Tag: internships

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.

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Steering Share: Meet Andrea Belair

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of new Vice Chair / Chair-Elect Andrea Belair, Library Project Specialist at the Clark Art Institute. She is left her position as chair in Sept. 2022, upon accepting a new job as a school librarian near her record store.

What was your first experience working with archives?

I wish I could say that I’d had experience in an archive before I was in graduate school, but I can’t remember any. They always sounded cool and mysterious, but I didn’t really work with archives much until my first internship during graduate school, where I processed a small collection of records of the local fire department. The internship was at the North Jersey History and Genealogical Center in Morristown, New Jersey, and I had to travel there by train from Rutgers in New Brunswick. I created a finding aid in EAD, the records themselves were very dirty, so I had to clean them off and asked tons of questions about everything I did. The archivist there was great as a person and as a professional. This was only a part of an internship that had many facets, but I think processing that collection made me feel that I’d like a goal of becoming an archivist, although I was often told back then that I’d never find a job in archiving so I was trying to keep my hopes minimal. 

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

As many others have said with this question, it’s hard to answer because there are so many issues that are so important. I am always thinking about climate change but I’m not sure what archivists really can do about it, and I think about decolonization a lot. However, one issue that has been hitting close to home lately for me is that of mental health. I know that archivists are not alone in this whatsoever. Lots of archivists take a beating when it comes to their mental health, and this is one area in which much of the general workforce became more aware of during the pandemic. I have just changed jobs, but the toxicity of some of my former workplaces, combined with things like the stress of a low salary, and especially the lack of recognition for your work, can really take their toll on one’s mental health. I have been in situations where supervisors didn’t understand what I did and didn’t trust that I understood it either, and that could be very stressful and taxing. It’s hard to constantly feel the need to prove yourself and your worth, and it has led me into some very dark places mentally. Once I even asked a supervisor outright to try to trust me because I’d like their support, to which the response was that they hadn’t been the one to hire me (although they had indeed hired me) and that was rather demoralizing. It takes advocacy to an entirely new level when you need to try to uphold respect for the profession while trying to advocate for recognition for yourself as an individual who deserves respect as a human being. This really comes down to workplaces in general, but many archivists are employed in academia, which can sometimes have tendencies to maintain a toxic hierarchy that can be hard to change. I cannot imagine how frustrating this must be for others who don’t have the levels of privileges that I’ve had.

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

I would very much like to regain my focus and become more involved in advocacy for the archival profession. As I said in the last question, I think I’ve become a bit out of the loop and focused a lot on my personal circumstances lately, and I’d really like to connect my experiences with the profession in general again. I am now working in a museum, which is quite different from the academic environments that I’ve been involved in for some time, so it will be interesting to be able to see issues and advocacy that arise within this framework. I’m already seeing a lot of differences. 

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

I love hiking and I co-own a record store with my husband. Now that winter is here, I’m outside a little less often and inside the record store more often. 

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Steering Share: Meet Caitlin Rizzo

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of the Steering Committee member, Caitlin Rozzo, Archivist at the Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. Other members currently on the I&A Steering Committee include Danielle Simpkins, Burkely Hermann, Sheridan Sayles, Liz Call, Holly Rose McGee, and Claire Gordon.

What was your first experience working with archives?
This is always a favorite question of mine! The first time I encountered the archive, I was a sophomore in college. In the spring, I decided to launch myself head first into a project that I was objective unqualified to perform and I applied for a summer job as a Research Assistant for a professor on campus, Dr. Marguerite Rippy. I spent what felt like a magical summer researching an all-black production of Macbeth that Orson Welles directed as part of his work with the Federal Theatre Project, which required me to go to places like the Library of Congress and National Archives and Records Association. I remember very distinctly my first ever trip to an archive was the Library of Congress. The day before I met with Dr. Rippy who told me very plainly that the goal for the first day was simply to get my research card and warned me that the first day of research you always feel very lost and a little like an idiot, so as long as I got the card I should celebrate my success. Fast forward to a very confused 19 year old wondering in the tunnels (I am not even sure how I got there) at 3:00 p.m. so desperate to leave and so terrified of asking for help that I followed a group of people with suitcases around for about ten minutes hoping somehow that suitcases signified an intent to leave a building. (Truly, who would drag around suitcases if they were just planning to Sorkin walk through the tunnel? This part of the story remains a mystery.) The good news is that an hour later, I did manage to find the exit and, utterly disoriented, make my way to the metro. I kept coming back and about a week later I made my first archival “discovery”—a little advertisement for the show in Texas where the black-cast was segregated from white production staff. Two years later, when I was searching for internships I applied to the Library of Congress Junior Fellowship program. I ended up staying there for three fabulous years (and, reader, I still wound up lost in those tunnels again and again, but seriously it remains very worth it.)

