Today’s post is an interview with Eira Tansey, with questions formulated by Burkely Hermann, Metadata Librarian for the National Security Archive and current I&A Blog Coordinator.
Eira Tansey is a researcher and archivist who focuses on climate change impacts on cultural heritage and archives. She also founded Memory Rising, in December 2022, which provides archival, consulting, and research services for humanities and cultural organizations, and worked in academic libraries from 2008 to 2023, first at the Louisiana Research Collection of Tulane University Library, and more recently at the Archives and Rare Books Library of the University of Cincinnati. This post is an interview with Tansey about her recently published report “A Green New Deal for Archives,” which was published by CLIR in July.
Question 1: The public policy program, which you propose in your report, outlines three foundational principles for a Green New Deal for Archives (increasing permanent staffing for archives “that steward vital public records”, “create a nationwide plan for collection continuity and emergency response,” and developing “climate change documentation projects organized by watersheds”). Do you envision this program as applying to community archives or activist archives, in the United States, which are not formal institutions?
Eira Tansey: In a Green New Deal for Archives policy platform I think there’s an important role for community archives to play in documenting watersheds and local environmental problems. Community and activist archives can do this in ways that government archives likely could not or would not. Even in the original Historical Records Survey which I explore in the publication, WPA workers did important work to identify archives from informal institutions. I think that work can and should be replicated in a Green New Deal for Archives.
With that said, there is a reason why I put the first priority as increasing staffing at archives that steward vital public records, because I think this is the most important priority facing American archives. To be clear, vital records have a specific definition: “a record necessary to begin recovery of business after a disaster, as well as a record necessary to protect the assets, obligations, and resources of an organization” and “a record that documents significant life events, including births, deaths, marriages, and divorces.”
Vital records are usually stewarded by public-facing archives like local, state, and federal government archives. Without the preservation and access of vital public records, we are at major risk of losing individual rights and the collective ability to hold public institutions accountable. Like the original New Deal that emphasized the importance of strengthening government institutions as a means to better serve the public (instead of primarily relying on the private sector), I believe we need to apply similar thinking to meet the scale of climate change adaptation in archives.
My stance on this is shaped by my professional trajectory, which comes from working in academic libraries for 15 years until I left earlier this year to build my business. In my last role I was the records manager for one of the largest public universities in the state of Ohio for nearly a decade. Records management work, even in higher education, has far more in common with the kind of archives work carried out by government archivists than a topical focused curatorial collecting model. Even though my institution was legally mandated by Ohio law to carry out records management, and retention scheduling directly supported our most popular use area – university archives – I received zero dedicated budget resources for records management. Meanwhile collections of non-institutional materials that had comparatively little use had endowed funds. This led me to appreciate how the records that receive the most use and are required to be managed according to law rarely receive the resources needed to do this work effectively, and are especially vulnerable to becoming unfunded mandates.
In my city of Cincinnati, we do not have a municipal archive that makes the records of the city easily available to the public. So based on my own local experience, I’m not convinced that formal institutional archives are always receiving the support they need to make the records of government and public institutions accessible and accountable to local residents. In many cases, they don’t exist to begin with.
Librarians – regardless of where they work – understand that public libraries are integral to the larger enterprise of librarianship and that public libraries are an essential part of the democratic experiment. I’d like to see archivists – regardless of where they work – embrace the same kind of support for government and other archives that serve the larger public. This is why although I hope A Green New Deal for Archives will resonate with all archivists, I assert that the priority needs to be on bolstering the capacity of archives that have a broad public mandate.
Question 2: In your view, how should readers, who agree with your “Green New Deal for Archives” public policy proposal, share their support?
Eira Tansey: Learning how to advocate on behalf of archives to elected officials is really important. Within SAA, the Committee on Public Policy has done great work on this front, especially with the Archives on the Hill event that happens when SAA meets in Washington DC.
I have been excited to have some encouraging recent conversations with Congressional staffers about the importance of archives. There are a lot of folks in Congress who care both about climate change and archives, but they don’t necessarily connect the dots between how archives can both identify climate risks and help communities be more resilient in the face of climate disaster. It’s up to archivists to have these conversations and put this issue squarely in front of our elected officials.
Question 3: If you could make a change (or changes) to the core values statement (which states that archivists “must necessarily involve an ongoing awareness of the impact of archival work on the environment”) or recent strategic plan of the Society of American Archivists, based on what you have written in your report, what would you change?
Eira Tansey: SAA’s Core Values statement includes Sustainability, and that section is very thoughtfully worded. However, the current Strategic Plan does not specifically address or name environmental concerns or climate change among its activities. I’d like to see this change in future iterations. For example, many of the strategic plan actions rightfully focus on workforce issues. There is a climate change link here – as increasingly severe and frequent disasters disproportionately impact more vulnerable communities, how will this impact hiring and retention of archivists? Climate change is already affecting our work, and will only continue to do so. Our strategic plan should reflect those realities so we can prepare and respond accordingly.
Today’s post comes from Alexis Bhagat, a student at SUNY University of Albany, currently studying for a Master of Science in Information Science, with a concentration in Archives & Records Management. If you would like to write a guest post, please use the guidelines here. It has been edited for brevity and length before publication on the I&A Blog by the current blog coordinator, Burkely Hermann.
Promotional image for symposium discussed in this post. The Artwork: “Change Our Worlds” by Shyama Kuver in collaboration with The People’s Paper Co-op, which was created for the 2023 Black Mama’s Bail Out
During Brown University’s announcement of their acquisition of the papers of the celebrated, and long-incarcerated, writer Mumia Abu-Jamal, Amanda E. Strauss, director of the John Hay Library, remarked that “the carceral system touches millions of Americans’ lives, yet the historical archive has a scarcity of stories of incarcerated people.” This glaring absence of incarcerated voices in the historical record is precisely what the Hay Library seeks to address with their groundbreaking collecting initiative, Voices of Mass Incarceration in the United States. This initiative is aimed at providing researchers with first-person accounts from individuals who have endured the harsh realities of prisons and jails in the era of mass incarceration.
At the heart of this new initiative are the Mumia Abu-Jamal papers. There are “more than 60 boxes of letters, notebooks, manuscripts, pamphlets, personal artifacts, books, and other items.” These invaluable documents, previously in the custody of historian Johanna Fernandez, will be made available to researchers starting September 27, 2023, when the John Hay Library at Brown University officially unveils this collection. The finding aid is currently accessible online through the RIAMCO online inventory, allowing scholars and the public to explore its contents.
