Tag: historical interpretation

Steering Share from Samantha Brown

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

What is your favorite thing about your job or the archives profession?

One of my favorite things about working in archives is that you get to be a bit like Sherlock Holmes. It’s the archivist job to go through everything and piece together the clues about who the creator of the collection was and how that creator used and organized the collection. Every item you look at contributes a new detail that you can use to solve your mystery. While solving that mystery, you get to learn about a topic you may never have known about before. An even if the collection deals with topics you’re familiar with, it may come at it from a completely different angle which will show you a new way to contextualize history. The fact that working in archives forces me to constantly learn and explore new ideas is something I love about the job.

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Hello!

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

After working as an intern for the committee, I knew that I wanted to join as a full member. My experience getting to work with everyone was so fulfilling that I didn’t want it to end after just one year. Working with the committee has allowed me to connect with other archivists and deal with issues that our profession is facing. Not only do we discuss the issues but we try to come up with concrete ways to solve the problems. While trying to get people who are scattered across the country to work together can be a struggle since we all have differing time zones and responsibilities, we all put in an effort to contribute something.

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

An issue that I have been thinking a lot about lately is the value of archival labor. It seems like a regular thing at this point to hear a story about how a researcher or historian visited an archive and discovered a lost piece of history. What so many of these stories neglect to say is who enabled that person to find that item. Even if a story acknowledges that the researcher used a finding aid or consulted with an archivist, there never seems to be any acknowledgment of the work that archivists do to make the materials available and accessible. This, to me, shows an inherent problem that archivists face. People may know we exist but they don’t know what we do or why it’s important. If the public at large doesn’t understand our work then they can’t value it. While they may think that the materials we work with are treasures, they fail to understand that those treasures can’t be preserved and accessed unless someone does some kind of work.  This lack of understanding can also contribute to the anger people feel when they can’t access something they want. Without understanding what we do, people can’t understand the framework we work within and how that can restrict use of a collection or material. By helping people understand what we do as archivists, we can help them gain a greater understanding of what archives are and why our work is so valuable.

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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.

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Research Post: Gaps in the Collections

The I&A News Monitoring Research Team stays abreast of news related to archives and archivists, and helps us stay updated. This post, part of our Research Post series, was written by News Monitoring Team member Rachel Cohen. 

 

History is told by the victors. For too long, the evidence of that history has been missing minority voices. On the heels of the #MeToo movement and the Charlottesville protest, society has been looking inwards towards racist and sexist gaps. Archivists are recognizing that our collections are frequently reflecting the identity of their stewards, a group largely composed of white individuals.

The collective idea of history as an elevated, almost posh concept for the elite is waning. The past is becoming more accessible to the everyday person in ordinary places outside of the occasionally intimidating archive or expensive museum.

In Chicago, black women well known by textbooks and never recognized, now have a guidebook documenting their legacies through geographic locations. An article in the Chicago Tribune interviews authors Mariame Kaba and Essence McDowell on their documentation of the South Side of Chicago’s African American women. Forty women during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from pilot Bessie Coleman to the abolitionist Fannie Hagen Emanuel, are highlighted on maps throughout the city for their accomplishments. The authors were not paid for their work and published the book on top of their full time jobs. “People haven’t taken the time to really know black women, in our fullness as three-dimensional human beings,” Kaba explained. “I want people to think about what these women did, the stories they told, the music they made, the institutions they built and how it’s connected to black women’s lives today.”

The New York Times tried to correct the historical record by writing obituaries for overlooked women throughout the paper’s history. They solicited nominations and received submissions from readers that included famous women and their own deceased relatives. Accessible at “Overlooked,” the reporters are collating obituaries dating back to 1851.

Since 1888, National Geographic has been informing its readership about foreign lands, exotic animals, and racist coverage of minorities. As reported in “‘National Geographic’ Reckons With Its Past,” the magazine scoured its archive in anticipation of an edition solely devoted to race. The textual references, photographs, and choice of subjects in the magazine’s coverage upheld a tradition of racism that influenced generations of readers. Glossing over the ugly parts of history that don’t show people in the best light is wrong. The photographs in the magazine up until the 1970’s fetishized the “otherness” of certain groups in order to make them seem subhuman in comparison to Western, white culture. Women were often shown topless and images were framed in stereotypical manners without giving voice to the subjects. The so-called exotic practices of the people were emphasized in order to not report on the negative parts of their lives, like war or hunger. The magazine is increasing its list of diverse voices in response to their report.

