Archival Science Commons^™

The Pack Horse Library Initiative And Kentucky's Librarians In The Great Depression: An Academic Essay, Jessica Omer (University Of Missouri)

SLIS Connecting

The history of libraries is a complex story of ups and downs. There have been times in American history when libraries almost ceased to exist (Boyd, 2009). One of those moments was during the American Great Depression of the 1930s. During this time, American institutions failed, jobs disappeared, homes were lost, and American libraries began to disappear. This paper aims to discover the Pack Horse Library Project's role in Kentucky history and its legacy. This paper answers two questions—How did The Pack Horse Library Project save libraries in Kentucky? And how did women save library services in eastern Kentucky?—by exploring …

From The Gas: Congratulations, Publications, And Presentations, Stacy L. Creel, Ph.D., Teresa S. Welsh, Ph.D.

SLIS Connecting

Includes book reviews by the graduate assistants for Finch House, Mall Goth, Maid for It, and Your Personal Penguin. Highlights what SLIS faculty are reading, alumni updates, faculty publications and presentations, and student congratulations.

Spotlights: Faculty, Alumni, Festival, Stacy L. Creel, Ph.D., Mary A. Osborne

SLIS Connecting

Meet Dr. Welsh, Professor Emeritus of Library and Information Science, and Adjunct Faculty for SLIS. Meet MLIS SLIS alum, Marjorie Hills, the Library Director for Iberia Parish Library. Learn about the exciting speakers for the 2024 Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival.

Slis Director's Report, Stacy L. Creel, Ph.D.

SLIS Connecting

Welcome to the Fall/Winter issue of SLIS Connecting. It has been a busy time here in SLIS. The faculty have been hard at work developing new courses based on feedback from the most recent survey and focus groups. Several new courses and curricular changes have been approved to begin in the Fall of 2024.

Making Love Easier: Automating Communication For Better Relationship Building For Web Archives, Emily Collier

2024 R&I Day

Starting in Fall of 2023, Ruth Bryan and Emily Collier began researching sustainability for the Web Archiving Program, which led them to building communication channels with the University of Kentucky Office of Public Relations and Marketing Web Content Development group. By tightening this channel, we hope to initiate the archival mindset right at the moment of content creation, as well as limit gaps in our web archives collection as the PR team is directly involved in monitoring sites that go live and expire. Part of this tightening of communication has been finding ways to automate alerts when changes are made …

Review Of Decolonial Archival Futures, Rachel A. Ernst

Journal of Western Archives

Review of Decolonial Archival Futures by Krista McCracken and Skylee-Storm Hogan-Stacey.

Creation Of A Southwestern Authors Archive: Revisiting The Laverne Harrell Clark Collection Ten Years Later, Erin R. Wahl, Pamela Pierce, Wendy Burk, Julie Swarstad Johnson, Sarah Kortemeier

Journal of Western Archives

This article details the processing of the LaVerne Harrell Clark Photographic Collection by University of Arizona Poetry Center librarians, archivists, and interns, and the current status and next steps of the collection. The LaVerne Harrell Clark Photographic Collection, which contains thousands of portraits and candids of poets taken circa 1960-2000 by LaVerne Harrell Clark, the Poetry Center’s first director, is deeply entwined with the Poetry Center’s institutional identity. In addition, the authors explored ways in which the collection and the institution as a whole are positioned as uniquely Western and also of national significance. Those processing the collection became interested …

Ms 173 Guide To Dorothy Otto, Edd, Msn, Rn, Anef Papers ( 1972-2015), Dorothy Otto (1932-2020)

Manuscript Finding Aids

This collection consists of Dorothy Otto's personal and professional papers related to her long career on the faculty of the Cizik School of Nursing at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston. Much of the collection documents Otto’s work at the Cizik School of Nursing, as well as the history of the School itself. There are faculty meeting minutes, handbooks, and other records from the School’s early development in the 1970s. See more at MS 173.

Mississippi Libraries 86(3) Fall 2023 (Full Issue)

Mississippi Libraries

Complete issue of Mississippi Libraries Volume 86 Number 3 Fall 2023

Representing Historically Marginalized Communities In Archives: Moving Beyond Lcsh To Create More Inclusive Subject Headings, Melissa A. Ewing

School of Information Sciences Student Scholarship

The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are widely used around the world in libraries and archives to add access points for users searching their collections. This can be problematic because LCSH has many embedded issues including inconsistency and complexity, the myth of neutrality that surrounds it, systemic biases, and how slow it is to change. These problems lead to poor descriptions of people, especially those who belong to historically marginalized communities. Archives can move beyond LCSH to create local thesauri, crowdsourced vocabularies, and collaborative partnerships with historically marginalized communities to create more inclusive subject headings.

