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FRIDAY, JULY 8: 11:00 AM-12:30 PM

TRACK 1

M. Caswell: Critical Theory and Its Archival Applications                                                        

This paper will define and delineate critical theory, tracing its roots from the Frankfurt School to more recent iterations in feminist, postcolonial, critical race, and queer theory. It will then imagine the promises of critical theory for archival studies and argue for critical theory generation as a much-need research method in the field.

M. Cifor & S. Wood: Critical Feminism in the Archives 

This presentation locates the manifold strains of critical feminist thought and practice emergent in archival theory and practice. Through this discussion we offer a set of challenges and provocations in order to further intersectional interventions in archival practices and labors.

B. Jules & E. Summers: #BlackLivesMatter: Social Movement Archives in the New Age of Digital Power   

The dramatic rise in the use of social media services to document events of historical significance presents archivists and others who build primary source research collections with a unique opportunity to transform appraisal, collection, preservation and discovery of this new type of research data. Marginalized people, especially African Americans and Hispanic Americans, have found new agency through these social media services to tell their stories and to publicly document historical events influencing their lives. In particular, social movements around police violence since the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014 have produced a massive amount of social media records. This paper will explore how African Americans’ access to traditionally privileged digital information spaces presents archivists with opportunities and challenges around collecting and preserving social media records.

TRACK 2

H. Soyka: Climate Change through the Continuum: Using Continuum Thinking to Understand the Recordkeeping Challenges Related to Climate Science

Drawing on the foundation set forth by the AERI Grand Challenges Working group, this paper will closely examine the cross-cutting societal Grand Challenge of sustainability and climate change, and the relationships of community and networked recordkeeping to approaching climate change as a global concern. This paper starts from a specific question: how can applying and expanding a recordkeeping/archival theory, the information continuum model (a variant of the continuum model/continuum thinking), be used to approach and inform the grand societal challenge of climate change and environmental sustainability? Using a case study based in the author’s current work at the National Center for Ecological Sustainability and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, this project will outline and examine challenges defined by ecological and environmental scientists that relate to recordkeeping and data that fit within the bounds of this inquiry, and apply continuum thinking as a way to read this case study over various registers, including time, space, and situated context. More broadly, this paper will contribute to continuum research and thinking, and to next-generation recordkeeping and archival research agendas in a global, societal context.                           

E. Borglund: Scenario Planning and Personas, a Way to Foresee Future Use of Digital Records    

Simplified one could say that appraisal is about deciding what records are worth saving. But in the era of open data and reuse of public data, records can and will probably be used in new ways in the future. It is also possible to argue that we do not keep the records that we in the future will need. In this article we propose a new method to support the appraisal process. With digital records many argue that there is a need to be proactive, and that even the information systems in which records are born must fulfill recordkeeping requirements. A digital record can never be changed or altered during its preservation, and implicit must at creation be captured in a way that it also meet future needs. In this research we propose that scenario planning and the interaction design technique personas together form a method that could reduce uncertainty about future use of digital records usable either for design of recordkeeping system or in an appraisal process. The proposed method was evaluated in an experiment like interpretative research. The method was applied in the police domain, which consists of several recordkeeping systems which content should be preserved forever. The research indicate that scenario planning is a very powerful tool to identify potential future use of records and together with the scenarios that are outcome of the method could be used to design personas. Personas and the scenarios could give a very rich picture of potential future use of digital records, which would be usable in appraisal process and during recordkeeping system design.          

E. Wilczek: Thick Description at Scale: Seeing Wicked Problems as a Recordkeeping Challenge

Over the past several years, an AERI working group has been investigating grand challenges, defining them as “complex, multifaceted and widely recognized fundamental problems with broad applicability and interdependencies that require extraordinary breakthroughs and the engagement of multiple areas of expertise to address.” Grand challenges are also referred to as “wicked problems,” which have been defined as societal problems that are complex, vitally important, ill-defined, and “rely upon elusive political judgment for resolution.” One way to examine wicked problems and grand challenges is to understand them through a recordkeeping lens. Wicked problems are political, unbounded, messy, tangled, dynamic, and complex challenges that require subtle, nuanced description. In short, wicked problems demand thick description. Yet wicked problems are also large-scale challenges—they are grand challenges. In order to grapple with their enormity, people must describe and document wicked problems at scale. This is the fundamental recordkeeping challenge of wicked problems—they demand thick description at scale.This paper uses as its launching point a historical case study of how the US military and government attempted to solve and document a wicked problem—the communist insurgency in the Vietnam War. It focuses on 1) the challenge of producing scalable thick description and 2) how tackling wicked problems is to a remarkable extent a recordkeeping act because documenting the problem is defining, and in turn addressing, the problem. The paper explores the unique contributions recordkeeping scholarship can make to the understanding of wicked problems.

TRACK 3

G. Oliver: Records Literacy 

From the late twentieth century onwards, a defining feature of the information and library science (ILS) domain has been its concern with information literacy.  The resulting body of literature is vast, and there are many examples of implementations of research into practice, as evidenced by the involvement of professional bodies and the development of standards and guidelines. However, consideration of the power of records and recordkeeping in everyday lives is a perspective that is largely missing from information literacy research and practice.  This absence of awareness means that existing conceptions of information literacy developed by the ILS community do not adequately reflect issues relating to everyday records and recordkeeping. Contributions to information literacy from the archival science discipline have focused largely on archival or primary source literacy, often in terms of user education (for instance, how to navigate access to archival institutions and collections). Records literacy, addressing the challenges inherent in interacting with everyday records and records systems has not been addressed, other than from a training perspective targeted at specific workplace requirements. As records are influential at all levels of human existence, the consequences of not addressing records literacy, particularly for the least empowered individuals in society (such as refugees), can be profound. Issues of professional identify and culture are likely to have influenced the lack of awareness of the need for records literacy in everyday life, in particular the division of responsibilities for recordkeeping to records managers and archivists. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness of the need for records literacy and to call  for a research and practice agenda to introduce and embed awareness of records and recordkeeping in information literacy. 

P. Garcia: Accessing Archives: Teaching with Primary Sources in K-12 Classrooms  

With the widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards, K-12 teachers are required to utilize primary sources as tools to promote inquiry-based learning. This presentation reports on findings from an 18-month study that focused on understanding the forms of literacies and knowledge needed to effectively facilitate student learning using primary sources in K-12 classrooms. The presentation uses ethnographic data to analyze how the researcher expertise model developed by Yakel and Torres (2003) applies to K-12 teachers as a user group and investigates the role of “archival intelligence” in integrating primary sources into classroom instruction. The presentation also proposes a collaborative knowledge model for primary source-based instruction that introduces the role of professional knowledge in effectively locating, evaluating, and using primary sources to teach.                 

J. Zhang: Lakota Winter Counts, Pictographic Records, Record Making, and Remaking Histories

Winter counts are pictographic calendars created as mnemonic devices by some Native American communities to remember the sequence of events that mark each year and retell the community stories. Drawn on the resources from the winter count collections in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Anthropological Archives and related literature, this study reviews and discusses the characteristics of pictographic records, traces their making and remaking histories, and revisits the pictorial tradition in the American history of records and recordkeeping. The discussion of Lakota winter counts as a legacy recordkeeping system is not new. This study offers a new angle to recount the stories of winter counts in the framework of the relationships between records, recordkeeping, and archives. The study made a deliberate effort to trace and capture the natural and distinctive process of record making, maintenance, and preservation of Lakota winter counts. The study also helps to demonstrate that that records can be spoken, drawn, and written, and there is an oral, pictorial, and textual tradition in the American history of records and recordkeeping.

FRIDAY, JULY 2:00 PM-3:30 PM

TRACK 1

E. Doolan: Weaving in New Narratives: Textiles as Records of Conflict

In the 1970s, Chilean women began creating textiles known as arpilleras (from the Spanish word for burlap) as a way of documenting their lives and experiences. Under the Pinochet regime (1973-1990), arpilleras depicting the difficult, often violent, experiences of Chilean women began to gain global recognition. Through an internship with the Tower Museum archives in Derry~Londonderry in Northern Ireland, I worked with a collection of arpilleras that had been donated by Roberta Bacic, a Chilean lecturer currently living in Northern Ireland, who has focused her research on arpilleras. Considered by some to be both museum artifacts and archival records, these textile works challenge classical professional distinctions drawn between the two categories. Situating their dual categorizations within a combined museum and archival setting exposes the ways in which traditional definitions of archival records may not only exclude women's voices, but also fail to consider how gendered activities and expressions might play a role in records’ formation and reception. Arpilleras have been adopted in a variety of countries as a medium through which women are able to express their own personal experiences with conflict autonomously. Thus, there is a greater imperative that archivists work to create a more inclusive archival record.                                                  

P.A.S. Babić: Access to the Archival Records of Military Courts--Archival Records of ex-Yugoslavia

In this research paper I am resolving the issue of the access of archival records of military courts, which are in Slovenian archives preserved only in fragments, and they could be found in different archival collections and fonds. The majority of those records are the subject of the Yugoslav agreement on succession issues (Annex D) and kept by military archives in Serbia. I am addressing four main questions: importance of archival records of military courts for public use; legal basis of the succession issues after ex-Yugoslavia; access of archival records from the legal aspect of different legal provisions of ex-Yugoslavian states as well as from the aspect of limited access of Slovenian archival law. Based on above listed questions, I will deal with issues related to search for records on the field and creating archival aids for better use, especially from the aspect of protecting human rights in present judicial and administrative procedures.