To celebrate the inauguration of this vital collection, the Hay Library has organized an exhibition that will span the Brown University campus. The exhibition will be complemented by a three-day symposium that will bring together over two dozen artists and experts, each offering unique perspectives on the multifaceted impacts of mass incarceration, from its effects on health and policing to issues of gender and racial justice. Together, the symposium and exhibition are designed to shed light on the daily realities of incarceration. They offer a catalyst for a broader discussion on American history and culture, as seen through the material records of one man. Thus, the exhibition and symposium both exemplify the power of archives to illuminate history while also exemplifying a historic flaw of the archives profession in collecting the papers of prominent individuals.
Mumia Abu-Jamal occupies a singular place in American history. He is a rallying point for a global movement advocating for his amnesty, the object of organized outrage from the Fraternal Order of Police and their supporters. Given his status, and the controversies around his case, it’s undeniable that Mumia Abu-Jamal is a “prominent individual” whose papers would be coveted by any repository in the United States. The Voices of Mass Incarceration project aims to move beyond collecting the papers of prominent individuals and to collect the papers of incarcerated individuals more broadly. Last year, Mary Murphy of the Hay Library said that her team has identified a mere 25 archival holdings in American libraries related to first-person experiences of incarcerated individuals. The Voices of Mass Incarceration project aims to address this archival silence. I am curious if Murphy has reassessed her statement over the past year. Is the silence of the voices of incarcerated individuals primarily a problem of acquisition? Or is it also not a problem of retrieval?
Consider, for instance, other ways to search: The first newspaper published within a prison by an incarcerated person was “Forlorn Hope,” released in 1800 by William Keteltas (1765–1812) while he was in a New York City debtor’s prison. This occurred two decades before the first surge in American prison construction from 1816 to 1825. There are no “Keteltas Papers” in American repositories, but correspondence between William Keteltas and other individuals can be found in various archives. This includes letters to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams, from 1801 to 1812, found on the National Archives’ Founders Online website.
By using different frameworks to search, users can uncover writings and artwork created behind bars, which is scattered throughout America’s archives. In this respect, the curation of a digital collection, by the Beinecke Library in 2020, is an exemplary project. It features writings and artwork by incarcerated individuals drawn from the library’s extensive holdings. The collection includes notable pieces such as Austin Reed’s memoir manuscript, poems by Ethridge Knight and Leonard Peltier, and periodicals like “The Shadow” monthly, produced by Oregon prisoners, and “The Angolite,” produced by inmates at Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary.
In conclusion, the Voices of Mass Incarceration project, anchored by the Mumia Abu-Jamal papers, represents a pivotal moment in archival collections. It not only seeks to bridge the historical gap by bringing forth the narratives of those incarcerated but also underscores the urgency of acknowledging and addressing the myriad challenges faced by millions of prisoners in America. This initiative serves as a powerful testament to the transformative potential of archives, revealing both the past and present contradictions within the Mumia Abu-Jamal papers and offering a promising path toward a more inclusive historical record.
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 The Owl House Season 3.
Camila, Gus, Hunter, Willow, and Amity stand in so-called “archives” in the series finale of The Owl House “Watching and Dreaming”, with those around them as those possessed by The Collector.
Earlier this year, I was intrigued when protagonists of the acclaimed (and recently-ended) young adult animated series, The Owl House, talked about saving their friends from The Collector, a mysterious antagonist who takes over the Boiling Isles and treats everyone he touches as his toys. The Collector keeps people/beings in a huge castle called “The Archive” or “The Archive House” which is shaped like a giant crescent moon, floats in the air, and looks a bit like a tiara, making me think of Sailor Moon. While this castle is not equivalent of an archives in reality, the actions of The Collector, who appears childlike on the surface, but is actually heartless, cruel, and casually indifferent, connect to the issue of ethical collection by archival institutions in the real world. As Holly Rose McGee, a new I&A Steering Committee member, noted in her Steering Share back in January, it is important to ask the questions: “what are we documenting and why? Who is the author of this history? What voices are silenced by it? How do we ensure that all aspects are represented, especially to people of the future, who will be in a different context? What will they want to know about us?” Those questions, and others, are related to the ongoing issue of ethical archival practices, particularly when on the issue of institutions retaining human remains and repatriating artifacts from Indigenous cultures.
In early January, ProPublica began The Repatriation Project which lists museums and other institutions in the U.S. which hold remains of over 100,000 Indigenous people and hundreds of funerary objects, despite the fact this violates the 1990 law, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which says these remains and artifacts need to be returned to tribes in an expeditious manner. The database created by ProPublica specifically notes human remains held by 600 federally-funded institutions, including those held by the Mississippi and Alabama state archives. [1] As ProPublica notes, these institutions face “little to no consequences” for violating NAGPRA, since they often claim that the human remains they hold are “culturally unidentifiable”, meaning that a federally recognized tribe isn’t affiliated with them.
These human remains of Indigenous people ended up in hands of these institutions as a result of archaeologists and museum collectors looting Indigenous graves, homes, and religious places, along with government and military officials that harvested remains. Despite the fact NAGRA was passed in 1990, institutions have worked to thwart the law in whatever way possible, with estimates that repatriation of such remains, and artifacts, will take at “least another 70 years to complete” at its current pace. Even so, current leaders in museums and tribes stated their optimism that new archaeologists, museum and institutional leaders, will want to “better comply with the law”, which is being relatively optimistic. This is coupled by a proposed regulation in October 2022 by the Secretary of Interior to remove the “culturally unidentifiable” designation for human remains, and other changes.
The archives field does not have a good history on this topic. In fact, the Society of American Archivists, the premier professional association of archivists, demurred in supporting the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials, aimed at guiding archives and libraries in “culturally responsive care of Native American archival materials and…culturally appropriate service to communities,” despite pressure to do so from the SAA’s Native American Archives Section. The Protocols, proposed in 2006, were endorsed by many Indigenous groups and professional associations. [2] In a dramatic statement in August 2018, the SAA admitted that the reason the Protocols were not endorsed was because of lingering prejudices:
On August 13, 2018, the SAA Council endorsed Protocols for Native American Archival Materials as an external standard of the organization…During the past 12 years, many archivists, including and especially members of SAA’s Native American Archives Section, have continued to champion the Protocols, to encourage their use, and to create tools open to all archivists and cultural heritage professionals. The SAA Council commends these individuals…When presented with the Protocols in 2008, the SAA Council declined to endorse them…Many of the original criticisms of the Protocols were based in the language of cultural insensitivity and white supremacy. After this period of member feedback, the Council again declined to endorse the Protocols in 2012. The SAA Council acknowledges that endorsement of these Protocols is long overdue. We regret and apologize that SAA did not take action to endorse the Protocols sooner and engage in more appropriate discussion.
