Archivists on the Issues: “Sensitive documents”, NARA’s role in declassification, and contested spaces

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Burkely Hermann, Metadata Librarian for the National Security Archive and current I&A Blog Coordinator. There will be spoilers for RWBY Season 2.

A Schnee Dust Company representative warns Weiss Schnee that there are “sensitive documents” on the list of files Weiss requested in a season 2 episode of RWBY

Recently, I was rewatching the young adult animated series, RWBY, and forgot that there is an episode including a scene where one of the protagonists, Weiss Schnee, a daughter of an unscrupulous company executive, requests files from her parent’s company, the Schnee Dust Company (SDC). In the season two episode, “A Minor Hiccup”, Weiss uses a computer terminal, which she accesses at a CCT (Cross Continental Transmit System) Tower, a prominent part of Beacon Academy, using her scroll on the elevator to access the upper level, Once there, she is helped by a communications operator, who patches her through to the SDC. Once at a terminal, she is greeted by the SDC employee who looks at her file list and states that some of records are sensitive. Weiss responds that she will treat the records “with care”, and without even a second question, her request is fulfilled. [1] The records are later used in an effort to figure out more of what the “low-level” villain, Roman Torchwick, is doing. The claim by Weiss about the sensitive records relates to a recent interview with lawyer James Trusty.

Trusty defended his well-known client, the former president, stating there were no classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and implied that not turning over documents was “not a crime”. He then claimed his client was being politically targeted, declared that the Presidential Records Act is a “non-criminal statute”, and said civil litigation is the answer instead, among other statements. The comments by Trusty on national television and those by Weiss in RWBY relate to what I’ve written about before in regards to how classification works within NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), British Public Record Office, South African State Archives Service, National Archives of Korea, United Nations, and other U.S. government organs and non-U.S. institutions. The aforementioned comments by Weiss and Trusty connect to the reality of document classification within archives, which remains an important issue considering a recent U.S. Senate hearing on over-classification, with calls for “original classifiers to assign sunsets at the front end,” i.e. dates at which classification would expire automatically, along with other changes, as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) system remains thoroughly broken.

This is not a new issue, are classified records inherent to U.S. government institutions in many ways. For years, U.S. government agencies have been writing declassified institutional histories based upon the “still classified records of the services”, including about U.S. foreign relations. This is coupled with continuing complexities of record classification, leading to issues with obtaining access to “security-restricted records”. However, it can be bypassed thanks to sympathetic archivists or with the proper procedures in place. There have been cases in which classified records have been destroyed reportedly to “protect” operational security of U.S. military actions, even though the records should have been preserved. [2] This makes it clear that archives are not neutral, but are contested spaces instead, which is obvious for libraries, galleries, museums, and other institutions, but is also the case for archives.

There have been efforts to keep classified records intact and store them correctly. This has especially been the case after 1972 when the Archivist of the United States (AOTUS) became the center of government-wide policy-making in terms of research with classified records. Many years before, in March 1946, a National Archives appraiser, Philip C. Brooks, was worried about accepting “highly classified” records from the State Department about the Office of Strategic Services, due to the unknown size of the records being transferred, and had questions about record organization, issue of eventual declassification, and how these records would affect other transfers. Apart from the above-mentioned historical example, there have been instances in which researchers were denied from using classified records. On the contrary, declassification has been said to open up information for “intensive private historical research”. Some records at the U.S. state-level have also been classified, causing those in charge of the records to become declassifiers. [3]

In the past, the Pentagon had a room aside for storing classified records when agencies were reportedly under “extreme space pressures” as a result of World War II. This reality has only been reinforced by ever-present institutional resistance toward declassifying records for scholarly research due to a directive-of-sorts which instructs archivists to “guard” the security of classified records no matter what. This can involve classification for political purposes. [4] There have been evolving challenges from records classification and secrecy, archivists have opened older classified case files for historians, and declassification has become an important duty for NARA, especially since the 1970s. Further scholarship has focused on movement of classified materials, reviews of classified records by NARA, and continued pushes to declassify additional records. [5]

Recently, some have tried to differentiate between the different cases involving classified records involving the former president and President Biden, with Sharon L. Lynch of Reuters writing that neither president “should have had any classified material in their possession” and that such records should be in the “legal custody of the U.S. National Archives.” Lynch added that it is illegal to willfully or knowingly retain or remove classified material, and stated that failing to properly secure and store such material “poses risks to national security if it should fall into the wrong hands.” This has been so egregious in the case of the former president that one of his defense attorneys said the president used a folder with a classified marking to “block a light in his bedroom that kept him up at night”. The former president has further declared that he has the “right” to go through classified records which should have been handed over to NARA. In light of these recent scandals, some have called for NARA to adapt its protocols “around the handling of all classified documents” to prevent future scandals. [6]