A. Gilliland: Evidence and Exigency: Reconstructing and Reconciling Records for Life After Conflict

Records and other forms of documentation play important roles in the ability or inability for refugees, among other things, to prove identity and citizenship, to ascertain and certify familial relationships, to cross borders, to claim asylum, rights and reparations, and to reclaim property and re-establish credentials. In coping with the exigencies of genocide and ethnic cleansing, forced migration and asylum seeking, refugees often use strategies such as altering documentation; using others’ documents; providing false information regarding names, birth dates and places, familial relationships, occupation and military service; and avoiding registering as migrants when attempting to move across one country in order to get to another. In their flight or displacement, they may also be unable to carry necessary personal copies of records, records may be destroyed or lost, and babies born along the way may not be issued with birth certificates. At the same time, the UN High Commission on Refugees has introduced DNA tracking as a way to identify refugees unambiguously and also to help them to establish a base record upon which to rebuild their juridical presence. This paper will examine the human consequences and socio-cultural implications of such strategies, particularly for women and children when they try to reconstruct accurate or reconcile differing records in order to interface with the bureaucracies and social institutions of the countries in which they have settled, the homelands to which they have returned, or the governments and regimes against which they have made claims.

TRACK 2 

C. Colwell & T. Wright: Recordkeeping Culture in Federal Agencies of Australia and Canada

Australia and Canada have contributed strongly to the discussion and adoption of records continuum thinking and practice.  In 1985 Archivaria published Atherton’s[Field] seminal work From Life Cycle to Continuum - some thoughts on the records management-archives relationship.  This was the earliest published effort that espoused and consolidated continuum thinking. Not long afterwards continuum thinking and the Records Continuum Model, developed by Frank Upward, was taken up in and evolved in Australia.  The Australian recordkeeping community issued a records management standard based on continuum thinking. Both nations have adopted a records continuum view in developing their national recordkeeping framework, but Bak (2010) notes that there are important differences in the two views of the continuum developed on either side of the Pacific.  He contends that the Canadian view, as espoused by Atherton (1985), privileges service or what he later calls utility whereas the Australian view has a tendency to privilege issues of authenticity and evidential value.  Canadian archives scholars have a different perspective, and MaNeil (2011) argues that the professional identity of archivists and records management professionals has centered on authenticity and trust. Is Bak accurate in stating that “the difference between Australian and Canadian views of the continuum have been carried over to differences in the recordkeeping cultures of the two nations”? This paper draws on interviews with records managers in both Australian and Canadian federal government agencies to explore this notion that the views of the continuum have affected the recordkeeping cultures of the two nations and to see whether there is indeed an underlying universal professional recordkeeping culture that prevails regardless of national frameworks.

B. Real: Film Studies and the Archival Turn (Re-Shaping a Discipline)

This paper will analyze the fallout from film scholars’ increased attention to film archives and related paper-based documentation in the 1970s. Prior to this time, historical research on cinema had largely been the domain of amateur authors, many of whom were film collectors. Film studies at the university level used critical theory to closely analyze a small canon of films by directors that had been acknowledged as great auteurs. However, greater archival access led to changes in film studies as a discipline that mirrored the tensions brought about by the introduction of new history and public history to academia just a few years before. The 1960s saw significance growth in film archives in the United States and throughout the world, including the establishment of many institutions and considerable expansions to the collections of those that had existed prior. The ensuing decade saw the development of access procedures and relevant infrastructure to allow scholars to conduct research using these materials, resulting in the late 1970s and early 1980s seeing a sea change in the field of film studies. The primary scholarly innovations of access to film archives were that researchers could more easily see films, they could conduct repeated viewings, and they could see obscure works that had previously been unavailable. This included viewings of early (pre-1915) fiction films in chronological order, initially as part of New York University professor Jay Leyda’s graduate courses. As this type of systematic viewing became a part of the 1978 International Federation of Film Archives (better known by its French acronym, FIAF) Congress in Brighton, England, young scholars began to challenge and discredit previous assumptions about the development of cinema. This resulted in a divergence from the academic tradition of “film theory,” largely rooted in critical theory, and the birth of the “film history” movement. Tensions between film history and film theory continue to date, but were particularly heated in the years following Brighton. Thus, this paper will look at how the use of archival sources disrupted an established discipline and challenged conservative scholars.

TRACK 3

D.R. Donaldson: Understanding the Value of Digital Repository Audit and Certification  

Recently, standards for Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDRs) have emerged within the digital curation community. While it is  generally accepted that standards can improve a wide variety of products and services, to date few digital repositories have  undergone audit and certification. One possible explanation for this could be that digital repository staff members do not perceive  high enough value in undergoing audit and certification to pursue these activities. This research presentation presents findings of a study aimed at understanding the value of audit and certification of digital repositories from the perspective of actual digital  repository staff members. Participants in the study include staff members of digital repositories that have acquired Data Seals of Approval (DSA)and/or become members of the International Council for Science (ICSU) World Data System (WDS). Findings suggest that  participants perceived high value in undergoing audit and certification; they articulated the value of undergoing audit and certification in terms of improving their systems and services, better understanding their systems and services, and making positive impressions on various classes of stakeholders of their repositories, including funders, depositors, and end users or consumers of digital repository content. Implications of the findings for digital repository managers are discussed.                                    

R. Frank: Risk Perception and Trustworthy Digital Repository Certification 

Digital preservation is about ensuring the sustainability and longevity of digital information (Atkins et al., 2003; Berman et al., 2010; Garrett & Waters, 1996). In order to do this, repositories must be able to assess, mitigate, and manage risk (Clifton, 2005; Conway et al., 2012). In the past decade the number of digital repositories has grown but stakeholders still have no way to know whether these repositories can fulfill the promises that they make to curate, preserve, and provide access to data long term. In response, standards for trustworthy digital repositories such as ISO 16363: Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification (TRAC) have emerged to verify that repositories can meet these obligations. The TRAC standard depends upon the idea that in order to be trustworthy a repository must be able to demonstrate the ability to identify, assess, manage, and mitigate risk (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, 2012). In this research presentation I will discuss the theoretical foundations and research design for my dissertation. This qualitative study examines the implementation of the TRAC audit and certification process, an internationally-accepted standard for assessing the trustworthiness of digital repositories, through a theoretical framework based on theories of risk perception (e.g. Gardoni & Murphy, 2013; Slovic, 1987; Vaughan, 1996; Wildavsky & Dake, 1990). More specifically, I ask how risk is understood, managed, and addressed in digital repositories andamong auditors. My dissertation employs a qualitative design incorporating in-depth semi-structured interviews and document analysis. Data collection will be carried out across three stakeholder groups: repository leaders from TRAC-certified repositories, auditors who have conducted TRAC audits at those same repositories, and individuals who have been through PTAB training in order to become certified auditors for the TRAC standard (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, 2011; “PTAB Courses,” 2015). Document analysis will focus primarily on audit reports and the TRAC standard itself (e.g. Center for Research Libraries, 2014). This presentation will focus on the theoretical framework and research design and may include an update regarding data collection, if appropriate.

Cal Lee: A Very Long Engagement: Lessons from Building a Software Consortium as a Faculty Member 

TBA 

SATURDAY, JULY 9: 11:00 AM-12:30 PM

TRACK 1

V. Vukliš: Documentation Strategy in the Desert of Post-Socialism: Rethinking Appraisal in Former Yugoslavia    

 

This ongoing research is based on a previous inquiry into the state of archival sources for social history of Yugoslav Socialism (1945–1990). An in-depth analysis of archival socialist heritage uncovered systematic issues regarding strategies and practices of appraisal that were designed within the previous system, and then automatically reapplied in a new, post-socialist environment. In the era of state socialism, where almost all spheres of social life – including government, economy, education, politics, non-government associations etc. – were “socially owned” and/or “socially controlled”, archival institutions were entrusted with overlooking the totality of records production. Appraisal of records, based on criteria of formal function and hierarchy, was operationalized through a “life cycle” model, where an essentially negative selection eliminated what was considered valueless. The bulk of material retained as potentially valuable, as it waited for acquisition and processing, was gradually accumulated into an increasing backlog. As no proactive appraisal strategies were yet devised, one can only speculate about possible responses to these challenges, because with the 1990s came unexpected extraordinary conditions. After a decade of political and social turmoil, Socialist Yugoslavia fell apart in a series of violent secession wars. Archival institutions were primarily concerned with surviving and adapting to new conditions, as well as with attempts – too often futile – to save the records that suddenly fell out of place. Two decades after these wars, however, it becomes apparent that the archival profession must also (re)engage in deeper issues. Post-socialist transition and deregulation severely reduced the archival framework. Private (and privatized) enterprises, the political parties, NGOs, the trade unions, and even the Judiciary, now all act independently when it comes to handling and disposition of their own records. Archival profession was reduced to a guardian of state papers, produced by government bodies and remaining public institutions. With the goal of reclaiming lost ground for the archives, envisioned to document the totality of social life, this research explores the possibilities for designing documentation strategies and for appropriation of proactive appraisal practices as well as modern records management systems that would enable these deeply needed changes.

W.R. Schneider: Conscripts of History: Rereading Haiti’s Internal Struggles After Emancipation  

The Haitian Revolution has been used as the key element in romantic narratives of slavery to freedom. It has also been used, more recently, as an iconic example of the empty promise of freedom for enslaved populations after emancipation, where Haiti’s early authoritarian, militarized and colorist governments form the basis of a historical trajectory to today’s “failed state.” As David Scott argues in Conscripts of Modernity (2004), these narratives fail to look closely and critically at the historical contexts, the “problem moments,” of the generations of Haitians who lived through the revolution and who built lives afterword. Very little attention, in particular, has been paid to historicizing the generation of Haitians born in the first decades after independence. What were their actions, if not motivations, as individuals and communities? The Haitian past has been and continues to be essentialized, both because of a presumed absence of archival sources, and also because of a presumably unfathomable disconnect between the documentation that does exist and the lived experiences a historically disenfranchised rural population. In this presentation I hope to address both of these arguments and the narratives they enable. Using new research in the private archives of notaries and early civil records in the city of Gonaives and the Artibonite Valley, I will focus on how to read the struggles of Haiti’s earliest generations after emancipation in 1803/1804. These documents, and this genre of record keeping, provide rich information on the legal rituals of Haiti’s so-called “peasantry,” and they also prompt further questions about the practice of legality, recordkeeping and state control in the new republic. How did Haitian notaries and mayors engage in their project of conforming the Haitian population to a legal practice that straddled colonial Saint Domingue and Restoration-era France? How can land sales, inheritance and succession transactions, birth, death and marriage registers be used to reread the historical context of Haitian freedom? Through looking at these genres of new primary source documentation, my paper will engage Haiti’s archival context and examine the stakes of historical production in and about the country.

