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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Archival Science

Yale University

2023

Archival debt

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Defining Archival Debt: Building New Futures For Archives, Jillian Cuellar, Audra Eagle Yun, Jennifer Meehan, Jessica Tai Jul 2023

Defining Archival Debt: Building New Futures For Archives, Jillian Cuellar, Audra Eagle Yun, Jennifer Meehan, Jessica Tai

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

As archivists surface and reckon with harmful theory and practice, how can we awaken to transcend past legacies? This article introduces and reflects on the concept of “archival debt,” defined as resources owed to address problematic legacy issues in an archival repository resulting from past practices, policies, and strategies that prioritized the protection and validation of institutions over democratic access and responsible stewardship. As a concept, archival debt amalgamates the myriad issues we now grapple with as a profession, including harmful or inadequate description, performative or competitive collecting, languishing backlogs, failure to recognize staff potential, shortsighted fund management, neglected constituencies, …