, depending on where guns are.” Chronicle of Higher Education, (April 8, 2016): p A6. Academic OneFile. Accessed January 5, 2017. go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=tel_a_ttul&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA450800253&it=r&asid=691fa62f0ce974ce4f9c62e0b09e3edb 
• Monica Fuglei, “Why Concealed Carry Laws Can Affect School Field Trips.” Concordia University Education Blog. Accessed December 30, 2016. http://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/news/concealed-carry-field-trips/.
• Mary Beth Chappell Lyles, “The Open Carry Library: Navigating gun policies in the age of open carry laws and mass shootings.” AALL Spectrum 19, no. 4, 2015 February. Accessed December 30, 2016. http://www.aallnet.org/mm/Publications/spectrum/Archives/Vol-19/No-4/open-carry.pdf
• Carrie O’Maley Voliva, “Can I Bring My Gun to the Library.” Public Libraries. 2015 July 29. Accessed on January 23, 2017.  http://publiclibrariesonline.org/2015/07/can-i-bring-my-gun-to-the-library/

Texas

• Dave Philipps, “Grappling With Guns on Campus.” The New York Times, 2016 August 28, p A16. Accessed January 2, 2017.
• “University of Texas at Austin to allow students to carry handguns on campus,” CNN, 2016 Feb 18. Accessed January 25, 2017.  http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/18/politics/university-of-texas-austin-students-guns-classrooms/  
• “UT Austin’s Campus Carry Policies,”  https://campuscarry.utexas.edu/

Tennessee

• Elahe Izadi, “Faculty can carry handguns on public college campuses under controversial new Tennessee law.” Washington Post, 2016 May 2. Accessed January 25, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/05/02/faculty-can-carry-handguns-on-public-college-campuses-under-controversial-new-tennessee-law/

Colorado

• David Kopel, “Guns on University Campuses: The Colorado Experience.” Washington Post, 2015 April 20. Accessed January 25, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/20/guns-on-university-campuses-the-colorado-experience/

Utah

• Annale Renneker, “Packing More than Just a Backpack.” Journal of Law and
  Education, vol. 44, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 273-282.
• Jennifer Sinor, “Guns on Campus Have Already Curtailed Free Speech.”
  Chronicle of Higher Education, vol. 61, no. 10., 2014 October 27. Accessed January 3, 2017. http://www.chronicle.com/article/Guns-on-Campus-Have-Already/149663

Idaho

• “Your Guide To Idaho’s Guns On Campus Debate.” Boise State Public Radio. Accessed January 25, 2017. http://boisestatepublicradio.org/topic/your-guide-idahos-guns-campus-debate
• “Weapons on Campus: Frequently Asked Questions.” Idaho State University. Accessed January 25, 2017. http://www2.isu.edu/pubsafe/policies/ConcealedWeaponsFAQ.pdf

Resources for understanding and tracking legislation

• Armed Campuses site, http://www.armedcampuses.org/ features an interactive map where one can read up on individual states’ legislation
• Andy Pelosi and John Johnson, “The Important Work of Keeping Guns Off Campus.” American Association of State Colleges and Universities, Public Purpose. Accessed January 23, 2017. (PDF) http://www.aascu.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=8726
• Diana Gleason, “2015 Update: Can I Bring My Gun? A Fifty State Survey of Firearm Laws Impacting Policies Prohibiting Handguns in Public Libraries.” SSRN. 2015 May 13. Accessed January 25, 2017. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2605937
• “Education Bill Tracking Database.” National Conference of State Legislatures http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/education-bill-tracking-database.aspx  Search under Post-Secondary — Campus Safety. Includes legislation that was not adopted.
• “Guns on Campus: Resources.” National Conference of State Legislatures. Accessed January 25, 2017. http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/guns-on-campus-resources.aspx  Includes resources that are pro- and con- concealed carry weapons on campus 
• Students for Concealed Carry. Accessed January 23, 2017. http://concealedcampus.org/

February 22, 2017June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Research PostTags: archives security, databases, environmental degradation, GLAM institutions, gun laws, guns, human rights, legislation, libraries, patrons, preservation, Research Teams, Wikipedia Leave a comment

Steering Share: Rachel Mandell

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post is from I&A Vice Chair Rachel Mandell. She is Digital Archivist at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

What was your first job in a library, archive, or museum?