J. Ghaddar: To What Ends? Lebanese Archival Memory

Archival practice in the Arab sectors of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and the scholarship that seeks to study it, must grapple with the dual challenge of, on the one hand, thinking critically about the transmission of western paradigms, methods and goals while adapting the insights and knowledge of a tradition most often associated with the west; and of combating the orientalist tendency to essentialize the cultures and societies as timeless and monolithic, on the other hand (Mejcher-Atassi & Schwartz 2012, 1). In this context, and against a regional background of increased and diversified collecting practices, heightened contestation over the past, and large-scale material heritage destruction, my research paper interrogates various Lebanese archival sites and initiatives in light of modern Arab history. I begin by exploring the increasing relevance and political province of narratives of (neo)colonial and postcolonial violence in Lebanon and across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). While making connections between ongoing conflict and the oft-noted archival deficiencies facing the MENA, I outline the necessity, rationale and context of a research agenda that seeks to fill the gaps in our knowledge of archives in Arab settings while critically questioning what archives in Lebanon exhibit, what purposes and audiences they serve, and, most crucially, what narratives they engender. This line of questioning allows me to probe what archives mean in a region where the most pressing need to collect and recover lies not only in the professional and academic fields concerned with preserving and organizing heritage, but perhaps more so in attempts at objectifying and sustaining a presence for those people, places and objects lost, destroyed or erased by past and ongoing violence (see Shabout 2012 for relevant discussion).

Works Cited:

Mejcher-Atassi, Sonja and John Pedro Schwartz (eds.). (2012) Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing.

Shabout, Nada. (2012). Collecting modern Iraqi art. In Mejcher-Atassi, Sonja and John Pedro Schwartz (eds.), Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing.

TRACK 2

R. Punzalan & D. Marsh: Expanding Impact Studies: Native and National Research on Impact Stories of Digitized Ethnographic Collections      

This paper presents two branches of ongoing research generated from the Valuing Our Scans project. The initial research sought to understand the impacts of digitizing ethnographic collections through a year-long study among heritage professionals, asking how heritage professionals and administrators understand the impacts of their ethnographic digitization projects. The pilot study explored how emergent uses and impacts in source communities could be assessed, what data would be appropriate in assessing such projects, what general framework could be used in assessing them, what new and traditional users of digitized collections were emerging, and what the emergent uses of these resources were. The results of that study found that assessing impact for ethnographic collections was indeed possible, and could be accomplished through systematically collecting “impact stories.” Two new studies have been launched from the results of the initial research. First, headed by Ricky Punzalan, aims to produce four user-centered assessment toolkits designed to generate information and feedback on the use of digitized ethnographic resources by Native American communities, K-12 educators, academic researchers, and LAM professionals and administrators. The second project, currently being conducted by Diana Marsh, is a qualitative, ethnographic research drawing on ongoing collaborative digitization efforts at the American Philosophical Society (APS) and its Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) to explore the direct impacts of digitization among Native communities in culturally appropriate ways. This presentation will provide the highlights and key findings of these two research projects.

Z. J. Semlič Rajh: You May Find Only if You Seek Properly: Analysing Users and the Use of Archives Online Database SIRAnet                     

Slovenian Regional Archives offer their users access to archival material through online accessible archival database SIRAnet. This involves a large amount of information in the environment that constantly changes. When searching for information in archival databases users cannot rely on the help of an archivist, as they could if they researched the traditional, paper based finding aids. They can rely only to themselves and their own knowledge and experience. Until the present time the Slovenian archivists have never carried out any serious research about users and their needs and behaviour. The question became an important topic in Slovenian archives only after switching to the description of archives in online accessible database SIRAnet. It has thus become necessary that we begin dealing with the users of archival information systems. The first such survey about users of archival information systems in Slovenia was presented in 2014. For the first time, in the archival profession in Slovenia and in the region, authors tried to introduce the basic concepts and theories in the field of user behaviour in information systems. We confirmed that the Carol Kuhlthau basic model of information search also applies in an environment of archival information systems, the specialty of which is the context. In the continuation of the research of users that started in 2014, the author conducted a detailed analysis of the online accessible database SIRAnet in which she tried to determine how many users of archival services seeks for initial information for their research directly in the online database SIRAnet. Therefore, the author analysed the Log Viewer of the database Query web server and tried to answer the following questions: do users mostly use the full text search or the field search? Do the users use the advanced full text search? Do our users use the descriptors search? What fields are mostly used in the field search? What are the most used phrases or words? How many searches are conducted? Do the users use the ability to filter on archival type or description level? and many others. The author also analysed search strategies and their success rates. This paper reports on the results of this analysis.

J. Dorey: Trauma and Healing in the Archives

Archives are places of trauma. Archival records document trauma (Caswell, 2014; Nathan, Shaffer & Castor, 2015), be it the atrocities of war, the lives of survivors or narrative of the displaced. Silences in the archives, gaps of histories, and the underrepresentation of certain marginalized populations (Carter, 2006) can also have traumatic effects for people in search of their history. Recent events, notably the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada, have illustrated how archival records are very much needed in the process of seeking redress (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2015). Social justice (Harris, 2002) and social activism (Flinn & Alexander, 2015) often turn to archives to fight for the people and get reparation. More recently, there have been questions about the wellbeing of archivists and researchers dealing with traumatic archival records, notably the inclusion of helplines and counseling services in researcher’s resources. However, one question remains unanswered: What is the place of archival records in the healing process? To answer this question, I will be presenting preliminary work by examining issues of recordkeeping, literacy and therapy. First, I will address the issue of what could those “archival records” be, to include personal health records, medical records, personal institutional records and personal records, along with their associated recordkeeping challenges. Then, a discussion on health information literacy must include an understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder, mental health and care/survivor burden. Finally, an examination of various existing projects and therapeutic options will be done through the lenses of personal memories, oral history/talk therapy and bibliotherapy. Could the records often viewed as documenting trauma be used as part of the healing process of various groups, such as residential school survivors or survivors of gay-bashing attacks? How soon could we use archival records when the traumatic events are still very recent? The overarching goal of this research is to ask whether or not there is a place for archivotherapy in the healing process. If archivotherapy is indeed a viable option, does this frame the use of archival records as answering one of the many Grand Challenges often discussed at AERI, including health and mental health issues?

TRACK 3

P. Galloway: Archiving Digital Objects as Maintenance: Reading a Rosetta Machine  

Archiving digital objects qualifies as maintenance and conservation: in fact, many of its practitioners think of themselves as conservators, people who are capable of arresting a cultural object in time, maintaining it as closely as possible in the state in which it was created. Software provides the context in which digital objects are created, and other software provides the context in which they must be maintained, but practitioners of digital preservation are only now beginning to move seriously into the area of deciding how to perform digital objects for users. It is therefore important to be able to document the contexts of creation and use of digital objects, and of late my students and I have begun to create virtual machines to support digital objects so as to capture and preserve those contexts—where we know what they are. The problem that arises is what software environment version(s) to choose to document where we must guess at the context of creation, since almost every item in personal computer software stacks has evolved at a different rate. Since it is impossible to document every version of every item in the stack, we need to craft a practice of maintenance that resembles standard testing and even standard setting. Accordingly, we are experimenting with creating a small set of canonical hardware systems based on our research on popularity and normal configuration of personal computers, so as to be able to experiment with digital objects created on such systems by installing the software environments that our study of the objects suggests were present, creating born-digital objects in those environments, and then acting to create virtual environments that will emulate those contexts of creation to test how well we understand them. By the time of AERI 2016, we shall have created three such projects, and my intention is to report on the problems and solutions resulting from this work.

A. Gursoy: [Stakeholder Representations of Complex Digital Objects, such as Fan Fiction and Video Games]   

In order for artifacts to become archival records, they must first be transformed through a process of arrangement and description. The transformation does not happen naturally; an archivist must engage in labor to affect it. While arrangement and description have been critiqued in the archives literature for privileging some cultural forms over others, there has been comparatively less work understanding the broader issue identified by Yakel (2003) as “archival representation”: archival arrangement and description are components of a model-building activity that takes a set of artifacts and a set of assumptions and transforms them into a representation of a process. I am studying the issue of transformation in archival representation by exploring how variousstakeholder groups create representations, archival or otherwise, of complex digital objects. Digital games are interactive software objects and thus incorporate various agencies into the creation of a complex experience. By examining representational practices around digital games, I seek to understand how experiences are transformed into objects to be preserved. First, I examine user-contributed metadata for fan fiction based on a digital role-playing game series with a high degree of choice and interaction in the path of the game. In this fan fiction collection, user-contributed metadata serve a variety of representational roles that include, but are not limited to, arrangement and description. What does a set of metadata signify in this context, and how does it signify? Second, I investigate how players of a different, multiplayer online game discuss changes to the game over time. Most preservation activities focus on maintaining an artifact into the future, but in a highly unstable environment such as a continually-changing online game, the artifact to be preserved is much broader than a single version on a single date. What real-life discussions and conversations do these players have, and why? Through these two studies—oriented not on institutional archival work but on the existing representational work done by primary users in daily life—I offer a point of comparison for exploring “archival representation” in the context of digital objects and in general.

