Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Review Of Archival Values: Essays In Honor Of Mark A. Greene, Gregory Wiedeman

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Archival Values: Essays in Honor of Mark A. Greene is an archetypal Festschrift with 23 essays on each of the 11 Society of American Archivists Core Values of Archivists. This is primarily a book about archival professionalism, as Scott Cline’s framing essay offers the values as "integral to the archival endeavor" and the SAA Publications Board selected it as the fourth of SAA’s annual “One Book, One Profession” series. The book features some particularly standout works that will help both graduate students and veteran archivists better understand some of the more cutting-edge ideas that are reshaping how archivists think of …

Review Of Advocacy And Awareness For Archivists, Elizabeth D. James

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Advocacy and Awareness for Archivists is at once a practical guide and a call to action to consistently communicate the work and impact of archives at the local, regional, and national levels. As an expansion of the Archival Fundamentals Series, the book places the work of advocacy as being central to the archives profession. However, it neglects to incorporate contemporary archival concerns related to power dynamics and inequity when planning and conducting an advocacy effort.

Mplp: From Practice To Theory, Kyna Herzinger

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This paper traces the transformation of More Product, Less Process or MPLP from a processing methodology to a principle that has supported a growing toolbox of practices. It highlights the seeds of that principle, which are rooted in Greene and Meissner’s effort to shift professional focus away from processing minutiae and toward access to and use of archival materials. Although MPLP developed out of demonstrable needs, its underlying attention to the nature of archival work and the archivist’s role within that work speaks to deeper concepts addressed within archival theory. This paper argues that MPLP’s pragmatic methods have evolved beyond …

Labor Gone Digital (Digifacket)! Experiences From Creating A Web Archive For Swedish Trade Unions, Jenny Jansson, Katrin Uba, Jaanus Karo

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The Internet has become an increasingly important forum for societal activism, as event mobilization, member organization, and some actions have moved online. These new types of activities, often facilitated by diverse social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, form an increasingly important part of contemporary social movements’ and organizations’ communication, work, and expression. This rapid digitalization and the increase of online activities have created a dilemma for social movement archives and researchers: Born-digital material is necessary to understand our contemporary movements, yet the materials generated and available on the Internet are rarely systematically archived. To help find solutions …

Review Of Leading And Managing Archives And Manuscripts Program, Rory Grennan

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Review of Leading and Managing Archives and Manuscripts Programs, edited by Peter Gottlieb and David W. Carmichael, examining the main topics of leadership and management of people in archival programs, its place in the archival literature, and its potential audience.

Review Of Do Archives Have Value?, Luciana Duranti

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This book is about the value of archives in all of its connotations: value as evidence, memory, culture, source for a variety of practical purposes, and, most interestingly, value as means of financial gain for corporations. Each chapter emphasizes values in a variety of contexts: from Malawi, Australia, and the United Kingdom, to India, Hong Kong and Japan. In the process of discussing such values, several authors explain how archives came to be accumulated and preserved in their countries and how these processes have determined the value, as well as the worth, of their archives today. Though the chapters are …

Perspectives And Practices: Archival Processing Metrics Survey Findings, Cyndi Shein, Sarah R. Jones, Tammi Kim, Karla Irwin

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Professional literature and case studies demonstrate that processing metrics are valuable in advocating for resources, informing priorities, supporting grant proposals, and predicting costs for collection storage and care. This article analyzes responses to an archival processing metrics survey that gathered perspectives and practices from archivists working in a variety of repository types. The findings describe how archivists collect processing metrics in different ways, what data points they view as essential, and how they use certain data points to serve specific purposes. The findings indicate that although most respondents acknowledge the value of processing metrics, the majority of them still do …

The Concept Of Natureculture Document: A Conceptual Exploration Of Seeds, Embodied Information, And Unconventional Records, Marc Kosciejew

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Seedbanks, or so-called archival arks of the apocalypse, are addressing accelerating anthropocentric alterations to the environment by collecting, storing, and preserving seeds. These are specialized archival repositories that approach, frame, and use seeds as documents for agricultural and scientific research, classification and preservation work, and various other archival and administrative purposes. Seedbanks indeed are archives of unconventional records.

