1) What was your first experience working with archives?
I have always had a fascination with the materiality and meaning embodied in artifacts, so when I was given the chance to work directly with artifacts as a volunteer at the Autry National Center, it set the stage to becoming an archivist. Over time, after speaking to archivists in the museum and library sector, I decided to earn my MLIS and focus on archival theory. My first archival work was during my graduate studies at UCLA as an archival assistant for the Barbara and Willard Morgan Archive, processing Willard’s working papers, and Barbara’s prints and artwork.
2) What is an archival issue that means a lot to you?
I believe that investing in and prioritizing the processing of under-represented and mis-represented archival materials should be work that is centered and supported by institutions and fellow professionals alike.
3) What do you hope to gain by being on the I&A Steering Committee?
As an early career archivist, I look forward to learning from my colleagues about the nuanced issues that persist in the archives profession and having open-minded discussions about how to address them.
4) What can we find you doing outside of the archival profession?
I am an avid hiker, and can often be found communing with local flora and fauna. I also enjoy creative expression through cooking, art and crochet.
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. The following post is from Bradley J. Wiles, a PhD student in Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Information Studies.
In August of 2019, I rejoined SAA and the general archives fold after several years away due to professional and personal factors that diverted my time and energy into other areas. I immediately second guessed this decision after reading about what happened at the SAA annual meeting with the cancelled Brown Bag Lunch discussion on Frank Boles’ unpublished article, “To Everything There is a Season.” I was not at the meeting, so I can’t speak firsthand about the “pall” cast over the proceedings by the session or whatever other immediate fallout resulted from the decision to cancel it. However, the subsequent explanations by the SAA council and American Archivisteditors, along with the apparently unquestioning acceptance by the membership at large, demonstrated what has become so disappointing about discourse in academy-dominated professions like archives. Or, in this case, the resoundingly negative discourse on social media that seemed satisfied with mostly attacking Boles’ character while providing minimal analysis of the article or its arguments.[1]
In any event, when it comes to instances like the session cancellation, I would never accuse anyone of acting in bad faith nor would I question anyone’s motives for defending their principles and doing what they think is right. I have no doubt that there are many valid points that people could make and did make from a variety of perspectives. Specific responses to the Boles article recently made available on the American Archivist website offer some illumination from an oppositional standpoint.[2] My disappointment stems from the apparent inability or unwillingness to engage with ideas or opinions that do not fit prescribed insider viewpoints or that might merely suggest the slightest deviation from a set of rigid premises that now seem to dominate the professional discourse. Heck, I probably even agree with most of these premises, but the notion that I should not be spoiled by other views that disagree with them is absurd. I read the Boles article and there were some things that I liked in his argument and other things that I didn’t. Imagine my surprise when my brain didn’t explode upon this realization.
On the one hand, I can understand the distaste of highlighting controversy for its own sake, as expressed in the statement by the Archivists and Archives of Color Section. But it stretches credulity to claim that the article and lunch session were categorically divisive in intent, design, and execution. As far as I can tell, other reasons for it being canceled were flawed planning and because it was deemed incompatible with the program requirements for inclusivity. Ostensibly, it failed to adequately question how archivists are “navigating power dynamics, facilitating transparency, preserving the history of transgender and other marginalized communities, or researching transnational records to actively transform our pedagogy and practice, and how do our actions affect the people and communities we serve.” In my reading, Boles’ article generally fits within the spirit of this statement, but apparently his approach or conclusions did not properly align with how the program committee and others thought this should be expressed. Although, it’s not clear if anyone who made the decision to cancel the session had a problem with the article until the social media backlash began.
Unsurprisingly, Boles’ account anticipated the reaction that unfolded at the meeting. All official responding parties made it a point to say they reject censorship, welcome vigorous debate, and appreciate multiple viewpoints, but the cancellation makes clear that this is only true to a certain extent. And if Boles’ article represents the intellectual tolerance threshold or demarcates what is or is not acceptable in disciplinary discussions, then the profession and our institutions are in big trouble. In so many ways, the archives profession has gladly assumed many of the highly caricatured qualities of the academic left, but we’ve really leaned-in to the ideological calcification aspect of it without generating the commensurate usable knowledge an applied discipline demands. The resulting self-congratulatory spiral of conspicuous wokeness is both exhausting and meaningless, offering the veneer of intellectual robustness and social value without the substance. The admirable and necessary impulse to rethink and reform institutions and practices in the name of inclusivity, representation, and justice too often shifts into a knee-jerk rejection of anything that smacks of convention or tradition.