S. Ramdeen: [Archival Needs of Physical Scientific Data]

The management of scientific data collections is changing as scientific research evolves and the technology available for accessing these collections continues to develop.  Archivists, librarians and other information scientists have unique skills that can be used to shape this future landscape.  Consider object based science in relation to archives. When discussing science data, we may think about numbers in a spreadsheet or points on a graph. But what about physical materials such as cores, cuttings, fossils, and other tangible objects? Like papers in an archive or specimen in a museum, these objects require surrogates (digital or analog) that allow researchers to access and retrieve them. Once these scientific objects are acquired, researchers can process the information they contain. Unlike papers, and some museum materials, not all scientific objects can be completely replaced by digital surrogates. A fossil may be scanned, but the original is needed for chemical testing and ultimately for ‘not yet developed’ processes of scientific analysis. These objects along with their metadata or other documentation become scientific data when they are used in research. Without documentation of key information (i.e. the location where it was collected) these objects may lose their scientific value. This creates a complex situation where we must preserve the object, its metadata, and the connection between them. These factors are important as we consider the future of science data, our definitions of what constitutes scientific data, as well as our data preservation and management practices. This talk will discuss current initiatives within the earth science communities and how archivists, librarians, and information scientists can contribute.

SATURDAY, JULY 9: 2:00 PM-3:00 PM

Track 1

G. Leazer: Original Order, Archival Representation and Secondary Elaboration   

Yakel, states (p. 1) in her definitive piece, “Archival representation refers to both the processes of arrangement and description and is viewed as a fluid, evolving, and socially constructed practice.”   A postmodern conception of archival practices de-emphasizes the notion that archivists reveal the meaning of archival documents, and instead notes how archivists construct representations of those documents.  This talk aims to examine original order, a key concept that emphasizes a neutral and passive practice of reflection and gap-filling.  Instead, this paper suggests that archival collections are instead often indeterminate in nature, and that the concept of original order is a fallacy of wishful thinking, aimed at reflecting or recovering a lost organizational narrative for archival purposes. Opposing the idea of original order, this paper examines Freud’s concept of secondary elaboration and its potential application to archival representation.  As presented in The Interpretation of Dreams (an early work, originally published in 1900), Freud describes dreams as chaotic, illogical, unruly and disturbing.  In the recounting of their dreams, people impose a narrative order to make sense of their dreams.  As he states, “the dream loses the appearance of absurdity and incoherence, and approaches the pattern of an intelligible experience”, and later, “representability … of the dream … is modified until it satisfies as far as possible the exactions of a secondary agency.” The concepts of original order and secondary elaboration are worked out with reference to four archival collections: the personal papers of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886); the papers pertaining to Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1819-1892); the archival collection on African-American history an culture created by Mayme Clayton; and the papers related to a 20th century Chicano political movement maintained by UCLA.

K. Anderson & H. Inefuku: Focusing the Archival Gaze: A Preliminary Definition and Model  

Over the past several decades, authors from within and without the archival profession have applied poststructural theories to the Archive and archives. Several authors have used the term "archival gaze," but the phrase has been neither defined nor thoroughly interrogated in the published literature. We seek to understand what makes a gaze archival, and what the implications for archival practice are. We will present on research in progress intended to articulate a definition and model of the archival gaze. Drawing on diplomatics, poststructuralism and Gaze theories (including Mulvey and hooks), this research explores the dynamics of power present in the archival gaze. To do so, we propose three layers of gaze analysis: content, documentary and archival. Within these layers, we examine the flow and manifestation of power between four actors (defined in relation to the record: subject, creator, viewer and archivist), and the information activities that this power enables. We will present our definition and model and discuss the results of our research so far.                                              

J.A. Lee: Archival Bodies: Ethos and Ethics of Embodied Productions   

Archival bodies take shape, and reciprocally shape the records creators who engage with the archives, through records, collections, practices, and productions. Utilizing the body as a framework to explore archives and their productions as always-in-motion, flexible, and dynamic, I interrogate the archival body through concepts of ethos and ethics. Beginning with an understanding of ethos as “an atmosphere, climate, disposition, and essence,” I move to make a connection to ethics that draws from political theorist Jane Bennett’s definition of ethics as “a complex set of relays between moral contents, aesthetic-affective styles, and public moods” (2010, p. xii). In this presentation, I question the climates in which hands-on practices might offer proposed archival ethos and ethics that are attentive to diverse, dynamic, and distinct bodies and bodies of knowledge to consider multiple histories, lived contexts, and meaning-making practices throughout archival productions. 

Bennett J (2010) Vibrant Matter: a political ecology of things. Duke University Press. 

Track 2 

A. Ivanov: Opening the Black Box of Archival Work: A Methodology for Qualitative Case Study of Appraisal and Preservation Practices in Moving Image Archives

Over the course of the last decade qualitative methods have gained prominence in archival science. In particular, fieldwork and interviews are increasingly being used to examine the social and cultural factors influencing the nature of archival work. This growing body of methodological and empirical literature has collectively come to be known as Archival Ethnography. In this paper, I present an overview of the theoretical and conceptual framework informing my current doctoral research on appraisal and preservation practices at the digital archives of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). I then discuss the structure and organization of a six-month fieldwork project at the CBC’s digital archives, and I outline my plans for following up on this data by using in-depth expert interview method. I conclude by presenting a tentative outline of my data analysis plan. The purpose of this paper is twofold: it seeks to introduce my interpretation of the craft of doing Archival Ethnography, and in the spirit of the AERI events, it seeks to solicit feedback and suggestions from the archival science community 

Keywords: Methodology, Methods, Archival Ethnography, Appraisal, Preservation                                    

K. Carbone: Mobilizing Object Biography in the Archives   

First introduced by anthropologist Igor Kopytoff in 1986, object biography centers on the idea that an object cannot be fully understood if regarded from only one point or stage in its existence. As a method, object biography provides a way to study processes of usage and production as well as accumulations of significance and value of an object over time and through space. By asking questions of an object similar to those one would ask about the life of a person, a key impulse behind the biographical approach is to reveal relations and histories between objects and people. It also seeks to understand how meaning about an object accrues as well as shifts and transforms through an object’s social interactions and consociations with human lives and activities. My goals for this paper are twofold: (1) to introduce to the archival studies field an epistemological framework that appears to have potential for expanding how our field thinks about object centricity, relationality, and the movement of things through space, time, communities, and meaning-making processes; and, (2) to demonstrate, though a discussion of my own research, how object biography might be conceptualized and applied within the archives. This paper begins with an overview of the intellectual underpinnings of object biography from the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology. It then draws upon my dissertation work, an ethnography that employs object biography with a collection of police surveillance files at the Portland Archives & Records Center in Portland, Oregon. From interviews conducted with four individuals whose lives entwine with the surveillance records—a newspaper reporter, an archivist, an activist who is a subject of the records and an artist—I will present four vignettes about some of the uses, roles, associations, relations, meanings, imaginings, transformations, trajectories, and impacts this body of records has had over time and at present day from the perspectives of the four individuals. The basic premise of this paper is that object biography provides an advantageous conceptual and methodological toolkit from which archivists can study and interrogate the “semantic genealogy” of the archive (Ketelaar, 2001), that is, the stories, histories, contexts, relations, values and meanings that have become connected to records and the archive through their use and reuse over time and space.

J. Stevenson: Social Network Analysis: Wisconsin Archive Facebook Community

The purpose of this study was to analyze how Wisconsin archives are using Facebook. Few archive studies use quantitative measurements to draw conclusions from social media application use. Quantitative data is needed in order to identify the various ways that social media is being used in an archive. Without the data behind the assumptions, it is impossible to improve service and outreach to the archive users. This study measured the effects of implementation social media in areas of archives in order to begin to identify and evaluate social media for future use for the archive community. The study used a mixed methods approach to analyze the Wisconsin Archive Facebook network. The methods included social network analysis, inferential statistics, and thematic analysis. The sample included Wisconsin archives using Facebook. Using social network analysis, a database and subsequent matrices developed to examine the Wisconsin archive Facebook community. Social networks allow individuals to connect with individuals and groups with whom they share common interests either personally or professionally. The study analyzed numbers to provide quantitative evidence of what is going on “behind the scenes,” and to find the correlation regarding content of posts and the number of responses. There are many portions of Facebook that need to be analyzed in order to understand the user community that constitutes the social network. Major themes include online activities, actor affiliates, meaning the relationships that the people and institutions have in Facebook, and the meaning behind those actions. Additional questions of the study analyzed who are the actors in the community and do the geographic locations of the actors and institutions have an influences on the connections made. Finally, the content posted was evaluated in order to better understand the connections and flow of information throughout the network. The findings provide a major insight into archives’ use of Facebook.

Track 3

T. Sutherland: Poplar Trees, Paved Roads, and Pixels: Curating the Digital Afterlife     

In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a black woman, died of cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital. In what is now a widely discussed case of medical and racial ethics, Lacks’s cells were used, without permission or informed consent, to create an immortal commercial cell line (HeLa cells), the use of which continues in contemporary biomedicine. In 2013, researchers mapped Lacks’s DNA genome and published the code online. Lacks’s family argued that the published genome laid bare their most intimate health information, making it digitally available to the public and denying them the opportunity to craft their own narratives about their bodies, their heritage, their health, and their future selves. Four years after Lacks’s death, Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black child, was lynched in Mississippi. Till’s mutilated body was photographed at his funeral in 1955; in the sixty years since, dozens of images of a deceased Emmett Till have been published online, where they will remain in perpetuity. A history of lynching as photographic sport in the United States, viewed alongside the Lacks and Till cases, offers tangible examples of the commodification of black bodies—the use by others of black death for personal entertainment or gain. For Lacks, the HeLa commercial cell line and published genome remain as an indelible record. So, too, for Emmett Till and the hundreds of other lynching victims whose dead bodies remain, forever suspended, in a modern-day digital afterlife. The use of dead black bodies for political, social, financial, or cultural gain continues today. A Google image search for slain teen Trayvon Martin, for example, asks whether one would prefer to see his body in a casket, or on the ground. It follows, therefore, that current research on the commodification of black bodies has begun to focus on digital spaces. Using critical and historical methods, this research asks questions about the line between memorialization and commodification; black bodies as records and as evidence; and the interplay between the permanence of the digital sphere and international human rights concept of the “right to be forgotten.”                   