This is not unique to the SAA. As Liz Woolcott and Anna Neatrour stated in August 2016 on this very blog, many cataloging elements in the Library of Congress Subject Headings, and similar other classification schemes, are Eurocentric and “do not recognize many Native American tribal designations, languages, or customs”. This was reinforced by the long history of Indigenous dispossession in the U.S., and other similar societies with colonial pasts, and the current reality of those living on reservations, created following genocidal actions which pushed Indigenous people in the U.S. to the margins of society.
There have been some efforts to engage in restitution, with archival records and cultural history used to return “remains, artifacts, memory, and culture to people who have been wronged…and perhaps even provide some healing to the wronged” as then I&A Steering Committee member Steve Duckworth stated in June 2018. In addition, some archivists, like Raymond Frogner, Director of Archives at University of Manitoba’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, have spoken about the “impact of Indigenous thinkers” such as George Hunt on archival theory and practices, at the Archives Association of Ontario conference in May 2017. There were discussions about digital outreach, acquisition, and archival management which interlinked with talk about the colonial past and present of Canada and social justice issues. Such actions by these archivists, and others, are in-line with SAA ethical guidelines, which state that archivists should strive to “respect the diversity found in humanity and advocate for archival collections to reflect that rich complexity.”
Otherwise, other archivists have worked to decolonize their collections or recover Indigenous voices within their vast collections, or proposed ways to empower Indigenous communities through inclusion. In fact, when I wrote about the proposed closure of the Federal Records Center in the Seattle Area, I noted that Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson made filings in federal court, including “almost 600 pages from indigenous peoples…which attest to the value of the Seattle facility and materials which are held there.” Even so, as Jarrett M. Drake noted, no legislation similar to NAGPRA “governs the transfer of materials to descendants of enslaved Africans,” meaning that institutions can keep such remains and artifacts indefinitely. [3] More recently, a present candidate for the SAA Council, Ryan S. Flahive, said that he supports “proactive repatriation of cultural patrimony” to their original communities. He further argued that the SAA should urge predominantly White institutions (PWI) should “reappraise holdings for potential voluntary repatriation”, a stance supported by the Native American Archives Section and the Archival Repatriation Committee.
With this, I am reminded by the line in the 2001 film Atlantis: The Lost Empire by self-defined adventure capitalist Lyle Tiberius Rourke (voiced by James Garner), commander of a group of mercenaries who come to steal a crystal which gives Atlantis, and its people, a life force. He defends his actions to the film’s hero, Milo James Thatch (voiced by Michael J. Fox), a cartographer and linguist cast aside by the Smithsonian Institution for his supposed “hairbrained idea”. Rourke infamously declares that “academics, you never want to get your hands dirty. If you gave back every stolen artifact from a museum, you’d be left with an empty building”. He follows this up by boasting that stealing the crystal would provide a “necessary service to the archaeological community”. Apart from drawing possible parallels to a museum heist scene in Black Panther, with similar themes about stolen artifacts, what Rourke talks about relates more to the interconnectedness of stolen artifacts and the lack of repatriation. Archivists and others in GLAM institutions should not try and become Indiana Jones, taking valuable artifacts and “returning” them to a museum, as they should remain in their places of origin instead.
Coming back to The Owl House, in the final episode, Luz’s friends are “collected”, captured, and manipulated by the Collector, stepping Luz and her friends from their attempt to save Eda and King from the so-called archives. As the episode goes on, it is revealed that archivists were scared of the power of the baby Titans, so the Collector was left alone, and ultimately the Collector becomes their ally-of-convenience. In the end, everyone is safely released from the archives by The Collector, reuniting with their families or anyone who is waiting for them, and everyone gets their happy ending of sorts.The release of people (and beings) from the control of The Collector has some parallels to institutions repatriating their artifacts to their original owners and the Diamonds in Steven Universe dismantling their empires. Neither of these characters is forgiven, but has engage in some penance for their misdeeds instead.
Just as the “collections” of The Collector were returned in The Owl House, allowing them to live out happy lives, repatriation of the thousands Indigenous artifacts and human remains held by renowned institutions should be a top priority, as should be efforts to strengthen NAGPRA so that any institution which does not comply with the law’s terms is penalized with severity.
Notes
[1] The page notes over 9,000 human remains held by University of California, Berkeley, over 6,100 human remains held by Harvard University, over 1,800 human remains held by the American Museum of Natural History, over 2,900 human remains held by the U.S. Department of the Interior, over 7,500 human remains held by the Illinois State Museum, and over 3,500 human remains held by the Tennessee Valley Authority, to name a few institutions.
[2] This page lists the following organizations: American Association for State and Local History, First Archivist Circle, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs Resource Centre, Native American Archives Section [SAA], Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums, Association of College and Research Libraries, Society of Southwest Archivists, and Cline Library [Northern Arizona University].
[3] Drake, Jarrett Martin (2021). “Blood at the Root,” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies, Vol. 8, p. 12.
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 Kiff and other animated series he will be discussing in this post.
Kiff and Barry are shown the so-called “archive” by Mr. Glarbin in episode 3b of Kiff. which is stereotypically portrayed here as disorganized stack of boxes with no order or organization, which does not reflect reality of archives.