This article introduces the concept of natureculture document as a framing device in which to help analyze the documentary status of objects that are not necessarily or usually considered as documents or having documentary characteristics. This concept, coupled with its interdisciplinary theoretical …

A Methodology For Implementing The Standardized Statistical Measures And Metrics For Public Services In Archival Repositories And Special Collections Libraries, Melanie Griffin

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Society for American Archivists (SAA) joint standard, Standardized Statistical Measures and Metrics for Public Services in Archival Repositories and Special Collections Libraries, provides a shared vocabulary and set of statistical measures that help archival and special collections repositories articulate their value as they share concrete evidence demonstrating the impact of their services. The standard is specifically designed to be system agnostic so that all repositories can use it. Many of the standard’s recommended measures, particularly those related to users and circulation, …

What’S Wrong With Digital Stewardship: Evaluating The Organization Of Digital Preservation Programs From Practitioners’ Perspectives, Karl-Rainer Blumenthal, Peggy Griesinger, Julia Y. Kim, Shira Peltzman, Vicky Steeves

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The National Digital Stewardship Alliance surveyed practitioners in 2012 and again in 2017 to gauge, among other things, how satisfied they were with their organizations’ digital preservation function. This study seeks to understand what causes the high and rising levels of dissatisfaction that practitioners reported. We interviewed 21 digital stewards and asked them to describe the organizational context in which they work; to reflect on what aspects of their organizations’ approach to digital preservation are working well and which are not; and to evaluate necessary areas of improvement. We identified experiences that were common among participants using a qualitative research …

Review Of Feminist Histories And Digital Media, Biz Gallo

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The edited volume, Feminist Histories and Digital Media, sets out to explore the ways in which the field has grown and changed since the advent of the first reminist archival research projects 20 years ago. Intended as a signpost by the editors for future research in the field, the volume succeeds in informing, inspiring, and inciting researchers to move forward with using digital archives in feminist scholarship.

Review Of The Future Of Literary Archives, Meghan R. Rinn

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

In the opening of The Future of Literary Archives: Diasporic and Diverse Collections at Risk, editor David C. Sutton is careful to note that the various chapters in the volume are related to the work of the Diasporic Literary Archives Network. As such, the book itself serves as a demonstrated result of the Network’s years of work and collaboration across international boundaries, touching on subjects including public/private archives, material at risk, cultural imperialism, and literary history.

Review Of Reappraisal And Deaccessioning In Archives And Special Collections, Audra E. Yun

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Building on the procedures and principles set forth in the Society of American Archivists’ Guidelines for Reappraisal and Deaccessioning, this volume of case studies edited by Laura Uglean Jackson provides ample instruction and examples from a variety of practitioners focused on these often neglected components of the archival collection management enterprise. Reappraisal and Deaccessioning in Archives and Special Collections is the first book dedicated entirely to deaccessioning, and the first compilation of reappraisal and deaccessioning case studies “demonstrating the utility and applicability” of the SAA guidelines. This book is a solid resource for practitioners unsure of how to pilot …

Out Of The Archives And Into The Streets: Teaching With Primary Sources To Cultivate Civic Engagement, Jen Hoyer

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This article examines whether teaching with primary sources can cultivate civic engagement by investigating the competencies involved in developing student civic engagement and aligning these with outcomes from teaching with primary sources. Using three examples from Brooklyn Connections, a primary source-based education outreach program that offers a free standards-based and curriculum-aligned school partnership program for grades four through twelve, this case study illustrates the potential for using primary sources to cultivate skills, knowledge, and student agency. Through assessment of these examples in teaching with primary sources using protocols developed for evaluation of programs that focus on developing civic engagement, the …

Review Of Pushing The Margins: Women Of Color And Intersectionality In Lis, Carla N. Cain

