Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Archiving Blackness: Reimagining And Recreating The Archive(S) As Literary And Information Wake Work, Jamillah R. Gabriel

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

“…we, Black people everywhere and anywhere we are, still produce in, into, and through the wake an insistence on existing: we insist Black being into the wake.”

– Christina Sharpe, In the Wake (2016)

In this paper, I introduce Christina Sharpe’s conceptualizations of wake and wake work, as they pertain to archiving the experiences of Blackness to better understand how the archive and archives are vital for those living and working in the wake of slavery. I am particularly interested in the wake work conducted both in literary works (speculative fiction) and at information sites (archives). To that end, …

The Winter Issue 2022, Margaret Rodriguez, Patrick Regan, Rori Holford, Lara Taylor

Fonds and Feathers

This winter issue is the first issue of Fonds and Feathers, a newsletter of the Southern Miss Student Archivists. It was edited and contributed by Margaret Rodriguez, Rori Holford, Lara Taylor, and Patrick Regan. Dr. Jeff Hirschy is the faculty advisor.

Community Of Practice At The California State University Special Collections And University Archives, Berlin Loa, Pamela Nett Kruger

Journal of Western Archives

The California State University Archives and Archivists’ Roundtable is a Community of Practice consisting of archivists that meet regularly online, and annually in person. Communities grow from shared interests, resources, concerns, or endeavors. Communities of practice can grow out of a need for connecting with other people who share the same issues, learning environment, or passions. In this article we describe how the CSUAAR group was founded, how it has evolved, and offers a potential model for other archivists to identify, create, and maintain a community of practice through common needs or interest.

2019-2020 Annual Report, Society Of American Archivists Student Chapter

Annual Reports

The 2019-2020 Annual Report records the activities of the San Jose State University Society of American Archivists Student Chapter (SAASC). This report is submitted to the Student Chapter's parent organization, the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The report lists SAASC members who are also individual members of SAA, and provides a summary of the Chapter’s events for the year. The report also includes information on the publication of the Fall/Winter 2019 and Spring/Summer 2020 issues of Archeota, the SAASC open source digital publication. SAASC Executive Committee members for 2019-2020 were Kelli Roisman, Chair; E. Ashley Cale, Vice-Chair; Dakota Greenwich, …

Digital Collaborations: A Survey Analysis Of Digital Humanities Partnerships Between Librarians And Other Academics, Jessica Wagner Webster

Publications and Research

The present study will investigate the perceptions of information professionals about their role in the work of digital humanities scholars, as well as the perceptions of digital humanities scholars on the role of information professionals in their research. While other scholarly literature has considered collaborations between these groups via surveys or interviews with small project teams, the present study will provide a large-scale analysis of collaborations using survey responses from more than 500 scholars, librarians, and archivists. Questions sought to determine the extent to which these groups collaborate with one another on project teams; how these collaborations unfold and who …

Archivists And Time: Conceptions Of Time And Long-Term Information Preservation Among Archivists, Reine Rydén

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The issue of preserving information about nuclear waste for an extremely long period of time raises questions about ways to transmit knowledge to future generations. There is an ongoing discussion about the design of a message and the sustainability of different storage media. Information preservation in the really long term is, however, only partly a matter of technology; it is just as much about thought patterns. Since the work of archivists plays a key role, it is important to find out how archivists think about time and whether they have more developed conceptions of time and the future than other …

The Cost Of Care And The Impact On The Archives Profession, Alexis Braun Marks, Rachael Dreyer, Jennifer Johnson, Michelle Sweetser

Journal of Western Archives

The archives profession has, in recent years, exerted considerable effort to become more welcoming and inclusive to diverse archival professionals. Many of these efforts have focused intensively on recruiting a diverse workforce. In this article, the authors propose a new approach through which to create and sustain inclusive archival work environments: caregiving. National research has shown that caregiving responsibilities affect women more than their male counterparts, and within these gender divides there are aspects of caregiving that impact individuals of different racial and cultural backgrounds unequally. The issue of navigating the demands of caregiving, work responsibilities, and professional engagement must …

People Of The Stacks: ‘The Archivist’ Character In Fiction, Sharon Wolff

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Archives and archival professionals suffer from what may be termed as an “image problem” due to their general lack of exposure to the public. With their efforts being tucked away in various repositories, their fictional representatives become an important way to give people an idea of what they do. With the help of an article by Arlene Schmuland, two works of fiction, People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks from 2008 and The Archivist by Martha Cooley from 1998, are used to compare fictional archivists and the ways their differences may indicate a change in how their real-life counterparts are …

Saa Presentation_ Technological Competencies.Pdf, Anne Daniel, Amanda Jamieson, Amanda Oliver

Anne Daniel

Poster - Fostering Stakeholder Engagement By Building Archivist Competencies.Pptx, Anne Daniel, Amanda Jamieson, Amanda Oliver

Anne Daniel

Purdue Data Reuse Checklist: An Archival Approach For Data Producers, Carly Dearborn

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

The Data Reuse Checklist is intended to help a data producer verify their research data is well-described and read for reuse by a third party. It was developed from the perspective of an archivist working with research data and borrows best practices from archival processing and research.

