The Breadth of Archives

Welcome to volume 80, number 1 of The American Archivist. This issue contains nine articles and eight reviews that cover the breadth of archives—with a dash of hip-hop!

The issue begins with two articles that specifically address diversity and inclusion. The articles are expanded versions of plenary addresses delivered at the 2016 Joint Annual Meeting of the Council of State Archivists and the Society of American Archivists in Atlanta. First is Dennis Meissner's presidential address, “Bare Necessities.” Meissner challenges archivists to think about what we want to be before we charge ahead with things we want to do. He focuses on three things we should become as a profession—inclusive, advocates, and givers—which he considers the bare necessities to which we should aspire.

Second is Chris Taylor's keynote address, “Getting Our House in Order: Moving from Diversity to Inclusion.” I decided to include the keynote address in this issue because it pairs so well with Dennis Meissner's presidential address. Taylor recommends using inclusion strategies to create a profession that embraces diversity. He illustrates his points with examples from both the Minnesota Historical Society and a recent milestone in his family life. Taylor delivered a powerful message to archivists, especially those in leadership positions.

Next in the issue is the 2016 winner of the Theodore Calvin Pease Award for superior writing achievement by a student of archival studies. Rachel Walton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill won for her essay, “Looking for Answers: A Usability Study of Online Finding Aid Navigation.” Walton collected quantitative as well as qualitative data from ten relatively inexperienced users as they interacted with and reacted to the online finding aid interface at Princeton University. The article concludes with ten pragmatic guidelines for archival professionals.

The next article turns from Princeton University to a prominent alumnus of Kings College, later Columbia University. Katherine Madison presents a fascinating analysis in “‘Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story’: The Use and Representation of Records in Hamilton: An American Musical.” Madison (what a perfect name for the author of an article about our founding fathers and mothers!) shows how the musical—a model of diversity and inclusion in its cast—uses historical documents as set dressing and props, plot devices, and historical subjects. She concludes that examining the musical “with an archival eye” emphasizes the abundance of records, but also the silences in the archives.

Patricia J. Rettig illustrates the expanding focus of archival repositories in “Collecting Water: An Analysis of a Multidisciplinary Special-Subject Archives.” Rettig explores the documentation for this life-giving natural resource, using the Water Resources Archive at Colorado State University as a lens. She analyzes the breadth and depth of the collection, including silences and missing voices. Her conclusions and suggestions are relevant for collecting repositories of all types.

Alex H. Poole presents a different perspective on efforts to diversify the archival profession in “Pinkett's Charges: Recruiting, Retaining, and Mentoring Archivists of Color in the Twenty-First Century.” Poole interviewed twenty-one recipients of the Society of American Archivists' Harold T. Pinkett Minority Student Award. His interviews covered six areas: undergraduate experiences, information and library science, the archives field, mentoring relationships, diversity at work, and recommendations for aspiring archivists of color. The first-hand accounts of Pinkett Award winners remind us of the personal as well as the professional impact of diversity and inclusion initiatives.

In the next article, Eric C. Stoykovich turns to an earlier time in archival history. “Public Records in War: Toward an Archival History of the American Civil War” explores the war's impact on public records at the national, state, and local levels. As happens so often in our profession, the past is prologue: the treatment of archival records during the Civil War points to vulnerabilities in the human record that transcend time and place.

Laura McCann examines a contemporary collection at risk in many parts of the country. In “The Whole Story: News Agency Photographs in Newspaper Photo Morgue Collections,” McCann discusses changes in the newspaper industry and the acquisition of photo collections by archival repositories. She describes obstacles to preservation and access, and details current efforts to render these significant visual resources available to users.

Patricia Garcia continues the theme of making archives available. Her article, “Accessing Archives: Teaching with Primary Sources in K–12 Classrooms,” reports on an eighteen-month study of the literacies and knowledge needed for student learning using primary sources. Garcia concludes by proposing a collaborative knowledge model for primary source–based instruction.

The final article shifts archival discourse to Poland in 1927. When I became editor, I began a quest for articles originally published in other languages that would be of interest to English-speaking archivists today. I am calling this series “Archives in Translation.” For this issue, Bartosz Nowożycki translated and edited a key contribution to the Polish archival tradition, Kazimierz Konarski's 1927 article, “On the Issues of Modern Polish Archival Science.” Konarski provides insights into the development of archival science in Poland and the relationship of Polish archivists to the rest of the international community. He also explores provenance and original order of collections affected by war and changing national boundaries—a very contemporary topic.

The issue ends with a reviews section expanded in two ways. First, Reviews Editor Bethany Anderson has increased the number of reviews to eight. Second, in addition to reviews of books and monographs, she is including reports of significance to the archival profession. The reviews cover a broad range of subjects: sexual histories, word processing, colonial Mexico, personal digital archives, Guatemala, no-nonsense archives, innovative descriptive practices, and digital memory. The reviews are by Kelly Wooten, Thomas Padilla, Eric C. Stoykovich, Erin O'Meara, Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez, Kathleen D. Roe, Olga Virakhovskaya, and Trevor Owens.

As I assembled this issue, I was struck again—as I have been throughout my term as editor—by the intellectual curiosity and scholarly creativity of members of the archival profession. We are a community of great depth as well as breadth!