In a recently-aired episode of Kiff, an animated musical comedy series, entitled “Career Fair”, the two protagonists, Barry Buns and Kiff Chatterley (voiced by H. Michael Croner and Kimiko Glenn respectfully), are given a summer job at Table Town’s city hall. They find it boring, believing they are just “pencil-pushers”. In order to achieve quicker results, they cut corners and shred the necessary forms in order to cut through the red tape, completing tasks to help those in the Table Town, such as installing a traffic light and marrying a couple. At the end of their first day, their boss, Glarbin Gloobin (voiced by Steve Little), city manager of Table Town, tells them they are “so good” at filing paperwork that all the forms they “completed” will be filed the next day in the “archive”. The latter is stereotypically portrayed as a somewhat disorganized stack of boxes in another room, which Gloobin describes as “beautiful”. After he leaves for the day, Kiff and Barry try and cover their tracks, deciding, without much thought, to shred every box and piece of paper in the archive with the shredder, resulting in massive record destruction, including vital records, like the town constitution. Eventually, Kiff comes to her senses, realizes they did a bad thing, but instead of confessing, she, and Barry, lie, statig they were robbed. Predictably, this does not work as the shredder explodes, and Gloobin realizes they shredded all the documents. As the episode comes to close, the townspeople thank Kiff and Barry, while Kiff says that city hall is about helping people, instead of “mindless” paperwork, the former employees (who had quit their jobs) come back to work, and the shredded paper continues to rein down like confetti.
Unfortunately, the episode has a bad lesson: repercussions for Kiff and Barry are slim, apart from Gloobin firing them, as there is no accountability for their mass destruction of the city’s paper records. Furthermore, those at city hall clean-up their mess, having the time-consuming job of piecing together the shredded papers, which has become confetti. As a result, the episode’s plot necessitates a focus on the value of preservation, record management, current practices, history of record destruction, and other pop culture depictions which are diametrically opposed to what is shown in Kiff.
Records management in archives, and other institutions, often involves identification, storage, retrieval, and circulation of records. This also necessitates record disposal, defined as records transfer, primarily of noncurrent records, to their final location at an archives or resulting in destruction. It is usually determined on a records retention schedule. Disposal contrasts with record destruction, which the Society of American Archivists (SAA)’ Dictionary of Archives Terminology defines as a disposal process which “results in the obliteration of records.” Kiff and Barry did not follow any process, meaning there was no maceration, but shredding, pain and simple, a form of destruction without abandon. Furthermore, shredding, apart from limits to what can be destroyed and maintenance of secure records storage, has the additional issue of creating paper which cannot be “easily recycled”. Preserving records is important, especially in legal cases. Some even discourage do-it-yourself document shredding. [1]
Historically, shredding of documents has been criticized, especially during ongoing litigation, including accusations of shredding by organizations which push for stronger records retention, like the ACLU, or by elections officials, accused of destroying ballots. Some politicians have even used shredders in order to illustrate their desire to “destroy” a policy of their political opponents. [2] One historical example that sticks out is explained within A People’s History of American Empire: Iranian women piecing together documents shredded by U.S. Embassy employees, prior to Iranian take-over of the embassy in Tehran in November 1979. The takeover began the Iran hostage crisis. The documents found in the embassy revealed information about U.S. foreign policy of supporting the repressive Shah, and published by the Iranian government in 77 volumes entitled Documents from the U.S. Espionage Den. [3]
There have also been some recent examples. For instance, in October 2022, the U.S. Army noted, in a now-deleted post, the destruction of over 19,000 boxes of “expired records…at relatively no cost” in Kasierslautern, Germany, with the records changed into toilet paper. In addition, in April 2022, the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) admitted to shredding documents in a coal ash legal case. Advocates, like Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, have argued that the administration of the former president, who has been called a “paper-shredding present”, had a major problem with record preservation. In Blanton’s view, it went beyond improper shredding, with a “deliberate failure” to create necessary records.
Previously, in 2008, Treasury Department officials shredded FOIA requests improperly (while delaying those same requests), the Bush Administration shredded hard drives in the early 2000s, and thousands of United Nations documents, including those about the Oil-for-Food programme in Iraq, were shredded. Other notable examples include destruction of evidence by the Union Bank of Switzerland showing the company owned stolen property once owned by Jews during the Holocaust, and reported “shredding parties” during the Iran-Contra scandal. [4] The latter included “stacks of memoranda and messages” destroyed by Oliver North as part of the cover-up during the scandal. At present, many municipalities host and/or support paper shredding events for their residents.
Kiff is not alone in having characters engage in record destruction. Hermes Conrad, the resident bureaucrat in Futurama for the Planet Express crew, did so in the Season Six episode “Lethal Inspection”, burning his own former employee file. Hera programmed data destruction in an episode of Star Wars Rebels, “Double Agent Droid,” to prevent the “wrong” people from getting the data (the Empire). In the comics, Jocasta Nu, the stereotypical archivist in Attack of the Clones, purged the files of the Jedi temple archives/library, to prevent the Empire from getting their hands on the records. At the same time, destruction was only implied infamously in Attack of the Clones, requested by Marceline the Vampire Queen in an episode of Adventure Time (it never transpired), and in an episode of TheCrown, it is noted that the German Nazis destroyed many of their records so people wouldn’t be unaware of their misdeeds.
This differs from R2-D2 in the Star Wars franchise who is an unintentional archivist of sorts, as he is never memory wiped. As a result, he remembers all the events through the entire series, which he witnessed, despite the fact he was destroyed at least once. Kiff is diametrically opposed to the emphasis on records preservation in Hilda. Alfur repeatedly explains the value of rules, regulations, and proper filing. Perhaps he would sing the bureaucrat song along with Hermes, who mainly follows the book, apart from record destruction in “Lethal Inspection”. Coming back to Kiff, neither Kiff nor Barry are following the SAA’s core values which encourage expansion of access and usage opportunities for records, promotion of transparency, mitigation of harm, implementing environmentally sustainable techniques for preserving records, and other suggestions. These values further state that archival materials should provide “digital and physical surrogates for human memory”, something which Kiff and Barry blatantly ignored and stamped upon.
Kiff glosses over one of the worst results of document shredding: it is said to be one of the “most effective ways” to protect businesses, individuals, or other organizations by extension, from “its extremely negative effects”. Even so, the episode may have roots in historical reality. The series was created by Lucy Heavens and Nic Smal, who grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. The episode could be referencing burning of tens of thousands of books by the apartheid government in South Africa from 1955 to 1971 in Iscor furnaces, and further shredding, and burning, of “hundreds of archival documents and public records” in the same furnaces in the early 1990s. [5] As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission put it in Volume 1 of their report, the story of apartheid is, “amongst other things, the story of the systematic elimination of thousands of voices that should have been part of the nation’s memory”, which included censorship, banning, confiscation, and other actions.