What is an archival issue that means a lot to you?
This is difficult for me to answer because there are a lot of things that concern me in archives. I was incredibly fortunate to get my MLIS at the University of Maryland when Dr. Ricardo Punzalan was teaching there and I often repeat a phrase he would say that feels central to my engagement with and love of archives: “History is offensive. If it doesn’t offend you, then you might not be looking that closely.” He is such an amazing example of how a critical approach to a subject is born out of a great love for that subject and a belief in that subject’s value. This is a nice way to say that many things concern me, but that’s probably because I actively strive to be a person who is concerned and who is attentive to the struggles of others.

I would say if I had to pick one thing to talk about in this moment that issue would be divestment and prison abolition in archives and special collections. I am part of a wonderful group that meets regularly to talk about the ways the ideologies of the prison-industrial-complex pervade special collections and the ways that we benefit as a profession from prisons and prison labor. I recently have been working on a statement and thinking about how to phrase this for folks that might think that Special Collections exists in another universe from the systemic oppression of millions of the most vulnerable populations and communities around us. I think for me the idea that right now in the United States about 2.3 million people are desperately in need of evidence, of records, of proof to set themselves free should feel sinister to us as archivists. How does that word ‘evidence’ that sustains our positions (our jobs, our material wealth, and our freedom) condemn others? What do we have to do with that if we benefit from it? And truly how do two worlds seem at first so completely separate? I know of several librarians that work with incarcerated populations but very few archivists have anything to do with the incarcerated. Why is that? There are researchers, users, scholars (whatever you would like to call them that would connote to you their worthiness) who happen to be incarcerated. I have read their poetry, transcribed their letters, and maintained their work in the archive. I think we owe these individuals something better.

What do you hope to gain by being on the I&A Steering Committee?
I hope to gain a sense of how advocacy can work in technical services. I’ve actually just started a new position that is a little more capacious, but previously all of my archival experience centered on technical or collection services. Most recently, I served as the Head of Collection Services for the Eberly Family Special Collections Library, but I often find that the work can sometimes feel unconnected from the conversations that seem the most interesting and necessary for the profession. I think largely that’s been changing with the incredible work of archivists that are tackling issues like redescription and reparative processing; however, I have found that it can be challenging to argue for advocacy in technical services. There is always the backlog, there is always software that need refinement or managing. I think of the words technical debt which always weigh heavy on your shoulders in technical services. Sometimes I think technical services gets too weighed down by those burdens of the “traditional” work of processing, description, and digitization to get to participate fully in these conversations, but the best professional development work I ever got to do was attend a Project STAND conference in Chicago and hear former Black Panthers speak to their experience with archives and activism. Those kinds of experiences feel vital and necessary to the work I do. The technology and the archival labor is not neutral. When you are so stuck trying to catch up with other institutions or new rules, it can feel really challenging to engage in what some people might cast as “value-added” work. The truth is that engaging critically with the issues and advocacy around the practice is foundational and necessary work for all of us. I firmly believe it cannot be additional or optional.

What can we find you doing outside of the archival profession?
Well, lately my love of loafing and people watching has been cut short by the pandemic. I am at my core such a literature nerd, but somehow this also translates to a deep love for really “bad art.” I love bad poetry, strange/awkward one man shows, bad movies—I like seeing the things that don’t quite work out or materialize the way you thought they would. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the podcast “How Did This Get Made?” but I could listen to that endlessly. I also love podcasts from this moment deep in quarantine. The “Still Processing” podcast just came back and I could listen to the episode that breaks down the culture of public apologies a million times over. Other than that, I am generally playing around with one of my own failed crafting projects and loving on my furry family (one dog, two bunnies, and many unrealized plans for expansion of the pack).

