Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Review: Unsettling Archival Research: Engaging Critical, Communal, And Digital Archives, Blynne Olivieri Parker

Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists

Review: Unsettling Archival Research: Engaging Critical, Communal, and Digital Archives. Edited by Gesa E. Kirsch, Romeo Garcia, Caitlin Burns Allen, and Walker P. Smith (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2023), 338 pp. Reviewed by Blynne Olivieri Parker.

Review Of Building Representative Community Archives: Inclusive Strategies In Practice, Louis Knecht

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Building Representative Community Archives: Inclusive Strategies in Practice.

“It Was As Much For Me As For Anybody Else”: The Creation Of Self-Validating Records, Michelle Caswell, Anna Robinson-Sweet

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

How does it feel to create a record? What personal impact does it have to represent yourself in a record after being misrepresented in records created about you by someone else? Employing a participatory action research (PAR) research design alongside two community archives, this article answers these questions through empirical interview and focus group data collected from people who told and recorded their stories as part of participatory projects led by the Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) and the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA). Across interview and focus group data with storytellers from both SAADA and TAVP, many participants …

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 …

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 Communities, Archives And New Collaborative Practices (2020), Jennifer Coggins

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This collection of varied case studies demonstrates the value and possibilities of participatory documentation initiatives, framing them in the context of the turn towards archives as collaborative spaces and the opportunities presented by the internet. Readers will find the volume useful as a source of creative models for community memory projects, but less so for addressing the challenges of long-term preservation and access in community archives. Overall, it is a valuable resource for those taking on community and participatory archives efforts.

The Veins That Lighten Dearth: Documenting Hidden Collections In Rural California, Jillian M. Ewalt

Journal of Western Archives

This case study discusses an archival consulting project to document and preserve hidden collections in rural northern California. The paper provides an overview of the collecting institution (the Mother Lode Land Trust), the collections and their historical context, and the consulting process. The author highlights processing strategies to improve preservation and description while developing a post-custodial approach to managing collections in a rural, community-based archives setting.

The Veins That Lighten Dearth: Documenting Hidden Collections In Rural California, Jillian M. Ewalt

Marian Library Faculty Publications

This case study discusses an archival consulting project to document and preserve hidden collections in rural northern California. The paper provides an overview of the collecting institution (the Mother Lode Land Trust), the collections and their historical context, and the consulting process. The author highlights processing strategies to improve preservation and description while developing a post-custodial approach to managing collections in a rural, community-based archives setting.

"Introduction" The Social Movement Archive, Nora Almeida, Jen Hoyer

Publications and Research

The Social Movement Archive examines the role of cultural production within social justice struggles and within archives. This book contains reproductions of political ephemera—zines, banners, stickers, posters, memes, and more—alongside 15 interviews with artists and activists who have worked across a broad range of movements including: women’s liberation, disability rights, housing justice, Black liberation, anti-war, Indigenous sovereignty, immigrant rights, and prisoner abolition, among others. These images and accompanying conversations illustrate the power of political art and ephemera to transform cultural practices, places, and communities; and its capacity to be a force for disruption in archival spaces.

Review Of Mary Kandiuk, Editor. Archives And Special Collections As Sites Of Contestation. Sacramento, Ca: Library Juice Press, 2020., Jennifer Gotwals

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Archives and Special Collections as Sites of Contestation, an edited volume collecting 17 essays from practitioners across the United States and Canada, contains chapters critically evaluating how Special Collections approach instruction, digital projects, cataloging, knowledge production, and ethics.

History Allies: Helping Protect Your Past: Resources On Managing Archives & Records For Community-Based Organizations, Ruth E. Bryan, Sarah Dorpinghaus, Matthew Strandmark

Library Presentations

Since 2015, the UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center (UK SCRC) has offered “archives basics” workshops for community-based organizations in central Kentucky. These workshops, titled “History Allies: Helping Protect Your Past,” are free and open to the public and often hosted in partnership with area public libraries. Attendees have been from African American churches, LGBTQIA organizations, genealogical groups, museums, and more. Topics include the historical value of organizational records, selecting records for permanent retention, inventorying and storing physical and digital records, providing access to researchers, managing volunteers and volunteer projects, digitization methods and standards, and outreach and exhibits. The workshops …

From Responsible Custody To Responsible Stewardship, Michelle Light

Library Faculty Publications

Light analyzes "responsible custody," one of eleven core values of archivists as described by the Society of American Archivists. After reviewing professional literature about postcustodial debates in the electronic records environment, advocacy for cultural sensitivity in native or colonial archives, and new models for stewardship associated with the community archives movement, Light proposes to revise this core value as "responsible stewardship."

