Archival Science Commons^™

Commemorating A Legacy Of Dissent: Revisiting Campus Activism 1968-1970, Annie E. Tummino

Publications and Research

On the heels of the student revolt at Columbia in 1968, Queens College students launched their own militant actions and demands for change on campus. Using primary source materials from the Benjamin Rosenthal Library’s Special Collections and Archives, the presentation covers the New Left and Anti-War movements, as well as an uprising led by Black and Puerto Rican students influenced by the ideologies of Black Power and self-determination. The role of archives in preserving activist history and educating current and future generations is also touched on.

Exploring Vicarious Trauma In The Archives: A Brief Survey Of American Archival Experiences, Victoria A. Fernandez

Student Theses

Whether deliberately collected or not, evidence of trauma is commonly found in archival collections. As a result, the field has seen a recent increase in conference presentations regarding archivists’ experience of working with traumatic materials, yet little has actually been researched or published. Vicarious trauma, as it is known in psychological contexts, is the understanding that individuals engaging with survivors of trauma may experience the emotional labor of their clients in secondary form. Although the concept of vicarious trauma is almost exclusively applied to mental health professionals, archivists are recognizing the need to integrate the prevalence of vicarious trauma within …

Out Of The Archives And Into The Streets: Teaching With Primary Sources To Cultivate Civic Engagement, Jen Hoyer

Publications and Research

This article examines whether teaching with primary sources can cultivate civic engagement by investigating the competencies involved in developing student civic engagement and aligning these with outcomes from teaching with primary sources. Using three examples from Brooklyn Connections, a primary source-based education outreach program that offers a free standards-based and curriculum-aligned school partnership program for grades four through twelve, this case study illustrates the potential for using primary sources to cultivate skills, knowledge, and student agency. Through assessment of these examples in teaching with primary sources using protocols developed for evaluation of programs that focus on developing civic engagement, the …

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 …

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 …

Visualizing Archives And Library Collections, Thomas Cleary

Publications and Research

Archivists and special collections librarians have struggled for a long time with how to show patrons what we have in our holdings. Collections have been made accessible through container lists, finding aids, and collection and content management systems such as ArchivesSpace, Islandora, and CONTENTdm. Each of these documents and systems also has its own learning curve and different functions, but even then the scale of some topics in collections or the connectedness between collections is not always apparent.

This article showcases two projects the author has worked on to assist in creating data visualizations in a library/archives context. The GLAMViz …

Referencing Audre Lorde, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

This chapter is close a reading and textual analysis of canonical texts, speeches, and archived audio recordings of Audre Lorde. It embraces Lorde’s many identities, including her identity as a librarian who chose to depart from the library as a means of survival. The author urges reference librarians to study Lorde’s example and learn from Lorde’s choice to act in a space where silence can be transformed into language and action. Acknowledgment of the limitations and opportunities that Lorde teaches us in reference service and institutional structures, may allow for librarians to move toward a realm of justice.

A Blueprint On Self-Exploration To Justice: Introduction To “Referencing Audre Lorde” & “Lesbian Librarianship For All”, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

My approach to social justice problematizes the profession by challenging the librarian to focus inwardly to a space concentrated with identity and self-exploration. To galvanize justice, the librarian may impose her or himself into the reference interaction as an element of praxis.

Crafting A Research Question: Differentiated Teaching For Instruction With Primary Sources Across Diverse Learning Levels, Jen Hoyer, Kaitlin Holt, Julia Pelaez

Publications and Research

This case study illustrates methods for drawing on primary sources to instruct students on how to generate and refine research questions (Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy, learning objective 1C) and to recognize that research questions may change (Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy, learning objective 1D). The authors are educators with the Brooklyn Connections program, the school outreach arm of Brooklyn Public Library’s archive and rare book division. Given the diversity of the students served by this program, this case study focuses on adapting a lesson to three examples of lesson implementation, one each in elementary, middle, and high school, varyingly …