All the while, there have been a defense of existing rules at the agency to safeguard records in opposition to those who state that there are too many rules, claims of “political bias”, questions about what NARA “knew” (or didn’t know) about classified records found at the office of the Penn-Biden Center, and laughable comments that such records were safer at Mar-a-Lago than at NARA. Others have praised the agency for its new agreement with the George W. Bush Foundation on a proposal to privatize the presidential library for George W. Bush by “transferring certain operations from NARA to the Bush Foundation” or called for a “revamping” at how the agency collects information, particularly classified information is Top Secret or Secret. [7] There have been broader comments about how it is fairly common to misplace classified documents (and “classified spillage” of documents outside “protected places”), and mentions of secure areas to view documents, known as SCIFs or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities. Other articles have stated that many public officials have shared classified papers over the years, with some rightly questioning whether too many documents are being classified, or saying that the existing classification system is “clunky”. [8]

This is important to note because archivists, especially those at NARA, have a key role when it comes to declassification. Former AOTUS David Ferriero said the agency has a leadership role in ensuring that millions of classified records are “declassified and made available for the people to inspect and for historians to mine”. Archivists are like Weiss in that they are dedicated to treat classified documents “with care”, but their access to the records is not based on family relation. When it comes to classified documents, archivists become guards. People cannot copy documents held by NARA “with uncancelled security classification markings” and there are specific procedures for copying formerly national security-classified documents.

Classified records need to be more readily available to the public through more-common (or even mass) declassification, something which requires archivists to maintain their roles as declassifiers. More public availability of records will clash with the impossible institutional push to remain “neutral”, as the institutions are contested instead of “neutral”. In any case, archivists are vital since the amount of records, especially classified records from government agencies, flowing into institutions like NARA is bound to increase in years to come.

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Notes

[1] The person she talks with tells her that she can talk to her sister Winter or her father but she says that she doesn’t want to, and her smile almost becomes a frown, implying a bad/fraught relationship.

[2] Nelson, Anna. “Government Historical Offices and Public Records.” The American Archivist 41, no. 4 (1978): 407-408; Hill, Edward. “Reviews.” The American Archivist 36, no. 2 (1973): 237; Herschler, David and William Slany. “The ‘Paperless Office’: A Case Study of the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Information System.” The American Archivist 45, no. 2 (1982): 151-152; Robinson-Sweet, Anna. “Truth and Reconciliation: Archivists as Reparations Activists.” The American Archivist 81, no. 1 (2018), doi: 10.17723/0360-9081-81.1.23; Soyka, Heather and Eliot Wilczek. “Documenting the American Military Experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.” The American Archivist 77, no. 1 (2014): 188, 191.

[3] Angel, Herbert. “Archival Janus: The Records Center.” The American Archivist 31, no. 1 (1968): 9; Heaps, Jennifer. “Tracking Intelligence Information: The Office of Strategic Services.” The American Archivist 61, no. 2 (1998): 301-302; Peterson, Trudy. “The National Archives and the Archival Theorist Revisited, 1954-1984.” The American Archivist 49, no. 2 (1986): 131; Harrison, Donald F. “World War II: A Bibliography of Books in English, 1945-1965” [Review]. The American Archivist 34, no. 4 (1971): 388; Epstein, Fritz. “Washington Research Opportunities in the Period of World War II.” The American Archivist 17, no. 3 (1954): 226; Baumann, Roland. “The Administration of Access to Confidential Records in State Archives: Common Practices and the Need for a Model Law.” The American Archivist 49, no. 4 (1986): 360, 364-365, 367.

[4] East, Sherrod. “Archival Experience in a Prototype Intermediate Depository.” The American Archivist 27, no. 1 (1964): 46, 51; Marrow, Mary. “Moving An Archives.” The American Archivist 53, no. 3 (1990): 423-424; Cox, Richard. “Secrecy, Archives, and the Archivist: A Review Essay (Sort Of).” The American Archivist 72, no. 1 (2009): 220-224, 227, 230.

