Noblesse oblige

I was talking to a younger colleague of mine, one who only recently moved over from medical to academic libraries, about academic library research. She went to library school fresh out of college, and hated reading the "theory", and even now has a less-than-gracious view of the librarians who spend their time just talking about librarianship instead of *doing* librarianship. For the record: I agree with her. I feel that there are far too many academic librarians who publish studies and write articles and talk about things at conferences but never actually contribute their hands and voices to the act of librarianship.

However, that being said, I also think that academic librarians are in the unique place of having enough time to publish (unlike, say, most public librarians or school librarians) and therefore academic librarians probably have a sort of noblesse oblige to do studies and enact change and then write about it. And by the way, I am not endorsing the idea that academic librarians sit at the top of some sort of library food chain: academic librarians just tend to have faculty status that grants them time to work on research.

The reason this came up is because we've decided to do a survey of local libraries and library schools, to get a feel for how diversity in librarianship is being encouraged (or discouraged) in our area. And we could just stop there, and publish those findings, and then everyone would read it and nod sagely and say "yes, of course, diversity is a huge issue. Someone should do something." Instead, we're going to use the survey to put together an unconference of some sort that reviews our findings with the people who took the survey, and then help people get some concrete actions that they can take NOW that will hopefully help towards resolving the huge racial disparity in librarianship. And we might even publish! But publishing is not the goal. The work is the goal, as it should always be in a service profession.

The Perpetual Future, or a Feeling of Despair

The other day, while scrolling through Twitter feelings about the annual AHA meeting, I saw that someone said " too much of digital work is stuck in a perpetual future tense."

The perpetual future.

My husband once said, when he was an Economics major and was also working at a window factory at night, that he finally understood Marxist rhetoric, because no matter how hard he worked, there is always another window.

If an archivist were inclined, they could easily fall under the spell of Marx--trudging endlessly, day after day, after the "future" where all the things are accessible, is a dream which is of course impossible. And eventually leads all archivists to a sense of despair and rebellion.

This sense then leads people like me to get pretty annoyed when some historian tosses off a comment about how much we archivists are NOT doing (whether or not his comment was directed at archivists is entirely beside the point, since archivists all carry an inordinate amount of guilt around with us about how much we cannot save).

The perpetual future, indeed.

Radicalism in Archives

Question posed for submissions to Archive Journal on "radical archives"

• Is radical content (e.g., the archives of activist collectives, social movements, or avant-garde artists) best served by practices that eschew archival standards? What are the short- and long-term consequences of such decisions?

This question is one that skirts a central issue of archival work, one that is sometimes addressed and sometimes not, in the ebb and flow of mainstream discourse. Instead of asking questions about radical content eschewing archival standards, we should be asking Whose archival standards? The Eurocentric view of archival standards has long been a (somewhat) debated topic, as we try to fit "round" archival collections into the "square pegs" of our system of arrangement or description.

Archival standards were, for a very long time, amorphous, and by design. In the early days of creating Dublin Core, the debate was heated about what was "necessary" to description and what was optional. All archival collections are unique, the argument ran, so placing global restrictions or requirements on them would be anathema to their nature. This argument has largely fallen by the wayside in the past 20 years, as people have grown comfortable with the idea of standards and best practices and digitization workflows. But we are now faced with a new challenge: archival standards and traditional practices are based entirely on Western European models of governance and structure, and communities which are not "traditional" would like to have their own archives, based on their own needs.

As we learn more and new techniques for streamlining our processes, as the amount of records and information grow ever larger, we're actually blocking ourselves from engaging these other communities. How can one even understand, much less successfully document, a community's structure and flow of information if the community does not fit inside the model of structure and information flow which we have determined is the "default"? 

Obviously the archival community skews white/cis/middle or upper-class. This is not an opinion, by the way, it's a fact of which archivists are well aware. Many people would like to change this, to see more diverse types of people become archivists. I sit on an internship group for SAA which is specifically trying to bring in more diverse applicants for internships. But how welcoming is this profession, really, when everything we do, our entire history, is wrapped around models of information flow and recordkeeping that are divorced from all communities, save the one holding power? How well would a colleague of Native American/Hispanic/African-American/Asian-American descent be heard, in the face of all that assumed knowledge? Chris Rock said in a recent interview that being the only black guy in a room was kind of like being Bill Murray in Lost in Translation--fine, usually, but very lonely and no one understands what you're really saying.

Radical content is not the issue. There is no such thing as "radical content", and if people assume that there is, I think that speaks to a huge mindset problem in archives generally. Communities which are creating radical content should have a real stake in not just "eschewing" archival standards but having a hand in re-tooling those standards so that they better serve ALL communities. Intentionally "othering" everyone who is not the default is the very definition of a flawed system.

The Dangers of Nostalgia

I've been thinking a lot on what makes an archives a good one or a bad one. Of course these are totally subjective terms--"good" and "bad"-- but I assume if an archivist steps inside a repository and sees certain things, it throws up a red flag and an institution can get piled into the "bad" category pretty quickly. Some of these things might be.... a really huge backlog, or maybe improper preservation techniques, or you see a silverfish on your sweater.

But to me, the thing that really kills an archives is nostalgia.

Now, many people who are not archivists think that the archival profession is built on a foundation of nostalgia, but I would argue the exact opposite. Archivists have to be ruthless in their rejection of nostalgia. I do not ever, ever keep something because it's got great packaging, or because it "seems really neat." My job as an archivist is to look past the trappings to the information contained therein, and assess it with a cool head. I usually ask these questions of any item coming into the archives:

1) Is this item already being preserved by another institution, or can I safely assume it is being preserved elsewhere?

2) Does this item fit within the scope of my collection? If it does not, what is the exceptional circumstance which is compelling me to keep this item rather than passing it to an institution into whose scope it does fit?

3) Is this a high-information object, or is it duplicating information which can be found elsewhere?

4) Is this an item which I am beholden to keep by law or historical expectation?


See how far down the list "beholden" comes? LAST PLACE. Because in truth, I am beholden to keep very, very little in the grand scheme of archives. But if I am not careful and vigilant, I could end up keeping all kinds of things which are thrust upon me by nostalgia. Special Collections have this problem too: "Oh look how pretty the binding is on this 1874 edition of Alice in Wonderland! We should keep it!"
Should we? If my collection scope is strictly American South in the 20th century, then it doesn't matter how pretty the binding is, it does not fall into any category under which I am entitled to keep it. My job in this case is to find an institution who *does* collect these things and make sure it has a safe home there.

Now, getting back to archives, this same problem applies. "Don't you *want* to keep these 50 posters announcing the President's Convocations at the university over the past 5 years?"  This is the wrong question. The right question is "Do I have the space to keep these 50 posters which offer no new information, but only duplicate exactly the information I already have in my files and in the actual transcriptions and video recordings of these convocations?"

Archives are not blessed with infinite resources or space, and the fight against nostalgia is one that we probably fight every day, in some form or another. An archives which does not fight against nostalgia, which embraces it instead, is probably not a very good nor useful archives. It will be an archives with a huge backlog or unprocessed material, with more coming in all the time, which has no sense of itself or what community it's supposed to be stewarding. It will try to be all things because it assumes that no one else "cares" about these things as much as it does. All of which are dangerous to an archives' long term health.