Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

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 …

Review Of Fundraising For Impact, Meredith R. Evans Ph.D

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

In Fundraising for Impact, Kathryn K. Matthew uses soundbites from more than 100 interviews she conducted with practitioners from libraries, archives and museums from around the world to share ways they increased their funding. This work emphasizes frameworks that help reveal an institution's value and the impact of community, partnerships, investing and fundraising.

Review Of Bitstreams: The Future Of Digital Literary Heritage, Kara Watts-Engley

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Literary production has always been tied to specific developments in technology. This has become all the more apparent since the advent of personal computing and our digital media age. How might an awareness of technology’s impact then affect the future of literary creation, critique, and preservation? For Matthew Kirschenbaum’s Bitstreams: The Future of Digital Literary Heritage, this is among the core questions of literary, archival, and bibliographic studies in the contemporary digital media age.

Data On Deck: A Case Study Of A Historic Undersea Film And Video Digitization Project, Karen Urbec Mlis, Ca, Audrey Mickle Mlis, Lisa Raymond

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

In 2021, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Data Library and Archives (DLA), a part of the MBLWHOI (Marine Biological Laboratory Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) Library, received a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Recordings at Risk (RAR) program to catalog, digitize, preserve, and make available historic films and videos of Alvin, the first-of-its-kind manned submersible vessel that has shown us more of the deep ocean than had ever been possible and transformed our understanding of life on Earth.

These moving images have not been accessible to researchers and were far past the intended life cycle …

“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 …

From Archive To Anarchive: How Bereal Challenges Traditional Archival Concepts And Transforms Social Media Archival Practices, Mandi Li

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

BeReal, an “anti-Instagram” photo-sharing app, not only challenges the performative culture of social media but also revolutionizes the very concept of ‘archives.’ By employing the technical walkthrough method grounded in software studies, this research found that BeReal can be conceptualized as an anarchive that consists of diverse storytellers, decentralized micro-narratives, and interdependent contexts. More specifically, although some classical archival elements can be found in BeReal, the platform challenges the traditional archival industry in two ways: one, its ordinary record subjects and high level of accessibility shatter the centralization of traditional archives; two, it challenges the humanist value of archivists by …

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, …

Review Of Archival Accessioning, Bree'ya Nadia Brown

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

In Archival Accessioning, editor Audra Eagle Yun and eleven authors compile essays on modern theories and practices to accessioning collections in archival settings. Authors in this anthology share knowledge and assert scenarios supporting their arguments, while also providing resources as guides for professionals who tackle the challenges of accessioning records and collections.

Review- Archives And Human Rights, Alexandra Pucciarelli

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Archives and Human Rights edited by Jens Boel, Perrine Canavaggio, and Antonio González Quintana utilizes seventeen case studies to examine the role archives and archivists can play in international justice after human rights violations. The cases include but are not limited to; Rwanda, Spain, and Cambodia.

Review Of Archives In The Digital Age: Preservation And The Right To Be Forgotten By Abderrazak Mkadmi, Lydia Curliss

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The book Archives in the Digital Age: Preservation and the Right to be Forgotten (2021) attempts to broadly describe the current state of digital archiving practices, the methods and strategies, influences of digital humanities and big data, preservation, and the concept of the Right to be forgotten. While this book promises to delve into the right to be forgotten, it is not until the final chapter that the author begins to really engage with this concept. While each of the chapters provides interesting and useful definitions for many technical terms, processes, and stages within the digital lifecycle, this book has …

Review Of Making Your Tools Work For You: Building And Maintaining An Integrated Technical Ecosystem For Digital Archives And Libraries, Ryan Leimkuehler

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Making Your Tools Work for You by Max Eckard introduces readers to the concept of systems and data integration. Eckard walks readers through how to approach system integration and highlights various tools and techniques to make an integration project successful. The book hits its climax with specific case studies that any reader would find valuable.

Review Of: Archival Virtue: Relationships, Obligation, And The Just Archives By Scott Cline, Meghan R. Rinn

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

A thoughtful meditation on the profession, Scott Cline’s Archival Virtue is timely and much needed. The text reframes discussions regarding justice, equity, diversity, access, and a better archives for all as a part of a greater quest for morality and virtue among ourselves and as a core of archives as a profession in the 21st century.

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, …

Community Oral History To Widen The Path: The Jewish Mobile Oral History Project, Deborah Gurt

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This article presents the case study of the Jewish Mobile Oral History Project of the McCall Library at the University of South Alabama as an example of a participatory archival practice. With goals to build a collection centered on a minority experience, to engage with community members, and to foster inter-communal dialogue, the project highlights affect as one vital consideration for archival record keepers, users, and subjects.

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 …

“Quietly Incomplete”: Academic Historians, Digital Archival Collections, And Historical Research In The Web Era, Donald Force, Bradley Wiles

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Since the early 1990s, archives institutions largely have approached digital archival collections with an “if we build it, they will come” mentality. But the extent and motivations of use for traditional and emerging patron groups are constantly evolving, and the factors or conditions that characterize use vary wildly in the web environment. As part of a broader study investigating how academic historians utilize and interact with digital archival collections, this paper details the findings of a pilot project involving a citation analysis, survey, and semi-structured interviews with academic historians from a medium-sized Carnegie Research 1 university. This limited exploratory study …

No Manuals: Archives Administration 100 Years After Jenkinson’S Manual, James Lowry, Riah Lee Kinsey, Aimee Lusty, Ezra Hyman, Phyllis Heitjan, Alexander Rettie, Kylie Goetz

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This article discusses authority and the codification of professional principles in the archival field by comparing Sir Hilary Jenkinson’s Manual of Archive Administration (1922) with the contents of a wiki called A (New) Manual of Archive Administration, created by the Archival Discourses research network in the lead up on the centenary of Jenkinson’s text. Instead of a systematic comparison of the two texts, the article uses the mode of the “wiki game” to randomly navigate the intellectual content of the wiki. The authors then make comparisons between the wiki entries and the ideas espoused in Jenkinson’s manual. This comparison …

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.

Review Of Ghosts Of Archive: Deconstructive Intersectionality And Praxis, Rose Buchanan

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Ghosts of Archive: Deconstructive Intersectionality and Praxis explores the relationship between archives and power to posit an archival praxis centered around justice. Drawing on his experiences working for South Africa's National Archives and the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Harris shows how archives have the potential for oppression and liberation, harm and healing. His work will appeal to all readers interested in social justice.

Digitize Your Yearbooks: Creating Digital Access While Considering Student Privacy And Other Legal Issues, April K. Anderson-Zorn, Dallas Long

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Student yearbooks are distinctive cultural records. For the schools and universities that produced them, yearbooks promoted a shared sense of identity and experience among students and helped create enduring loyalty to the institutions long after the students graduated. For scholars and other users, yearbooks are unique primary sources that provide insight into past eras of local student life and culture. In regards to user engagement and preserving local histories, student yearbooks should be ideal candidates for digitization by libraries and archives. However, yearbooks are challenging digitization projects because they are likely to contain privacy-sensitive photographs and other information as well …

The Value Of A Note: A Finding Aid Usability Study, Betts Coup

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Finding aids have long been an essential part of archivists’ work. To create a finding aid is to create a surrogate of an archival collection. Multiple levels of description are used to distill information about the unique groupings and parts of a collection and to place its content into context. Archivists make decisions about what to include in a finding aid based on their own judgment as trained professionals, but also with the intent to create a finding aid that will be genuinely helpful to researchers. Indeed, as the revised principles of Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) state: “Users …