Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Archival Discretion: A Survey On The Theory And Practice Of Archival Restrictions, Katrina Windon, Lydia M. Tang

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

In 2019, the Society of American Archivists’ Privacy and Confidentiality Steering Committee surveyed SAA members with the goal of identifying current practices and concerns across the field regarding archival access restrictions. Survey results yielded rich and sometimes contradicting information about how archivists approach access restrictions in theory and practice. The authors explore the survey methodology and results. Key observations include the ubiquity of restricted collections across archival repositories; the influence of donors on repositories’ restriction decisions; and variances in approaches to administering, tracking, and lifting expired restrictions.

Not having a comprehensive codified professional standard for privacy and restrictions is entirely …

Documenting Doha: Community Archiving And Collective Memory In Qatar, Sumayya Ahmed

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Heritage experts working in Qatar contend that international museum standards do not allow them to engage with local understandings of history and heritage, thereby acknowledging the disconnect between museums and Qatari collective memory. This article posits that due to the relative absence of relatable representations in international-facing museums, Qataris, building upon a local tradition of private folk museums, are collecting and sharing their heritage materials via social media in forms known in the field of archival studies as “community archiving.” In reviewing examples of Qatari online community archives, it notes correspondences to the characteristics of community archives that have been …

Use Of Digital Archives During The Covid-19 Pandemic By Murray State History Students, David Sye

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

During the 2020-2021 academic year, which was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers had limited access to physical repositories for historical research. Both the limitation of in-person archival access and the growth of digitization led to a greater use and reliance on digitized primary source materials. This preliminary study examines the approaches undergraduate and graduate history students took to find and access primary sources online amidst the pandemic. An expanded study has the potential to provide insight on search methods, types of repositories used, types of primary sources used, the use of online vs in-person sources, and factors for digital …

Review Of Deconstructing Service In Libraries: Intersections Of Identities And Expectations, Emily Komornik

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

In Deconstructing Service in Libraries: Intersections of Identities and Expectations, Veronica Arellano Douglas and Joanna Gadsby bring together nineteen essays from the perspectives of library workers of differing race, ethnicity, gender identity, and job title to discuss service and what it means in their respective roles. Arellano Douglas and Gadsby’s edited volume offers essays that highlight the frustration of librarians who feel underappreciated, undervalued, and, perhaps most importantly, underestimated in their professional spaces. Within Deconstructing Service in Libraries, Arellano Douglas and Gadsby collect insightful, real-world examples of library professionals tackling these issues, offering solidarity alongside valuable professional advice. This book …

Review Of The Social Movement Archive., Sonia Pacheco

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The Social Movement Archive, written by Jen Hoyer and Nora Almeida, utilizes fifteen interviews--as well as reproductions of visual records--to highlight the necessity of archivists and archives to reconsider what is preserved and by whom. The movements highlighted are wide ranging and include (but are not limited to): women's liberation, disability rights, housing justice, Black liberation, anti-war, Indigenous sovereignty, immigrant rights, and prisoner abolition.

Book Review: Urgent Archives, Terry Baxter

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

In Urgent Archives, Michele Caswell provides a tough love blueprint that allows archivists, in whatever place they are situated, to take individual and collective liberatory action by extricating archival theory and practice from the constraints of the oppressive systems in which it is rooted and for which it has been a tool. While Urgent Archives is aimed at liberatory memory work in community archives settings it also has a lot to say to archivists in other, often institutional settings. Caswell lays out three legs of liberatory memory work -- temporal, affective, and material. She then proceeds to outline the …

Review Of Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords For Big Data, Marissa Friedman

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

While its encyclopedic organization does hinder the book’s overall accessibility, Uncertain Archives presents some useful theoretical frameworks for archivists working with digitized and born-digital collections. In its entirety, the book provides a complex analysis of present and possible future impacts of big data across many aspects of human life and organization. It raises thought-provoking questions and areas of inquiry for information professionals tasked with collecting, preserving, describing, and providing access to exponentially growing digital collections. For those interested in LIS approaches to big data, Uncertain Archives is part of a growing body of scholarship concerning the growth of digital archives …

Review Of Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library And Information Studies Through Critical Race Theory, Rayna Andrews

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

In Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory, editors Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López-McKnight compile thirteen essays, as well as three introductions by scholars that discuss how Critical Race Theory tenets can and are being used by information professionals to challenge systems that harm marginalized communities. Authors in this volume share personal narratives interspersed with analysis and critique to provide an enlightening and enriching view of how CRT can be used to advance the profession.

Toward A Crip Provenance: Centering Disability In Archives Through Its Absence, Gracen M. Brilmyer

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Using the records that document the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition as a case study, this article discusses the messiness and unknowability of provenance. Drawing attention to how the concept of provenance can emphasize the reconstruction of a fonds when records have been moved, rearranged, and dispersed, this article draws attention to the ‘curative’ and ‘rehabilitative’ orientations of established notions of provenance. Put in conversation with disability studies scholarship, which critiques rehabilitating, curing, and restoring, this article outlines the theoretical scaffolding of a crip provenance: a disability-centered framework of resisting the desire to restore and instead meets records where they are …

Selective Memory: Assessing Conventions Of Memory In The Archival Literature, Mason A. Jones

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Scholarly applications of memory concepts in the archival literature broadly assume the role of memory as essential to the function of archival research and practice. While academicians in the archival field maintain the necessity of foregrounding memory as an essential concept underpinning both practical and theoretical research, it has nonetheless encountered some justified critique. Memory itself has become harder to define among the critical archival literature, applied liberally and, sometimes, even without merit. Critiques of these problems with memory concepts examined instances or groupings of instances where memory concepts were applied in the scholarship. A systemic overview of memory concepts …