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Steering Shares: Advice your current professional self would tell to your young professional self regarding a particular issue

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of committee member Sheridan Leigh Sayles, technical services archivist at Seton Hall University.

My archival career started at an intersection between the library world and the museum world. As an undergraduate with experience and passion in both, I settled on archiving as a way to be able to be more hands-on with historic materials while having closer to the job security of a librarian. Right?

AngryGoldenIsabellinewheatear-mobile

So I dove in; I racked up a number of part time jobs in libraries, museums, in archives. I had almost a full resume of experiences before even starting graduate school, and graduated after adding a GA, part-time job, and two more internships on that list. And I was one of the fortunate ones who found a job only 3 months after graduating.

Now as an early-to-mid career archivist (when exactly do we become mid-career again? This is what happens when I let the imposter syndrome in), I thank my early 20s self every day for getting in that extra internship and doing that little extra reading. And while I currently serve on I&A to try and reduce the hoops I had to jump through for future archivists, I still want to tell my younger self this:

  1. You never know where you’re going to end up, so embrace the ride.
    • If you had told me that my first job would be as an archivist for a political collection? I might have laughed at you. If you told me that one thing that got me that interview was a 40 hour volunteer position weeding government documents, I might have laughed even harder. And now that I’ve completed that term position and met a number of fantastic colleagues through it, I’m grateful to have had the opportunity that I couldn’t have imagined—and am growing a professional identity from it. I’m also happy that my wide range of internships leading up to that position gave me plenty of insight going into that position. Which leads to point 2…
  2. All experience is good experience – but only if you learn from it.
    • Probably my biggest heartbreak as an emerging professional was getting too optimistic about a job prospect too soon. Twice I took and continued with internships with the possibility of a job at the end of it and both times they fell through. So while we can’t control budget cuts or federal-ese, I have learned to manage my expectations and be transparent. Now when I take on interns, I outline what I hope for them to learn on the job, share advice when I can, and be open while still being encouraging. I also usually tell them…
  3. You only need one job, so don’t let rejections discourage you.
    • I think I applied to about 80-100 jobs when I got out of graduate school, and I stayed up more nights than I wish to count crying over anxiety of whether or not it would be worth it. The perfect job may come right out of grad school, it may come after 6 or more months, or after years of mediocre jobs strung together. So plan for the worst, hope for the best, and trust yourself.

Now good luck out there!

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Steering Share: Meet Sara DeCaro

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of committee member Sara DeCaro, the university archivist at Baker University Library. 

 

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I was lucky enough receive the Mary Louise Meder Internship in the State Archives division of the Kansas Historical Society when I was working on my MLS. It was a great introduction to archives, and it was paid! I wrote finding aids for two collections of personal papers and did some work with Kansas Memory, the KSHS’ digital image website. I enjoyed every minute of it, too. It reaffirmed my decision to pursue a career in archives.

 

 

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

I initially became a part of I&A because I had never served on a committee in any of the professional organizations I belong to, and I&A seemed to match my interests. This is my second year on the steering committee, and I already feel like I’ve gained a lot. Having the opportunity to work on our temporary labor survey was meaningful to me personally, as someone who has held temporary positions in the past, and although analyzing all that data was a bit challenging, I learned a great deal. One of my Steering Shares from last year also led to participation in a panel discussion at the Annual Meeting in July, which was also a very worthwhile experience.

 

 

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

Low wages in the archives profession is a very important issue, in my opinion, and one that I’ve been able to explore as a result of my involvement in this committee. That was the focus of the panel discussion I mentioned before. It’s a widespread problem in the archives world, for a number of reasons. I knew that after reading the responses to our survey, but listening to the other panelists and hearing their stories made the scope of the problem very clear. I like being able to contribute to a solution, even if it is in a small way.

 

 

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

I’ve recently started volunteering with Kansas City Pet Project, my local animal shelter. I wasn’t ready for a new pet when my cat passed away, but I missed cats and wanted to be around them. Shelter environments can be stressful for cats, so I’m glad I can give them a little comfort.

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Steering Share: Meet Courtney Dean

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

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1) What was your first experience working with archives?