As an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, I worked in Doe Library, the university’s main library stacks. The student library employees switched tasks every hour of our shifts; tasks included re-shelving books, collecting discarded books or belongings left behind by patrons, and participating in larger projects like shifting books. Re-shelving books involved gathering an entire library cart full of books and first arranging them in the proper Library of Congress order before bringing them back to the stacks. One of my favorite memories of that job was competing with my fellow student workers to see who could put together an entire cart the quickest without any mistakes!

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

Last year, I served as the Issues and Advocacy Intern. As a project archivist, I have found it difficult to acquire institutional support for professional development opportunities outside of my current position. I saw the internship as a great way to get involved in SAA, without taking too much time away from my daily tasks. After spending a semester working with the Issues and Advocacy team, I was hooked! It’s a great way to stay up to date with important archival issues and stay connected to larger archival community!

What is one major issue you see archives tackling in the next five to ten years?

I would love to see linked data incorporated into the archival field. In the linked data environment, connections between data points are created with links that are machine accessible rather than human accessible. The library community has already begun to tackle this issue. By using encoding schemas such as BIBFRAME created by the Library of Congress, the library catalog gets transformed into something more than structured information. These links become actual “things” that are connected to each other. For example, exposing library metadata as linked data means it could be crawled by search engine bots and included in user search results along with articles from Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). In the archival environment, we can imagine using linked data to connect many different vocabularies to a collection of materials. We don’t need to risk interoperability by choosing one vocabulary over another, because we can link to many. Through linked data, we can make our projects more dynamic and flexible.

What archive issue means a lot to you?

My current work on the Japanese American Digitization Project at California State University, Dominguez Hills deals with an archival issue that has become very important to me: accurate archival description. The controversy surrounding how the Japanese American experience in the 20th century was historically and typically described by government agencies such as the War Relocation Authority is very present in this project. For example, internment is not a preferred or even an accurate term when describing nearly 120,000 people who were forced to leave their homes; internment refers to the legally permissible detention of enemy aliens in the time of war. So it is extremely problematic to apply this term to the unlawful incarceration of American citizens — and nearly 2/3 of those people incarcerated were U.S. citizens. As archivists, we have the power to describe and therefore perpetuate a particular perspective of history. Archival description should not be taken lightly. Terminology and description are power tools.

Describe and share an interesting archive you have come across over the years.

While living and working in Vienna on a Fulbright grant, I spent part of my time learning how to digitize Super 8 mm films at the Austrian Film Museum. In addition to the already impressive collection housed in the Film Museum’s archive, I was introduced to their wonderful collection of home movies and other ephemeral films. Ephemeral films are a very interesting archival artefact. They are defined as films with a limited purpose and not meant to endure– and include amateur, institutional, industrial, educational, and other films. They are often discovered by collectors or hobbyists, however there is often very little known about these films. One way that the Austrian Film Museum is tackling this issue of limited metadata, is to digitize the films and incorporate them into online platforms. An example of one such platform is the Ephemeral Films Project, which focuses on ephemeral films from the Austrian Nazi era. Researchers, historians, and other interested users can view the digitized films and actually provide feedback if anything is known about the film such as locations within the film. By crowdsourcing metadata, we can discover more about these unique and rare films.

December 12, 2016November 24, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Interviews, Steering ShareTags: archival description, archives profession, crowdsourcing, data mining, databases, detention and arrest, digitization, films, grants, Holocaust history, internships, Interviews, Japanese internment, linked data, metadata, patrons, professionalism, terminology, U.S. history, Wikipedia 1 Comment