Summoning The Ghosts: Records As Agents In Community Archives, Jessica Tai, Jimmy Zavala, Joyce Gabiola, Gracen Brilmyer, Michelle Caswell

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Although records have traditionally been defined by their physical form, our research reveals that records documenting marginalized communities disrupt these limiting definitions by surfacing the ways that community members conceive of the agency of records. Based on focus groups we conducted with fifty-four community members at five different Southern California–based community archives, this paper examines how community archives users conceive of records as agents, embodied with the voices of past lives, and capable of facilitating meaning for those who access, activate, and interpret them. In our findings, users of community archives not only surfaced the notion of records as dynamic, …

Supporting Community Archives (Or, How I Learned To Let Go And Love History Harvests), Annie Benefiel, Kimberly Mckee

Presentations

A History Harvest is a collaborative approach to community archiving, which leverages the skills of historians, librarians, or archivists and creates experiential learning opportunities for students to collect, digitize, and share cultural heritage objects and oral histories online. In many cases, archival skills are needed to curate and preserve the digital objects created and collected during History Harvest events. In this session, presenters discuss how we can contribute our skills, knowledge, and repository resources to support our local and regional communities and diversify the historical voice preserved in our collections.

The Living Archive In The Anthropocene, Nora Almeida, Jen Hoyer

Publications and Research

This paper presents the concept of the living archive as a system which reflects how social behavior and cultural production are part of the Anthropocene. The authors explore how dominant narratives of both the Anthropocene and the archive work to consolidate power and maintain cultural and disciplinary divisions. The authors refute conceptions of the Anthropocene as a purely biophysical phenomenon that is alienated from cultural practice and of the archive as a comprehensive and nostalgic space. They then introduce the living archive as an alternative representational, creative, and reactive space and illustrate how the living archive can intervene in ecological …

Review Of Participatory Heritage, Allyson E. Smally

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This review of Participatory Heritage, edited by Henriette Roued-Cunliffe and Andrea Copeland, focuses on the book's relevance to the archives field. It highlights some of the chapters that will be most relevant to archivists, provides overviews and highlights of each of the book's three sections, discusses some of the main themes that come up throughout the book, and mentions a few strengths and drawbacks to the book’s approach. It addresses some ways the book relates to important topics in the archives field today and what areas of the field it has particular relevance for. The review concludes that Participatory …

Teaching Through Activism: Service Learning, Community Archives, And Digital Repository Building In Mlis Classrooms, Travis L. Wagner, Elise Lewis

Student Publications

This paper reflects upon a set of Service Learning (SL) courses taught in the University of South Carolina’s Library and Information Science (LIS) program. The classes discussed helped community archives build digital repositories and provided LIS students skills demanded by potential employers, while affording students chances to experiment with technologies and information organization practices in low-risk, innovative ways. While SL is not pedagogically new to LIS instruction, this paper expands discussion on how SL courses translate between undergraduate and graduate students and within in-person and online variants. The paper concludes with an exploration of the ethical challenges of teaching a …

The Basic Archives Workshop: A Partnership Between Kentucky Community Organizations And University Of Kentucky Libraries, Ruth E. Bryan, Sarah Dorpinghaus

Library Presentations

UK Libraries has held a series of archives workshops to help community organizations preserve and manage their records. In this session, archivists and attendees share personal and professional reasons for hosting/attending the workshop, workshop challenges and successes, and more. Featured are audio and video clips from interviews with community members who attended the workshops. An open forum follows to discuss:

• What are individual and community needs and interests?
• Is sharing knowledge through a workshop setting enough?
• What barriers prevent individual or community collaborations with repositories? How can these be removed or lowered?
• And more!

