Archival Science Commons^™

Review Of Encoded Archival Description Tag Library – Version Ead3, Jodi Allison-Bunnell

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Encoded Archival Description Tag Library – Version EAD3.

Review Of Becoming A Trusted Digital Repository, Module 8 Of Trends In Archives Practice, Kevin C. Miller

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Becoming a Trusted Digital Repository, Module 8 of Trends in Archives Practice.

Strengthening Archival Digitization Efforts With An Interdepartmental Approach: A Case Study, Jessica Hayden, Jane D. Monson, Emory J. Trask

Journal of Western Archives

This case study details how the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) Libraries made the shift from a centralized model where digitization took place largely within the archives department, to a decentralized one that encompasses multiple library units. This shift came about as the result of the addition of a digital initiatives librarian position and the formation of a digitization steering committee comprised of employees representing different departments from throughout the Libraries. The result was a marked increase in the number of objects that could be digitized and made available online within a given period of time.

Review Of Preserving Our Heritage: Perspectives From Antiquity To The Digital Age, Christina Thomas

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Preserving Our Heritage: Perspective from Antiquity to the Digital Age.

The How And Why Of Mentoring, Alison H. Stankrauff, Tom Sommer, Michelle Ganz

Journal of Western Archives

Mentoring those in the archival field is critical to the development of any professional, or budding professional archivist. The mentoring relationship is one that has the potential to inform, nurture, encourage those on both sides of the relationship. This article explores that relationship and the frameworks that foster such mentoring programs. Discussed are mentoring to undergraduates, graduate archival program students, peer-to-peer mentoring of archivists at different institutions, as well as mentoring in the tenure process. This article is meant to be at once informative about such programs as well as offering guidance for those wanting to create a similar mentoring …

The Gregory Peck Papers: It's Not Just Hollywood, Clare Denk

Journal of Western Archives

The Gregory Peck papers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences serve as a case study to demonstrate the value of a collection beyond its expected scope. In this case, four examples are used to highlight how the Peck papers move far beyond the confines of Hollywood by encompassing topics including Hawaii on the eve of its statehood, politics, international fan culture, and post-World War II Japan as seen through the lens of an American GI.

Review Of Extensible Processing For Archives And Special Collections: Reducing Processing Backlogs, Todd Welch

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Extensible Processing for Archives and Special Collections: Reducing Processing Backlogs.

Images Of The Surreal: Contrived Photographs Of Native American Indians In Archives And Suggested Best Practices, Zachary R. Jones

Journal of Western Archives

This essay explores the complex history of contrived photographs of Native American Indians created by non-Native photographers around the turn of the twentieth century. Based on research and surveys this essay overviews issues associated with contrived photographs, colonial narratives of history, and offers perspectives and survey feedback on practices that could improve archival description of controversial historical photographs of American Indians found in archives around the world.

Developing And Organizing An Archival Education Training Opportunity For Oregon’S Tribal Communities: The Oregon Tribal Archives Institute, Natalia M. Fernandez, David G. Lewis

Journal of Western Archives

In 2012 Oregon State University hosted the Oregon Tribal Archives Institute (OTAI), a week long archival education training opportunity specifically designed for Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes. This article describes the OTAI project development, organization, and implementation. The authors offer various lessons learned that can be applied by others who wish to offer a similar archival education institute.

Natives In The Nation's Archives: The Southwest Oregon Research Project, David G. Lewis

Journal of Western Archives

The Southwest Oregon Research Project, initiated by members of the Coquille Indian tribe broke ground in Oregon for archival collections. Tribal scholars, working to restore and support their tribal nations collected documents and learned skills of archival research and organization. The last phase of the project returned collections to regional tribes in a community process of potlatch. The project theory reversed the trend of the late 19th and early 20th centuries of collecting information from tribes with little or no reciprocity. Tribes today are using the information to write histories, restore cultural identities and support tribal sovereignty.