In a telling sign of these Trumpian times, the archives profession appears more likely than at any other point in my career to embrace a narrow orthodoxy that leaves little room for criticism or consideration of frameworks that do not mirror the inviolable beliefs of those now making the rules. I suppose that’s where my regret mostly resides—not because I reject those frameworks or beliefs out of hand, or because I think there is something so important or essential about Boles’ perspective or the cancelled discussion, but that this incident further galvanizes a standard that can be easily applied against anyone else who finds themselves out of step with that orthodoxy or the hashtag warriors enforcing it. And let’s be honest: it’s not like we’re shouting down neo-Nazis or tangling with fascists in the streets here. Attempting to spare the archives world from Boles’ perspective perfectly embodies the half-baked approach by the academic left to policing itself through speech and thought codes. At the end of the day it allows the archives profession to do what it has become so good at: patting ourselves on one side of our back, while flogging ourselves on the other.
It comes down to this: a judgement was made in the service of zero-sum identity politics that preempted anyone from having to think about the matter any more than necessary. But that’s just the world we live in now and I regret re-entering the archives professional fray in an atmosphere where intellectual freedom has become so loaded with preconditions and unwritten rules that are arbitrarily applied. But I also know that my regret—my ability to have it and express it—is tied to the relative privileges that I enjoy and I do not take this for granted, nor do I begrudge anyone’s right to be offended. My hope is that good faith professional discussions can still occur even if they are uncomfortable or contentious. Good faith assumes civility or at least the lack of malign intent. I don’t see how archivists advance as a profession if we cannot move forward on this basis, especially if our default reaction is umbrage against those with whom we might disagree, effectively killing necessary conversations before they begin.
[1] See the Twitter hashtag #thatdarnarticle for the tenor of the discussion, and for substantive analysis in other non-SAA venues see these blog posts by Geof Huth and Eira Tansey.
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This end-of-the-year post is from Steering Committee member Samantha Brown, Assistant Archivist at the New-York Historical Society.
As this committee year comes to an end, I have begun thinking about the issues that our committee and SAA at large will be facing in the coming years. While questions of accessibility and preservation will still be looming far into the future, the biggest problem our profession will face in the years to come is retention. How does our field retain talented and enthusiastic young archivists when their career prospects are so uncertain?
While many of us enter the field with big hopes and dreams, we’re soon confronted with the reality of the limited positions available in our profession. Job applicants soon discover that jobs are hard to come by and the ones that are available are either part-time or contract gigs. Even though securing one these positions feels like a success the reality of the position soon becomes evident. You might have a job now but positions is temporary and you need to start applying for new positions immediately. Unless you’re lucky enough to find a permanent job, you’re constantly in a cycle of applying and reapplying for new positions. This situation begs the question of whether it’s ethical to have a field that largely consists of part-time and temporary positions. Is it right to allow people to enter a field that has such limited options?
When discussing this dilemma, people have suggested that universities should limit the amount of students allowed to enter archival studies tracks. As of right now, it’s unknown whether less students entering the archival field would fix the jobs problem. However, what we do know is that limiting entry into the field creates a whole new set of problems. When setting limits, universities must create a set of criteria that students must meet to enter a university’s program. Unless universities develop a way to do blind admissions, these criteria could very well reinforce biases that already exist within the profession and prevent underrepresented groups from being able to enter the profession.
Another issue with limiting entry into archival studies programs is that it just deals with the surface issue of our profession. While there will be less people fighting and competing for jobs, there is no guarantee that more permanent, full-time jobs will be created or that higher wages will be offered. While there is definitely a pool of people applying for archives positions, the issue isn’t the number of people searching or the number of jobs available but how institutions value archival labor. Since archival work isn’t seen as valuable to the institutions that employ us, our employers don’t see the need to provide decent compensations. Unless we can convince people that the work we do is important and contributes something positive to the world, no one will want to create jobs for us. In order for our profession to thrive and grow, we need others to see our value and desire to employ us so that archivists can stay in the field rather than having to leave and find other work to support themselves.
