Archival Professionals Research Articles

Designing dynamic descriptive frameworks

Cultural heritage professionals use descriptive metadata as a tool to manage and mediate access to the memory texts in their custody. With digital and networking technologies exploding the possibilities for capturing recorded memories and memorialising lives, loves and losses, they can, and should, revolutionise our recordkeeping metadata management frameworks. Embracing the ‘archival turn’ requires relinquishing our role as the dominant descriptive storyteller, but are our current descriptive models and systems a barrier rather than a facilitator of such a transformation? In this paper the author adopts an autoethnographical approach to explore her experience of developing archival systems since the advent of the Web in the mid-1990s. The story involves a range of metadata schemas and models, questioning their ability to enable the design of interfaces to recorded knowledge and memories that tap into and unleash the dynamic capabilities of the new technologies and their potential to reflect a multiplicity of voices. The paper will contribute to the growing body of literature about the role of archival professionals in shaping recorded memory through their standards and practices, challenging our image as merely silent partners and neutral players.

A vital feedback loop in educating and training archival professionals: a tracer study of records and archives management graduates in Zimbabwe

Tracer studies are one of the tools that educational institutions may use to gauge the applicability of the courses they offer to their work environments. This study traced records and archives management (RAM) alumni who graduated from the National University of Science and Technology between 2008 and 2012. The main purpose of the study was to find out where RAM graduates were and what they were doing and establish if the skills they acquired during their education placed them in jobs relevant to their profession. A quantitative survey with a triangulation of data collection methods was employed. Data were collected through the use of questionnaires, interviews and document analysis. Data was analysed using quantitative methods with the assistance of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The results indicate that 67 percent of RAM graduates were employed, with the greatest number employed in parastatals, that is, agencies which are quasi-governmental. Skills that graduates acquired during their education were relevant to their jobs though they were not happy with the limited industrial attachment and exposure to practical training, and the sketchy coverage of aspects of information technology in the curriculum. Results also indicate that some organizations in industry did not appreciate the essence of the RAM profession. It is recommended that the Department of Records and Archives Management should involve stakeholders such as employers when designing the curriculum so that they may appreciate what the Department was doing, and should equip its graduates with skills that are always relevant to industry. Information technology aspects of the curriculum and industrial attachment for students need a rethink.

The Louisiana State Museum's Loan Resolution Project

A team of dedicated staff recently completed a two-year project that resolved over 7,000 loans at the Louisiana State Museum. These included loans that had been left in the museum's care for long periods of time and had never been returned or reclaimed; loans whose lenders had passed away and that had never been claimed by heirs; or institutional loans from institutions that no longer exist. Several factors came into play including a lack of proper documentation going back to the museum's founding over 100 years ago, changes in accessioning practices, and collections moves. This article will discuss the history of the various issues related to long-term loans at the museum, the methodology of the project, and some results and lessons other museums and archives professionals might take away from our experience.

Digital Curation Education in Practice: Catching up with Two Former Fellows

From 2008-2010, as part of the grant: ‘DigCCurr I: Preserving Access to Our Digital Future: Building an International Digital Curation Curriculum’ (DigCCurr I) funded through the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a number of fellows at the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) were comprehensively trained by library and archive professionals in digital curation theory and practice. This paper examines the curriculum skill areas matrix of the DigCCurr I program from the perspective of two former fellows, now employed in professional positions that utilize digital curation principles. Each fellow offers an analysis of digital curation functions and subfunctions as they relate to her current position, deriving suggestions for future iterations of the DigCCurr program and other graduate programs meant to prepare digital curators. While DigCCurr has been reported by its creators, a group of seasoned digital curation professionals and educators from around the world, this paper provides a fresh perspective from graduates of the program who are applying their newly learned digital curation skills and knowledge in the workforce.