Contemporary interpretations of history have had the tendency to try erase the struggles of people, to the point of war and death, for a better world. Confederate statues, largely put up in the twentieth century, ignited a nation-wide debate this year with how the present day culture deals with the notion of slavery and racism generations later. The last slaves have died, as have their children. How should we place the rampant practice of slavery in the present day interpretations of history?

A new historical marker in Memphis shows how history can include recognizing the negative aspects of the past. This prime example comes from the Jefferson Davies Highway, which still has remnants you can drive on throughout the Southern states. Memphis and the National Park Services expanded a 1955 sign honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest to include his participation in the antebellum slave trade. Prior to the additional words on the marker, the fifty-five words on Forrest only said that “business enterprises made him wealthy.” It is now the only sign in Memphis that connects the city to slave trading. Forrest was only one of several slave traders on Adams Street, where the sign is located, who bought and sold kidnapped African slaves despite the 1808 congressional ban on slave importation.

Revealing these hidden histories will take time and introspection by those in power, but the articles of this past month have shown some steps towards a more inclusive reading of the past. As archivists, we are in a unique position to fill in gaps in our collections that marginalize groups.

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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.

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Hiding in Plain Sight: Archives and Popular Culture

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, Cate Peebles. Cate is the NDSR Art fellow at the Yale Center for British Art, where she works with permanent-collection-related born-digital records. 

Lately there have been rumblings on the internet regarding the deadness and/or dying of the library and archival professions, which is nothing new, but it strikes me as a particularly myopic death knell considering the omnipresence of records-related headlines (emails, JFK, cyber-attacks, etc…) and the ongoing relevance of archival work, both traditional and digital. The professions are changing, as the nature of information creation and sharing changes, but our work and ideals remain crucial to a society that values the open exchange of ideas.

Since beginning my career as an archivist in 2015, I have developed a heightened awareness of the proliferation of archives, “the archive,” and archival documents represented in popular culture. I can’t binge watch my way through the latest Netflix series without at least once hitting an imaginary buzzer on the couch and yelling “Archives!” to anyone (or no one) who happens to be next to me. But at the same time, there is also something—or someone—missing in these moments of recognition: the archivist. Where are we in the popular imagination? The results of our work are everywhere, yet representations of actual archivists are few and far between. Of course, it is traditional in our profession to be behind the scenes and to leave no trace once we have “shuffle[d] the damn papers” (O’Toole, 1993).

This has led me to wonder about the role of the archivist in society, how we are seen or ignored, and how our work is vital to so many creative pursuits beyond the expected use of archival sources by historians. Archival materials are used by poets, visual artists, and filmmakers to deepen their work and as “the narrative marrow and aesthetic backbone” (Paletz, 2013) of their pieces.  In this post, I will explore one popular genre that notably relies on archives: the true crime documentary.

Beginning with Errol Morris’s seminal film, The Thin Blue Line (1987), modern true crime documentaries place records in a starring role alongside interviewees; these records are narratively and aesthetically significant.  In the last couple of years, such films have been everywhere: Making a Murderer, The Jinx, Serial (podcast), OJ; Made in America, and The Keepers, to name a few, and new titles continue to appear (such as Morris’s new film Wormwood).  

This notable trend builds upon a literary genre that has been popular for centuries—the crime serial—and modernizes it with an emphasis on theatrical legal drama (Silbey, 2010), records, and recordkeeping. The visual power of records is matched by their power to effect real change in the lives of the films’ subjects. In the case of Morris’s subject Randall Dale Adams in The Thin Blue Line, his exoneration came about as a result of the film; we see this happening again with The Jinx, the Paradise Lost trilogy, and the podcast Serial, which establishes a strong link between filmmakers’ use of archival resources and criminal justice causes that result in activism.

And with the proliferation of sources available online and in various media, filmmakers have access to materials beyond newsreels and photographs. Taking center screen in many of these true crime films are: home movies, cell phone records, police documents, interview transcripts, handwriting samples, and police interviews with suspects (custodial interviews).

In film, as in other visual media, records carry symbolic weight (O’Toole, 1993). In each of the docu-series discussed here, records constitute much of what is seen on screen. Having “gained independence from its conventional role as historical wallpaper” (Paletz, 2013), archival footage, and footage of archival materials, now drives the action.