As an undergrad I wrote a paper on the history of May Day in Boston using mircrofilm copies of old newspapers, but that’s as close I got to anything remotely archival for a long time. When I was thinking about grad school I came across the Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) and the Riot Grrrl collection at Fales and was disabused of the notion that archives are stuffy and elite. Then I found out “archivist” was an actual job and was completely sold. My grad school internships were at the Wende Museum of the Cold War, Pacifica Radio Archives, and LACMA. I worked with artifacts and artworks; ¼ inch audiotapes; and institutional records. While in grad school I also worked in the Center for Primary Research and Training in UCLA Library Special Collections, a program I now head. There I had the opportunity to work on collections from the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives as part of their partnership with UCLA Library.  

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

This is my third(!) and last year on the Steering Committee and I hope to contribute to both the continuity and sustainability of the section and its ongoing work. So much volunteer work is thankless and burnout-prone, but I’ve always appreciated how I&A’s charge is broad enough for folks to pursue issues of importance to them. The enthusiasm of my fellow steering committee members is infectious, and I look forward to pushing forward conversations around issues facing the profession. 

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

Fair and ethical archival labor has been something I’ve been passionate about for a long time- everything from paid internships to temp labor to salary transparency and barriers to entry in the profession. Aside from I&A, I participate in the Digital Library Federation’s (DLF) Labor Working group, co-chair the Society of California Archivists (SCA) Labor Issues Task Force, and am on the organizing and issues committees for the librarian unit of my union. Right now a lot of this work involves data collection, which can hopefully be leveraged to better advocate for change. Like others have mentioned, I’ve also started thinking more and more about the environmental impact of the profession- flying to conferences, digital storage, etc. 

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

Way too much of my free time has been devoted to archives adjacent activities, but I’m trying to get better with boundaries and work life balance. I play guitar in a punk band called Red Rot, just joined a rad book club, and am obsessed with my cat, Walrus. (My other feline bff Potato just passed away last week which was really hard.) I’m also currently watching Deadwood for the first time.

 

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ICYMI: I&A’s Temp Labor Survey

Our ICYMI series provide summaries of presentations, publications, webinars, and other educational opportunities that are of interest to I&A members. If you have an issue you would like to write about for this blog series or a previous post that you would like to respond to, please email archivesissues@gmail.com. The following is from Courtney Dean,  Head of the Center for Primary Research and Training in UCLA Library Special Collections. 

Some of you may remember that I&A launched a survey earlier this year to gather preliminary data about the state of temporary labor in archives. (A PDF of the questions can be found via our public facing survey documentation: https://tinyurl.com/TempArchives. We intended for this data to gird conversations about archival labor and to serve as one piece of a series of ongoing labor advocacy efforts across LAM professions. 

A subteam of the I&A Steering Committee- Sara DeCaro, Steve Duckworth, Rachel Mandell, and me, along with I&A member Angel Diaz, took a DIY approach to both developing and analyzing the survey. (Many thanks to Lana Munip, Analysis and Planning Consultant, Pennsylvania State University, for her assistance.) Major themes and takeaways were shared out at the joint I&A/SNAP section meeting at SAA’s Annual Meeting in Austin. Since two of us are from California, and one of us was getting married, Steve Duckworth kindly presented on the results, on his birthday. (Thanks again, Steve!) Those slides are available here: I-A-Survey-presentation

Not surprisingly, many of the results supported current assumptions- archivists in precarious positions are for the most part anxious, stressed, and actively looking for work, even while temporarily employed. Academic libraries create the most temp positions, and interestingly, funding for temp positions, over half of the time, comes from the institution itself, not grant funding. What this means is that that the widespread perception of temp labor being caused by overreliance on grant funding is patently false. (For the raw quantitative survey data see the full spreadsheet: https://tinyurl.com/TempArchives)

Angel Diaz and I also shared out the results of I&A’s survey during a panel on the state of temporary labor at the DLF Forum in Tampa, FL last month. I&A’s findings are congruent with the results of the Collective Responsibility project’s survey and white paper which focus on the experiences of grant-funded digital LAM workers. In other words, we’re all in this together. 

Many of us have been thinking a lot about how to move forward from data and information gathering into future advocacy phases. How do we leverage what we now know? 