Records Of A School At Sea, Annie E. Tummino

Publications and Research

This presentation is largely about strategies for dealing with archival legacy description. Not just in terms of data migration or updating standards, but what to do when you inherit a large scale collection that was organized using a methodology that no longer works in a 21st century context. How do you move forward, and how do you document your interventions and decisions? This is what happened to me at SUNY Maritime with the college’s institutional records.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Lib 3010 (Digital Traces: Memory In An Online World), Jessica Wagner Webster

Open Educational Resources

This course will help students think critically about how our society uses digital archives. Students will learn about different kinds of digital materials prevalent in our society (such as photos, data sets, and social media), and explore how the obsolescence or longevity of digital records impacts academic scholarship, government, journalism, and personal recordkeeping.

Nora Evelyn Cordingley, Keith J. Muchowski

Publications and Research

Nora Evelyn Cordingley worked for the Roosevelt Memorial Association at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace. She helped Hermann Hagedorn build the extensive collection of materials related to President Theodore Roosevelt starting in the early 1920s until the collection moved to Harvard University in the early 1940s. She also helped in the project to publish Theodore Roosevelt's letters. Ms. Cordingley died in her office within the Widener Library in 1951.

Woman Energy: How Our Lesbian Past Informs Our Lesbian Future, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

Sinister Wisdom Issue 3, published the year 1977 holds an essay by poet Adrienne Rich, titled, “It is the lesbian in us...”; The cover of the same issue has art by photographer Tee Corinne. Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal. This non-fiction creative essay written by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz reflects on the first year of Sinister Wisdom's publication as a celebration of 40 years through this special edition anniversary print for which only 1000 have been printed. The essay remarks on the shift in lesbian identity and community and the potential impact of the Sinister Wisdom journal …

Painless Portal Partnerships: Collaboration And Its Challenges For Small Organizations, Christine Mcevilly

Publications and Research

This article addresses challenges inherent in collaborative archival projects involving both large institutions and small historical societies. It identifies these unique problems and outlines potential solutions to overcome these issues. Examples are drawn from the Portal to American Jewish History project and contextualized within the professional literature on ethnic or community archives and archival collaboration. This project collected metadata from a wide range of Jewish history archives and aggregated the records in a single searchable website.

“Filling The Gaps”: Oral Histories And Underdocumented Populations In The American Archivist, 1938–2011, Jessica Wagner Webster

Publications and Research

During the 1970s and 1980s, archivists and historians discussed, in their literature, the ways that oral histories could be used to fill in the documentary record with stories from all parts of society, not just stories from white men of means, whose stories often were retained as part of business, government, and university records. This article analyzes pieces from the journal The American Archivist to determine how frequently archivists actually published about using oral history techniques to document people of color, women, the working class, and other consistently underdocumented populations. A survey also was conducted to determine whether archivists undertake …

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 …

Performing Ourselves At The Center, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

This interview sits alongside an extended version edited for Amanda Curreri’s solo exhibition, The Calmest of Us Would be lunatics, which took place from January 21–May 8, 2016, at Rochester Art Center, in Rochester, Minnesota. Curreri dug through the archival collection of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian organization in the country, and their journal, The ladder, at the Tretter Collection in LGBT Studies at the University of Minnesota. The exhibition is titled after a line in Emily Dickinson’s 1877 letter to Elizabeth Holland which reads, “Had we the first intimation of the Definition of Life, the calmest of …

Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press And Fluxus, Meghan A. Dellacrosse

Theses and Dissertations

"Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press and Fluxus," positions Knowles’ Big Book (1966) as a case study of historical methodology and interdisciplinary artistic practice in the post-war period. This comprehensive analysis of Big Book, a work of art no longer extant, contextualizes its publisher, Something Else Press through Dick Higgins’ concept of “intermedia,” and important lesser-known junctures relevant to Fluxus and the group’s leader George Maciunas are illuminated. Knowles' early and lesser-known silkscreen paintings are also examined.

