ABSTRACT

This article surveys and analyzes archival literature and legal resources (primarily United States–focused) related to copyright considerations that archivists and other content managers must be aware of to effectively and legally maintain a collection of born-digital materials. These considerations include the centrality of copying to preservation actions, shifting definitions of ownership, unclear distinctions between published and unpublished content, digital rights management laws and technologies, and the layered copyrights that can exist in complex digital objects and their dependencies. Strategies for dealing with these challenges include securing rights ahead of time, adopting legal rationales related to orphan works and fair use, adapting practices from specialized digital preservation subfields, ensuring routine procedures adequately address copyright-related recordkeeping and risk management, and advocating for preservation-enabling copyright reforms. An examination of these issues and strategies in the context of current thinking about copyright suggests that while certain legal exceptions and existing rights frameworks can help to facilitate digital preservation activities, copyright will continue to be a barrier until significant reforms are enacted.

ABSTRACT

Human rights are intricately tied to the practice of archivists, and the imperative to address the silence of the archive has been discussed in archival scholarship. After examining the evolution of archival intervention in arts (films, novels, plays, etc.), this article analyses the narrative components of two novels—W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz (2001) and Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive (2019)—and demonstrates that certain works of autofiction are uniquely fit to become “imagined records.” Through the lens of “archival reading,” the article reveals these novels' narrative traits, such as their tendency to rely heavily on photographs, maps, and other iconography; their use of a specific type of narrator; and their intention to supplement the silence of the archive, the characteristics that facilitate the construction of imagined records. By delineating the ways in which these traits were implemented in the creation of an imagined record, the article paves a way for more imagined records to come in the future. Rooted in real sociohistorical traumas, these two novels expand the notions of evidence and the forces that shape archival theory and practice.

ABSTRACT

A growing body of literature has developed around critical archival instruction and archivists as educators. This development demonstrates the pedagogical evolution beyond show-and-tell sessions to critical approaches in archival instruction and specific standards in archival literacy. This article provides a cross-disciplinary discussion of an approach to archival instruction. Also included is a reimagined instruction session using a fragmentary collection from the Saint-Domingue/Haiti colonial administration. Stories of the enslaved are usually marked by death and brutality. But Haiti's is a story of triumph; though fleeting, a victory nonetheless. When instructors decolonize archival instruction, they bring the past into the present and the future. The Haitian Revolution was a large-scale revolt by enslaved Africans, and it was also directly connected to the expansion of the United States. Archival instructors should encourage students to reimagine the stories told from the Saint-Domingue colonial administration collection and from any colonial collections that may be under their care.

EDITOR

Christopher (Cal) Lee (2018–2020), University of North Carolina
Amy Cooper Cary (2020–2023), Marquette University
Sumayya Ahmed (2019–2023), Simmons University
Caroline Daniels (2017–2021), University of Louisville
Benjamin Goldman (2019–2023), Pennsylvania State University
Katharina Hering (2019–2023), German Historical Institute
Eric Hung (2020–2024), Music of Asian America Research Center

Reviews Editor

Bethany Anderson (2015–2021), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Shadrack Katuu (2019–2022), United Nations Mission in South Sudan
Jessican Lacher-Feldman (2020–2024), University of Rochester
Kathryn Puerini (2020–2024), Archival Consultant
Alison Trulock (2017–2021), U.S. House of Representatives
Sylvia Welsh (2020–2024),