Unlike the traditional guts and gore we have come to expect from crime stories, records convey a familiar, quotidian side of human logic that contrasts the inherent sensationalism of the genre. Records, representing truth, drive visual narrative and on-screen action; they also provide the viewer with access to potential answers and a satisfying resolution.

 

Examples of archives in pop culture includes:

The Jinx (HBO, directed by Andrew Jarecki, 2015)

Estranged real estate heir, Robert Durst, is the central figure in three murder cases: his wife, his neighbor, and his best friend, Susan Berman. His story is bizarre and ongoing. Oddly, it was Durst himself who approached Jarecki and offered access to his personal papers (3). Each episode presents records used to further the story in a variety of ways: 

  • Reenactments based on crime scene photos
  • Handwriting samples
  • Highlighted interview transcripts
  • Newspapers, crime photos, tabloids.

The crux of this series, and the subsequent re-arrest of Robert Durst, lies in the unearthing of a handwritten note from Durst to victim Susan Berman found in the personal papers kept by her stepson, Sareb Kaufman. Kaufman serves as a kind of amateur “citizen archivist” or keeper of records that link Durst to the murder of Susan Berman.

The Jinx, which is full of interviews and oral history interviews, is itself a new record of the crimes it represents, documenting the relationship between filmmaker and subject along with the subject’s continued role as suspect. The film is a well-constructed result of careful research and Jarecki credits many archival sources at the end of each episode.

Making a Murderer (Netflix, directed by Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, 2015)

Created over 10 years, this series explores the life and trials of Steven Avery, a man convicted of murder and exonerated after 18 years in prison in 2003, only to be arrested and convicted of murder again in 2007. Many questions arise regarding the Wisconsin criminal justice system and local police department’s handling of Avery’s case(s) and that of his nephew, Brendan Dassey. The film’s focus on the legal system and court room activity also highlights the importance of evidentiary records over time and the need for adequate stewardship of legal and public records.

Pivotal use of records in the series includes:

  • Possible evidence tampering, case files and police evidence
  • Cell phone metadata
  • Police interviews and custodial interrogations
  • Court and police dept. documents

The filmmakers use of documents and police footage led to the overturned conviction of Brendan Dassey after his pre-arrest police interviews were found to show a coerced confession (Almasy, 2016). Like The Jinx, this series is a compilation of many years’ research and is itself documentation of Wisconsin’s criminal justice system and the Avery family.

The Keepers (Netflix, directed by Ryan White, 2017)

These clues to what [the past] was linger on in a place like this attic. These objects hold energy…Tom Nugent, Journalist, “The Keepers”

This is a series as much about memory as it is about solving a long-cold case. As the title suggests, its protagonists are keepers of memory, truth-seekers and literal stewards, collecting stories related to the murder of their teacher, Sister Cathy Cesnik. They also investigate the role of the Diocese of Baltimore in covering up sexual abuse at area schools.

The Keepers taps into what it means to steward ephemeral fragments of a larger story, delving into the psychology of memory, abuse survival, and the emotional work of recordkeeping.

Led by a team of citizen researcher-archivists and advocates, the women at the center of this series “went into this collecting information…every bit of scrap…every story” seeking answers where the absence of records leaves an endless trail of questions.  

 

Film invigorates archival records, inviting new eyes and reinterpretation. Records participate in the narratives and underpin the criminal justice causes and retrials instigated by these series.

These documentaries highlight records as active participants in ongoing investigations rather than mere static referents—but they do not rise magically from nowhere. Archival records, both analog and digital, require ongoing stewardship and preservation if they are to remain accessible to creators and researchers. We see stacks of papers and boxes pulled from shelves, but actual archives and archivists are often absent. There is no “popular” image of an archivist and yet we are more present than ever, however unseen we may be. Without records and their keepers, there are no stories to tell.

Other Viewing and Listening
  • The Thin Blue Line (Morris, 1988)
  • Serial (Koenig, 2014- )
  • Capturing the Friedmans (Jarecki, 2003)
  • OJ: Made in America (Edelman, 2016)
  • Paradise Lost Trilogy (Berlinger and Sinofsky, 1996-2011)

 

References

Almasy, Steve. ‘Making a Murderer’: Brendan Dassey conviction overturned. CNN.com, August 12, 2016.