Opening Cuny: Academic Works At Work, Megan Wacha, Miriam Deutch, William A. Casari, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

Academic Works, CUNY’s new open access institutional repository, collects and provides public access to the scholarly and creative works produced by CUNY faculty, students and staff. This program will show how opening content to the world impacts CUNY, as each speaker addresses collections at their institution: dissertations at The Graduate Center, Open Educational Resources at Brooklyn College, the “Save Hostos” archival collection at Hostos Community College and faculty research from across CUNY.

Digital Preservation, Stephen Klein

Publications and Research

Despite the ease of creation, the web is ephemeral. The fleeting nature of websites present a challenge to repositories when a record needs to be preserved. The Graduate Center Library was recently presented with this challenge with the increase of submissions of online components to dissertations. This presentation focused on the need to capture a snapshot, the limitations of current normative practices and some alternative approaches.

Lacuny Archives And Special Collections Roundtable, April 2015, Lacuny

Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.

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.

Being A Lesbian Librarian, Collection Development In Lesbian Librarianship, And Archives As Lesbian Spaces, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

Edited talk From Pratt SILS Gender LIS Panel curated by Dinah Handel on March 27th, 2015
Co-presenters include: Sian Evans; #artandfeminism Wikipedia Editathon & Jen LaBarbera; Filling in the Margins: The use of Queer Theory, Feminist Standpoint Theory, and Critical Race Theory to build inclusive archival collections
This talk remarks on the role of the librarian to provide lesbian-specific content.

Tape-By-Tape: Digital Practices And Cataloguing Rituals At The Lesbian Herstory Archives, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

This essay will outline the digital collections of the Lesbian Herstory Archives with an emphasis on process and workflow. The paragraphs below will describe the efforts put forth by the all- volunteer collective, and their dedication toward making materials accessible through the use of digital technology to preserve, catalog, and exhibit lesbian herstory. Interviews with Archive Coordinators, called “Archivettes”, Rachel Corbman on the Online Public Access Catalog, Saskia Scheffer on Photos, and Maxine Wolfe on Audio, will provide examples of LHA digital practices in the creation and maintenance of the Photo Collection, OPAC, and Audio Tape Digitization projects. Additional mention …

Graduate School And University Center Archives Finding Aid - Record Group V-C: Presidents' Files: Horowitz, Graduate Center Library, Cuny

Finding Aids

This is part of the finding aid to the Graduate School and University Center (GSUC) Archives. Record Group V-C is the papers of Frances Degen Horowitz from when she was president of the GSUC (1991-2005).

Graduate School And University Center Archives Finding Aid - Record Group V-B: Presidents' Files: Proshansky, Graduate Center Library, Cuny

Finding Aids

This is part of the finding aid to the Graduate School and University Center (GSUC) Archives. Record Group V-B is the papers of Harold M. Proshansky from when he was president of the GSUC (1972-1990).

Graduate School And University Center Archives Finding Aid - Record Group Viii: Doctoral Students' Council, Graduate Center Library, Cuny

Finding Aids

This is part of the finding aid to the Graduate School and University Center (GSUC) Archives. Record Group VIII is the files from the Doctoral Students' Council (DSC).

Graduate School And University Center Archives Finding Aid - Record Group V-A: Presidents' Files: Rees, Graduate Center Library, Cuny

Finding Aids

This is part of the finding aid to the Graduate School and University Center (GSUC) Archives. Record Group V-A is the papers of Mina S. Rees from when she was president of the GSUC (1969-1972).

Graduate School And University Center Archives Finding Aid - Record Group Iv: Committee Records, Graduate Center Library, Cuny

Finding Aids

This is part of the finding aid to the Graduate School and University Center (GSUC) Archives. Record Group t IV is records from various GSUC committees.

Graduate School And University Center Archives Finding Aid - Record Group Iii: Periodicals, Graduate Center Library, Cuny

Finding Aids

This is part of the finding aid to the Graduate School and University Center (GSUC) Archives. Record Group III is periodicals by and/or about the GSUC.