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 Rachel Mandell, I&A’s past-chair and Metadata Librarian at the USC Digital Library.
Last month I attended the Society of California Archivists Annual General Meeting, which was held in Long Beach, California from April 24-27, 2019. I found much of the program to be of interest to our Issues & Advocacy members as many of the presentations and events were focused on inclusivity and diversity. The reception for the event was held on the Queen Mary ocean liner, which was fun for archivists and ghosts alike.
One of the highlights of the conference was Michelle Caswell’s plenary discussing a feminist standpoint appraisal of archival materials. She argued that instead of continuing to allow historically dominant perspectives of what should, and should not, be considered of significant archival value, we ought to adopt a new way of appraising archival materials. The historically dominant perspective– which favors white, English-speaking, straight, men—continues to dominate when archivists from oppressed communities are left out of appraisal discussions and policies. What is even more likely than archivists from the underrepresented or oppressed perspectives being left out of the conversation, is archivists’ attempt to achieve a “value neutral” view of archival materials. Professor Caswell completely dismantles this belief that neutrality can be achieved and adds that this goal of neutrality in fact reinforces the current, oppressive structure. Boom! I am so inspired to read forthcoming publications and eventually put into practice a new set of questions that we need to ask ourselves when conducting archival appraisal.
Another exciting event that I want to highlight was the Labor Brown Bag lunch! In the last year, Issues and Advocacy has been very focused onlabor issues faced by archivists. SCA is also joining the conversation! This brown bag lunch was an informal discussion and brainstorming session about forming a new SCA working group to monitor and address ongoing labor issues.
Other talks related to inclusivity and diversity included:
“Building Belonging: Strategies for Diverse and Inclusive Collection Development, Inreach, Outreach, and Instruction” Zayda Delgao, Sonoma County Library Robin M. Katz, University of California, Riverside Craig Simpson, Son Jose State University
“Putting it Out There: Engaging Communities and Enhancing Access to LGBT Collections”
“Campfire: Practicing Inclusive Archival Description” Noah Geraci, University of California, Riverside Cyndi Shein, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
“Empowering Indigenous Communities through Inclusion” Kelsey Martin Stefani Baldivia, California State University, Chico Celestina Castillo, Occidental College Lylliam Posadas
“No Reprocessing Without Representation! Discovering Hidden Narratives During Routine Work” Linh Gavin Do, Go For Broke National Education Center Jamie Henricks, Japanese American National Museum Lauren Longwell, Loyola Marymount University Kate Wilson, Saint Mary’s College of California
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.
Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from regular writer for I&A’s blog, Lindy Smith, Reference Archivist at Bowling Green State University’s Music Library and Bill Schurk Sound Archives.
For my second in a series on Access and Accessibility in Archives, I will discuss physical access to collections and spaces. I did not want to cover physical accessibility since there was an SAA AMRT/RMRT Joint Working Group on Accessibility in Archives and Records Management that covered this in depth and has created excellent documentation for working with both patrons and professionals with disabilities.
My initial thoughts were unfocused, though I knew I wanted to touch on this idea of who is, and more importantly, feels welcome in our spaces. I have been thinking about this since last spring, when I attended a presentation on art education and museum outreach, and last summer, when I read Cecilia Caballero’s blog post, “Mothering While Brown in White Spaces, Or, When I Took My Son to Octavia Butler’s Exhibit.” My thoughts congealed into a more digestible mass in my brain after I attended a fabulous session at the Midwest Archives Conference annual meeting titled “Beyond Description: Toward Critical Praxis in Public Services,” featuring Anna Trammell, Cinda Nofziger, and Rachael Dreyer as panelists.
These three occurrences gave me a lot to think about regarding the people in our reading rooms and what we can do to increase access and inclusion to a wider range of patrons. I hope we as a profession can come up with solutions to improve access to our physical spaces.