Bagli, Charles V.; Yee, Vivian. On HBO’s ‘The Jinx’ Robert Durst Says He ‘Killed them all’. The New York Times, March 15, 2015.

O’Toole, James. The Symbolic Significance of Archives. The American Archivist, 1993. 234-255 

Palatz, Gabriel, “The Archives in Contemporary Documentary,” POV 83 (Fall 2011), available at http://povmagazine.com/articles/view/the-archive-in-contemporary-documentary

Silbey, Jessica M., Evidence Verité and the Law of Film (April 24, 2010). Cardozo Law Review, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 1257-1299, 2010; Suffolk University Law School Research Paper No. 10-23

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Steering Share: Lisa Calahan

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

Lisa Calahan
Steering Committee member Lisa Calahan
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOUR JOB OR THE ARCHIVES PROFESSION?

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

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

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

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

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

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Research Post: The Evolving Landscape of Collecting Protest Material, Part 2

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 two 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.

 

In the first part of this two-part series, we discussed digital, social media, and other online materials that can be collected to form archives. Forming bodies of these digital artifacts carries legal consequences and privacy issues for the folks whose information is collected, but such work also has issues around narrative and interpretation. Below are two lists: one is a list of projects and tools that use social media and online materials in documenting history, and the other is a bibliography where the work as well as its related issues are discussed.

Projects and tools

  • A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland. Digital repository that “collects, preserves, and shares the stories, memories, and accounts of police violence as experienced or observed by Cleveland citizens.” Partnership between Cleveland residents and professional archivists.
  • Baltimore Uprising 2015 Archive Project. Digital repository “that seeks to preserve and make accessible original content that was captured and created by individual community members, grassroots organizations, and witnesses to the protests that followed the death of Freddie Gray on April 19, 2015.” This is a collaborative project of Maryland Historical Society, university faculty, museums and community orgs.
  • DocNow. “Tool and a community developed around supporting the ethical collection, use, and preservation of social media content.”
  • Documenting Ferguson. Project of Washington University St. Louis. “Freely available resource that seeks to preserve and make accessible the digital media captured and created by community members following the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014.”
  • Trump Protest Archive. “Self funded digital repository, collecting [photographs of] items of material culture from protest events relating to the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump and the early part of his administration.”

List of further readings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Legal consequences and privacy issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Issues of narrative and interpretation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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ICYMI: NHPC Camping Con, “Outside Public History”

Our ICYMI series provide summaries of presentations, publications, webinars, and other educational opportunities that are of interest to I&A members. If you have an issue you would like to write about for this blog series or a previous post that you would like to respond to, please email archivesissues@gmail.com. The following is from I&A Steering Committee member Stephanie Bennett, Collections Archivist, Wake Forest University.

This past fall, I spent a long weekend, 2016 October 7-9, at a National Council on Public History camping conference in Great Smoky Mountains National Park with the theme “Outside Public History.” It was a conference focused on public history in the outdoors, in honor of the National Parks centennial, aimed at discussing “issues related to historic and contemporary public history as it took/takes place in outdoor leisure spaces.” Notably, this was a *camping* conference – we all slept in tents at a couple of group campsites in GSMNP – for those familiar with the park, in its Cades Cove area.

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Many of my archives colleagues across America have spoken highly of NCPH annual conferences, so I was excited to be able to attend an NCPH event. This conference had a lot of pros for me: it was local-ish – a less than  6-hour drive; gave me an opportunity to engage with historians, which as Collections Archivist is a treat; focused on physical spaces, which I’m into and which I think we could do more with given our collections related to the University and Baptist churches; involved campfire and s’mores; and as a bonus, was very reasonably priced. So I packed up my tent, sleeping bag, and a cooler (to be stored in a car because BEARS), and headed to Tennessee. I was able to carpool with a group of graduate students from NC State, one of whom was my tent mate for the weekend, and heard about their scholarship, interests, and music tastes (#Hamiltunes).

The conference was really excellent. It was small – about 45 people, I believe – so we were able to meet and hear from almost everyone there. We were all there together, so we were all equally damp, unshowered, and attired; it leveled the playing field in ways that normal conferences cannot. Dinners were provided but we brought our own breakfasts and lunches, often sharing among the group. In the mornings and at breaks, we drank coffee and tea fresh from the camp stoves in our own cups. Most sessions involved taking in the scenery in short walks.