Tribal Archives, Traditional Knowledge, And Local Contexts: Why The “S” Matters, Kimberly Christen

Journal of Western Archives

In this article I examine the landscape of tribal or Indigenous archival management as it relates to digital assets and, more specifically, how these might help us reimagine the intellectual property needs of local, traditional, and indigenous communities, libraries, archives, and museums as they seek to manage, preserve, and reuse their digital cultural heritage. The colonial collecting project was a destructive mechanism by which Native materials were unhinged from their local places and knowledge and at the same time used as markers of Native erasure. As part of a practical solution to contemporary intellectual property dilemmas faced by Indigenous peoples …

"The Right To Know": Decolonizing Native American Archives, Jennifer R. O'Neal

Journal of Western Archives

This work examines the historic and current policies regarding Native American archives, detailing the broader historic landscape of information services for tribal communities, the initiative to develop tribal archives in Indian Country, and the activism surrounding the proper care and management of Native American archive collections at non-Native repositories. Utilizing Vine Deloria's "Right to Know" call to action, the paper analyzes major activities and achievements of the national indigenous archives movement with a specific focus on archival activists and tribal communities in the American West who were at the forefront of a grassroots movement to establish and develop tribal archives, …

Native American Archives Special Issue: Dedication, Jennifer O'Neal, David G. Lewis

Journal of Western Archives

This is a dedication for the special issue on Native American archives.

Review Of Through The Archival Looking Glass: A Reader On Diversity And Inclusion, Alexandra M. Bisio

Journal of Western Archives

Though the Archival Looking Glass: A Reader on Diversity and Inclusion, edited by Mary A. Caldera and Kathryn M. Neal, brings together a series of essays that challenge the reader to think critically about archival practice and education, evaluate the current demographics of the profession, and actively battle the silences left by history.

Deconstructing The Critical Theory Archive At Uci: An Experiment With Eac-Cpf And Linked Open Data, Sara Renée Seltzer, Alexandra M. Bisio, Shu Liu

Journal of Western Archives

The University of California, Irvine (UCI) Libraries has begun a pilot project exploring the use of Encoded Archival Context-Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF) and linked open data to expose contextual information about holdings in UCI's Critical Theory Archive (CTA). The project team has identified a number of goals emphasizing public service, sustainability, and scalable experimentation. This work-in-progress article reports the pilot's background, scope, status through July 2014, and future plans.

Review Of "Conceptualizing 21st-Century Archives", Ryan K. Lee

Journal of Western Archives

Book review of Conceptualizing 21st-Century Archives.

Fading Silver: The Territorial Cup, The Arizona Foot Ball League And The Mystery Of The History, Robert P. Spindler

Journal of Western Archives

New evidence regarding the Arizona Foot Ball League Championship Cup enhances our understanding of its' provenance as the oldest intercollegiate rivalry trophy in the United States. The story of the Territorial Cup and the 1899-1900 Normals’ football season offers many insights into territorial Phoenix history, archival preservation, memory, and symbolism.

Review Of The American Archivist Online Supplement To Volume 74, Patricia J. Rettig

Journal of Western Archives

Review of The American Archivist Online Supplement to Volume 74.

Review Of Exhibits In Archives And Special Collections Libraries, Russ Taylor

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Exhibits in Archives and Special Collections Libraries by Jessica Lacher-Feldman.

Review Of Perspectives On Women's Archives, Julia Stringfellow

Journal of Western Archives

Book review of Perspectives on Women's Archives.

Citizen Krueger: An Examination Of Cultural Province And Community Preservation, Stephen J. Hussman

Journal of Western Archives

This study describes the efforts of an educator to both engage and enlighten his local community regarding the importance of preserving primary resources, and a brief community history highlighting its origin. Finally, this study offers a narrative regarding a community’s collaborative effort to re-discover and reclaim its identity.

From Accession To Access: A Born-Digital Materials Case Study, Cyndi Shein

Journal of Western Archives

Between 2011 and 2013 the Getty Institutional Records and Archives made its first foray into the comprehensive ingest, arrangement, description, and delivery of unique born-digital material when it received oral history interviews generated by some of the Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. project partners. This case study touches upon the challenges and affordances inherent to this hybrid collection of audiovisual recordings, digital mixed-media files, and analog transcripts. It describes the Archives’ efforts to develop a basic processing workflow that applies the resource-management strategy commonly known as “MPLP” in a digital environment, while striving to safeguard the integrity and authenticity …

