Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

"'What The Suffering Was Like': Digital Affect In The Act Up Oral History Project, Margaret Sullivan

Remembrance: A Journal of Queer Culture, Information, and Preservation

This article considers The ACT UP Oral History Project as an affective site that renders visible the impact of loss and suffering. Focusing on the archive’s filmic and computer-mediated interviews, and placing both in conversation with memory and queer identity studies, I demonstrate that the Oral History Project, as a discursive space, invites its audience into a felt physical contact with grief, loss, anger, and rage.

Using Metadata To Mitigate The Risks Of Digitizing Archival Photographs Of Violence And Oppression, Claudia A. Mallea

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Questioning the archival imperative of access, this research article discussed how descriptive metadata can be used to contextualize and problematize digitized archival photographs, which are often inadequately described in the digital environment. Beginning with literature review of atrocity photos and their use and digitization to discuss the risks inherent to disseminating photos of or born from violence. Review continued into the digital environment and the risks inherent to making difficult archival collections accessible online and the conflict between the right to privacy of the individuals represented in archival materials and the archival imperative to provide access.

Expanding on the recommendations …

Participatory Archival Research And Development: The Born-Digital Access Initiative, Alison Clemens, Wendy Hagenmaier, Jessica Meyerson, Rachel Appel

Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists

In an effort to advance the professional discourse around establishing best practices for access to born-digital archival collections, we designed a multi-phase, mixed-methods initiative, begun in 2014, that aimed to identify gaps and challenges in existing access methods and identify plans for how cultural heritage organizations hoped to improve access practices in the future. Over the course of our collaboration, our goals quickly evolved beyond the scope of collecting and publishing a static data set. We were inspired by models of research in practice, participatory action research, and research and development to translate our results into action by using the …

Recognizing Co-Creators In Four Configurations: Critical Questions For Web Archiving, Amy Wickner

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Four categories of co-creator shape web archivists' practice and influence the development of web archives: social forces, users and uses, subjects of web archives, and technical agents. This paper illustrates how these categories of co-creator overlap and interact in four specific web archiving contexts. It recommends that web archivists acknowledge this complex array of contributors as a way to imagine web archives differently. A critical approach to web archiving recognizes relationships and blended roles among stakeholders; seeks opportunities for non-extractive archival activity; and acknowledges the value of creative reuse as an important aspect of preservation.

Lessons From The 1800s: Creating The Miss Porter's School Digital Archive, Deborah Smith

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

College preparatory (“prep”) schools have their roots in the New England region of the United States; many predate the nation's most illustrious colleges and universities. The archives at these schools contain items of importance to American history in the 1800s. However, few schools have trained archivists managing their physical collections and even fewer have created digital archives to increase access. Founded in 1848, Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut was one of the first independent schools devoted to the education of young women. This article reviews the creation of the Porter's digital archive in 2018 and examines issues specific to …

“Tell Us About Your Digital Archives Workstation”: A Survey And Case Study, Elvia Arroyo-Ramírez, Kelly Bolding, Faith Charlton, Allison Hughes

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Archival staff in the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) at Princeton University Library lacked a fully-equipped digital processing workstation to capture, transfer, and secure born-digital and digitized archival content for long-term preservation and access. Staff recently conducted a survey that included information about the digital processing workstations of twenty institutions. The results of this survey informed a successful proposal to acquire a Forensic Recovery of Evidence Device (FRED) to serve as our digital processing workstation. The article will share details about the survey and considerations that went into our decision-making process, as well as introduce …

Togetherness With The Past: Literary Pedagogy And The Digital Archive, Madeline B. Gangnes

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Archival materials are invaluable to an understanding of the historical, cultural, and material contexts in which literary texts were published. Materiality, paratextual elements, and other key characteristics of literature cannot be discerned from recent editions. Yet original and rare versions of literary texts are difficult or impossible for most scholars, let alone their students, to access. Digital facsimiles provide opportunities to examine archival texts over the Internet, alleviating logistical and financial barriers. In Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (2001), Carolyn Steedman writes: “The Archive is a place in which people can be alone with the past” (81); archives are …

Adapting An Analog Records Management System For The Ingest And Accession Of Permanent Electronic Records, Brandy Tunmire, Amy Dinkins, Mary K. Coker, Shelly J. Croteau, John Korasick

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The Records and Archives Division of the Office of the Missouri Secretary of State (hereafter MSA) received two National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) grants for the purpose of establishing an electronic records program at the Missouri State Archives. The first grant covered planning, staff training and a consultant who determined that minor modifications to the current State of Missouri Agency Records Tracking (SMART) System would allow for the ingest of permanent electronic records. The second grant funded the SMART upgrade and the purchase of data-grabbing equipment. The upgrade succeeded and MSA was able to ingest 150 GB of …

Ambiguity And The Digital Archivist, Caryn Radick

Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists

This article presents an exploratory study of the use and interpretation of the position title “digital archivist,” and considers issues in how this term is used and understood, particularly in regard to working with born-digital materials. It looks at discussions of terminology and mentions of the digital archivist title in professional literature and provides a brief content analysis of digital archivist position advertisements from between 1995 and 2012 that focuses on responsibilities of working with born-digital versus digitization. The lack of clarity and consensus regarding what a digital archivist is or does reflects uncertainty within the archival profession even as …