Archivists at Purdue University Libraries have been working with data curation initiatives since the mid-2000s. Early in the Libraries’ work with managing research data, Dean of Libraries James Mullins saw the value of archivists’ knowledge in areas such as raw “data” collection, sensitive or personal information management, and defining user groups. Mullins brought …

Purdue Data Orientation Checklist: An Archival Approach For Data Users, Carly Dearborn

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

The Data Orientation Checklist is intended to help a data user navigate an unfamiliar dataset, research material or digital collection. Whether joining a new research lab or downloading data from a public repository, navigating new data can be confusing and frustrating. This checklist was developed from the perspective of an archivist working with research data and borrows best practices from archival processing and research.

Archivists at Purdue University Libraries have been working with data curation initiatives since the mid-2000s. Early in the Libraries’ work with managing research data, Dean of Libraries James Mullins saw the value of archivists’ knowledge in …

Applying Archival Science To Digital Curation: Advocacy For The Archivist’S Role In Implementing And Managing Trusted Digital Repositories, Sammie L. Morris

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Archivists have led digital preservation efforts for as long as there have been digital records, as a natural extension of archival responsibilities to collect, preserve, and provide ongoing access to unique information of enduring value. Increasingly, librarians and information professionals are also focusing attention and resources on these initiatives. Examples include data curation, establishment of institutional repositories, and providing virtual work spaces for researchers to collaborate and archive their scholarly output.

Information professionals are relying upon standards such as ISO 16363 for certification of trustworthy digital repositories, to facilitate successful digital preservation and access. Unfortunately, archivists are sometimes forgotten in …

Archival Literacy Competencies For Undergraduate History Majors, Sharon A. Weiner, Sammie L. Morris, Lawrence J. Mykytiuk

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Undergraduate history majors need to know how to conduct archival research. This paper describes the second phase of a project to identify “archival literacy” competencies. Faculty, archivists, and librarians from baccalaureate, masters, and doctoral/research institutions commented on a draft list. This resulted in competencies in six major categories: accurately conceive of primary sources; locate primary sources; use a research question, evidence, and argumentation to advance a thesis; obtain guidance from archivists; demonstrate acculturation to archives; and follow publication protocols. Collaborations of archivists, faculty, and librarians can integrate the competencies throughout undergraduate history curricula in their institutions.

Freedom Is Everybody's Business: Using Multi-Faceted Outreach To Draw Student Attention To Local Archival Collections On The Civil Rights Movement Of The 1960s, Joshua Youngblood

University Libraries Faculty Publications and Presentations

As the recent celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington demonstrated, numerous digital projects and numerous scholarly and popular print publications have made the grander stories and lessons of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s widely available. But what about the lesser known heroes and the local and regional episodes that have not received the same level of interest? Manuscript collections that capture those hidden stories, integral to the achievements—and setbacks—of the Civil Rights Movement, can provide students access to richer understandings of the social and political watersheds of the era. By utilizing select …

Seeking An Identity: The Portrayal Of Archivists In Film, Anne Daniel, Amanda Oliver

Anne Daniel

The image of archivists in media can sometimes seem nebulous. From descriptions of dusty, unorganized vaults and cardigan-clad gatekeepers, there appears to be many stereotypes perpetuated in media. Building upon previous research in this area, this study aims to investigate how archivists are portrayed in film. Films involving archives and archivists were selected and a content analysis of these films was conducted to address the following questions: is there an archivist in the film and how is the character portrayed? Can specific stereotypes be identified? Do archivists have their own distinct identities in films or is the archivist a non-descript …

Seeking An Identity: The Portrayal Of Archivists In Film, Anne Daniel, Amanda Oliver

Western Libraries Presentations

The image of archivists in media can sometimes seem nebulous. From descriptions of dusty, unorganized vaults and cardigan-clad gatekeepers, there appears to be many stereotypes perpetuated in media. Building upon previous research in this area, this study aims to investigate how archivists are portrayed in film. Films involving archives and archivists were selected and a content analysis of these films was conducted to address the following questions: is there an archivist in the film and how is the character portrayed? Can specific stereotypes be identified? Do archivists have their own distinct identities in films or is the archivist a non-descript …

How To Deal With Published Maps In Your Collection, Katherine Rankin

Library Faculty Presentations

This program is aimed at archivists and other special collections staff who have published maps as opposed to manuscript maps as part of their collections but do not have much expertise in map librarianship. The program includes information on kinds of maps, the basic parts of a map including those found mainly on pre-19th century maps, how to store and preserve maps, why they should be cataloged, how cataloging rare maps differs from cataloging current maps, why maps should be classified with a standard classification system, how Library of Congress call numbers can be used to locate certain kinds of …

Graduate Studies In Archives: Proficiency, Experience, Engagement, Darwin Stapleton

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Role of Archivists in Communities:

• Acquire, manage, preserve, and provide access to historical records
• Assist communities with documenting their unique stories
• Serve as a link to the records that inform family historians and genealogists
• Utilize digital technologies & media to expand public access to on-line collections
• Digitize images and records to make them available for use by peers, researchers, and diverse communities worldwide
• Serve as the bridge between historic information and the users who can benefit from its public availability

The Well‐Rounded Archivist: A Unlv University Archivist Perspective, Tom D. Sommer

Library Faculty Presentations

I’m going to be focusing on three main themes today:

• The first theme will be “Being a University Archivist.”