Citizen Artists: Group Material

Previous articleNext article No AccessArticleCitizen Artists: Group MaterialAlison GreenAlison Green Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Afterall Volume 26Spring 2011 Published by Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/659292 Views: 128Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref © 2010 by Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Theron Schmidt What if we think of the classroom as a work of art? Performance, collaboration, and social engagement considered as pedagogic practices, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 20, no.44 (Oct 2020): 345–364.https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022220966944 Queer Curations, Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 7, no.44 (Dec 2011): 441–448.https://doi.org/10.1177/155019061100700410

The Archive and Academia

The Archive and Academia Haden Guest (bio) The past decade has witnessed the rapid transformation of motion picture archiving into a professional and, gradually, academic field. In the United States, the emergence of specialized degree programs designed to educate and train motion picture archive professionals has encouraged, even galvanized, interest in the film archive as a career destination. The promise of professional accreditation and vocational training has drawn a new generation of college graduates to archiving in much the same way, one could say, as many have turned recently to information science as a "cool" profession.1 The vast majority of applicants for the new archival programs share an undergraduate degree in Film Studies and a desire to find a "practical" application for their interests in film and media history. This is, indeed, precisely the background common to the many aspiring archivists who have contacted me during my three years as Director of the Harvard Film Archive for advice on how to enter the field of moving image archiving. In responding I invariably point back to my graduate education—to my PhD in Film and Television from the University of California–Los Angeles—as the crucial stage in my training and education where I gained the research and curatorial skills that remain invaluable to my work. I encourage those would-be archivists interested in pursuing work in conservation, collection management, or cataloging to consider applying directly to one of the excellent professional degree programs. Yet I also describe the PhD as an ideal preparation for a more curatorially oriented career in archiving, whether as a film programmer, archive director, or archivist with collection development/management responsibilities. I believe that the dedicated, patient work of a doctoral candidate—and specifically the development, research, and writing of a dissertation—can offer an ideal means of honing the type of judgment and understanding of historical and cultural values necessary for curating archival collections and cinematheque programs. A career in the film archive is best suited, in my opinion, for those scholars whose PhDs have trained them as film historians. For motion picture archiving offers an exciting alternate mode of practicing film history to a teaching career, a firsthand engagement with and often [End Page 106] direct shaping of the very material foundation upon which the history of cinema is built. Indeed, the knowledge and research skills of a film historian are essential tools for discovering or assessing the value of a collection. Archivists must be able to judge the value of the many collections—of films, manuscripts, photographs, technology, or periodicals—that come their way, often at a moment's notice, in order to determine if valuable resources should be used to bring these materials into the archive. From a long list of film titles provided by a film collector, for example, an archivist must be ready and able to evaluate the collection's research and preservation values by distinguishing the obscure and otherwise unobtainable works from those better known and more readily available films. The work of the motion picture archivist requires a type of curatorial judgment grounded in precisely the type of broad knowledge of film history and aesthetics gained by graduate study—an understanding of key national cinemas and production companies, historical periods and movements, film technology, filmmakers, performers, and cinematographers, as well as their historical, sociocultural, and intellectual contexts. Experience in academic film study can provide a crucial base of knowledge and research skills that will continue to be built upon and expanded by work within a film archive. At the same time, however, curatorial judgment also calls for a set of skills for which most academic programs rarely provide training. Indeed, the type of engagement with and evaluation of a wide range of vital primary sources typical of archival work (whether in the form of film prints, manuscripts, or, perhaps most crucially, the artists themselves) is a mode of research that most graduate programs, at best, only touch upon. I have always felt that more attention should be given in graduate film studies to training in primary research beyond simply industrial and personal documents; students could be trained, for example, in actually viewing films to identify and appreciate...

Certification of archivists in The Netherlands

This article focuses on the certification of Dutch archival professionals as initiated by the Royal Dutch Association of Archivists, KVAN. This certification covers the full breadth of the records continuum and is meant for both records managers and archivists. Important points of reference are the sets of competencies for records managers and for archivists as formulated by the advisory committee of the Dutch Archives School. In this certification model the concept of life-long learning is incorporated. It is expected that in an indirect way, by certifying professionals, the quality of the education can be influenced. In order to consolidate certification, the KVAN plans to establish an independent register of archival and records management professionals.