Even if the episode is based on the the above-mentioned historical reality, the fact that Kiff and Barry are barely punished, with few consequences for their actions, does not send a positive message about the value of record preservation. Furthermore, the stereotype of a dusty, dirty, and unorganized archive is perpetrated, something which harms the profession, its institutions, and archivists themselves. Neither is the value of retention, i.e. the specific amount of time a record is kept, emphasized, since Kiff nor Barry follow any guidance on how to properly shred documents. Hopefully, future series, animated or not, emphasize the vitality of preserving and retaining records instead of what is depicted in Kiff.
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 each of the books, animated series, films, and other media he will be discussing.
This organizational chart of the National Archives and Records Administration is an example of an archival bureaucracy
Large government, corporate, and private archives are bureaucratic. Even though the so-called Information Revolution threatened to upend existing practices within archival bureaucracies, and structures of these institutions, new records management strategies developed, in Europe and U.S., which are as hierarchical as previous methods. [1] Bureaucracy remains firmly entrenched, in language, practices, and strategies of collecting institutions, whether the National Archives or Library of Congress. In this post, I’ll discuss the role of bureaucracies in archival institutions and connect my findings to fictional depictions.
Recordkeeping often lends itself to bureaucracy, whether in non-profit organizations, corporations, or governments. Sometimes practices change and reinforce the bureaucracy of these institutions. This can include discouraging creation of “rich narrative reports”, while supporting archival classification and arrangement as an “infrastructural tool”. Furthermore, some bureaucracies are repressive, affecting restitution of captured wartime records. [2]
Unsurprisingly, culture of documentation has changed from being transactional to bureaucratic as organizationally sophisticated bureaucracies first developed in the 19th century. Scholar Francis Blouin called for new principles about diplomatics, referring to study of form, creation, and transmission of records, and their relation to facts within them, and their creators, to order to “identify, evaluate, and communicate their nature and authenticity.” [3] Blouin argued that bureaucratic culture produces transactional and literary records, systematic recordkeeping, analytic records, and records created in respect to “sovereignty of people in democratic societies”. In Blouin’s view, in such societies, public accountability necessitates “particular forms and genres of recordkeeping.” [4]
Other scholars have noted growing complexity, changing nature, and interrelatedness of government bureaucracies. Recently there has been a tendency to “free up” bureaucracy while encouraging entrepreneurship and risk-taking. The latter undermines archival missions. [5] Modern bureaucracies have defined existing file systems, even as archivists and historians are presented with many challenges. This includes influence on archival theory, especially by Weberian bureaucratic thinking, and controlling access to records. This was even the case in Eastern Europe, with political shifts in latter years of the Cold War caused archival access procedures to change. [6]
Modern bureaucracies have produced a “sheer mass of records”. In the past, this caused archivists to use sampling in order to determine “research potential” of records and appraise them. Even so, archivists continued to experience frustrations when “dealing with” bureaucracy, while being a part of complex bureaucratic structures, which can include competing groups. [7] More recently, there has been discussion of how various technologies can change bureaucratic processes, including in the United Nations and Vatican. Other scholars have asked whether the role of archives in the life-cycle of government records is a way of “holding democratic governments accountable”. The latter is the case in Germany, which has a strict division between records management and archival functions, with records remaining in custody of government bureaucracies. [8]
Fictional depictions of bureaucracies reflect some of these realities. One of the best known examples are the Vogans in Douglas Adams’ TheHitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, who destroy Earth because the planet is in the way of a hyperspace freeway. They are the embodiment of bureaucrats. The Vogans are inefficient, with absurdly lengthy official processes, and their continued efforts to thwart “any real progress in the galaxy.” Adams’ makes clear a metaphor: the house of protagonist Arthur Dent will be destroyed by an uncaring (and extremist) bureaucracy, just as the Vogans are doing to the planet. [9] Archives are not directly shown, but characters in the 2005 film view a restricted archival record from the Magrathean Public Archive. The record cuts off before revealing the name of a supercomputer, with a message stating that information has been deleted, as I noted in my post on the Issues & Advocacy blog back in December.
While bureaucracies are famously criticized in novels like Catch-22 and The Trial, they are a major part of other media, like the acclaimed animated series, Futurama. In the series, Hermes Conrad (voiced by Phil LaMarr), is a bureaucrat who works for the Central Bureaucracy, which manages legal, financial, and business matters in the city of New New York. In one episode, “Lethal Inspection”, a physical file archive is shown, with Hermes taking a folder out of a file cabinet. It is later revealed that he was the inspector who approved a defective robot named Bender (voiced by John DiMaggio), after be burns the file.
Brad Houston, a Document Services Manager for the city of Milwaukee, said the physical file archive is really a records center because it has semi-active records. He described how the Milwaukee records center works, noting the importance of filling out transfer forms correctly, pointing out that records are organized by box with specific assigned numbers, and importance of records management training. As another archivist put it, information and records management is as much about understanding bureaucratic processes and human behavior as it is about the records and information.
While there are many other examples of fictional bureaucracies, [10] one specifically comes to mind: the Elven bureauacracy in the children’s adventure and supernatural comedy-drama animated series, Hilda. An elf named Alfur (voiced by Rasmus Hardiker) is a series protagonist. Like the other elves in the series, they can only be seen if their tiny paperwork is signed and filled out. In the first episode, the protagonist, Hilda (voiced by Bella Ramsey), tries to come to peace with the elves, who see her as a menace because she stepped through their houses for years without realizing it. In the process, she goes through various Elven political officials who declare there is nothing that can be done and that the matter is out of their hands.
As the series continues, Alfur becomes a correspondent in the city of Trolberg, and files reports about his daily activities in the city, where Hilda is now living. Characters such as Frida (voiced by Ameerah Falzon-Ojo) and Deputy Gerda (voiced by Lucy Montgomery) are shown to care about the paperwork as much as him, as does the witchy librarian named Kaisa (voiced by Kaisa Hammarlund). In other episodes, Alfur proudly tells a legendary Elf story about a fight over a real estate contract, he meets a society which doesn’t use paperwork, and emphasizes the importance of reading the fine print. The series also features elf-mail, known as “email”, which is sent from the countryside into the city with various couriers, Alfur saying that elves pride themselves on the accuracy of historical records, and impressed by how Hilda is able to use loopholes. In the next to last episode of the show’s second season, Alfur is able to convince an elf sent as his replacement to write an eyewitness confirmation form, confirming that his reports from Trolberg, said to be “the most requested from the official archive”, are accurate and true.