In the immediate future, we can inspire and support others to do more in-depth research and amplify these conversations. Sheridan Sayles, a new member of the I&A Steering Committee, has been working with colleagues at the University of Delaware and NYU on a research project into the status of term-limited (project) archivists to help define the scope of project positions.

We can also collaborate. A lot of labor issues overlap. For example, some of us from I&A have joined recent salary advocacy efforts around SAA job board policies and salary transparency. You may have also seen the archives salary spreadsheet floating around. And recently several folks from the leadership of AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) have plugged into these conversations. I’ll also mention that the Society of California Archivists (SCA) formed a labor issues task-force, and the next Western Archives Meeting (WAM), a joint meeting with several of the western regional archival orgs, has central theme of Labor, Power, and Privilege. In short, these conversations are happening in increasingly more places. Let’s not reinvent the wheel go at it alone. Check out some of the resources below, and let us know who else out there is engaging in similar work. 

Resources

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Steering Share: Meet Committee Member Sheridan Leigh Sayles

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of committee member Sheridan Leigh Sayles, technical services archivist at Seton Hall University.

1) What was your first experience working with archives

SpringShare profile picI grew up in a town rooted in history—Richmond, VA—and always had a love and fascination with old things. When I went to undergrad, I started working in the Library and that inspired me to look into all aspects of heritage work. I enrolled in the Museum Studies minor and learned about exhibit design, preservation, and got the opportunity to intersperse practical work with my studies. I fell in love with the practice of handling the objects—I remember one day getting to see the preservation housing for an outfit worn by President James Monroe in Paris, and I knew I’d found the right career!

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

This is my first year on the Steering Committee, so I am still learning about what the committee does and how we affect SAA policy and all that good stuff, but I feel like we are in a good position to connect archivists with resources that can help them in their careers and with their interests. Through our blog and other resources, we can connect archivists at all stages of their careers with material to help them do their jobs better, or advocate for themselves and the practices they’d like to uphold. And I’m thrilled to be working with the I&A veterans and learning from them on how to affect change.

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

I’m really invested in archival labor and supporting early career professionals! I’m currently working with colleagues at University of Delaware and NYU on a research project into the status of term-limited (project) archivists and I’m hoping that our data can help define the scope of project positions. I think a big part of this question starts with ethical internships and making sure that the work they are doing will ultimately translate into success on the job market. Beyond that, I’ve been following the research on archivists and climate change and seeing recommendations on that.

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

I was a competitive figure skater in a past life, so you can often find me in an ice rink jumping, spinning, and all that good stuff, or coaching youngsters. It’s so rewarding taking my students to their first competitions, not only to see how much they’ve grown as skaters, but also to show them how hard work can pay off.

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Steering Share: Meet I&A’s New Chair Joanna Black

JoJoBlackSteering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of the chair of the I&A steering committee, Joanna Black, the archivist for Colby Library, Sierra Club national headquarters.

My name is Joanna Black, and I am the 2019-2020 chair of SAA’s Issues & Advocacy section. What an honor it is to be part of such an impactful and meaningful section, and it’s an equal honor to be working alongside very talented professionals in the section’s Steering Committee.

This is the first Steering Share blog post of the season, so please let me take a moment with the rest of my colleagues to tell you a little bit more about myself.

1) What was your first experience working with archives?

My first experience working with archives was in 2008 as an undergraduate student at San Francisco State University. I was looking for an internship and came across a listing for an “Archives Intern” at the University’s Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives. I didn’t know anything about archives, but it sounded mysterious enough for me to take a chance. Upon working with my first “archival object” – a 60 year old recording of an on-campus poetry reading from Allen Ginsberg – I knew immediately that there was something special about working with archival materials. I was hooked, and off to an MLIS program I went!

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

Actively participating in the I&A Steering Committee is such a privilege, and I hope to learn from my colleagues and fellow section members more about the issues that are most impactful to our profession. Additionally, I hope to learn some of the creative ways in which those issues are being tackled both inside and outside of SAA. Being part of a small profession places extra importance on building strong professional communities, and I aim to build this with fellow section members as well as with SAA members more broadly. By the end of my tenure as chair, I hope to know many more SAA members on a first name basis and learn more about their experiences working in the archives profession.