University Library-Community Partnership: The Basic Archives Workshop As A Joint Community Support And Collection Development Initiative, Ruth E. Bryan, Sarah Dorpinghaus, Yvonne Giles

Library Presentations

In Fall 2015, local historian Yvonne Giles approached staff in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at the University of Kentucky Libraries about holding a basic archives workshop for clerks and secretaries of Lexington African American Baptist churches. Staff were excited to partner with Yvonne and held the first workshop for four participants in November 2015. The second workshop, given in early March 2016, attracted 15 participants from a wide variety of local organizations. A third workshop was held in June 2016. Giles and two SCRC staff (Ruth Bryan and Sarah Dorpinghaus) will discuss their individual and library-level reasons for …

Archives, Education, And Access: Learning At Interference Archive, Bonnie Gordon, Lani Hanna, Jen Hoyer, Vero Ordaz

Publications and Research

Archives are a tool for education and the access policy of an archive affects what kind of education takes place in its space. In this paper, we describe how Interference Archive (IA), a community archive in Brooklyn, New York, provides access through an open stacks policy and experiential learning, which allows for unique educational opportunities. These methods of providing access are intended to subvert representational power, allowing visitors, donors, and volunteers to take part in deciding how histories are told, how materials are accessed, and how the collection is re-used as a resource for learning about contemporary and historical social …

Interference Archive: A Free Space For Social Movement Culture, Alycia Sellie, Jesse Goldstein, Molly Fair, Jennifer Hoyer

Publications and Research

This paper discusses activist archives within the context of community archives and the practices of archiving activism. Interference Archive (IA), a volunteer-run independent archive in Brooklyn, New York, is presented as one example of an activist archive. We explain the manner in which IA functions as a transmovement and prefigurative “free space” under Francis Poletta’s typology of movement spaces. Through this explanation, we illustrate how the structures of free spaces can help us understand the way activist archives forge connections between communities and the ways that they create new networks of solidarity through the archival process.

A Vibrant And Vocal Community: Establishing An Archival Outreach Plan For The Lgbtq Community In Utah And Similar States, Julia Huddleston

Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists

Despite being both politically and culturally conservative, Utah has a vocal and vibrant lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community that has been making history and headlines for decades. However, there is a demonstrated lack of primary source material documenting these movements. The lack of archival material highlights the need for archives in Utah to actively seek out collections from LGBTQ individuals and organizations through a concentrated outreach effort.

This paper addresses the unique concerns associated with acquiring LGBTQ collections—building trust, respectfully arranging and describing materials in a way that maximizes access, and creating inclusive physical spaces through reference …

University Archives & Community Organizations: Ensuring Access Through Collaboration, Jessica R. Holden, Andrew Elder, Joanne Riley

Joseph P. Healey Library Publications

In 2011, to further our community-engaged mission, UASC began to focus on working with, promoting, and assisting community archives in the greater Boston area through facilitating cross-organization collaboration and access to informational, educational, and practical resources relevant to archival procedures and best practices.

The guiding tenets behind this continuing commitment emerged, in part, from UASC’s multifaceted collaboration with The Irish Ancestral Research Association (TIARA), a local nonprofit organization established to develop and promote the growth, study, and exchange of ideas among people and organizations interested in Irish genealogical and historical research and education. Our collaboration with TIARA formally began in …

University Archives And Community Organizations: Ensuring Access Through Collaboration, Jessica R. Holden, Andrew Elder, Joanne Riley

Joseph P. Healey Library Publications

How can a university archives establish a successful ongoing relationship with a community organization? What are the benefits and challenges of such a collaboration? University of Massachusetts Boston’s Archives and Special Collections (UASC) explored these questions while working with The Irish Ancestral Research Association (TIARA) to preserve and provide access to 79,000 mortuary records from the Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters. Elements of the collaboration included shifting stewardship of the records from the Foresters to TIARA to UMass Boston, integrating TIARA’s efforts in processing and indexing the records into the Archives’ workflow, providing in-person and electronic access to the records, …

Beyond A Box Of Documents: The Collaborative Partnership Behind The Oregon Chinese Disinterment Documents Collection, Natalia M. Fernández, Cristine N. Paschild

Journal of Western Archives

This article is a case study of a collaboration between the Oregon Multicultural Archives of Oregon State University, Portland State University Library's Special Collections, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), and the Northwest News Network to preserve and make accessible a recovered box of Oregon Chinese disinterment documents. By examining what influenced and engaged each partner, this case study offers an opportunity to better understand the motivations of diverse stakeholders in a "post-custodial era" project that challenges traditional practices of custody, control, and access.