[5] Leopold, Richard. “A Crisis of Confidence: Foreign Policy Research and the Federal Government.” The American Archivist 34, no. 2 (1971): 143-144; Rositer, Margaret (ed. Brenda Beasley Kepleyand Sara L. Stone). “Understanding Progress as Process: Documentation of the History of Post-War Science and Technology in the United States. Final Report of the Joint Committee on Archives of Science and Technology” [Review]. The American Archivist 47, no. 3 (1984): 298; Newman, Debra L. (ed. Brenda Beasley Kepleyand Sara L. Stone)  “The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume I: 1826-August 1919…[and] The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume II: August 1919-August 1920” [Review]. The American Archivist 47, no. 3 (1984): 309; Weir Jr., Thomas E. “News Notes.” The American Archivist 41, no. 4 (1978): 485; Goggin, Daniel T. and Carmen R. Delle Donne. “News Notes.” The American Archivist 36, no. 4 (1973): 606-607; Dowling, F.P. “News Notes.” The American Archivist 39, no. 3 (1976): 398-399; Dowling, F.P. “News Notes.” The American Archivist 39, no. 1 (1976): 83-84; Goggin, Daniel T. and Carmen R. Delle Donne. “News Notes.” The American Archivist 36, no. 2 (1973): 289-290.

[6] Meola, Lexi and Robert Weiner, “Op/Ed: Better protocols needed to keep classified documents out of the wrong house,” Indianapolis Star, Apr. 7, 2023.

[7] “Strict Rules at the National Archives Preserve Treasures,” Wall Street Journal, Mar. 30, 2023; Johnson, Ron, and Chuck Grassley. Electronic. “Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley Ask About Review of Classified Records By FBI and NARA.” Electronic, March 27, 2023 (also see here); “Fox’s Mark Levin: Classified documents are “safer at Mar-a-Lago” than “at the National Archives”,” Media Matters, Apr. 3, 2023; Rigby, David. “Petty Tyranny at the U.S. National Archives,” Wall Street Journal, Mar. 23, 2023; Quinn, Melissa and Arden Farhi, “National Archives says it retrieved nine boxes of Biden records from ex-personal attorney’s Boston office.” CBS News, Mar. 9, 2023; x, Connelly, Gerry. “Chairs Maloney, Connolly Issue Statements on Revised Agreement Between the National Archives and George W. Bush Foundation.” Nov. 16, 2022; Jacobson, Sheldon H. “Do classified document revelations highlight problems at the National Archives?” The Hill, Jan. 30, 2023.

[8] Waxman, Olivia B. “Classified Documents Get Misplaced All the Time. A Former National Archives Official Explains Why,” Time, accessed April 9, 2023;Herb, Jeremy, Katie Bo Lillis, Katelyn Polantz and Zachary Cohen, “‘I had to sleep with that document’: How the government tries to prevent classified government documents from spilling out,” CNN, Jan. 24, 2023; House, Billy. “Kissinger, Albright Among Officials Who Shared Classified Papers,” Bloomberg News, Mar. 9, 2023; Lopez, German. “Too Many Top Secrets,” New York Times, Jan. 27, 2023; “What Biden’s Documents Reveal About the Confusing Classification System,” Time, accessed Apr. 9, 2023;

June 12, 2023April 9, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: animation, AOTUS, archives security, Bush Library, chain of custody, classified records, declassification, FOIA, lawyers, NARA, patrons, Pentagon, preservation, presidential records, Presidential Records Act, RWBY, SCIFs, spies, State Department 2 Comments

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).

June 3, 2021November 24, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Interviews, Steering ShareTags: archival description, archival processing, archives profession, discovery, government archives, internships, Interviews, library degrees, Library of Congress, NARA, patrons, podcasts, poetry, prison abolition, prison labor, Project STAND, redescription, reparative processing, special collections, Whiteness 6 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

[2] Llewellyn and Buchanan, 7-9.

[3] Ibid, 3-4.

[4] Ibid, 4-5.

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

[6] Llewellyn and Buchanan,  5-6.

[7] Ibid, 11-17.

[8] Ibid, 17-19.

[9] Ibid, 24-25.

[10] Ibid, 21.

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

Archivists on the Issues: More than a warehouse: why the closure of Seattle’s National Archives facility matters

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

On January 26, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approved the sale of the 157,000 square foot National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Seattle facility, which holds permanent federal records for Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. This decision raises the question: which is more important, access to historic records or selling a public facility in a high-value real estate market? There has been fierce opposition from historical societies in Alaska and Seattle, historical researchers, genealogical groups, indigenous leaders, university professors, archivists, and historians. They were joined by a bipartisan group of eight Alaskan state legislators and 16 Congress members. The latter, comprising Washingtonian, Alaskan, Idahoan, and Montanan politicians, was also bipartisan. Washington Governor Jay Inslee also opposed the decision, as did Washington’s Secretary of State Kim Wyman. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson is considering suing the federal government over the closure. He reportedly submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the five-person Public Buildings Reform Board (PBRB), OMB, NARA, and the General Services Administration (GSA) regarding the closure. The Washington State Archives even created a page about the topic.