Arbiters Of Ugliness: A Review Of Strategies For Describing Offensive Archival Materials, Leah Minadeo

School of Information Sciences Student Scholarship

As archivists increasingly concede that neutrality is impossible, we suggest that non-action is still action. It follows that to treat reasonably offensive records as any other record is to apply an interpretation that they are innocuous, unremarkable, and uncontroversial. Archivists may perceive the stakes of describing these materials as particularly high, but they lack a comprehensive set of descriptive strategies in consideration of interpretive ethics. As a result, existing practices are likely to be local or ad hoc. This research aims to identify and explore descriptive strategies archivists use which serve to construct (or concede) the meaning that certain historical …

“Now, What’S One Story I Wanted To Tell You?”: Oral History Exhibition Archives At The Chicago History Museum At The Turn Of The 21st Century, Arianne Nguyen

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Starting in the 1970s, American history museums have undergone a shift away from seeing themselves collections-focused historical societies acting as “temples to the past.” In the face of broader political challenges—civil rights, increasingly multicultural urban audiences, and the “culture wars” of the 1980s, public historians have sought to reclaim their institutions’ relevance by seeking to share their authority and mission with those “publics” they serve.

While secondary literature on public history has generally agreed that museums pulled off this shift—and museums themselves have touted successful exhibits and outreach—this essay uses a specific case study to complicate the narrative. The Chicago …

Ischool Student Research Journal, Vol.13, Iss.2, Student Reseach Journal

School of Information Student Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Innovation And Responsibility: Librarians In An Era Of Generative Ai, Inequality, And Information Overload, Odin H. Halvorson

School of Information Student Research Journal

In an era marked by generative AI, widening inequality, and information overload, librarians with LIS training find themselves at the forefront of a changing landscape. The traditional paradigm in academia is challenged by new technologies and social shifts, prompting a reassessment the librarian's role as a public leader. This article discusses three perspectives on these issues, placing them within the larger conversation of the LIS field. Dr. Norman Mooradian lays the groundwork for a paradigm shift by exploring the intersection of knowledge and ethics in a knowledge economy. Boheme Morris delves into the complexities of inequality within the high-tech knowledge …

Knowledge Ethics: Conceptual Preliminaries Scope And Justification, Norman Mooradian

School of Information Student Research Journal

This paper lays out the conceptual groundwork for a long-term project examining ethical issues raised when addressing the value of knowledge to a knowledge economy. The project includes a series of papers on specific topics that interrelate to the subjects of knowledge, ethics and organizations. While some of the planned articles for the project will have a practical focus, others, such as this one, will be conceptual in nature. The following outlines selected key concepts for an ethics of knowledge and their relationship with cognate areas of inquiry and practice.

Representing Historically Marginalized Communities In Archives: Moving Beyond Lcsh To Create More Inclusive Subject Headings, Melissa Ewing

The Information Warrior Journal

The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are widely used around the world in libraries and archives to add access points for users searching their collections. This can be problematic because LCSH has many embedded issues including inconsistency and complexity, the myth of neutrality that surrounds it, systemic biases, and how slow it is to change. These problems lead to poor descriptions of people, especially those who belong to historically marginalized communities. Archives can move beyond LCSH to create local thesauri, crowdsourced vocabularies, and collaborative partnerships with historically marginalized communities to create more inclusive subject headings.

Arbiters Of Ugliness: A Review Of Strategies For Describing Offensive Archival Materials, Leah Minadeo

The Information Warrior Journal

As archivists increasingly concede that neutrality is impossible, we suggest that non-action is still action. It follows that to treat reasonably offensive records as any other record is to apply an interpretation that they are innocuous, unremarkable, and uncontroversial. Archivists may perceive the stakes of describing these materials as particularly high, but they lack a comprehensive set of descriptive strategies in consideration of interpretive ethics. As a result, existing practices are likely to be local or ad hoc. This research aims to identify and explore descriptive strategies archivists use which serve to construct (or concede) the meaning that certain historical …

From Panels To Shelves: The Evolving Intersection Of Comics And Italian Libraries. History, Issues, Perspectives, Andrea Tosti

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Despite comics' popularity and cultural significance in Italy, its integration into Italian libraries has been slow, problematic, and uneven. This is reflected in the scarcity of academic research on the topic, which demands further in-depth exploration.

In the context of Italian libraries, characterized by chronic underfunding and staffing shortages, comics might be perceived as a low priority. However, as essential cultural institutions, libraries must strive to reflect both the contemporary era and the evolving reading habits of their audience. Comics, in this regard, could prove to be – and in part already are – a critical resource, a 'booster' for …

What Is A Lesbian Document? Platforming Archival Description, Documents, And History In Sweden, Rachel Pierce

Proceedings from the Document Academy

As Joanna Drucker (2014) convincingly argues, “Most information visualizations are acts of interpretation masquerading as presentation" (p. 10). This article investigates the visuality and built-in argumentations of the Alvin interface for digitized Swedish cultural heritage, focusing on how the platform defines a document and the effects this definition has on the accessibility and interconnectedness of documents related to lesbian and feminist histories. This paper addresses how (failed) systematization and an emphasis on large quantities of documents and metadata breathes new life into outdated historiographies and renders documents and information related to feminist and lesbian histories and connections between these histories …

Exploring Artifacts And Documents In Collective Creativity Workshops Applied To Future Studies, Mathilde Sarré-Charrier

Proceedings from the Document Academy

In a context of uncertainty, organizations use creativity methods to anticipate future challenges in relations with the long-term evolutions of the society. These approaches consist in bringing together people with complementary points of view to multiply the diversity of ideas. This paper focuses on the process of transformation and selection of ideas and artifacts from a collective perspective in the unprecedented circumstances that occurred during the pandemic.

We question how ideas are grounded in the documents and artifacts produced at the key moments of the creative process from the perspective of the facilitators and the participants.

In this paper we …