S. Wood: Police Body-Cameras and the Privatization of the Chain of Evidence     

Over the past two years, substantive amounts of both money and time have gone into the implementation of large-scale police body-camera initiatives. The cameras have become the primary institutional response to high profile instances of police violence, vibrant community and political organization and internally focused paranoia. The rhetoric surrounding these programs quite easily equates the equipment with a kind of automatic transparency, the technology itself acting as third party witness. Footage from police body cameras will assuredly challenge archivists and archival scholars to meet the challenge of preserving, describing and providing access to new and abundant records. While many of the longer-term questions have been put aside, leaving issues of use and storage to be determined, leading bodycam manufacturers such as Taser and Vievu currently offer end-to-end service. Beginning with the cameras themselves and locking law enforcement agencies to cloud based evidence management systems, the companies are inseparable from the chain of evidence. These records require a reconceptualization of foundational archival principles, in order to understand how the footage is constituted as evidence and how we can assess its reliability and authenticity within the context of such purported technological neutrality. This paper will focus on the end-to-end design of police body camera manufacturers in order to situate police body camera footage as evidence supported by overlapping private and public infrastructures.                    

E. LeClere: Analyzing Privacy in the 1964 Freedom Summer Digital Collection using Contextual Integrity

There is growing pressure on archives to digitize their holdings for more universal and unfettered access to important historical collections, but little analysis of the privacy concerns that emerge from these large-scale digitization projects. This research paper examines the private information held in the corpus of materials digitized as part of the Wisconsin Historical Society’s 1964 Freedom Summer Digital Collection, and considers whether or not this re-contextualization of information poses new privacy concerns for individuals represented in the collection. The content analysis is framed by Helen Nissenbaum’s theory of contextual integrity, which states that privacy is neither a right to secrecy or control but a right to the appropriate flow of information. Using Nissenbaum’s contextual integrity decision heuristic, I find that individual privacy is significantly impacted by digital collections and the technology that facilitates these projects. While it would be unreasonable to analyze digital collections spanning in the tens of thousands of pages for privacy violations, I suggest that archives reinforce researcher liability in regards to maintaining privacy, and consider the impact that technologies (like optical character recognition) may have in privileging the retrieval of certain content (i.e. typed) over others (i.e. handwritten). The Freedom Summer content analysis is in its initial stages, and I hope to accomplish a more structured analysis through more systematic coding of randomly selected documents. I also plan to look at services that have similar goals to digitization projects, such as Google Books and the Digital Public Library of America. In doing this, I hope to reveal how the lofty goal of “democratizing knowledge” may actually be rendering important collections invisible and therefore inaccessible to the public, while at the same time undermining established information norms regarding individual privacy.

SATURDAY, JULY 9: 4:00 PM-5:30 PM

Track 1

M. Ramirez: 'On Monstrous Subjects and Human Rights Documentation'       

In her conclusion to the proceedings of the conference “The Humanities in Human Rights: Critique, Language, Politics,” Judith Butler notes, “…one must become critical of “the human” to assert human rights. If the concept of the human produces a figure outside itself, the nonhuman, the monstrous, the nonfigurable, then it would seem that the negotiation of humanity happens here, at the juncture where the human confronts the limits of its self-definition.”1 Resplendent in the representation of what Jean-François Lyotard has termed the “inhuman,”2 this rumination on the strategies of human rights discourse gestures towards a confrontation with those liminal, socio-politically marginal, and indeed ‘monstrous’ victims of human rights violations that elicit little public sympathy. If, as Michelle Caswell asserts, the rubric of “human rights archives” is illustrative of an expansive (im)materiality that promotes a dialogic engagement with the “rights of victims,”3 then it is valid to contend that the rubric of “rights” in archival figuration extends to those deemed the very sources of our horrors and violent nightmares. Intent on exploring this uneasy juncture, this paper will take up the figure of the Salvadoran gang member, and their victimization at the hands of the police and Salvadoran state, as the departure for a discussion on the moral and ethical quandaries posed by accounting for the “rights” of perpetrators of violence through the act of documentation. Cast into a state of “social death” that legitimizes the violation of their corporeal and psychic capacities,4 gang members are in turn delegitimized as rights bearing “humans” whose torture and extrajudicial killing is beyond social and moral reproach. To then document the violation of their person is to commit an act of recognition that potentially inaugurates subjective consideration.

A. Migoni: [Documentation of Sites of Mass Violence in Mexico]     

 

Mexico is currently undergoing a surge in cartel and drug related violence, and has endured over two decades of gendered violence against women in the city of Juárez. These processes are fueled by mechanisms of globalization that lead young women to migrate from southern Mexico and Central America to opportunities of labor in factories along the border. Journalists who have covered the violence have been publicly executed, and earlier this month Mayor Gisela Mota was slain one day after taking office due to her commitment against organized crime in Morelos, a state in central Mexico known for its extensive cartel networks. Utilizing the records and activism efforts of non-profit organizations along the border regions of the United States and Mexico, it becomes readily apparent that the onus of documentation for targeted assassinations, mass murder, and missing persons falls to the victimized populations and their families, or to sympathetic parties not affiliated with the Mexican government. Sites of documentation include the organization “Justice in Mexico,” an organization from University of San Diego and sponsored through the MacArthur Foundation; “No More Deaths|No Más Muertes,” a ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson; and the “Colibrí Center for Human Rights,” an NGO based in Tucson, Arizona which works to end migrant death across the border. These NGOs may not identify themselves as community archives, as their political activism and victim advocacy forms the core of their work, but they are largely the only locations in which documents of missing persons are actively filed, kept, and disseminated to the public. This paper will focus on research to date concerning the sites in which mass violence is documented on both sides of the border, to interrogate the use of art and storytelling alongside police reports and missing person reports submitted to the NGOs themselves. These records are invaluable sites of memorialization, accountability, and justice for the victims of cartel related violence. My project attempts to address the disparity between government documentation of violence in the Mexico-United States border region, and the ways community archives, grassroots political organizations, and relatives of victims of violence actively work to memorialize those who have been lost and seek punitive action and justice against the perpetrators.

N. Geraci: “The Great Mystery of my Life was Inside”: Patient Experiences of Mental Health Records Access

Conversations that frame medical records, particularly mental health records, as uniquely troublesome archival documents due to privacy and legal concerns, frequently elide the experiences and perspectives of the people who are subjects of these records. Using qualitative content analysis of six semi-structured interviews conducted with people who have accessed their own mental health records in California, this research seeks to amplify these perspectives in the professional and scholarly discourse, from a perspective rooted in disability studies as well as archival studies scholarship on affect, access, community archives and human rights. Interview participants articulated significant bureaucratic and logistical value attached to accessing accurate mental health records, including access to public benefits, academic disability services, and use of records in legal proceedings; as well as significant personal and affective value to possessing copies of one’s own records, surrounding issues of memory, identity, ownership and, at times, creative repurposing of records. Yet participants also reported stress, frustration, difficulty, and sometimes impossibility in accessing records through their healthcare providers, lack of transparency in the access process, and receiving incomplete or inaccurate records. Participants expressed desires for greater transparency and availability of more information surrounding records practices, policies and laws. 

Track 2

A. Kriesberg & R. Punzalan: Data Curation at the National Agricultural Library   

Agricultural data covers a wide range of scientific disciplines and research methods. In the agricultural science community, as with other scientific disciplines, issues relating to data management, curation, and preservation are becoming more pressing as researchers, governments, and funding agencies place increasing value on data as a scholarly output. While the agricultural information community has made significant contributions in information services provision and digitization of published materials, research data has not been a priority in the field. We have forged a partnership with the United States National Agricultural Library (NAL) to conduct research on data curation in the agricultural sciences and connect the field with the curation community. Our initial data collection activities have included interviews with KSD staff and data producers from the agricultural sciences. The results from this study will highlight the collaborative nature of the relationships maintained by the library’s Knowledge Services Division (KSD) on data curation projects and identify how the library’s capacity to support data management, preservation, and access has evolved since it began engaging data curation activities.                                            

J. Niu: Comparing the Organization and Description of Datasets Between Traditional Archives and Data Repositories

In this study, the author analyzed the websites and catalogs of four national archives and 12 dataset repositories including four social science data archives, four scientific data centers, and four newly emerged government open data portals, and identified the similarities and differences between the dataset description of national archives and that of dataset repositories. It was found that dataset repositories and national archives share many similarities in the organization and description of datasets. They both use metadata-based catalogs and browsing structures in order to support dataset discovery. In addition, they both support multi-level description, authority control and entity-linking in their catalogs. However, dataset repositories use more specialized metadata standards and support more flexible knowledge organization and easier data access and use. These unique features demonstrate their stronger expertise in dataset management. Based on the findings, the author made suggestions for archival institutions to support better dataset discovery and use.