Director Dialogue: In Conversation with Brian Kennedy
Last March I attended a public discussion between three art museum directors about how they approach art education at their respective institutions: Brian Kennedy, director of my local art museum, the Toledo Museum of Art; Gretchen Dietrich from the Utah Museum of Fine Arts; and Lori Fogarty of the Oakland Museum of California. Though I went looking for outreach ideas, I came out with many questions, which I summarized on my own [sadly neglected] personal blog shortly after the event.
The directors discussed how they conduct outreach to make their museums into community spaces, better anticipate user needs, and invite more of the people from their respective neighborhoods into their buildings. Libraries, especially public libraries, have served the role of community centers for decades and museums are now getting on board, but where does this leave archives among our GLAM counterparts?
Archival public spaces tend to be limited to utilitarian reading rooms and maybe exhibit space. What would it look like if we tried to build new kinds of spaces where people could interact with our collections in different ways? What if we focused on more than research needs and looked at other information needs we could fill? What if we built spaces that are comfortable and appealing to spend time in? What if people didn’t have to sit at an uncomfortable table in a silent, surveilled room to get access to our collections? I am sure some of you reading this are thinking, “We’re doing something like this!” I want to hear about it! Do you have a good model others can follow? Shout it from the rooftops (or @librarypaste on Twitter)!
Beyond Description: Toward Critical Praxis in Public Services
During the MAC session, Trammel, Nofziger, and Dreyer began by presenting the idea of taking a critical look not only at our collections and our profession, but also the public services our staffs provide, using Michelle Caswell’s instant classic “Teaching to Dismantle White Supremacy” as a basis to examine the barriers that keep some users from accessing archives. Caswell’s article provides a useful diagram to provoke thinking about ways white supremacy shows up in our work; the area on Access/Use is particularly relevant to this discussion, but it only scratches the surface.
The second part of the MAC session was an interactive activity where the room broke into groups and filled out a rubric that had a much longer list of types of barriers along with space to include a description of specific barriers to help guide the group discussions. The categories listed were as follows:
Technology (i.e. digital literacy)
Physical (i.e. vision or mobility challenges presented by public spaces)
Time (i.e. public hours, length of time required to conduct research, request and recall materials)
Financial (i.e. costs involved with accessing archives)
Institutional/Systemic (i.e. whose interests & history are represented by holdings?)
Human Factor (i.e. customer service issues, approachability, etc.)
I found these categories to be excellent starting points to brainstorm. For the sake of (comparative) brevity, I will not go into all of them here, but I want to talk through a few to give examples of how to use them as inspiration for brainstorming. Full disclosure: some of these came up or were inspired by my group’s discussion and did not spring fully formed from my own brain.
First example: Cost is a huge barrier. Obvious costs include memberships to private libraries and historical societies, photocopying or other reproduction services, or private researcher time, but hidden costs like parking, transportation, childcare, time off work, food and accommodations if researchers are coming from out of town are also present. It is great to collect materials from underrepresented communities, but if members of those communities cannot afford to come see and use materials from their own lives and experiences, we are still only serving people with the means to visit. To mitigate this, archives could provide research grants to members of the communities targeted in collection development projects. Institutions could also take their work directly to those communities, rather than continuing on relying on patrons to do all the work of coming to them.
A second barrier: Time. Many repositories have limited hours, often because of limited staffing or other concerns that are seemingly insurmountable, but we should take a closer look at ways to make ourselves more available outside “normal working hours” (or 9-12 and 1-4, or afternoons two days a week, etc.). People who work have to take time from jobs to visit, and if they have limited or no paid time off, this is a costly proposition, especially if their research needs require multiple visits. Archives can at least test extended or flexible hours as their circumstances allow. What if a repository closed on Wednesday afternoons in order to open Saturday afternoons instead? What if academic archives used students to stay open on weekends? My repository is somewhat unusual in that we have a circulating collection in addition to our special collections; so we have longer hours than most special collections – when school is in session, we’re open until 10pm five days a week and Saturdays and Sundays). We only have four full-time and one part-time staff in our department, so our terrific student employees keep things running on evenings and weekends. Sometimes staff members take an evening shift, but we flex that time and take it off during the week.