Meztizaje and remembering in Afro-Mexican communities of the Costa Chica: implications for archival education in Mexico

This paper summarizes some of the major themes of a larger study that used Afro-Mexicans of the Costa Chica as a case study to understand archival education in Mexico. This study seeks to provide insight on how absences of Mexicans of African descent from the official record and recordkeeping came into being in Mexico; to examine the role that education of archival professionals might play in addressing or contributing to these absences; and to produce recommendations for remedying this under-documentation—at least in part—through changes to what is currently taught in formal archival education at the university level.

The Research Imperative: Medical Library Association policy and the curricula of schools of library and information science

Ten years after the Medical Library Association (MLA) adopted its first research policy, the 1995 Using Scientific Evidence to Improve Information Practice [1], MLA President Joanne Gard Marshall, FMLA, appointed a task force to research and publish a new official statement [2]. The resulting MLA research policy statement, The Research Imperative, was approved by the MLA Board of Directors in 2007 and “challenges MLA members to build a supportive culture that values and contributes to a research base that is recognized as an essential tool for future practice” [2]. It describes domains of research as well as basic, advanced, and specialized research skills sets. The Research Imperative encourages health sciences library and information science (LIS) practitioners to take advantage of different educational opportunities to acquire and build on that skills set. Specifically, it recommends, “4. MLA will provide and promote education and training to support health sciences information research. To accomplish this recommendation, MLA will work with academic programs to ensure that opportunities to develop quantitative and qualitative research knowledge and skills appear throughout the curriculum, provide a complete range of basic and advanced courses in quantitative and qualitative research methodology through MLA's continuing education (CE) program, and encourage graduate LIS schools to require master's degree students to undertake a research project in information science” [3]. Curricular decisions for programs leading to the LIS master's degree (MLIS) are shaped by many factors, not the least of which is the very wide variety of careers that holders of such degrees can expect to have. Many will undoubtedly work in school, public, academic, or special libraries. Many others will be information professionals in archives, museums, corporations, and other organizations. In any case, a major driver for MLIS curricula is program accreditation by the American Library Association (ALA). The ALA Standards for Accreditation do not specify exactly what courses should be taught, but the accreditation seeks evidence of various curricular elements. In particular, the standards require that a program's mission, goals, and objectives include: “the importance of research to the advancement of the field's knowledge base…the importance of the contributions of library and information studies to other fields of knowledge [and]…the importance of the contributions of other fields of knowledge to library and information studies.” Furthermore, they seek evidence that the curriculum of an accredited program “emphasizes the evolving body of knowledge that reflects the findings of basic and applied research from relevant fields” [4]. Do MLIS academic programs “ensure…opportunities to develop quantitative and qualitative research knowledge and skills?” Do they “require master's degree students to undertake a research project in information science” [3]? Evidence of such opportunities would include (but not be limited to) courses and evidence of whether research projects are required for graduation from such programs. In a comparison of LIS research course requirements with those of other master's level programs in related disciplines, Park studied the 2002 graduate catalogs of fifty-two of the then fifty-six ALA-accredited MLIS programs as well as the catalogs of master's of business administration, master's of social work, and master's of education programs at some of those schools. She found that all but three of the MLIS programs offered research methods courses, but only twenty required such a course for graduation [5]. Park reported that “LIS does not use consistent terminology across schools to identify what constitutes a ‘research methods’ course” and that the courses “vary from comprehensive coverage of both quantitative and qualitative methods to superficial inclusion of simple survey methods.” Park discussed aspects of the MLIS degree that related to research “at the consumer level” and “at the contributor level” [5]. Evidence-based LIS (and other types of evidence-based practice) are examples of the use of the consumer level of research expertise. Practitioners in many fields can confuse the two functions, especially when the word “research” is taken to include searching literature for published scientific studies, as opposed to actually carrying out such studies. The Research Imperative quite rightly calls for health sciences librarians to practice as consumers of and contributors to research in the discipline. This study seeks evidence of the current availability of required or elective research methods courses and research projects as a graduation requirement in ALA-accredited masters' programs in library and information science.

