Over the course of this first year of my term as editor of American Archivist, it has struck me time and again that archivists are writing across the full spectrum of our profession and are even shifting the spectrum as we write. I consider the articles that appear in our journal as separate components in the continuum of our professional literature. Articles stand on their own but are a unified whole, interrelated (borrowing from Eastwood) with the stream of writing that has come before and that will come after. Each issue of the journal provides a shifting snapshot
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PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
The Society of American Archivists held its Annual Meeting virtually in 2021. President Rachel Vagts delivered her address in person in July at the Denver Public Library in front of a small group of family, friends, and colleagues, and the recording was shared with attendees during the conference in August. Vagts was introduced by Sasha Griffin, university archivist and special collections librarian at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. Griffin's introduction precedes Vagts' address. I'm so honored to give the introduction to someone who actually needs very little introduction. However, I wouldn't be joining you today ifIntroduction by Sasha Griffin
THEODORE CALVIN PEASE AWARD
This article contributes to the emerging body of literature on grief and trauma in archival and records management work through the lens of COVID-19. The pandemic has put into stark relief the fragility of our individual and collective lives and livelihoods. Now, more than ever, we must take seriously the mental health and well-being of archivists. Inspired by the loss of a lover due to coronavirus-related symptoms, which brought on a deep grief that had profound professional, academic, and personal affects, this article—in a nod to Michelle Caswell's writing on feminist standpoint epistemology—represents the author's effort to “[value] the view from the margins.” More acutely, it speaks from the vantage point of a queer, Filipino, precariously employed archival student and practitioner grasping for meaning during a global pandemic. Engaging with affect theory, queer studies, and work on grief in archives, the author develops the concept of affective porosity, a means through which archival practitioners might seek a richer sense of relationality. Grounding theoretical expansiveness within contemporary practice, this article concludes by using field reports on archival trauma and case studies on BIPOC student labor to productively interrogate the state of archival labor today. As a profession, it is critical that archivists strive toward a path of embodied immediacy, caring for fellow archivists as much as we do archives.ABSTRACT
ARTICLES
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Increasing interest in indigenization, decolonization, community archives, and the recent adoption of the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials (PNAAM) by the Society of American Archivists, offer opportunities for archivists to reflect on the application of “reciprocity” in archives. This article examines reciprocity as a concept in the archival field and shows how current reciprocal practices in archives with Native and Indigenous holdings can inform the wider field and its practice. The authors chart the emergence of reciprocity as an archival responsibility and to create fieldwide change through meaningful, community-based partnerships. They posit a continuum of institutional reciprocity, as well as how reciprocity might be seeded into the core functions of archives to bridge distances between communities and archival institutions. Inspired by recent scholarship in museum studies, the article concludes with a vision of “otherwising” to explore alternative possibilities that can be realized when we adopt reciprocity as an archival practice.ABSTRACT
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This article contributes to ongoing discourse that highlights oppressive institutional attitudes and approaches toward archiving materials that document the lived experiences of historically marginalized and minoritized people and communities. Through analyzing focus groups and interviews with members of minoritized communities about community archives, this article outlines four key tensions that exist around representation: holding conflicting desires of how to honor older generations; navigating methods of respecting privacy and cultural values; acknowledging the importance of preserving community history versus individual histories; and developing strategies for protecting the community. Together, these tensions illustrate the nuances of representation in archives: how members of minoritized communities navigate complex, often conflicting, affects within archival materials and how they protect themselves and future generations through visibility and invisibility. The authors introduce the concept of representational subversion, which they define as the ways in which historically minoritized communities balance and respect both their representation and erasure in society and archives, working through the tensions of honor, cultural nuance, individual value, and community protection. Representational subversion emerges among minoritized people/communities when they use their agency to protect themselves and the communities in which they find a sense of belonging. In explicating four tensions that mark representational subversion, the authors acknowledge a minoritized community's rights to be forgotten/forget (alongside their right to be remembered), to self-preservation, and to self-determination, and demonstrate the reach and perpetual threat of white supremacy in archives.ABSTRACT
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Approximately 61 million (or 1 in 4) adults in the United States have a disability. Despite this prevalence, many people cannot name a coworker who is disabled, possibly due to the number of people who have invisible disabilities. This lack of understanding of both causes and prevalence can cause both the disabled and their supervisors or managers to be unaware of how to address a disabled person's needs. In this article, the authors shed light on how to improve the professional environment for disabled archivists, staff, and patrons. People without disabilities or those with unrealized disabilities can all benefit when universal design is considered. The best way to achieve inclusivity is to encourage all employees to model the behavior you want to see in others and to normalize disabilities and accommodations. In an environment where accommodations for everyone are normalized, many of the micro- or macro-aggressions may be eliminated from the workplace, as it can help remove the stigma surrounding disability. Everyone wants to work in a supportive environment where they feel respected.ABSTRACT