“Mothering While Brown in White Spaces, Or, When I Took My Son to Octavia Butler’s Exhibit”
I stumbled across Cecilia Cabellero’s post via Twitter last fall and it hit me hard. It is worth a read, because we can see some of these issues in action in a real person’s real life. Rather than try to rephrase her words with my own [white] words, take a minute to read her post and reflect on the issues she raises.
Cabellero mentions a specific library, but let’s be honest: this could be many of our repositories. She identifies it as being in a white space, as many archives and special collections are. Started by a wealthy white man for the use of other wealthy white men. A place where researchers need to have advanced degrees or letters of reference to access collections. Who is served by these policies? What is protected? For those of us with less stringent admission guidelines, what groups are we still keeping out? Do you require photo identification? Do you charge membership or usage fees? Many of our policies have good reasoning behind them and we are not likely to update them anytime soon. Are there better ways to communicate that to our users?
Cabellero was visiting an exhibit about Octavia Butler, a woman of color who wrote science fiction at a time when neither women nor people of color were particularly welcome in that genre (I am sure many would argue they still are not, but things have improved). Regardless of the library’s intentions, they created an environment in which a female writer of color did not feel comfortable or welcome or allowed to visit an exhibit with personal resonance.
One of Cabellero’s main points, as evidenced by the title, is her experience parenting in our spaces. This deserves some examination for archivists. Do you allow children in the reading room? If not, do parents who want to use your collections have other options? Childcare is expensive and may not always be available at convenient times. This disproportionately affects mothers, who often take on more childcare labor, especially during weekdays when archives tend to be open.
How often do we exclude as Caballero was excluded, or on similar but smaller scales? How often do our minor interactions with patrons leave them feeling unwelcome? I am sure I have unintentionally done this in my work. What kind of image do we project and how does that keep people away? How do we make archival spaces that are really for everyone?
It Take a Long Pull to Get There
I do not have nearly as many answers as questions, but let us have these discussions and attempt solutions that better serve all potential users. It won’t be quick or easy, but it will be worthwhile.
I’ll leave you with one final illustration. I studied musicology in graduate school and I often think back to a point that one of my professors, Dr. Gayle Sherwood Magee, made about the importance of representation and access, as illustrated by the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. A little background if you’re unfamiliar: it is very controversial because a group of privileged white men wrote about poor black characters so the script play into a lot of negative stereotypes: characters are beggars, drug dealers, abusive partners, etc. It gave African-American singers the opportunity to perform on Broadway, something that was still remarkable when Hamilton premiered with a diverse cast 80 years later, but none of the characters portrayed in the opera had access to be in the audience and watch their stories playing out on stage. Are we doing the same thing in archives by focusing our diversity efforts on our staffs and collections, and not the people coming into our reading rooms?
Trammell, A., Nofziger, C., & Dreyer, R. (2018 March). “Beyond Description: Toward Critical Praxis in Public Services.” Panel presented at the Midwest Archives Conference Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL.
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post comes from I&A Chair Rachel Mandell, Metadata Librarian at the University of Southern California Digital Library.
A few months ago, my colleague Giao Luong-Baker and I responded to an Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) call for proposals to write a chapter for a forthcoming publication, Supporting Today’s Students in the Library: Strategies for Retaining and Graduating International, Transfer, First-Generation, and Re-Entry Students. My colleague and I both work in the University of Southern California’s (USC) Digital Library, where we make archival materials and digital collections discoverable to researchers online. More specifically, as the Digital Initiatives Librarian, Giao creates partnerships both on campus and with local community groups to develop projects that preserve and also promote collections, materials, and untold or underrepresented histories. And as the Metadata Librarian, it is my job to describe and publish these materials in our Digital Library.
We responded to this call for proposals, because although we have recently seen more literature surrounding first-generation college students and the role that academic libraries can play inhelping these students meet academic demands and expectations,there seems to be even less written about how archives and archivists can also play an active role in the first-generation college student’s experience. We structured our proposal first around the research practices and learning theories that help to identify gaps where first generation students are left out of current archival collection policies. We then presented two case studies, which demonstrate how the USC Digital Library is currently engaged in the process of expanding digital collections to be more inclusive and diverse by partnering with an array of contributors including professors and community archives.