History Associates Incorporated, which cautioned their clients to plan ahead for the facility’s closure, noted the process would take 18 months. They also included the estimate from Susan Karren, NARA’s Seattle director that only “.001% of the facility’s 56,000 cubic feet of records are digitized and available online,” and stated that permanent records may be inaccessible when transferred between facilities. According to NARA, no actions are being taken imminently which affect users of the facility, and NARA has requested to stay in the facility for three years following the sale. With such hullabaloo on this topic, one question is relevant: why does this closure matter to us, as fellow archivists?

NARA’s Seattle facility in Sand Point is more than a “giant U.S. government warehouse” or “excess property” as described in bureaucratic language. This facility holds records on indigenous people in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. It also holds: Chinese Exclusion Act case files which have been diligently indexed by local volunteers for the past 28 years; Forest Service teletypes about the Mount St. Helens explosion in 1980; federal case records from the early 1900s; and other important local documents. Such records make the NARA facility part of the “historical ecosystem” in the Northwestern United States, providing the public “direct access to government documents, from genealogical records to court files.” These aspects make the facility a “high value” federal property (or “asset”) which has a “deferred maintenance backlog of $2.5 million.” Additionally, no public PBRB meeting transcripts showed discussion of the closure. In one meeting, “warehouse[s]” used by NARA for “long-term storage” was touched on and at another there was a passing mention of Seattle.

Some may point to existing digitization efforts. Sure, some of Alaska’s records have been digitized, but record series are often digitized by FamilySearch and the project is only five years old. For instance, some records relating to Alaska have been digitized like crew lists, immigrant lists, draft cards, and naturalization records, as is the case with Washington and Idaho. But these are primarily 20th century records, with very few 19th century records. The letter from congress members criticizing the decision also called this out, stating that “NARA’s partnership with FamilySearch to digitize records has…not resulted in actual access to records that have been prioritized by stakeholders,” a unique and rare criticism of the NARA-FamilySearch partnership. The limitations of existing digitization undermines NARA’s reasoning that some of their “popular records” are already digitized or available online, asserting that public access to their archival records will stay in place.

Access to “archived knowledge” is vital and inherent to archival ethics. Moving records away from those who can use it, dividing it between two existing facilities in Riverside, California, and Kansas City, Missouri, is an act of cruel inaccessibility. Furthermore, splitting the records between two locations, regardless of the reason, leads to a strain on those facilities, which need additional storage space. NARA itself admits that the closure will negatively affect those who use the facility. They pledge to engage with researchers in a “smooth” transition when the facility is shuttered, even though this change will undoubtedly disadvantage various stakeholders, whether state archivists, government employees, scientists, students, or others. In a recent invitation-only meeting, they showed their commitment to the closure of the facility, pledging to work with indigenous groups.

The PBRB’s executive director Adam Bodner claimed that the closure of the facility was a decision by NARA staff. If true, this would put them at odds with users and stakeholders who want the facility to remain open. On pages A-68 to A-71 of their report, the PBRB concluded that NARA wanted to move to a more modern facility and that the 10 acres the facility sat on would be great for residential housing, apparently worth tens of millions of dollars as one article claimed. The PBRB also stated that NARA could only fulfill its storage needs at another facility because the current facility does not meet NARA’s “long-term storage needs.” In the process, some records will be moved to a temporary facility. Reportedly, NARA justified the closure by the fact that the facility is the third-least visited NARA site in the country and has “high operating costs.” Such arguments don’t consider the fact that the 73-year-old building could be retrofitted for the agency’s needs or records could be moved closer rather than split between two locations. This closure also stands against NARA’s stated goal that public access is part of its core mission and violates the Society of American Archivists’ Code of Ethics, stating that archivists “promote and provide the widest accessibility of materials.”

In coming days, NARA will be submitting a Report of Excess to the GSA, headed by Administrator Emily Murphy, which will collaborate with the PBRB and OMB to help “offload” properties like this facility. As such, to speak out against the closure, you could email Emily Murphy at emily.murphy@gsa.gov, the GSA’s Deputy Administrator at Allison Brigati at allison.brigati@gsa.gov, call 1-844-GSA-4111 or contact the GSA’s Office of Real Property Utilization and Disposal at 202-501-0084 and at realestate.buildingdisposal@gsa.gov. Alternatively, you could contact the OMB’s Russell Vought at Russell.t.vought@omb.eop.gov or Archivist David Ferriero at David.Ferriero@nara.gov.