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Early collections-based digital projects and their infrastructure, including website platforms and software, digital asset management systems, information systems, metadata, and preservation protocols, serve as the foundation for many library, archives, and museum (LAM) repositories' ongoing efforts to organize, describe, and make digital assets widely accessible online. Completed projects, despite well-intended planning and execution, can become time intensive to maintain and migrate forward as new projects that meet fresh programmatic goals and current professional standards, become today's focus. Assessment of past projects, with the goal of making better decisions in the future (i.e., “lessons learned”), can be framed through an understanding of the term “technical debt,” a metaphor used within the software development community. The authors define and explore the concept of technical debt, relating it specifically to the archival field, and suggest a preliminary conceptual framework of technical debt to inform decision-making.ABSTRACT
A record's context forms a complex, intricate, malleable records language that archivists are responsible for translating, including the obligation to document themselves and their own complex contexts as a form of transparency and accountability in the archival endeavor. This article suggests three principles from translation theory that are particularly important in archival representation praxis and the translation of context. These include: 1) translations by their nature are new works that, when done well, exhibit the spirit of the original text; 2) word selection and translation decisions should be justified and documented; and 3) in attempting fidelity to the original text, the goal of the translator is restitution of original meaning. Added to these principles is the argument that a critical element in archival translation activity is documenting the translator—the archivist's own context. The goals of archival translation are fairness, honesty, transparency, and ultimately justice in the representation of archives.ABSTRACT
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Archivists have spent the past several decades seeking solutions for managing born-digital collection materials. While progress has undoubtedly been made in the areas of acquisition and digital preservation, a recognizable gap exists in the area of processing. Defining what, exactly, born-digital processing is and what it entails is a conundrum. Following the 2016 Born Digital Archiving & eXchange (BDAX) unconference at Stanford University, a group of ten archivists produced the Digital Processing Framework to articulate what archivists do when processing born-digital archival collections. This article examines the current professional digital processing landscape and reflects on the framework group's lofty endeavor. It frames four issues that make born-digital processing enigmatic and challenging: defining the scope of digital processing; the ongoing tensions between minimal processing and digital preservation; confusion in terminology about the functions in digital processing; and the convergence of two fields of inquiry that borrow and share language and practice that have become digital processing. It concludes by recommending further actions and explorations for defining and guiding born-digital processing.ABSTRACT
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Where does linked data fit in archival description? How do we get from promise to implementation? This article evaluates the benefits and limitations of current approaches to linked data in archival work. It proposes four pragmatic principles for the archival community to follow when determining how to pursue linked data. This approach engages with communities (both inside and outside cultural heritage institutions) already publishing linked data, accounts for institutional resource limitations, and recognizes the need for technological, educational, and social support for institutions and workers. Through an examination of the work of the Archives and Linked Data Interest Group with Schema.org and Wikidata, the article provides case studies that explore how these pragmatic principles for archival linked data create inclusive, rather than exclusive, communities.ABSTRACT
Academic archives can seem intimidating to the public at large. Accessing and enjoying their contents is, for some, a foreign experience. Even when archives leverage extensive fiscal and technological resources to make their materials available as well-organized, online digital collections, this perception often persists. In 2013, the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library (SWC) at Texas Tech University (TTU) began an extensive Web 2.0 outreach program designed to overcome that perception for researchers other than TTU students and faculty. Using social media allowed the SWC to creatively and successfully rethink and reframe connections to the nonresearcher public. This article identifies the origin and breadth of that success by walking through the implementation of a comprehensive social media outreach program and providing a qualitative and quantitative assessment of its success, with an eye toward how the SWC and other archives might reframe the use of social media in the future.ABSTRACT
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At the end of the Second World War, the collapse of the Prussian archival system lead to a gap in archival administration. Education and training of archivsts who broke ties with Nazi-era principles, and who adopted ties to American archival theory and practice, became a priority. This article first examines the contribution of American archival protection officers to this endeavor, including the establishment of an archival school in the American Zone, and the influence of Ernst Posner's archival theory. This article examines the historical context of these events and concludes by asking the question of what traces the American commitment has left behind in the archival system of Germany.ABSTRACT