Our proposed article titled, “Validation in the Archives: Developing Inclusive Digital Collections to Promote First-Generation College Student Engagement,” was accepted! As we started researching learning theories, we realized that the critical and multicultural pedagogies theory, which holds that if students are engaged in the process of knowledge construction, they are more likely to be active participants in their education (1),completely supports our first case study. This case documents the oral history collection created by students of Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen, who recorded the detailed accounts of Vietnam War participants. I actually wrote about this collection in a previous Steering Share when I first started working on it. This project can serve as a model for bringing more student work into the archives, therefore validating the students’ efforts.
Our second case study is the Independent and Webster Commission materials, which documents the aftermath of the 1990s Los Angeles civil unrest. The Independent and Webster Commissions were tasked with exploring the perceptions minority communities had of the Los Angeles Police Department surrounding the Rodney King beating and subsequent civil unrest. These materials were only recently disembargoed. We chose this collection as an example of how collection development can serve as a tool for engagement with the local community.
The crux of our article is that collections like these two create a more representative resource that reflects the university’s demographics, including first-generation students, which are now nearly 20% of USC students (2). At the USC Digital Library, it is our ultimate goal to create and promote inclusive and cutting-edge scholarship wherein students of all heritages and levels of privilege can find validation in the archives. Keep an eye out for our upcoming chapter in what promises to be an interesting new book from the ACRL Press!
Citations
(1) Rashné Rustom Jehangir, Higher Education and First-Generation Students: Cultivating Community, Voice, and place for the New Majority (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 55
I&A Research Teams are groups of dedicated volunteers who monitor breaking news and delve into ongoing topics affecting archives and the archival profession. Under the leadership of the I&A Steering Committee, the Research Teams compile their findings into Research Posts. Each post offers a summary and coverage of an issue. This post, part one of a two-part series, comes from the General News Media Research Team, which monitors the news for issues affecting archivists and archives.
Please be aware that the sources cited have not been vetted and do not indicate an official stance of SAA or the Issues and Advocacy Section.
Protest materials have long found their way into archival repositories, and collecting initiatives such as the gathering of signs from January’s Women’s March are not unsurprising in our currently volatile political climate. While still fraught with their own set of ethical considerations, as was evidenced by Occupy Wall Street archive custody concerns, traditional protest ephemera does not harbor the explicit privacy and legal consequences that have arisen as a result of the increasing online presence of protest movements.
The internet is a richly generative arena where movements are born and developed, either with or without a coincident physical presence. The way it is mobilized for protests can vary–from coordinating and publicizing traditional actions, to communication and information sharing, community building, fundraising, and movement organizing. Its rapid and reactive nature means that the parameters of a movement can be constantly adjusted and redefined, often across social media networks. Social media content by design yields much more information about its creators and can therefore be harvested and analyzed differently than traditional material, and due to its increasing ubiquity, it warrants new conversations where traditional legal and social notions of the public and private domain may no longer be adequate. As the volume and variety of this content grows on an unprecedented scale, so, too, do the tools and methods by which it is subjected to scrutiny.
Curt Ellis, “Woman holds up her fist ,” Preserve the Baltimore Uprising: Your Stories. Your Pictures. Your Stuff. Your History., accessed March 15, 2017.
Legal consequences and privacy issues
In response to this ever-growing body of online material, archivists and archival institutions have been initiating and developing best practices for web archiving projects. Web archiving and data harvesting provide opportunities to study metadata as well as content, in order to better understand the context of creation. For example, researchers may be interested in studying tweets across time, by geographic origin, or as part of a larger network of contacts.
This information is also of interest to law enforcement agencies, some of which have partnered with companies that sell tools for tracking and monitoring social media content culled from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media companies that offer programs which allow app makers to create third-party tools. One such company, Geofeedia, counts more than 500 such clients and has advertised services that were used by officials in Baltimore to monitor and respond to the protests that followed Freddie Gray’s death in police custody in April 2015. Using such tools, Baltimore County Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Unit was able to discover and arrest protesters with outstanding warrants by collecting and filtering social media photos through facial recognition software, a practice that has been shown to have serious technical flaws and to disproportionately affect people of color. Such tools are also used to assemble dossiers on targeted individuals as part of a strategy of long-term surveillance, as evidenced in the Cook County Sheriff’s Office records.