February 18, 2020September 3, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: accessibility, archives closure, digital access, FamilySearch, federal records, genealogy, government archives, immigration, intellectual access, Mormons, NARA, National Archives at Seattle, patrons, physical access, record storage, SAA Code of Ethics, volunteering 8 Comments

Archivists on the Issues: The Values First Approach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resources Consulted:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Archivists on the Issues: I’m sorry, can you repeat that? Navigating Archives while Hard-of-Hearing

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Michelle Ganz, the Archives Director at McDonough Innovation,

Hard of Hearing (HoH) covers everything from not being able to hear certain vocal ranges or pitches to only being able to hear with the help of hearing aids or cochlear implants.

Every HoH person’s condition, and therefore experience, is different. Everyone has different coping techniques and strategies to navigate the world we live in and the environments we move through. I’d like to share my experience and how that has informed how I have navigated my professional life as a lone arranger.

I was born deaf in my left ear and have slightly diminished hearing in my right ear, especially in the higher tonal ranges. Until a few years ago I managed without a hearing aid but as I have gotten older the efforts to hear became exhausting and I decided it was time to get help. Before the hearing aid I spent a lot of time completely panicked that I was missing critical information at school, at work, and anywhere that wasn’t home. After the hearing aid everything is louder, but that doesn’t translate to easier to hear. If a room has a lot of white noise, electronics, or cross-talk all I hear is a cloud of indistinguishable sound. When I was first transitioning to the hearing aid I would often have to flee from group situations to sit in a dark room until I could calm down from the overstimulation coupled with even less understanding. Those moments have passed, but I still have problems every day with basic vocal interactions; even in seemingly quiet spaces. Having an invisible disability can make an already challenging situation feel insurmountable.

The type of active listening and hyper-awareness of my surroundings that I have to engage in every day is exhausting, stressful, and isolating.  Some days are better than others, but what really adds to the load is the constant reminders to others: of my disability, of the best ways to communicate with me, or the concessions that need to be made for me. At best this sets me apart from the rest of the team, and at worst I’m seen as a disruption to the normal flow of work. People require regular assertions that I am not making things up to take advantage of perceived ‘perks.’ I feel like I constantly have to apologize for being a ‘burden’ for requesting special accommodations or basic courtesies. This means that I don’t always tell people that I can’t understand them.  It means I spend a lot of time wondering if I misunderstood something or completely missed something I should have heard. It means when I ask people to repeat things sometimes I have to ask so many times they just give up and walk away. It means I’ve sat in meetings and wondered what the heck was going on because everyone mumbled and the pace was too fast for me to ask for everything to be repeated.

Wearing a hearing aid has helped tremendously, but it doesn’t fix all my problems. It is paired with my cell phone (which is awesome) so phone calls stream directly to my ear, but conventional phones are nearly impossible for me to use. Listening to webinars on my computer, participating in conference calls, and other routine uses of technology can be difficult or outright impossible. Regular interactions with my colleagues in our kitchen are always a struggle, especially when the coffee machine is doing its very loud fresh-grind thing. People get uncomfortable with being asked to repeat an offhand anecdote or comment so it’s just easier for me to smile and nod rather than try to figure out what they said. Meetings can be totally derailed by requests to repeat something, or even worse, having to have someone else repeat what was said.  My boss is quiet and often mumbles, and does not like to repeat himself. I have spent hours trying to figure out what I missed from one of our meetings. When I used to do teaching sessions questions from students were the most difficult part of the class. At my last archive I had to conduct a lot of reference interviews over the phone with researchers who were often elderly or had difficult-to-distinguish local accents. This was frustrating for the patrons, who just wanted quick answers, and frustrating for me since it often derailed outreach efforts.

I understand that the vast majority of people will go their whole lives without knowingly interacting with someone who is HoH. But hearing loss affects millions of people (many of whom don’t even realize they have issues) and hearing issues are going to become a more prevalent issue in archival spaces and in everyday life. Our world is filled with white noise; even reading rooms have a lot of ‘noise’ not noticeable to most people. If I deeply engrossed in my work and there’s a fan on I will not hear you unless you get my attention first.

I also understand that people can’t grow and change if they a) don’t realize they are doing something wrong and b) if they don’t know where to start. To that end here are some of the things that I would like everyone to know.

The recommendations I’m laying out here are ones that I believe you should adopt with everyone. I believe that if you use the same sort of approach with everyone you will move the onus of service back onto yourself. Take a look at the resources I’ve listed below like the diversity work group page as well as the access statement on disabilities currently being updated. But mostly, use common sense. None of the things I lay out here are complicated, costly, or even time consuming. They just take practice to become part of how you approach every interaction.

Make eye contact

It’s easier for me to know you are talking to me and not someone else in the room if you make eye contact before you start to speak. It’s also an important way for you to tell that I’m actually listening.