J. York: The Stewardship Gap Project (research data)

The Stewardship Gap is an 18-month study funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to investigate metrics and measures for evaluating the stewardship gap: the gap between the amount of valuable data in the US that is being produced through sponsored projects and the amount that is being effectively stewarded and made accessible. This presentation will review questions, challenges, and findings one year into the project, and discuss next steps. The Stewardship Gap is co-led by Myron Gutmann of the University of Colorado Boulder and Francine Berman of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 

Track 3

N. Timbery: Beyond the Animations: an Aboriginal community archival system for virtual 3D models                                           

This year I would like to present a paper rather than a poster as this will give me an opportunity to share my research and the research process to date, in greater detail. My PhD research Beyond the 3D Animations: uniting Aboriginal Knowledges and 3D Modelling as a Community Archive, is attached to the Monash Country Lines Archive (MCLA) which assists Indigenous Australian communities in the animation of stories that combine their history, knowledge, poetry, songs, performance and language to provide material for intergenerational knowledge sharing and learning. This is achieved through the use of world-class 3D animation to assist the sharing and preservation of knowledge and stories. The products of the animation, virtual models and other related information is where my research is focused as I hope to build a conceptual model of an online archive. In my presentation I would like to share my journey so far and in doing so reflect on how I have negotiated my path as an Aboriginal research student, in a very narrow field. I will explore my experiences with the Ethics process, inviting research participants, conducting interviews across varying participants and selecting methods that compliment my methodological grounding. I will also explain how I position myself in the research and broader projects. In the Australian context there have been some wonderful archival projects involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities however as I conducted my literature review I found there was little theoretical understanding underpinning the archival projects reported on. The literature described the projects however a thorough examination was missing. I will discuss some impacts of this on my research.

K. Nasomtrug: Heritage documentation and the role of community leaders in Thailand    

This presentation is based on a PhD research project entitled ‘(Self-)documentation of Thai communities: does the Western ‘community archive’ movement provide a model?’ which is being undertaken at the University of Liverpool. Based on four case studies of communities in Thailand, the findings reveal that leaders of communities play significant roles in various aspects of their community’s heritage documentation. The research has identified four communities holding resources which could be identified as ‘community archives’. Previous research on community archives has tended to focus on the community, rather than the individuals representing that community in relation to its archive. In every case studied, the motivation for establishing these resources has derived from a single individual or a small number of key individuals. The research therefore aimed to identify what has motivated these initiatives, both personally and in terms of external drivers such as government support. It was found that different motivations had an impact on the governance and organisational management of the community archives. Moreover the status of a leader within the community could affect the levels of engagement between the community and the archive, which could have considerable impact on the sustainability of the archive. This presentation will highlight the drivers which lead individuals to initiate heritage collection projects and the potential risks involved in relying on individual authority.

Z. Lian: The Creation, Preservation and Transmission of Shuishu Archives in China

This paper will analyze the conditions, crises and activation mechanisms associated with the creation, preservation and transmission of the Shuishu archives of the Shui, the ethnic minority living in the remote and poorly accessible mountain area of southwest China. Shui use the Shuishu, a kind of ancient hieroglyphic script, to document their astronomical, geographical and religious knowledge and understandings, as well as their ethics, folkways and philosophy. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Zenlei, Shuiyao,i including interviews with archivists of the local archives, Shuishushi, and some other members of Shui that were conducted between July 12 and August 10, 2015, this paper argues that the creation and transmission of the Shuishu archives rely upon three conditions: 1. the remote geographical location of the Shui, which isolated them from the outside world and resulted in 2. the development and preservation of their unique writing and culture. The Shui worship their ancestors and spirits, value harmony with nature, and, as already noted, use Shuishu to document their knowledge and beliefs as well as to to guide their social activities. 3. Shuishushi who can understand, interpret Shuishu and are thought by their community to be able to talk with spirits. For historical reasons, only Shuishushi can understand and interpret Shuishu archives, which then include not only texts, but also the interpretations of the texts that are stored in the minds of Shuishushi. These three conditions together form a closed community system whereby Shuishu archives are created, preserved and passed down to future generations of Shui. However, with modernization and the wide use of communications media such as TV, mobile phones and internet in China, the closed community system of Shui is broken. The younger generations of Shuiwho are eager to live a wealthier and better life have embraced the dominant Han culture and the special culture of Shui has greatly weakened. Fewer and fewer members of Shui understand Shuishu besides a limited number of old Shuishushi. The preservation and transmission of Shuishu archives is, therefore, currently in crisis. This paper concludes with suggestions that in order to preserve and transmit Shuishu archives to future generations, there needs to be equal cooperation and also mutual trust between government archives and Shuishushi. The “cultural consciousness”ii of Shuialso needs to be activated in order to encourage more members of the Shui to participate in capturing and preserving their own culture, while at the same time encouraging participation using social media. In this way the Shuishu archives may shift from jeopardized collective memory to more preservable cultural memory.

SUNDAY, JULY 10: 2:00-3:30 PM

Track 1

D. Daly: Fugitive Archiving: Ephemera and Community Expressions  

Archival tradition is based on cyclical colonial power dynamics that surround exclusive histories with “negative space,” and community is a theme connecting many stories that have been excluded. One push to break out of these cycles is the recent archival scholarship around “communities of records” that has ignited new interest in communities’ embodied expressions, although questions remain around how we can include embodied expressions and particularly community performances in archival practice. I propose one key to archiving around communities is ephemera, the concept in archival studies and library science under which short-lived or "difficult" materials are classified.” In this work, I broaden the classification ephemera to include performance and locate this broadened understanding of ephemera at the center of communities' dynamic commemorative practices. To study community-situated ephemeral commemoration I conduct qualitative case study analysis of the All Souls Procession of Tucson, Arizona, an annual community event in honor of the dead. Through this analysis I map one area of negative archival space by drawing an analytical guide to one community's commemorative repertoires and archival scenario play. The goal of this analysis is to twofold: First, I hope to illuminate a growing subcultural form of commemoration for archival professionals to consider in the drive toward more inclusive histories; Second, I hope to enrich understandings of commemorative expressions to help the information and archival sciences form more vital relationships with dynamic communities, networks, and disciplines.                                   

J. Jenkins: Archiving the Ephemeral Experience 

As 21st century archivists move out of the stacks and into increasingly dynamic and multicultural communities, we confront the issue of how to archive such communities’ events and lived histories. In response to a query from a campus museum to help archive an aerosol art performance/installation, I asked my students to consider how to archive an ephemeral event using one sense beyond audio and visual. As an example, I offered John Waters’ 1981 film Polyester, filmed in “Odorama” with scratch-n-sniff cards distributed at screenings. How do we describe, arrange, and conserve the sensory moment that is lived experience? On a theoretical level, I discussed phenomenology and presented some ideas from Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space. On a practical level, what’s an archivist to do? Janet Ceja’s work on videographers as digital scribes for local communities in Mexico (2015), Carmen Cowick’s work on street art (2015), and Anabel Quan-Haase and Kim Martin’s study (2013) of translation of actual to virtual provide some exemplars. Much of this work relies upon A/V media as a recording and preservation end in itself. The professional archival pedagogy literature is largely silent on archiving sense experience. Yet thinking outside the (Hollinger) box and digital capture has pedagogical value for rising archivists who will confront heretofore unexpected materials. Collecting and processing with a full complement of perceptual aspects also has profound implications for engaging with disability communities, as well. I propose to discuss the design and execution challenges to an assignment in archiving the ephemeral experience, be it fiesta, graffiti installation, community march, political protest. How do we capture what it feels like to be in the moment and conserve that for future researchers and generations. (What did Woodstock smell like? How do we reproduce the feeling on the ground at the “I Have A Dream Speech”? What is the taste of aerosol in the air when artists are tagging?) I’ll discuss how I framed the assignment, how the students responded, what worked and what didn’t, and propose and invite revisions for next time. This is very much a work in progress. I would welcome the conversation!             

A. Pendharkar: Soaping History Coping (with) Archives: History, Politics and Popular Culture

Television serials or soap operas based on certain characters or events or periods in history popularise history. Often based on extensive primary and secondary archival research, these serials offer an interpretation of a moment in history. They have the potential and power to establish a pseudo/historical discourse and might perpetuate, enhance, nuance or counter the pre-existing ‘historical’ readings of that moment. In spite of or because of their hold on popular imagination, these serials are at the centre of debates about commodification, trivialisation or even falsification of history. This paper will argue that, although archives play a central role in these debates, they are not merely the sites where these debates are performed but are active participants in the interplay between history, current politics and popular culture. Using the receptions of these soap operas as example, this paper will examine and analyse the ways in which hegemonic cultural expectations in a society, a particular moment in history as described in the historical records of the period and representations of that moment in popular culture interact with each other to create a layered narrative about the moment. 