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

Advocating for the importance of the archival profession is a really important issue to me. Our jobs are made so much more difficult when, on top of our impossible workloads, we are tasked with advocating for our positions – even within our own organizations! Each of us entered the archival profession because the work means something significant to us, and communicating that passion to others is an important way to strengthen public awareness around the significance of our work. As much as I like being a secret superhero of cultural heritage, broader awareness of the archives profession would help ensure job and funding stability, public engagement with cultural and historical resources, and a possible societal shift in how we think about our past, present, and future heritage.

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

When I’m not thinking about memory, metadata, or manuscripts, I enjoy the simpler things in domestic life: writing, reading, gardening, listening to music, playing with my two cats, and taking walks through the gorgeous California redwoods surrounding my home in Oakland, California. I also really love sleeping. 

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Steering Share: Conversations on Labor Practices in Archives

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

Despite the continuing prevalence of institutions relying on temporary labor and unpaid internships, and individuals leaving the profession (including I&A’s own Vice-Chair Summer Espinoza) because it simply isn’t a sustainable way to make a living, I am heartened that conversations around labor practices in archives are happening with increased frequency and volume. I expressed a similar sentiment back in October, when I presented as part of a panel entitled “Building Community & Solidarity: Disrupting Exploitative Labor Practices in Libraries and Archives” at the DLF Forum in Las Vegas. The panel briefly explored a number of issues including unpaid internships; the proliferation of temporary, contract, and grant-funded labor; ad hoc and siloed conversations around these issues; the lack of POC in leadership positions; and the problematic expectations of “diversity work.” While current labor practices in GLAM professions disproportionately affect students, new career workers, and POC, it is these same populations who are leading the resistance to traditional white cis hetero patriarchal ableist LIS systems and enacting community building. (Here I’d like to shout out We Here, DERAIL, and the Los Angeles Archivists Collective.)

Building Community & Solidarity: Disrupting Exploitative Labor Practices in Libraries and Archives Panel at DLF in Las Vegas 2018

As Joyce Gabiola mentioned during the panel, the success of this type of organizing has a lot to do with community driven efforts, rather than trickle down initiatives. However, it should not have to be the responsibility of those most affected by a broken system to fix it. To this end, as I’ve mentioned before and will continue to advocate for, we can and should be leveraging our professional organizations to provide a platform, make space, and take a stand on labor issues. The DLF has been an exemplar in this regard, both with their conference programming (last year’s forum also included sessions on “Valuing Labor When You’re ‘The Man’”; student labor; and organizing for change) and through their Working Group on Labor. The latter, has been nothing short of an inspirational and I’d recommend that anyone interested in these issues to refer to their Research Agenda: Valuing Labor in Digital Libraries as well as the draft Guidelines for Developing and Supporting Grant-Funded Positions in Digital Libraries, Archives, and Museums. The Labor Working Group’s Ruth Kitchin Tillman and Sandy Rodriguez also received an IMLS grant for “Collective Responsibility: National Forum on Labor Practices for Grant-Funded Digital Positions” which will host two meetings in the coming months.

I am also thrilled that my state archival org, the Society of California Archivists (SCA), is in the beginning stages of forming their own group to address labor issues. (California archivists should look out for a meetup at the SCA AGM in Long Beach!) Early conversations point towards a project to develop a best practices document for the use of temporary employees in archives. This comes in conjunction with the SCA board’s statement in support of temporary archivists at UCLA in their grievance to the university and current SCA President, Teresa Mora’s President’s Message.

I’ve mentioned several of SAA’s efforts before and I’ll just add that Council’s decision to prohibit the posting of unpaid internships on SAA’s Job Board is a great move. To bring it back to I&A, the Steering Committee is (finally!) planning to launch our survey on temp labor in late winter/early spring to obtain some baseline data, and we are continually exploring ways in which we can advocate for ourselves as professional archivists in our capacity as section leaders. We’re aware there are so many other labor issues in our profession that need addressing: salaries; under-classified positions; a turn to using “paraprofessionals” for archival processing; a lack of a national union- the list goes on. We invite guest blog posts, Twitter chats, and any other type of dialogue to highlight and resist exploitative labor practices. You know where to find us.

Further reading and resources:

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