Don’t cover your mouth / Make it easy for your mouth to be seen

Lip reading doesn’t work like in the movies. You can only catch about 40% of what someone is saying and it’s really hard to figure out since your mouth makes the same motions for a lot of different words. BUT we do use lip reading to confirm that what we are hearing is matching what your mouth is doing.

Speak clearly / use a microphone

If you speak clearly and enunciate your words it will be much easier for me to understand you. If there is a microphone in the room please use it. See the great blog post by Jessie Ramey (link below) on this very topic. She addresses the issue of people who don’t use microphones.

Have an alternative method of communication via digital or physical notepad

There is nothing more frustrating than a communication barrier. Have an alternative method like the notepad on your phone or a piece of paper. For many hard of hearing people the higher registers and tones of a woman’s voice can be difficult to understand; don’t be insulted if we ask to speak with someone with a lower voice (and yes, this often means a male voice). And don’t assume that I know sign language. Most hard of hearing people do not.

Be understanding of involuntary noise or levels of loudness.

Hard of hearing people are loud. We usually don’t realize that we are making a ruckus or causing a disruption. I have no idea how loud I am, especially in a quiet room or if I’ve been intently working on something. I use outside stimuli to determine my own levels of noise; often I have grossly misjudged but don’t know until people around me react like a bomb went off. Be polite and we’ll do our best to keep it down.

Don’t assume, ask

I would rather you ask me a hundred times what I’d like you to do than you assume and get it wrong. Assumptions (or even worse, asking the person with me) are infantilizing and marginalizing.

I’ve spent my whole life dealing with being HoH, I spent my childhood hiding it, my college years learning how to advocate for myself, and my adult life working so that today’s and tomorrow’s kids don’t have to hide. But at the end of the day none of my efforts mean anything if able-bodied people don’t acknowledge invisible disabilities and take steps to ensure that they are treating everyone with respect.

 

Resources:

Working Group on Accessibility resources

The group has completed its task but the microsite has a ton of great resources and links to additional information.

Guidelines for Access Archives for People with Disabilities

The Approved guidelines for access. This is great resource to help you develop policies and to provide support with administration.

A Note From Your Colleagues With Hearing Loss: Just Use a Microphone Already

A fantastic blog post about the importance of things like microphones to HoH people.

 

There are a number of deaf and hard of hearing people on YouTube who have a ton of really great videos about their experiences. They explain a lot of things that HoH people deal with and review things like assistive technologies. I’m a big fan of Jessica Kellgren-Fozard and Rikki Poynter.

April 4, 2019November 5, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: accessibility, archives profession, disabilities, films, hard of hearing, outreach, patrons Leave a comment

Archivists on the Issues: An Update on UCLA temporary librarians

Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from current and former UCLA Temporary Librarians. While all the contributors to this post currently hold or held archivist positions at UCLA, the term “librarian” is used since that is way the institution classifies these positions.  At UCLA, the term librarian is used to refer to a variety of academic staff. All staff under this umbrella term are afforded the same protections. For these reasons, the terms archivist and librarian are used interchangeably throughout the text.

Since writing an open letter to UCLA Library administration in June 2018, we have received support from colleagues from all over the country. Thank you. Our situation at UCLA, and the grievance filed on our behalf by our union UC-AFT, are still unresolved and we wanted to post a brief update.

The Situation

As archivists who are classified as temporary librarians, we are well acquainted with the many reasons why the practice of hiring on temporary contracts is problematic. Over the past five years, and maybe more, our department Library Special Collections (LSC) has had more temporary archivists than permanent. This undermines the professionalism, expertise, and worth of archivists, it damages our personal lives, it diminishes institutional knowledge, it inhibits long-term decision making, and it disrespects our donors, users, and collections. These reasons and more are detailed further in the temporary archivists’ open letter to UCLA Library administrators.

LSC is continuing to capitalize on promises of “processing, preserving, and making [collections] accessible” to attract funding during UCLA’s Centennial Campaign. LSC’s funding and staffing priorities, however, tell a different story: one in which curatorial and collection development positions are given the lion’s share of endowments and funding, while archival work is addressed only once, through the creation of a relatively paltry general “fund to support the processing of high-priority collections.” (And let’s call that what it is: funding for more temporary hires to deal with processing that administration has promised to high-priority donors without regard for our staffing constraints and existing priorities.) The UCLA Library continues to respond to core and ongoing departmental needs by systematically under-staffing the Collection Management unit of LSC, which manages the work of archivists and catalogers, with precarious temporary positions, while ignoring and denying the effects of such a practice.