Hilda, emphasizes importance of accountability within hierarchies more than fictional bureaucracies shown in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Futurama. Alfur is graded on a performance management system and experiences some level of bureaucratic accountability. The latter is achieved, within institutions, through strategies, administrative rules, budget reviews, and performance management. It can also be accompanied by citizen accountability, which attempts to hold government administrators accountable through forums and laws, using communication technologies to directly access bureaucratic information, monitor government activities, and give feedback on delivery of public services. However, Futurama and Hilda make clear the value of records managers (and archivists) who have developed strategies and experience with relationship-building and negotiating bureaucratic politics.
Many archives, these days, are not “faceless” or “nameless” as those in fiction, nor do they encourage falsification of information to protect individuals. Instead, some likely came into existence during the Progressive Era to “lessen anxiety” about issues such as race. While some bureaucratic records, within archives, may be considered “cold”, there have been efforts to humanize the files, especially those about human atrocities. Even so, some archivists remain impatient with “inanities” of bureaucracies they are part of. [11]
Bureaucracy remains part and parcel of archives. There have been efforts, in recent years, to reduce bureaucracies said to be “overlapping” and related claims that government by bureaucracy is dead or no longer necessary. Despite this, committing information to paper, then managing, or shuffling, that paper within a bureaucracy remains a “source of an essential power.” After all, records have the power to legitimize bureaucracy, while promoting political hegemony and constructing social memory. In fact, in the 1985 film, Brazil, a controlling bureaucracy rules people’s lives and crushes spirits. [12] The film’s protagonist, Sam Lowry, has been described by some as an archivist who has “dreamlike moments” and sees himself as a winged superhero. He tries to tamper with data in order to save the woman he loves before his vision is shown to be an illusion.
While there won’t be any “bureaucratic cock-ups” or Vogan Constructor Fleets demolishing Earth to make way for a hyperspace expressway, [13] sophisticated and complex bureaucracy will remain an integral part of archives, whether we like it or not.
[10] The Wikipedia category “Bureaucracy in fiction” lists 50 entries, including Loki TV series, the anti-communist novel 1984, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Pale King.
[13] Adams, Douglas. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” In The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide, 16, 25-26. New York: Gramercy Books, 2005. Vogans are also described, on page 38, as “one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy…[not] evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous”.
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 each of the animated series, films, and other media he will be discussing.
Lord Theodore dissuades Elianna from entering the royal archives in the first episode of Bibliophile Princess
At the end of the first episode of the currently airing fantasy romance anime, Bibliophile Princess, the protagonist, Princess Elianna Bernstein (voiced by Reina Ueda) is physically blocked and dissuaded from entering the royal archives. When combined with other events, she breaks down and cries, feeling she has lost it all. Her ban from the royal archives later turns out to be a measure to protect her from a nefarious plot. Her vast knowledge of the archives’ holdings is praised for its positive effects on society. This depiction of archival limits is not unique, however. It is widespread across popular culture, across what could be called “the cultural stacks”. In this post, I’ll note other examples of archival limits in popular culture, connect the depictions to the SAA’s Code of Ethics and Core Values, and other issues in the archival field.
Scholars, such as Sue McKemmish, Michael Piggott, Barbara Reed, Frank Upward, Jocelyn Fenton Stitt, and Sarah Tyson, define archival limits as barriers created when documents pass into hands of archival institutions from their creators. These limits inhibit attempts to use those records to tell family stories while circumscribing any efforts to reclaim archival records about enslaved people or utilize these records to fulfill other useful purposes. One of the most pertinent examples of archival limits in popular culture is the 1996 mockumentary by Cheryl Dunye, The Watermelon Woman. The film has been regarded by scholars, like Jolie Braun, as critiquing how archives and libraries control access to records, and revealing power relations that undergird research in these spaces.
In the eighty-six-minute film, the protagonist, played by (and embodying) Cheryl, is dismissed by a White male reference librarian (played by David Rakoff). He tells her to check reference books in the “Black”, “film”, and “women” categories to learn about a Black female actress in a 1930s film set on a plantation who is only credited as “The Watermelon Woman”. Later, he begrudgingly searches his computer and finds information, directing her to records about the film’s director. The latter is unsuccessful, as it doesn’t have the information she is looking for. As I noted in my review of the film for The American Archivist Reviews Portal, this librarian represents collections which reinforce cultural bias through marginalizing views that are not White, heteronormative, and male. The same is the case in archives, since they are, like museums, libraries, and galleries, not neutral spaces. Rather, they are contested ones.
Later in the film, Cheryl travels to a collective feminist lesbian archive known as Center for Lesbian Information & Technology (C.L.I.T.) Archive, where she meets a White female archivist (played by Sarah Schulman). Although she finds documents and photographs of the Black female actress, who she has identified as Fae Richards, the archivist is protective of the records. She doesn’t even let Cheryl, or her friend, film what she found. She also declares that all White people in the records have their faces crossed out to make the archive more “inclusive”. In this way, Cheryl becomes alienated in a lesbian archive, even though she is a lesbian herself. In actual archives, guidance on what to do with “offensive items” does not always exist, even in established codes of conduct or ethics. Sometimes it is only confronted when working with patrons, donors, or others.This is undoubtedly the case in the film, with photographs of White lesbians seen as offensive by CLIT. Measures were taken to counter White values by the archive, even though the methods used run afoul of existing archival codes of ethics.
There are many examples in popular culture of archival limits beyond those in Bibliophile Princess and The Watermelon Woman. In a pivotal scene of the sci-fi comedy film, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the archival record from the Magrathean Public Archive, published by the Commercial Council of Magrethea, cuts off before revealing the name of the supercomputer that Deep Thought created to reveal this ultimate question. A message states that the information has been deleted. It is an example of an archival limit. It is never revealed why the information was deleted or who removed the information. This deletion, which implies that the original record remains untouched and is intact, rather than completely unreadable (i.e. erased), violate the stated principles within the SAA Core Values. These values state that archivists should strive to expand usage and access to collections for potential and current users of archival records, while serving the broad range of people who “seek to locate and use the information found in evidentiary records.” Deleting important information reduces access to records and does a disservice to users who wish to access the records.