Use of social networks by third parties and law enforcement agencies has been met with opposition by many, including activists and the American Civil Liberties Union. Companies including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram cut ties with Geofeedia last year, according to the Washington Post, and on March 13, Facebook announced that police departments cannot use data to “provide tools that are used for surveillance,” a move that some consider a first step in curbing the online surveillance and targeting of activists and people of color.
Given this context, it is important for archivists to be aware of the potential ramifications of collecting contemporary protest material. For example, lawmakers in several states have recently introduced legislation that would target and criminalize protests, in some cases creating or greatly stiffening existing penalties and in others going so far as to give drivers legal license to hit protesters blocking traffic. Regardless of whether or not such pieces of legislation are passed, their existence is a testament to a political atmosphere that is fraught with serious issues for people who exercise their right to protest. As protest and movement organizing moves to an online and increasingly public sphere, the potential reach of such legislation, in conjunction with increased surveillance and data collection, could expand significantly.
Archivists should also be cognizant that many communities have complicated histories with the legal apparatus of this country. Different movements stem from different contexts, and as such the needs and aims of communities may differ with regards to visibility and their own safety. For the indigenous communities at Standing Rock, for example, the violent response of law enforcement towards protesters is the latest in a long history of dispossession.
Communities of color also often find themselves at the convergence of government surveillance and the rhetoric of legality. Some police departments, which respond to and monitor protests, have formed partnerships with the FBI, DEA, and federal immigration agencies such as ICE. These task forces facilitate information exchange between local officers and federal agencies through data-sharing agreements that provide reciprocal access to local and federal databases. Such partnerships have serious consequences for the activity of targeted communities, whether they are Muslim communities that are subject to surveillance by Joint Terrorism Task Forces, or undocumented and immigrant communities that are fearful of local officers deputized as ICE agents.
Archivists can navigate these concerns through the appraisal and reappraisal of their roles and documentation strategies, and by opening dialogues about consent. One model for ethical collecting could be the solicitation of community materials via online digital platforms. In A People’s Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland, for example, professional archivists worked in conjunction with community members to develop “a safe and secure space to share any testimony, documents, or accounts that narrate or reflect on encounters or effects of police violence in their lives and communities.” In other words, members of the community self-select what to contribute, while professional archivists serve to make that material accessible.
Harvesting does not need to be inherently problematic, however. In fact, ethical concerns can inform the development of technologies themselves. DocNow, a collaborative project between the University of Maryland, University of California at Riverside, and Washington University in St. Louis, has created a suite of tools for working with Twitter data related to Black Lives Matter and other social justice actions. As part of their mission they explicitly affirm, “a strong commitment to prioritizing ethical practices when working with social media content, especially in terms of collection and long-term preservation. This commitment extends to Twitter’s notion of honoring user intent and the rights of content creators.”
A recent American History Association article by Kritika Agarwal further acknowledges technology’s potential to dismantle problematic archival constraints and to “rectify injustices associated with historic collection and archiving practices.” The article cites collaborative content management system Murkutu, which allows indigenous communities to limit access in accordance with community practice, as another example of a digital tool that places ethics at the forefront.
Issues of narrative and interpretation
In any collecting effort, archivists must consider whose stories are being preserved and why. As has been pointed out previously here, historically repositories tended to focus on rehashing, and thus elevating, hegemonic narratives. While now there is a greater acknowledgement of the power in appraisal, description, and access decisions made by archivists, and the position of privilege these often come from, issues of representation still persist.
A recent thread on the Women Archivists Section listserv spoke to issues of counter-narrative in the Women’s March on Washington Archives Project, specifically concerns over actively trying to document voices of women who chose not to participate, and the tension between respecting “intentional archival silence” and including a variety of voices in oral histories and other event documentation (Danielle Russell, e-mail message, February 15, 2017). However, narratives and collections no longer need to be limited by traditional single repository/project models. As WArS co-chair Stacie Williams pointed out, “Let’s not assume that they don’t want to be a part of the larger narrative happening here, however well-meaning our intent as archivists; they may have their own ideas for how they want to be represented.” (e-mail message, February 15, 2017)
While digital collecting brings with it a host of new challenges such as security and privacy, it also carries the potential to create tools and projects that possess community-centric values. These are not mutually exclusive imperatives. As Jarrett Drake stated in his #ArchivesForBlackLives talk, “We have an opportunity before us to transform archive-making, history-making, and memory-making into processes that are radically inclusive and accountable to the people most directly impacted by state violence.” Now more than ever, archivists need to consider the ethical ramifications of our work.