LSC continues to create and fill curatorial positions while its Collection Management staffing reaches critically low levels, as archivists’ contracts continue to expire. Administration has attempted to obscure this by blurring archival responsibilities in the department’s recent positions, in this way undermining professional boundaries and devaluing the work of processing archivists, as well as creating an undue burden for these positions and providing no roadmap for processing work in the long term. The concentrated effect of these decisions and hiring practices is to deprofessionalize our jobs as archivists- and, given UCLA’s size and status, is bound to have far-reaching effects on our profession as a whole.

Grievance process

Our union UC-AFT filed a grievance on our behalf in May 2018. The grievance alleges that UCLA Library is in violation of Article 18 of our contract, which details specific conditions for the hiring of temporary librarians. We have exhausted Steps 1-3 of the grievance process, as well as a preliminary “informal” meeting that occurs prior to Step 1. At each step of this process, we have reiterated the ongoing and permanent nature of our work and cited the widespread professional support that our case has garnered. At each step, Library Human Resources (LHR), UC Labor Relations, and, most recently, the UC Office of the President (UCOP) have denied our requests, citing a variety of ever-changing justifications. As of earlier this month, UC-AFT has voted to bring our grievance to arbitration.  

To date, we have not received any direct response or acknowledgment from library administration. This lack of response has been particularly disappointing.

UC-AFT includes abuse of temporary appointments in bargaining

UC-AFT Unit 17 Librarians have been engaged in bargaining with the University of California since April 2018. At its fourth bargaining session in July, UC-AFT proposed changes to Article 18 of our MOU, regarding Temporary Librarian appointments. Drawing on our experience, the Temporary Librarians helped draft the language changes and gave testimony on the necessity of the proposed changes.

The current contract language on Temporary Appointees addresses the issue by attempting to limit the scenarios in which temporary appointees are appropriate. However, UCLA continues to abuse and misapply this article by exploiting various loopholes, which we felt were necessary to close. The suggested changes include limiting the situations in which hiring temporary appointments are appropriate to three scenarios: filling in for a librarian on leave, filling in for a temporarily assigned librarian, and time-limited projects fully funded by extramural funding (i.e., grant funding) or external funding (e.g., donor-funded). They also seek to require UC to inform temporary appointees whether they will be re-appointed within a specific timeframe, as well as give more notice if they will be released early — the latter coming with the right for the employee to have an informal hearing before the release. We felt it was important for the UCOP team to hear firsthand from temporary librarians about the deleterious effects of exploiting the temporary provision and hope that the UCOP team values hearing directly from affected staff.

Future updates

If you would like to continue to get updates on the UCLA temporary archivists, please sign up here: https://tinyletter.com/UCLAtemps

Links to additional information/coverage

Daily Bruin articles:

https://dailybruin.com/2018/07/29/submission-ucla-librarys-reliance-on-temporary-workers-is-inefficient-unethical/

https://dailybruin.com/2018/08/05/editorial-uclas-disregard-for-its-librarians-shows-once-again-its-exploitation-of-workers/

https://dailybruin.com/2018/07/27/librarians-bargain-with-ucop-about-academic-freedom-temporary-positions/

Professional support:

Leadership of the DLF Working Group on Labor’s Statement on UCLA Archivists

SCA Statement in Support of Temporary Archivists at UCLA: https://ift.tt/2zpl4bR

 

March 11, 2019June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Archivists on the IssuesTags: archival processing, archives profession, collection development, donors, Google Workspace, grants, job security, libraries, patrons, precarity, professionalism, temporary labor, unionization 1 Comment

Steering Share: What Archivists Can Learn From Public Libraries

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.

    The other day I was having lunch with some colleagues when the conversation inevitably turned to our experiences in graduate school. As per usual, we discussed the classes that were useful, the classes that were useless, and the changes needed to modernize MLIS programs. Most of my colleagues complained that the programs are out of date. The comment that struck me the most was the person who mentioned that their graduate program made them take a class on public libraries that they felt was unnecessary. To them, there was nothing they could possibly learn from that class that would apply to their career in archives. At the time, I wanted to stand against this person but everyone agreed with him and the topic quickly changed.

    I would love to say this was the first time that I’ve heard similar comments but it was not. Even on interviews, people have questioned me about why I would even consider working in archives or special collections when I’ve worked in public libraries for so long. Despite both being information agencies, people see archives and public libraries as disparate entities that can’t possibly have anything in common or benefit each other in any way. Having worked in public libraries for at least seven years before finding work as a professional archivist, I can clearly see how the two could  benefit and learn from each other.