• Next will be the things that I “Wish I had Known.”

• Lastly, I’m going to provide you a series of thoughts and feelings that center around my “Advice for New Archivists.”

Born Digital: Event-Driven Archives, Vincent Capone

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

The growth of the internet has brought numerous tools and opportunities for archivists to both enhance their collections and reach out to potential patrons. Archives across the globe have begun immense digitization efforts to bring collections into the digital age and make them accessible to a broader audience. But what challenges face new archives whose collections are born-digital? How do these archives prove that they are indeed an archival facility and not simply a memory institution? These questions have risen around numerous digital archives born in the past decade to document and commemorate social events and tragic disasters, including the …

Into The Breach: The Career Of David B. Gracy Ii, Kimberly D. Anderson

Kimberly D. Anderson

David B. Gracy II has had a significant influence on the development of archival practice in the United States. Through his service in and leadership of the Society of American Archivists, and his activism regionally in both Texas and Georgia, Gracy has shaped the profession and inspired several generations of students and future archivists. This paper explores the development of Gracy’s career and the impact it has had on archives, archivists, and the field of archival enterprise.

Snap, New Archivists, And Other Things That Keep Me Up At Night, Rebecca Goldman

Professional presentations

A brief history of SAA's Students and New Archives Professionals (SNAP) Roundtable and my thoughts and concerns about new archivists.

Information Workers In The Academy: The Case Of Librarians And Archivists At The University Of Western Ontario, Melanie Mills

Melanie Mills

For much of its history, the organizational culture for academic librarians and archivists at The University of Western Ontario was primarily a culture of the practitioner. While librarians and archivists supported teaching, research and service at Western, they did not directly engage in it. As a result of grassroots efforts undertaken by members of Western’s academic community in the mid-2000s however, the potential contributions of information workers to the teaching, research and service mandate of University began to garner recognition. Born out of this collective awakening, a successful union drive and shortly thereafter an inaugural Collective Agreement for The University …

Appraisal Learning Networks: How University Archivists Learn To Appraise Through Social Interaction, Kimberly D. Anderson

Kimberly D. Anderson

The appraisal of archival materials for ongoing value is one of the core responsibilities of the archivist, yet empirical research on how archivists learn to appraise is absent from the field. The purpose of this study is to understand how and when archivists learn to appraise and to devise a methodology for further studies in archival learning and knowledge transmission. It was hypothesized that the appraisal learning (continuing and formal) structures of university archivists can be understood as a network of relationships that demonstrates lineages of ideas and influences. The study employed an iterative process in which exploratory research and …

Archives For All: Professional Responsibility And Social Justice, Randall C. Jimerson Western Washington University

History Faculty and Staff Publications

Archivists should use their power-in determining what records will be preserved for future generations and in interpreting this documentation for researchers-for the benefit of all members of society. By adopting a social conscience for the profession, they can commit themselves to active engagement in the public arena. Archivists can use the power of archives to promote accountability, open government, diversity, and social justice. In doing so, it is essential to distinguish objectivity from neutrality. Advocacy and activism can address social issues without abandoning professional standards of fairness, honesty, detachment, and transparency.

Coming Together: Unity And Diversity, Randall C. Jimerson Western Washington University

History Faculty and Staff Publications

As archivists we all share some essential common values and perspectives, we have many of the same aspirations, and we are united in a profession that performs an essential function in society.

We are a diverse profession. We celebrate our differences and our special areas of expertise. SAA has long recognized these affinities, and has created sections, roundtables, and other groups to allow us to meet with those from similar institutions, or those who share the same functional responsibilities or particular interests. It is important for us to have these gatherings and to learn from each other.

Redefining Archival Identity: Meeting User Needs In The Information Society, Randall C. Jimerson Western Washington University

History Faculty and Staff Publications

In order to avoid becoming irrelevant in the modern information society, archivists must redefine their professional identity and role in society, learn new planning and marketing skills, and establish the importance of archives in meeting user needs. Responding to initiatives launched by the SAA Task Force on Archives and Society, the author argues that archivists should adopt a more user-friendly approach to marketing their services. Marketing differs from public relations and selling products by focusing on customers and their needs. Altering the profession's image requires that individual archivists redefine their own self-image, attitudes, and procedures.