Hermes’ file, proving he was the inspector who approved Bender, despite his defect, burns in a fire at the end of the Futurama episode, “Lethal Inspection”
Destruction of archival records, especially those with important informational, historical, continuing, enduring, and evidential value, can constitute an archival limit. It creates a barrier for those wanting to learn more about their family roots, reclaim records about enslaved people, or employ records for other useful purposes. For instance, in an episode of Futurama, the resident bureaucrat, Hermes Conrad (voiced by Phil LaMarr) burns a file from the Physical File Archive, a records center with semi-active records as noted by Brad Houston, Document Services Manager for the City of Milwaukee. The file proves he was the inspector who approved Bender (voiced by John DiMaggio) even though he is defective, since Bender was missing a backup unit.
While Hermes has a logical reason to destroy the records, since he wants to move on with his life and give Bender confidence, his action stands against principles stated in the SAA’s stated core values which emphasize access, use, and accessibility. These values also state that archivists are stewards of primary sources, with archival materials providing “digital and physical surrogates for human memory”. Even though Hermes is not an archivist, his action runs afoul of promoting “professional excellence” which The American Society for Public Administration encourages in their current code of ethics.
In some ways, when no archivists as present to organize the records, manifested by abandoned archives shown in well-known animated series like Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure or less-known ones like The Bravest Knight, is an example of an archival limit shown in popular media. However, this is unlikely to happen in reality, as even understaffed archives have at least one person managing the records. After all, preservation of records, responsible stewardship, selection of records, service toward “numerous constituencies and stakeholders”, social responsibility, and sustainability are emphasized in the SAA’s stated core values.
In the end, while archives are often shown stereotypically or confused with libraries in popular media, there is something that can be learned from these depictions, lessons which can inform and improve the archival field as a whole.
Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. In this post, Steering Committee member, Sheridan Sayles, talks to a member of the newly formed LAC at University of Michigan.
In March 2021, Lecturer-rank employees at the University of Michigan Libraries—specifically the Librarians, Archivists, and Curators (LAC)—voted to form a union as part of the University of Michigan’s Lecturers’ Employees Organization. This involved coordinating among the Ann Arbor, Flint, and Dearborn campuses and setting standards and goals for all three work environments. The members of SAA’s Issues and Advocacy section stand in solidarity with the union and, beyond signal boosting their incredible efforts, we hope that getting an insight into the experience of unionizing will support others who wish to take this same path. In this exchange, Colleen Marquis of the Flint campus shares some of her experience.
What inspired you to unionize? Our conditions on campus. The Flint campus is very isolated and struggling. The Ann Arbor administration treats us like the problem child rather than support us. Our librarians are overworked and underpaid and it’s embarrassingly obvious to students and fellow faculty in other departments. The breaking point was when we went to re-describe our job duties and redefine our roles (after several positions were left vacant) and realized that we all need two to three job descriptions while being some of the lowest-paid librarians not only in the University system but in the whole state.
What issues were most important to you when forming your union? Equality across campuses, better cross-campus library collaboration, job security should the Flint campus close, pay, and better working conditions.
What research did you need to complete at the onset of your efforts? A lot! I learned about how to have the organizing conversation, how to be relentless when contacting people (even if it didn’t work!) and I of course researched ATF and LEO as much as possible. I wanted to be sure that LAC would fit well and it was soon obvious that this was the best way for us to organize.
You were able to get a fairly disparate group together, what strategies did you use—communication or otherwise—in your organizing efforts? I used every tool at my disposal including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, every day I could to try to contact people I did. My efforts focused on the Flint campus though and with a whole faculty of 7 people in the library and archives and the realities of our working environment, it wasn’t difficult to get a majority to sign fairly quickly! I had a lot of trouble contacting and getting responses from Ann Arbor librarians.
If you could change one thing about the experience of forming your union, what would it be? CoVID made it hard to get face to face with people and I feel like that could have made things go much smoother. It’s easier to ignore the hardships of someone telling you on a computer screen, much harder to ignore them in person. I had a conversation with someone who had no complaints about their job but when I spoke about the trouble I was having they said, “Yeah but that’s you in Flint.” It was harder to connect the individual with the whole community.
Lastly, what advice would you give to someone looking to unionize? You will have frustrating and dumb conversations. You have to remember that we live in a society that actively discourages organizing. There is a negative narrative surrounding unions that is pushed harder here than anywhere else. You may come across as looking sneaky or non-transparent when working in secret is a necessary first step. Some people won’t let their egos go about not being the first person to be contacted for unionizing efforts, therefore they have a problem with the union. Others will nit-pick and bring up other issues they think are more important or need to be addressed before organizing. Just be ready with answers and be ready to repeat those same answers when their concerns are repeated back to you but with different wording (maybe this is strictly a problem with academics?!) Also, recognize when someone isn’t going to budge and then move on. If someone has strong idealogical (ie not based in their or anyone else’s reality) reasons to reject a union, move on to where your efforts will bear fruit. Finally, you need tenacity, you need to go after a yes over and over. Doesn’t matter if you feel like you are bothering them – you probably are and that’s good! Keep bothering them, push the issue, get them to make a decision cause they’ll have to justify that decision to themselves. Hopefully, they will realize inaction is a decision and will sign a card.
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes courtesy of the Steering Committee member, Bradley J. Wiles, a PhD student in Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Information Studies.
What was your first experience working with archives?
I first encountered archives from the user perspective doing research at a university archives for a local history project. I came away with the impression that these folks (archivists) really have their act together because I was able to get what I needed very rapidly and the specific person I dealt with had an almost preternatural sense of what I would be interested in looking at and what follow-up questions I was going to ask. Needless to say, I was impressed but I didn’t really make much of a distinction between what archivists actually do from what other library and information professionals do. It was only some years later while working in a financial services firm that I started to appreciate the volume and complexity of modern records and how consequential their management (or mismanagement) can be. At that time a friend had been urging me to go to library school but I only decided to do it when I discovered that the program I was looking at offered an archives and records concentration. Since then my career has taken a number of different directions, but I’m somehow always drawn to archives in one way or another.
What is an archival issue that means a lot to you?
The most important issue to me underlies or ties into almost every other issue that we as a profession seek to address–that of institutional sustainability. I think making sure we have stable and vibrant institutions–ones that are responsive to changing social conditions and value the profession’s expertise and perspectives–is key to enacting disciplinary and professional priorities related to education, training, job security, opportunity, outreach, diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. We are unable to make progress in any of these areas without a strong foundation composed of the networks of institutions, professional groups, community stakeholders, and external champions who frequently have different ideas of what an archives is or should be in any given time or place. Very few archives exist as independent, self-sustaining entities and are thus dependent on institutional structures to carry out the key activity of any archives–to capture records and information for long term preservation and use. If these basic functions cannot be sustained long term at a societal level, then archives are worthless and all related goals are meaningless.