As with most conferences, I didn’t attend a session that I didn’t like. On Friday, Brian Forist, a PhD student at Indiana University, gave a talk on “two-way interpretation” (basically, how parks share historical and natural information) that had me thinking about the way we present information in archives. Do we leave room for a variety of understandings, or do we put non-factual information in a way that makes it seem more factual, set in stone? Interpretation literature might be of interest to archivists exploring that aspect of our field.

I also loved hearing about what archival information people were using and how they were finding those materials. One of the NC State graduate students, Derek Huss, had studied Appalachian Trail Conservancy newsletters looking at 1970s thru-hikers experience of the trail, and others’ perception of them. If those newsletters were digitized using OCR, Derek or others would be able to perform an in-depth textual analysis of the newsletter’s presumed change in tenor over time.

For those of us very engaged in improved diversity and inclusion in our communities, Saturday night’s keynote is of interest. Led by Dr. Tamaria Warren, an environmental specialist for the US Army, we discussed Dr Carolyn Finney’s book Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors and how that affects us all, as individuals and in our professional pursuits. Dr. Warren discussed her research into African-American perceptions of environmentalism in Detroit and Columbia, SC, as well, which was really interesting. When you hear the world “environmentalist,” what comes to mind? And what can we learn from those preconceptions in order to communicate better about environmental pursuits?

Again, the nature of campsites allowed these conversations to be open – although (as a quick-to-talk person, I’m always thinking about this) probably more could have been done to encourage the quieter folks to speak up. The small size also allowed us to really see each other, break bread, talk s’more innards (Reese’s cups are not to be trusted, I don’t care what anyone says) and history, public spaces, new theories, etc. I was amazed at how many attendees were first-time campers; struggling with gear, talking about leave no trace practices, and shared dampness were good icebreakers.

On a personal, smaller note: I became really aware of how much one person can save with reusable utensils, mugs, plates, and napkins. I am now more committed to traveling with a mug, water bottle, and even my spork in tow because: why not?

More information about this inaugural (but hopefully not last!) Camping Con are available on its Twitter feed and the conference website (there were no printed programs), as well.

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Leaders of AACR, LACCHA, LAGAR on Orlando & Archivists’ Role in Creating a More Diverse Society

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Below is a post from leaders of the Archivists and Archives of Color Roundtable [now Archivists and Archives of Color Section], the Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives Roundtable, and the Lesbian and Gay Archives Roundtable [now Diverse Sexuality and Gender Section].  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.

49 individuals were killed and 53 injured at the gay nightclub, The Pulse. The majority of those killed or injured were Latinx and members or allies of the Orlando LGBTQIA community.  It was an act of violence so painful that our hearts ache from the pain of it, and our minds are reeling from the fear of it.  The act now joins the countless others etched in our individual and communal memories.

In addition to processing our emotional response on an individual, local community, and organizational level, we are now asked to respond on behalf of SAA AACR, LACCHA, and LAGAR membership. How can a few speak for so many intersections of cultural and personal understanding? It’s not possible—but we can respond from our professional experience as archivists.

As archivists, we  know that recording and preserving the contexts surrounding acts of violence and oppression can provide those who come after us examples of the intersections of communities and relationships. Thus, the histories, hardships and accomplishments of the marginalized and underrepresented must be understood and reflected in the archives. Additionally, archives must document the ability of these groups to resist the systematic cultural erasure that occurs on a global level.

We ask that you, fellow archivists, take a moment to be aware of how your personal biases and privilege might be reflected in what and how you collect, to accept that, and work to change the ones that hinder the progress and inclusion of others. To quote the May 2011 SAA Core Values of Archivists, “Archivists embrace the importance of identifying, preserving, and working with communities to actively document those whose voices have been overlooked or marginalized.” But you cannot document those who are overlooked and marginalized if you cannot see us, or cannot confront your own biases.

As archivists, we cannot accept invisibility. As a profession, we cannot continue to accept historical erasure and whitewashing through binary historical practices.

Aaisha Haykal, Senior Chair, Archivists and Archives of Color Roundtable
Harrison Inefuku, Vice Chair, Archivists and Archives of Color Roundtable

George Apodaca, Co-Chair, Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives Roundtable
Margarita Vargas-Betancourt, Co-Chair, Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives Roundtable

Lisa Calahan, Co-Chair, Lesbian and Gay Archives Roundtable
Daniel DiLandro, Co-Chair, Lesbian and Gay Archives Roundtable

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