This article describes the process of updating and broadening the collection policy of the Ohio Public Policy Archives (OPPA) at The Ohio State University Libraries to include a more diverse representation of policy and policy making on the national level. The author conducted a thematic analysis of peer congressional collecting policies to determine whether a notable difference exists between language describing the acquisition of congressional collections and language describing the acquisition of public policy collections. The thematic analysis highlights new areas of focus and reinforces the research value of congressional collections. OPPA's updated collection policy built on the identified themes to further illuminate the research value of congressional collections while also making room for the addition of new perspectives on the U.S. policy-making process.ABSTRACT
The New Brunswick Music Scene Archive (NBMSA) was founded in 2015 to document the musical life—primarily the independent rock, punk, and hardcore music—of New Brunswick, New Jersey, home of Rutgers University. The NBMSA builds on local music archives' common use of documentation strategy to build collections and connect with donors by engaging the scenes approach from popular music studies. The scenes approach allows archivists building local music archives similar to the NBMSA to consider cultural roles and practices; relationships, memories, and meaning-making among participants; inclusivity; and the key role of physical and virtual spaces into their collection development and appraisal work and outreach. Through the lens of the NBMSA this article presents examples of how the scenes approach can be applied in documenting underground, hidden, and virtual networks that archivists may not be privy to; in considering affect in collection development, appraisal, and outreach; and in recalibrating the advisory board concept.ABSTRACT
The goal of this historical literature review is to make a macro-to-micro analysis of the effort to archive the COVID-19 pandemic, starting with a global view, moving to a national view, focusing on New York State, and ending with the examination of personal narratives within communities. This literature review will discuss the procedures and theories behind how the pandemic was archived from March 2020 to August 2021, with the intention that it will serve as a resource to help individuals understand this difficult and uncertain time from multiple perspectives. This investigation also aims to illuminate the differences in archival approaches to documenting the pandemic and suggests areas for deeper analysis and further research. A macro-to-micro analysis of archival work during the pandemic can also help archivists reevaluate their current methods and consider other ways to collect, evaluate, curate, and preserve history for posterity in times of crisis.ABSTRACT
REVIEWS
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Writing is an act of community, as American Archivist editor Amy Cooper Cary recently stated.2 As the journal's new reviews editors, we are excited to join the community of archives workers, scholars, editors, and enthusiasts who bring this publication to life.3 We follow in the footsteps of Bethany Anderson, our immediate predecessor, and the many others who have worked to elevate and expand archival scholarship over the years—we know we have big shoes to fill! We are grateful for the guidance and mentorship that Bethany, Amy, and the entire Editorial Board have provided as
Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work is many things. It is a “tough love letter” (p. 16) addressed to archivists, scholars, and memory workers; a “rough blueprint” (p. 16) aimed at activating records to “interrupt cycles of hetero-patriarchy and white supremacy” (p. 64); and a “provocation” (p. 116) aimed at some of the most fundamental and “dominant Western archival theories and practices” (p. 35). Mostly, however, it is a well-cited, strongly argued cri de cœur from one of the leading voices in the archival studies field demonstrating the (urgent) need for major revisions to the ways that
I opened this book lazily hoping to find the PhD thesis I fantasize about writing on permanently active museum accession files and their relation to archives and records management. Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum differs from what I had in mind but is a very credible attempt to describe the wicked problem1 engendered by digitized object documentation over time and a pathway to acknowledging the potential of its plurality for social justice within the cultural heritage sector. It is in fact based on Mike Jones's own 2018 doctoral thesis.2 Jones is an
Scott Cline's Archival Virtue: Relationship, Obligation, and the Just Archives argues that archival work has a fundamentally spiritual and moral center. “The archival endeavor,” Cline writes, “is a faith-based profession, not in the religious sense, but rather as an organic, universal faith in the future of the species” (p. 23). Borrowing heavily from moral philosophy and Jewish and Christian theology, Cline asserts that archives possess the possibility for transcendence, transformation, and justice on both an individual and a collective level. He adapts religious terms such as “faith,” “covenant,” “salvation,” and “piety” to describe how the secular, professional, archival
EDITOR Amy Cooper Cary (2020–2023), Marquette University Editorial Board Sumayya Ahmed (2019–2023), Simmons University Rebecca Hankins (2022–2023), Texas A&M University Libraries Katharina Hering (2019–2023), German Historical Institute Eric Hung (2020–2024), Music of Asian America Research Center Shadrack Katuu (2019–2022), United Nations Mission in South Sudan Jessican Lacher-Feldman (2020–2024), University of Rochester Mark Matienzo (2021–2025), Stanford University Libraries Marlee Newman (2021–2025), Archival Consultant Kathryn Puerini (2020–2024), Archival Consultant Sylvia Welsh (2020–2024), Harvard University Reviews Editor Rose Buchanan (2021–2024), National Archives and Records Administration Stephanie Luke (2021–2024), University of
Digital Preservation Practices and Challenges at University Archives in the United States
Maali F. Alghnimi and
Donald C. Force
Draft No. 4: Thinking about Our Writing1
Amy Cooper Cary
Journalism History and Digital Archives
Kailyn Slater
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