What do you hope to gain by being on the I&A Steering Committee?
I wanted to join the I&A Steering Committee because I believe that the relatively recent adoption of a more activist approach by SAA has been a net positive for the archives profession, but needs to keep moving forward. This section serves a crucial role in helping to keep SAA members apprised of issues that directly impact our institutions, communities, and professional position, and I believe that it can be a leader in shaping SAA’s overall approach to internal and external advocacy. Like others on the Committee, I believe that I have the necessary background and a unique perspective that will positively contribute to the mission of this group and I appreciate being able to collaborate with others who are passionate about advocacy.
What can we find you doing outside of the archival profession?
Outside of work, I spend as much time with my children as possible hanging out at Lake Michigan and looking for the best parks and restaurants in the Milwaukee metro region. I also like to write, play, and record music, so maybe if this archives thing doesn’t work out I’ll write the next “Who Let the Dogs Out” or “Mambo No. 5” and then retire early as a gazillionaire one-hit wonder. But for now, I’m busy with dissertation research, teaching, and volunteering on archives projects with a local historical society.
Steering 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, Holly Croft, the digital archivist at Georgia College.
Hello belatedly from me! In what’s been a long time coming, I finally started writing my introduction post as chair at the beginning of the month, and here it is the last day of November.
To be honest, I’m horrified, embarrassed, and frustrated at myself for leaving it until almost December, but it’s been quite an autumn for all of us. I ask for your grace as our semester has finally wound down, which means the students have gone home. Today was my first day without students since August (and I didn’t even formally teach this semester!).
What a whirlwind COVID has created, yeah? This year has brought challenges and hardships, and required so much energy from all of us. I’ve seen people say they can’t find a bright side, and I certainly understand that opinion. However, I do consider myself an optimist, so I’d like to say I learned and adapted. If any of it sticks long term, it’s yet to be seen, of course.
Even with a lack of posting on my part does not mean the Issues & Advocacy Section has been idling along. Your steering committee has met twice and will hold a third meeting toward the end of December. Your Vice Chair/Chair-elect, Lauren McDonald, and I met with representatives from SAA’s Committee on Public Policy and Committee on Public Awareness and the Regional Archival Associations Consortium in mid-November to discuss how we can best help each other with our different, yet overlapping, roles as far as advocacy and outreach. Finally, I have reached out to the Program Committee to see about the possibility of hosting a brown bag lunch in conjunction with those other committees at the Annual Meeting next summer. As always, your committee remains vigilant about archival issues that come to us from concerned members.
I want to take a moment to thank each of you who maintain a membership in the Issues & Advocacy Section. This section has focused on labor issues in the past couple of years, but it also has an interest in ensuring that archives remain funded in times of austerity. I fear we’re headed for another period of economic contraction, so your attention and support will be especially important in the coming months.
Of course, this time of year is a celebration hope for several faith traditions. My hope for the beginning of 2021 is that we can finally start to put COVID behind us and work toward a new normal. My hope for this last month of 2020 is that all of you stay healthy and safe.
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, UCLA Library Special Collections, and Carli Lowe, University Archivist at San José State University.
The Archival Workers Emergency Fund (AWE fund) is a mutual aid effort organized by an ad hoc group of archivists and administered by the Society of American Archivists’ (SAA) Foundation. Mutual aid is defined by the Big Door Brigade as people getting together “to meet each other’s basic survival needs with a shared understanding that the systems we live under are not going to meet our needs and we can do it together RIGHT NOW!” The fund launched on April 15, 2020, and at the time of this writing has provided financial support to over 100 archival workers whose livelihoods have been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The AWE Fund aims to address some of the immediate financial implications of the current economic downturn, while also acknowledging broader systemic issues that have contributed to precarious labor in archives. Because workers are facing layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts at different times, the fund is accepting applications on a rolling basis through the end of December 2020. Allied groups and individuals have been collecting and tracking these job losses through circulating spreadsheets such as Library Layoffs, Archives Staff Impact During COVID 19, and Museum Staff Impact During COVID 19.
The authors of this article have personal experiences with financial precarity and contingent employment, and finding ourselves in positions of relative stability during this chaotic time, we were inspired to act. The Organizing Committee, led by Jessica Chapel of the Harvard Law Library and Lydia Tang of Michigan State University, includes nineteen additional archivists, from across the country. We worked together to outline the scope of the fund, create a rubric for evaluating applications, and submit a proposal to SAA. Our discussions wrestled with questions of who would qualify, how to obtain relevant information without invading privacy or making the application unduly burdensome, and how we might prioritize distributing the funds if applications exceeded donations. We made a conscientious effort to lower barriers for receiving aid, and any archival worker regardless of SAA membership, including student workers, may apply for financial support up to $1,000.
Our first moment of exhilaration came when SAA informed us that they had accepted our proposal. This was immediately followed by the news that the SAA Foundation would generously provide $15,000 of seed funding. Once the fund launched, donations from individuals and organizations rapidly surmounted the Organizing Committee’s expectations. At the time of this writing, over 755 individuals have donated to the fund, in addition to several institutions and regional organizations. This has allowed the Review Committee to provide funding to every qualifying applicant in the first few months. The ultimate goal of the AWE Fund is to provide aid to anyone who needs it, and the message to our colleagues is that we truly have each other’s backs and recognize a sense of shared purpose in seeing one another through this impossible moment.
We are still actively fundraising, and to date have distributed over $131,000. This means that archival workers have received critical aid so they can pay their rent, buy food and medicine, and care for loved ones. You can help provide this direct support by making a donation, spreading the word to your networks, and participating in the upcoming Coffee For Colleagues (Tea On Me) campaign launching September 1st. The AWE Fund organizers have also created a Mutual Aid Match-Up Sheet to allow those in need of tech, career advice, and more to connect with other archival workers offering up those services, similar to efforts underway by MARAC and the BIPOC Library Residents group.
The AWE Fund is an example of the impact individuals can have when united in a common purpose. It exists only because of intensive collaboration, and will survive as long as we continue to work together. While it is considered a pilot project at the moment, it is our intention that it will exist in some form beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. We also share a commitment to working towards the moment when the state of archival labor is such that an emergency fund is no longer necessary for archivists’ survival.
Issues & Advocacy 