Build It—And Advocate For It—And They Will Come: Lessons From A Collaborative Project In Archives Advocacy And Program Development, Jodi Allison-Bunnell, Linda Morton-Keithley, Elizabeth Knight

Journal of Western Archives

Libraries at small- and mid-sized academic institutions continue to re-define themselves as journal and monograph collections go online, budgets and staffing remain flat or reduced, and value to student learning and the institutional mission needs to be apparent. This all spells opportunity for archival programs which, with a strong focus on advocacy and daylighting formerly hidden collections of unique content, can re-invigorate the library and spotlight the active role today's service- and user-oriented archives can play in supporting student research, fostering ties with constituents, and ensuring the preservation of an institution's stories and history. A recently-completed National Historical Publications and …

Primary Sources On C. E. Kelsey And The Northern California Indian Association, Larisa K. Miller

Journal of Western Archives

This article provides a brief history of and identifies primary sources on C. E. Kelsey and the Northern California Indian Association, which brought federal support to the nonreservation Indians of northern California in the early 1900s. Kelsey is a frequently mentioned but largely unknown figure in the unique history of Indian-white relations in California. As an officer of the Northern California Indian Association (NCIA) and special agent for the Indian Office he altered the landscape for California Indians. Because there is no corpus of Kelsey's personal papers, NCIA records, or government records, he remains largely unknown, to the point that …

Review Of How To Manage Processing In Archives And Special Collections, Jillian Cuellar

Journal of Western Archives

Learning to process archival collections as an intern or student processor constitutes many archivists’ first practical understanding of the archival enterprise. Though this experience is an excellent hands-on opportunity for many nascent archivists to sharpen their project management skills, it does not fully prepare them to manage an archival processing program. Few students in archival graduate programs receive in-depth management training, leaving many to learn effective management techniques without formal guidance. With How to Manage Processing in Archives and Special Collections, Pam Hackbart-Dean and Elizabeth Slomba set out to offer archivists a comprehensive, practical toolbox for managing a processing …

The Bonds Of Organization: Zine Archives And The Archival Tradition, Rachel Woodbrook, Althea Lazzaro

Journal of Western Archives

There is a current movement amongst zine archives toward collaboration and the standardization of policies and practices. As a relatively new area of archival collecting, zine archives are progressing through core archival issues at a rapid pace; this progression provides an opportunity for them to redefine traditional archival practices in relation to their specific needs.

The community-based nature of their collections compel zine archivists and librarians to include their unique audiences in the mapping of traditional practices onto the organic structures of their largely grassroots organizations: they are translators and interpreters between archival theory and this grassroots practice. Ideally, this …

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.

Book Review: Archival Arrangement And Description, Tiah K. Edmunson-Morton

Journal of Western Archives

The 2013 book Archival Arrangement and Description, the first installment in SAA’s “Trends in Archival Practice,” has broad appeal for archivists with different professional duties and in a variety of repository settings. Published as both an e-book and a print edition, this book is built on flexibility and user needs. Editors Christopher J. Prom and Thomas J. Frusciano offer a great introduction for the three modules that constitute the book, calling for archivists to archivists embrace change and professional evolution. Sibyl Schaefer and Janet M. Bunde begin the book with an exploration of how standards facilitate intellectual control and …

Fruits Of Their Labors Digital Collection: A Case Study, Elizabeth Smart, Kristi Young

Journal of Western Archives

University folklore archives are expanding collections through cultural documentation projects run by students and community members. These new collections are a rich source of potential digital content. Bringing these collections online requires keeping the research audience in mind with thoughtful processing, modernizing traditional folklore archives description techniques, and working collaboratively with multiple library departments. The end results include expanded holdings and new digital resources for local historians.

The Importance Of Reappraisal And Deaccessioning In Collegiate Archives In The Pacific Northwest, Courtney Buehn

Journal of Western Archives

This article examines the current reappraisal practices and procedures of archives, and investigates the need for official deaccessioning policies through the analysis of literature in the field and eight personal interviews conducted with professionals in universities in the Pacific Northwest. These persons were asked about the initial appraisal procedure of their repository, the current reappraisal process done without an official policy, and the factors that contribute to the decisions made concerning deaccessioning. Formal policies for appraisal and deaccessioning are important for responsible management of individual archival repositories, and also for the development of archival communities.