A list of tools and related bibliography will be in the next post.
This post is courtesy of the General News Media Research Team, and in particular Courtney Dean and Lori Dedeyan. The General News Media Team is: Courtney Dean, Lori Dedeyan, Audrey Lengel, Sean McConnell, and Daria Labinsky, team leader.
If you are aware of an issue that might benefit from a Research Post, please get in touch with us: archivesissues@gmail.com.
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post is from I&A Chair, Hope Dunbar. Hope Dunbar is currently an Archivist at SUNY Buffalo State in Buffalo, New York.
What was your first job in a library, archive, or museum?
My first foray into the world of special collections and archives was at the Newberry in Chicago. I was chosen to participate in a small undergraduate seminar taught by the current Director of Exhibitions and Major Projects, Diane Dillon. The seminar highlighted novelty in the early republic and after just a few short weeks I was hooked. I loved the materials, I loved the staff, and most of all I loved that for the first time during my history degree I felt like I was connecting with my subject matter. There is something to the physicality of an artifact or book to drive home the reality of history and how close we are to a subject the surrounds us daily. After the seminar I became an intern, after the internship I became a summer page, and after the summer I became a full-time employee.
What made you want to join the I&A Steering Committee?
I eventually left the Newberry to complete a law degree at DePaul University, College of Law in Chicago and subsequently try my hand in the federal sphere. My time at the Dept. of Justice, Dept. of State, and Dept. of Education taught me the essentiality of advocacy and a strong voice, especially in relation to legislation and government. With many voices trying to be heard, there are ever present challenges to successful advocacy. I&A is an essential platform to allow a common voice that addresses everyday concerns archivists experience. We strive to equip archivists with tools for success to advocate for themselves and their department or institution on every level.
What is one major issue you see archives tackling in the next five to ten years?
Like many people in our profession, I worry about the inefficient or nonexistent capturing of early born digital materials, especially in relation to small institutions. Our collective history is less paper based than ever before. The hurdles to properly preserving digital materials are higher, more costly, and subject to obsolescence. My fear is that fifty or a hundred years from now we will look back at this period and have limited or incomplete materials to understand underrepresented or underfunded communities based on the shift from paper to digital.
What archive issue means a lot to you?
Access, access, access. If an institution has hidden collections, unprocessed collections, or no user access; in some ways that collection does not exist. This position is especially relevant when looked at through the lens of advocacy. It is more difficult to advocate for collections that do not provide a direct benefit to an institution or patron base. Exposing collections can be as simple as a general list on a library webpage or local state or professional association portal. A list and description can go a long way to informing patrons, scholars, and the public that they may want to contact an archivist for more information.
Describe and share an interesting archive you have come across over the years.
I currently work in the Archives & Special Collections at SUNY Buffalo State. We have a truly amazing, and arguably under-processed, LGBTQ collection donated by Dr. Madeline Davis and local community members. It is unique to the region and documents the LGBTQ community going back in some instances to the early 1920s. Part of this collection is a selection of around 150 historical t-shirts made or acquired for marches, rallies, and community events. Many t-shirts are original creations and the only documentation to early LGBTQ activities. We are currently digitizing our collection to contribute to a project called Wearing Gay History that was founded to show both the distinctness and interconnectedness of queer identities across geographic lines; to bring visibility to smaller queer archives across the country; and to uncover often ignored history of diverse LGBTQ cultures. Recently, Wearing Gay History was also added to the Digital Transgender Archive containing around 29 institutions. Both Wearing Gay History and the Digital Transgender Archive are wonderful examples of cross-national institutions bringing together collections on a specific topic.
opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This post is from I&A Chair, Hope Dunbar. Hope Dunbar is currently an Archivist at SUNY Buffalo State in Buffalo, New York.
Issues & Advocacy 