Track 2

A. Copeland & A. Yoon: Building Capacity for Inclusiveness through Connections with Community Archives        

Increasingly, archival professionals are committed to documenting and preserving forgotten records and unspoken voices of underrepresented communities. While these efforts have significantly contributed to social justice and human rights, there is a limitation of a top-down approach of collecting and preserving marginalized stories. Community archives, which take a bottom-up approach, are a potential path to overcoming these limitations. Historically, many underrepresented communities have created archives for use by their members to advocate for their current and historical representation in society. Still, limitations exist in the community archive, such as expertise and capability of preservation or technical, and financial sustainability. Bringing archival institutions and community archives together would be a mutually beneficial approach to overcoming these limitations for both sectors. Archival institutions will be exposed to an increasingly broader scope of topics and will be better positioned to help the communities that are not capable of telling its own story. Further, community groups or community archives that are so marginalized as to not have connections to formal institutions or professionals will have access to archival expertise as well as to a preservation infrastructure. This project explores how bridges can be constructed between existing archival institutions and community archives and community groups wanting to develop archives. The presentation will discuss the preliminary findings from interviews with archivists relating to their experiences and efforts to partner with community archives and marginalized groups; their views and strategies to document marginalized groups or groups that have been denied the rights to create (within or out of their institutional scope); and their perspectives on ethical obligations to these community as professionals, outside of the institutional context. We will also interview the stakeholders of community archives, specifically with researchers and practitioners who are interested in building community archives, as well as the users of community archives. Findings from this project will inform the authors’ efforts to create a Center for Personal and Community Heritage Informatics. The Center’s focus is to help grassroots groups, community organizations, and individuals build the capacity to explore, document, preserve, and use their histories in meaningful ways

Z. Ding: The Technology of Visibility: Archives, Power, Governance and Homelessness

This paper will use Foucault’s principle of visibility to explore how the power of records and archives affect homeless individuals’ everyday lives during the process of governance. It will argue that in accordance with this principle, records and archives are used as one technology of governance by housing agencies to render homeless individuals paradoxically both visible and invisible. On the visible side, everything is under surveillance based on the mass of records and archives that are captured and accumulated from and about homeless people’s bodies, their acts, attitudes and modes of every day behavior. Through methods of comparing, classifying, measuring and normalizing, the homeless as a category is distinguished and excluded from other individuals and groups. Then after homeless individuals become the object of surveillance or governance, knowledge about them is produced and a series of strategies is taken to manage and change these “useless or dangerous multitudes into ordered multiplicities”. (Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison,1977,p148 ). On the invisible side, records and archives can also function as specific devices to make homeless individuals invisible. Only the authorities have power to decide what kind of homeless individuals’ records and archives can be created and preserved. The authorities’ record-keeping systems may not support aspects needed by the homeless, for example, homeless individuals' identities may not be confirmed, and thus they may be excluded by social welfare systems, causing a vicious circle in their lives. Therefore, these two sides of the power of records and archives exercise force us to reconsider our role in protecting homeless peoples’ human rights.

Track 3

A. Poole: Pinkett’s Charges: Recruitment and Retention of Archivists of Color in the Twenty-First Century, An Empirical Study  

“After a long and somewhat torturous journey, diversity is now a front-and-center priority for SAA,” Elizabeth Adkins claimed in 2008.  But she also noted that fewer than half of the winners of the Pinkett Minority Award were still SAA members. This paper takes root in Adkins’s observation, namely the high attrition rate of Pinkett Awardees. As of 2015, 32 students had received the Pinkett Award. As emerging leaders and scholars, these persons constitute a useful sample by which to scrutinize the success of SAA and of the archival profession more broadly in recruiting and retaining archivists of color. I was able to unearth email addresses for 28 of the 32 winners and secured participation by 20 of them. Between August and December, 2015, I conducted semistructured qualitative interviews with these 20 individuals, half of whom are currently SAA members (Drexel IRB Protocol 1511004016; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill IRB Number: 15-0895). Best practice recommendations will be extracted from the data gleaned from these interviews. “By embracing diversity,” the Society of American Archivists’s Statement on Diversity (2013) promulgated, “the Society speaks more effectively on behalf of the entire profession, serves a fuller range of stakeholders, increases organizational credibility, and becomes a stronger advocate for the archives profession.”  This paper seeks to further the SAA’s goal.

S. Buchanan: Insights from Archivists to Educate for Advocacy     

Archivists matter, and over the past year they have communicated this message with a renewed sense of purpose. From the most recent Year of Living Dangerously for Archives, to the establishment of digital community archives to preserve stories in Cleveland, Baltimore, and Ferguson, archivists have promoted the value of their work while collaborating with new partners, stakeholders, and patrons. Yet taking action requires skills and strategy that may stretch archivists' everyday expertise in new ways. Archivists immediately recognize the importance of context when describing and arranging a photograph amidst a large collection of personal papers, but are less equipped to convincingly communicate the added value this brings to the collection. To better equip new archivists with the skills needed to successfully advocate for their work, our community must first identify those skills and develop curricula to teach them in archival education programs. We carried out a survey to ask archivists about their work roles and the advice they would impart to information studies and archival educators based on the challenges they most frequently encounter in the workplace. This presentation will share results from a qualitative analysis of responses from nearly 500 archivists that illustrates the dynamic nature of archivists' activities and the ways experiential knowledge is necessary to be effective in their management and advocacy actions in the long and short term. These survey findings speak to the continued emphasis in the archival profession on communicating archival values, sustaining growth in our profession, and expanding public engagement and appreciation of archives in society.      

X. Jia: Livelihood Archives in China: A Survey of Status Quo

To promote better public services, collections of people’s livelihood archives which are considered as a good tool for the party and government to improve and guarantee people's livelihood have been received high attentions in the development of national archival institutions. Better provision of livelihood archival services is first time listed in national archival policy in 2014, the “Guidance for Strengthening and Improving Archives Work under the New Situation” released by General Office of the CPC Central Committee, the State Council General Office. At present, comprehensive archives at all levels in China have taken actions to integrate livelihood archival resources and prompote utilization services. This proposed paper is to present of a baseline investigation of current status of livelihood archival resources integration and their utilization services. 80 city archives are selected for investigation and primary data are collected from the local official archival institutions' websites. The cities are selected under the condition that they are the 80 designated cities for construction of “Information Benefiting People Project”. Four research questions have been asked and answered by investigation, they are: (1)What kinds of livelihood archives are collected and used in the investigated local archival institutions? (2) What means that have been used for providing utilization service by the investigated local archival institutions? (3)What are the strength and limitations of current livelihood archives utilization service in investigated local archival institutions? (4) How livelihood archives service is relevant to the projects of information benefiting people? By answering questions above, the proposed paper will get a comprehensive picture of how integration of Chinese livelihood archives resources and their utilization service work in the real world practice, and identify gaps between archives utilization service and the benefits to people project. The paper will have broader implications to bridge the gaps between archives utilization service and the government public service. What’s more,it will help to build primary understandings about innovation attributes of Chinese archival thinking and practice and about the professional edge under the background of China.

TUESDAY, JULY 12: 9:00 AM-10:30 AM

Track 1

M. Cifor: Nostalgia as Critical Framework    

Drawing from my dissertation on nostalgia, representation and use and reuse of archival collections documenting 1980s and 1990s HIV/AIDS activism in the United States I illustrate the potential of nostalgia as a critical framework for the archival field. Nostalgia describes the condition of bittersweet longing for a time or space that is past. It is a set of relations to time and space that are “related to a way of living, imagining and sometimes exploiting or (re)inventing the past, present and future.”  Archival studies has not engaged nostalgia in spite of the field’s rich scholarship on closely related concepts of memory, temporality, affect, and identity. Nostalgia is a developed area of inquiry across many disciplines and encompasses a wide range of topics and methodological approaches. I offer a brief history of nostalgia from a curable medical condition in the seventeenth century through its transformation into an inescapable and incurable condition of modernity in the twentieth. Nostalgia signifies absence and loss that can in effect never be made presence again except for through the imperfect tools of memory and creativity of reconstruction. The practice of nostalgia, and the societal effects of nostalgic memory and feeling have been sharply critiqued as apolitical, reactionary, and ahistorical. However, from the 1990s onward scholarship on nostalgia has advocated for its “critical potential.”  Nostalgia is becoming understood as productive in building and sustaining cultural heritage and identities. The establishment of a link between the self in the present and the image of the self in the past through nostalgia plays a significant role in the construction and continuity of individual and collective identities. Nostalgia offers also a particular way of “shaping and directing historical consciousness”  that is unique in the sensory depth in which it correlates place, time and desire. This might include nostalgia for a past that has never been and a way to transform the past that was by imagination. Nostalgia is not only something that people are or feel like, or a cultural product we consume or analyze it is something we do actively, superficially or profoundly, alone and in collaboration, something we do because of, with, and in archives.                                  

D. Sanderson-Hunter: Critical Race Studies in Archives   

This paper will explore possibilities for Critical Race Studies (CRS) as a research method and Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a theoretical framework in archival studies. CRS is an emerging interdisciplinary field that addresses systemic inequity. Postmodern archival scholarship is addresses the relationship between archives and systems of oppression. This paper will position CRS as a research technique for post modern archival scholarship by engaging recent archival scholarship exploring affect, custodianship, social justice and human rights. First, the paper will introduce CRS and its foundation in critical legal studies. Second, the paper will advance CRT as a framework guiding archival research. Third, the paper will explore how concepts central to CRS such as micro-aggressions and counter-stories relate to postmodern archival studies. Next, the paper will identify existing archival techniques that are similar to a CRS approach. Finally, the paper will operationalize micro-aggressions and counter-stories as research technique.

Track 2

E. Benoit: Digital V-Mail and the 21st Century Soldier: Preliminary Findings from the Virtual Footlocker

For generations, soldiers documented their wartime experiences in personal diaries, photographs, and correspondence with loved ones. Often veterans kept these treasured personal collections long after their service, and handed them down to family members. Eventually, these personal military service records humanized the sacrifice of war through historians use as primary sources. With the digital revolution, the 21st century soldier no longer poses the same tangible personal archives creating a critical gap in the record. In its entirety, the Virtual Footlocker Project focuses on the development of an open-source, cross-system platform system for capturing and preserving the personal communication and documentary record of the modern soldier. The first phase of this project explores the personal archiving and record-keeping habits of the modern solider through addressing the following research questions: What types of communication and documentary methods are modern soldiers using? What, if any, methods are modern soldiers using to preserve their service-time archives and records and to what degree? A survey of both open- and close-ended questions was distributed to active duty, reservists, and veterans. The close-ended questions were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistics; and the open-ended questions were analyzed with open-coding. This presentation will discuss the preliminary findings of the analysis highlighting significant themes and identify key requirements of a supportive preservation platform.