    One of the biggest lessons that public libraries can teach archives is about outreach. In many of the archives I’ve worked in, both in graduate school and now professionally, they treat outreach as something passive. An archive might put out a blog, create an exhibit, or host a talk but most of the outreach depends on the public finding the information themselves. In public libraries, outreach is handled completely differently. A library may have blogs, exhibits, and talks but they don’t depend on people stumbling across these things themselves. The staff goes out into the community around them to try and bring people into their institution. For example, when I worked as a library assistant, a large part of my day consisted of reaching out to community groups and local schools to try and work with them to create library programs and to teach them about how the library can serve their needs. Although archives serve a different role, reaching out to the communities around them creates a beneficial resource to that community. By building relationships outside of your normal circles of interaction, a community outreach program brings in new users and helps people understand the value of the many collections archives house.

          While there may be a number issues facing the library world, division within the ranks shouldn’t be one of them. Archives and public libraries have different functions and serve communities differently, but we need to support each other and learn from  each other so that we can all gain the benefits of sharing information with others outside our normal circles of interaction. If we can see the value in the work others are doing then we can come together and fight against other more pressing issues in the world.

February 15, 2019June 24, 2022 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Steering ShareTags: archives profession, libraries, library degrees, library school, outreach, patrons Leave a comment

Steering Share from Ruth Slagle

Steering Sharesare an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of I&A committee member Ruth Slagle, the Instruction and Outreach Librarian at the Baptist College of Florida.

 

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

The variety! Well I might have a plan for the week, but it always changes. Currently, I do not work in an archive, but I emphasize with lone arrangers because I am solo librarian. The past 6 months has been a whirlwind of change for me since becoming a solo librarian and a natural disaster misplacing the library into another building. In my current position, I am multiple departments rolled into one, perks of working at a small school. I have enjoyed consulting with the archives on campus and giving advice on standards. For the future, I look forward to working with students and connecting with others.

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

As a member of the committee, I would like to take away useful strategies and methods for further advocating the presence of archives in our society and local influences. As a newer member and professional, I want to connect with other archivists in this section and gain a ready knowledge of best practices.

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

Education. In light of the recent Hurricane Michael, which affected the library where I work, it has become more obvious to me the importance of advocacy. Salvaging our collection and workflow has only happened because of myself advocating for the library and its employees. This past fall, I taught an Archives Management course for undergraduates. My teaching experience, taught me the importance of educating non-archival users. By opening their eyes to the archival world. I would love to teach again because the diversity the archival profession opens so many doors to users. As an archivist and librarian, I am my own advocate working with students and faculty. Without archivists, advocating our field, how will the world know our value?

January 11, 2019November 24, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Interviews, Steering ShareTags: archives profession, climate change, disaster preparedness, Interviews, lone arrangers, patrons Leave a comment

Steering Share: Hello, from Summer Espinoza

Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes from I&A steering member Summer Espinoza, Digital Archivist at California State University, Dominguez Hills

“El Archivo”

How did you first get involved in archives?

I have enjoyed history from an early age. I used to visit my local public library’s reading room to listen to records and gaze upon all the “old materials.” As a child, my father also took me to antique shops where I learned to appreciate history from antique vendors, and sometimes take home a piece. The first time I discovered my own history was at my local library in a 1918 phone directory of my hometown– I found my great-grandparents’ street address.

It wasn’t actually until after I completed my degree that I connected these influences in my early life to my decision to earn an archives and records administration degree from San Jose State University.

At one of my first paying positions at a cultural heritage organization close to my hometown, I found a record of my great grandfather’s work as a citrus picker in materials not yet identified as having archival or historical value. I took it as a sign that I had landed in the right place.

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

Last year I contributed to the “Archivists on the Issue” blog series. It was both challenging and rewarding to explore my professional interests. It was an opportunity for me to think more deeply about my experience as a practitioner and about my personal values and ethics relating to community records and personal identity politics.

On a recent MLK day (an observed holiday) I was at work. I had students from a local university campus in the archives at the cultural heritage organization for which I was the director of the archives. I remember thinking, “this is absolutely where I should be on this day. ” I was engaged in providing access to records of significant value to the history of oppression and exclusivity in our nation. In my own quiet way, I want to continue being an activist and this section gives me that opportunity.

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

I am very interested in practitioner experience in creating inclusive archives. In my first  “Archivists on the Issue” blog I wrote of the sometimes taxing and always relevant ways in which practicing inclusivity in daily work can create hesitation, confusion, and deflation of professional duty. I think within the theoretical ideas of inclusivity, as archivists, we often forget or minimize the connection to personal ethics, morals, and also emotion.

October 12, 2018November 24, 2023 by issuesandadvocacy Categories: Interviews, Steering ShareTags: archives profession, cultural heritage, inclusion, Interviews, patrons, professionalism, underrepresented communities Leave a comment