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Pushing the Margins: Women of Color and Intersectionality in LIS

Pushing the Margins consists of seventeen essays centered around the question: “what does it mean to be a woman of color in librarianship?” The responses reframe the discussion of the goals of librarianship to focus on inclusion and social justice within the profession. The volume is informed by the theory of intersectionality and cites the feminist practice of consciousness-raising as a model for its conception. Topics covered include how to understand the unique pressures faced by women librarians of color, the need for recognition of the contributions of women of …

Review Of Ethical Questions In Name Authority Control, Itza A. Carbajal

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control is a new and thoughtful addition to the metadata and cataloging field of study and practice. Consisting of eighteen essays written by a number of libraries, archives, and information scholars, this edited volume investigates and responds to a number of ethical questions regarding name authority control.These include topics such as the privacy of the creator, use of geographic names for contested lands, critique of the use of gender in authority control systems, as well as considerations around multilingualism, to name a few. While the title mostly appeals to a particular field of work and …

Review Of Project Management In Libraries, Lydia Tang

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The term “project management” brings to mind images of executive boardrooms or software teams, but projects on a large and small scale happen every day within a library. While many library science programs equip students with technical expertise, not many programs specifically offer project management training. Drawing upon over twenty years of working in public, special, and academic libraries as well as her formal training as a certified project management professional, Carly Wiggins Searcy provides a lean but approachable guide to project management applied to libraries. Using recognizable library-related scenarios, Searcy demystifies and clarifies the relevance of project management techniques …

Review Of Digital Curation For Libraries And Archives, Barbara Austen

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Stacy T. Kowalczyk wrote Digital Curation for Libraries and Archives as an introductory textbook for students in information, library, and archival science, as well as for working librarians, archivists, and information professionals. It provides a good balance of theory and practice. It succeeds as a textbook but could be challenging for working professionals without a strong technical background.

Toward A Competency Framework For Canadian Archivists, Anne Daniel, Amanda Oliver, Amanda Jamieson

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The goal of this research project is to establish a foundational competency framework for Canadian archivists. This was achieved by performing a qualitative analysis of established frameworks and generating a foundational competency framework from that analysis. The framework reflects current skills and knowledge requirements. The competency framework is meant to capture all facets of managing an archives, including activities such as governance and human resources. It is intended to strike a balance among all aspects of archival practice. Future iterations should include emergent issues such as emotional labor and regional practices. This competency framework is intended to define and communicate …

Review Of A Matter Of Facts: The Value Of Evidence In An Information Age, Beaudry Rae Allen

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Laura A. Millar’s A Matter of Facts: The Value of Evidence in an Information Age sets out to convince the general public of the value of evidence and why it matters by presenting several stories about evidence through the lens of recordkeeping. Millar frames the book around how do we trust information, especially in this post-truth world, and examines it through three main questions: what is evidence, why is it important, and what do we ultimately do next?

Review Of Reference Librarianship & Justice: History, Practice & Praxis, Julie M. Porterfield

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Reference Librarianship & Justice: History, Practice & Praxis exemplifies its call for an emphasis on social justice and shared ways of knowing in reference librarianship by incorporating contributors with diverse experiences with reference librarianship, as well as maintaining an inclusive definition of reference librarianship and a flexible organizational structure. The authors represent the experiences of reference services in academic, public, and prison libraries. Additionally, of particular interest for this journal’s readership, there is the inclusion of archives and museums. As a result, a broad definition of the work and responsibilities associated with reference librarianship takes shape in the volume, which …

Issues Of Ownership: Leveraging Accession Documentation And Provenance Research To Improve Collection Access, Kara Flynn

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Records created about archival materials—including deeds of gift, collection-related correspondence, and other accession documentation—play an important role, particularly when it comes to providing access and maintaining partnerships with other recordkeepers. This case study will describe a project to review the accession documentation of all collections within Augusta University’s Special Collections & Institutional Archives, and the collections of the local historical society, held on deposit with the department.