E. Nordberg: Archives are More or Less Bunk: Manuscript Collecting at the Henry Ford Museum     

Every year, thousands of tourists flock to The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, to explore American history through vast collections of artifacts, buildings, and living history interpreters assembled by Henry Ford and a succession of museum curators. Few visitors are aware, however, of the important manuscript holdings of the institution, which include a large collection of official corporate records of the Ford Motor Company as well as materials relating to the history, buildings, and collections of the museum and village. This research examines the founding and early development of manuscript collecting at the Henry Ford Museum. Beginning with the personal collecting of its founder and benefactor, including one of the earliest collections of manuscripts concerning his friend and inventor Thomas Edison, Henry Ford’s interest in American history led to the opening of his Greenfield Village in 1928 and the complimentary museum in 1929. Separately and subsequently, the Ford Motor Company organized its internal corporate archives in preparation for its fiftieth anniversary in 1953. Following the celebrations and publication of a three-volume corporate history, the company intended to close the archives and disperse the records to offsite storage, public relations offices and public repositories. Their project also intended a review and culling of any “controversial” documents in advance of any accessibility by scholars or the public. Due to an outcry from archivists, historians, and the general public, the bulk of the records were transferred to the museum for public use in 1964. A review of early manuscript collecting practice at The Henry Ford Museum reflects important themes concerning the documentation of business and industrial history in the United States. In many cases, repositories were initiated by wealthy, heritage-minded industrialists. Although this helped to preserve critical historical records, few of these individuals had any professional archival or museum training and some were outspoken in their distrust of historians and the academic discipline of history. This research compares and contrasts appraisal and selection processes at other archival repositories, revealing the unique contexts which have shaped and limited the surviving record of American business and industry.                 

J. Lymn: The spectacle of archival deposit

There is a growing phenomenon of the ‘spectacular’ celebrity archival deposit, where a public figure develops a relationship with an archival institution and deposits their ‘archive’ with the collection antemortem. This deposit and the subsequent archival work becomes a public act, and in this paper I present a preliminary analysis of the discursive construction of such archives, discussing archival deposits, the work of archivists, and collection use in mass media, social media and other public forums. Two recent archival deposits will feature as case studies – the purchase of Germaine Greer’s papers by the University of Melbourne Archive, and Kathleen Hanna’s donation of papers to the Fales Library and Special Collections at NYU. Both events have received substantial public attention and are significant to researchers and members of the general public for the periods of time and activity they cover in feminist history. Questions about the archival practices of the depositor are also raised by these events, and reimagine the role of the institutional archivist.

TUESDAY, JULY 12: 11:00 AM-12:30 PM

Track 1

S. Welland: Community Archives in New Zealand   

This presentation will summarise research conducted in 2014-2015 with financial support from the Ian McLean Wards Trust Scholarship. Community archives are a recognized part of the archives and information heritage industry in New Zealand, but little research exists about them, and there is little ongoing advocacy and support. This has resulted in information gaps and contradictory viewpoints about community archives from across the archives sector. My research sought to address these areas through focus on three topics: the current state of community archives in New Zealand, areas of concern for community archivists, and aspects that archives and information heritage experts considered may impact community archives over the next decade. Research was carried out by collecting and analysing data from two groups in two stages. Stage 1 analysed interview transcripts from five separate individuals (interviewees), each of who had day-to-day responsibility for a small community archives. Interviewees were asked questions about their collection in terms of their day to day work, their concerns, and aspects they would ideally like to change. Stage 2 analysed data from three rounds of online surveys involving fifteen archives experts using Delphi methodology. Experts were asked to give their feedback on statements that described different aspects of community archives and predict factors that they considered would impact community archives over the next ten years. While the research focused on what is happening in the ‘here and now’, it also raised questions about how community archives in New Zealand are to be supported and managed into the future. While interviewees’ areas of concern were similar to the future impact factors identified by experts, each group had very different priorities. Community archivists’ concerns were at a much more fundamental, day-to-day level, which made it difficult to develop the programmes and initiatives that would change the status quo. A key factor in changing this situation will be the ability of the wider archives profession to understand, recognize and support the unique working context of community archives.                                    

R. Margolis: Reforming The Present By Performing the Past: Understanding La MaMa through Community Curation  

This presentation will share the design of a proposed community description project developed in collaboration with La MaMa Archives. La MaMa Archives was started in 1987 to collect documentation and materials of the history of the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. La MaMa ETC is often hailed as “the birthplace of Off-Off Broadway Theatre” and has been a definitive site of experimental theatre in the Lower East Side of Manhattan since 1961. The research targets an at-risk collection of 170 early performances documented on ½ open reel video. The performances are unique and under-documented; they constitute works and performers found nowhere else. While La MaMa has worked with students from NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program to assess the tapes and begin digitizing them, the works themselves continue to be under-identified. The proposed research emerges from a framework that I call community curation, seeking to partner with elders connected to La MaMa ETC and the larger NYC Metro area. Much of the knowledge surrounding the productions and their associated companies exists only in living memory, so the project aims to work with remaining performers, company members, and audiences to capture their descriptions of the cultural context surrounding each work. The research seeks to incorporate techniques from oral history, reminiscence work, memory studies, and emerging discourse of participatory archiving and appraisal. The project looks to develop a model for engaging elders and community in co-creating new records of the performances as well as deepening the existing metadata. A secondary goal is to explore community description as a site of counter-narratives, positioning living artists as narrators and archives as a location for transmitting cultural memory.

R. Sheffield: After Afterglow Comes Dust: The Decline of a Community Archives

In previous studies, I have examined the histories of four lesbian and gay archives that emerged as part of the gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s. I asked if this par9cular cohort of community archives, like the social movements that produced them, have a predictable life cycle. My research identified four common stages of community archives: (1) they emerge when movement actors recognize the importance of the work that they are doing and the value of the documenta9on they have produced; (2) they help coalesce an activist community by establishing a shared heritage from which movement actors can draw inspira9on and support; (3) they bureaucratize or professionalize when the scope and significance of their collections passes a certain threshold; and (4) they decline when the social movement that produced them has either achieved its primary goals or is no longer useful. Now serving as Executive Director for the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (CLGA), I have experienced first-hand a community archives in decline. The CLGA was founded in 1973 with the working files of The Body Poli,c, Canada’s gay liberation newsmagazine of record from 1971 to 1987. Over the past 40+ years, the archives has grown from a small cupboard of reference materials to the largest independent LGBTQ+ archives in the world. Like the social movement that produced it, however, the CLGA has reached a critical juncture in its development — gay and lesbian Canadians have earned legal protections and civil rights. The primary goals of the movement have been achieved. At the same time, new forms of activism that be\er account for trans experiences, intersectional identities, and non-homocentric sexualities have expanded and shi]ed the dialogue of queer social movements. Can the CLGA adapt? Should it? What can other community archives learn from its history and its present decline? If selected to present at AERI, I will provide a thoughtful and considered response to these questions with examples drawn from my current research and professional practice.

Track 2

W. Xiangnyu: Between the Development of Archival Profession and Education: Some Reflections on Archival Science in China  

According to historical records, the archival education in China can be traced back to Xia Dynasty (21st century BC). In the subsequent more than 2000 years, the archival professional in the whole Chinese feudal society has great developed, but there was no strict distinction among archives, documents, and books, so "archival management" was not strongly practiced. During feudal dynasty periods, archival education was one of the ways and means of dissemination historical, cultural knowledge. After the revolution of 1911, the disintegration of the feudal dynasty provided a new opportunity for the development of the archival education. Archival educational was incorporated into national administrative management, and played an important role in the “Movement of Administrative Efficiency” (MAE). To meet the demands of MAE, the Boone Library School - the first library school in China, set up special instruction programs in archival management sponsored by the Education Ministry of the Nanjing Nationalist Government in 1934. MAE did not completely improve the efficiency; but this movement brought archival education in China. In 1953, the first department of archival education was established in Renmin University of China (RUC), following the model of Moscow Historical Archives College. RUC set up archival graduate education in 1982 and PhD education in 1993. The People's Republic of China Job Classification Ceremony published by the Ministry of Labor of China in 1999 took archival profession as one of 1878 occupations. Therefore, archival profession in China has completed the professional process as an acknowledged career. With the improvement of archival education, the degree of the archival profession is higher than before. This paper studies how archival profession and education interact with each other and gives some insights on the development of archival science in China.

J. Blanco-Rivera: Current Trends in Archival Education in Latin America and the Caribbean 

The roles of archives in transitional justice mechanisms in Latin American and the Caribbean, and the growth of freedom of information laws in the region have put into perspective not only the importance and impacts of archives, but also the recognition of the need to develop and strengthen archival education. Indeed, some countries are already moving toward the development of new curricula. For instance, the University of West Indies in Jamaica will begin offering a post graduate degree programme in Archives and Records Management in the 2016/2017 academic year. Additionally, information science schools in Mexico and Puerto Rico are revising their current archival studies curricula. This presentation will discuss the recent developments in Latin America and the Caribbean regarding archival education. The research project examines the archival literature from the region and curricula from various programs to identify current trends in archival education. The research project also incorporate the work done in Mexico and Puerto Rico to explore more in depth the challenges and opportunities of archival education in Latin America and the Caribbean.                             

L. Gibbons: All online: designing e-learning archival curriculum in graduate archival education

Experiential learning has always had a major role to play in our practice-based discipline, but how this has been designed and implemented in an online teaching environment has not been explored. There are several factors at play, including the increasing need to teach a variety of technological skills; the introduction and effective use of e-learning systems; and the role of accreditation and certification processes and quality models that emphasize measurable learning outcomes and demonstrative competencies. My research is at the beginning stages, but seeks to explore how to design and deliver “core archival knowledge” in the online classroom utilizing experiential learning. I anticipate this work has several elements including defining experiential learning in graduate archival education; identifying student, professional and academic expectations and/or conceptual models related to delivering “core archival knowledge”; how pedagogical design, including use of virtual labs, can address expectations of experiential learning; plus the role and value of competencies and learning outcomes in designing 100% online graduate archival education.