Embracing Web 2.0: Archives and the Newest Generation of Web Applications

Archivists are converting physical collections to digital formats and displaying surrogates of these primary sources on their websites. Simultaneously, the Web is moving toward a shared environment that embraces collective intelligence and participation, which is often called Web 2.0. This paper investigates the extent to which Web 2.0 features have been integrated into archival digitization projects. Although the use of Web 2.0 features has not yet been widely discussed in the professional archival literature, this exploratory study of college and university repository websites in the United States suggests that archival professionals are embracing Web 2.0 to promote their digital content and redefine relationships with their patrons.

Perpetuating and Extending the Archival Paradigm: The Historical and Contemporary Roles of Professional Education and Pedagogy

Archival Science has been defined as the systematic body of theory that supports the practice of appraising, acquiring, authenticating, preserving, and providing access to recorded materials. In the first of a two-part analysis of the past, present and future of archival education and pedagogy, this article deconstructs the concept of Archival Science by examining the development and evolution of its key ideas and principles, and the historical interplay between them and such constructs as modernism, objectivity, scientific management, nationalism, sovereignty, and colonialism. It argues that education in Archival Science, which traditionally has included elements of both professional practice and scholarship and which has only scantily reflected upon the pedagogies it has employed, has played a fundamental role in perpetuating the cultural hegemony of dominant groups. It has done so by inculcating archival ideas and principles without simultaneously providing sufficient historical analysis of their derivations or original intent, and without nurturing a critical perspective that would encourage sensitivity on the part of future archival professionals and scholars to the cultural and social implications of what are often regarded as “value-neutral” concepts and practices, particularly in terms of their impact on the record-keeping and memory practices of marginalized and under-represented groups.

Sports archives internationally - a development with risks and challenges?

The situation of sports archives worldwide is gradually showing signs of improvement, but at national level there are still huge differences and much needs to be done in order to minimise the risks of valuable material being destroyed. Despite earlier efforts to survey institutions holding sports archives, there is still no comprehensive overview of the situation. The risks connected with the handling of sports archives are manifoldand there is a great need in many areas to raise awareness about the importance of saving sports archives. This situation is related to the status of sports history within academic research; where this is low, the management of sports archives will never be an institutional priority. Both sports organisations and sports administration authorities need to be made aware of the importance of saving documentation, and that this is best taken care of by archival professionals, preferably in specialised institutions institutions, is not archiving but providing the best possible service to their sport.

Archivos y sociedad

Those, whose work is realted to the organization of archives should ask themselves in the very first place about the purpose of their organization, that is, the role of the archives in our society. International Organizations (UNESCO and ICA- International Council on Archives) have fostered certain “interest” among governments in the preservation, the organization of archives, as well as their integration both, to the knowledge society as well as a part of the human heritage. This “sensibility” is an opportunity that we, the archives professionals, must take advantage of. Despite the fact that society in general has little understanding of the relevance of archivist documentation, the professionals and the academic and researching staff praise their role in the preservation of the collective memory, identity, knowledge’s build-up, our personal life, and accountability.

The Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center

The Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center Mike Mashon (bio) Seventy-five miles southwest of Washington, D.C., outside the town of Culpeper, Virginia, on a site once occupied by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, a revolution in audiovisual preservation and access is taking shape. A building that once held sufficient monetary reserves to restart the American economy east of the Mississippi River in event of a nuclear holocaust now contains the more than 5 million film, video, and audio items in the collections of the Library of Congress. Next to it, a state-of-the-art conservation center will open in spring 2007, broad in scope, bristling with innovation, representing a paradigm shift in the way archives preserve moving image and recorded sound material and deliver them to patrons around the globe. Together with 124 vaults designed to house the Library's 130 million feet of nitrate film, the complex is known as the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC). Funded primarily by the Packard Humanities Institute, the 415,000 square foot complex will contain not only state-of-the-art preservation laboratories but also space for the Library's moving image and recorded sound processing staff, an acoustically perfect critical listening room, and a 200-seat theater capable of projecting nitrate film. Most strikingly, the NAVCC will usher in a complete redesign of the way the Library acquires and preserves film, video, and recorded sound, particularly in the [End Page 140] digital domain. The Library has already made the transition to file-based digital preservation of sound, and in Culpeper will do the same for videotape, using a high throughput, automated robotic transfer system. For now, large-scale digitization of film will wait until the technology matures and costs come down. Still, the Library remains committed to film-to-film preservation—especially for its nitrate holdings—for the long term. But what does all this mean for researchers? The main access point for patrons will remain on Capitol Hill in the Library's Madison Building, and researchers will still need to request items two weeks in advance. The major difference will be in delivery of content. For the near term, film will be delivered from Culpeper to Washington, but patrons wishing to see a video or listen to recorded sound will access digital files created at the NAVCC, but streamed to Capitol Hill via fiber optic lines. In a very real sense, researcher demand will drive preservation priorities. The increased capabilities and capacities of the NAVCC—an estimated 5-plus million gigabytes of digital information will be produced annually—means that access to collections can be increased exponentially beyond the confines of the reading room. The Library is studying ways to make copyrighted content available to desktops worldwide, but even as that study continues, plans are being made to provide thousands of hours of restriction-free moving image content in ways that are useful for researchers, including the use of folksonomies and other user-generated metadata, allowing users to tag files with their own descriptions (à la YouTube, etc.). Coupled with aggressive plans to digitize moving image-related microfilm and periodicals, the NAVCC promises to open up the Library's collections in unprecedented ways. The NAVCC will also be home to the Moving Image Collections (MIC) project, which documents moving image collections around the world through a catalog of titles and directory of repositories, providing a window to the world's moving image collections for discovery, access, and preservation. This resource—a union catalog of moving images—is phenomenally useful for scholars, archivists, and even causal users, and it will continue to grow in depth and breadth in the coming years. Further, the NAVCC will be, in the words of David Francis, former Chief of the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, "a center of excellence where scholars, visiting archive professionals, and students from graduate courses in moving image and recorded sound archiving can meet to consider the curatorial, technical and ethical issues associated with audiovisual preservation and access."1 All the technological innovation employed to preserve moving images, recorded sound, and born digital content like podcasts and video games, is used for...

A Study on Analysis of Types and Roles of Management & Archives Professionals Abroad

In this study, various types and roles of records management and archives professionals are reviewed. Throughout the literature review, types and roles of the records management and archives professionals are analyzed. The results show that roles of professionals can be divided into the areas of records, users and management. In addition to focusing on records and archives, modern archival professionals must also be adept in such areas as knowledge management and digital asset management. Business and management skills for forging partership with related organizations are also needed.

"Turning the Knobs on Writers' Closets": Archives and Canadian Literature in the 21st Century

Nothing is less reliable, is less clear today than word 'archive.' So declared Jacques Derrida in his well-known address to 1994 international conference on Memory: Question of Archives. Fittingly, conference took place in Sigmund Freud's last in London, England, now international centre of Freud studies and repository-arkheion, Greek word for domicile, address, and residence-of his archives. Derrida's lecture, The Concept of Archive: A Freudian Impression, appeared following year under title Mal d'archive: Une impression freudienne (1995). Its English language translation, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1996), has provided tremendous impetus to renewed, if not feverish, interest in archives, archival research, and archival theory, no less in Canada than throughout world of scholarship. This collection of essays aims to contribute to debates and discussions. Central to Derrida's discussion is term archive itself, from Greek arkhe-the commencement and commandment... there where things commence ... there where men and gods command (Derrida 1996, 1). It is place of inter section between commencement and commandment in archives that this collection proposes to explore. Notwithstanding Carolyn Steedman's contention that nothing starts in ever at all (2002, 45), archives mark point where, among other commencements, scholars begin what can prove to be lengthy, sometimes lifelong, attachment to unpublished legacy of their research subject. act of commandment is, at least in its earliest stage, work of archons, archival professionals, guardians under whose house arrest archives speak (Derrida 1996,2). Our purpose here is to examine this uncommon place, where law and singularity intersect in privilege (3) from points of view of its two most visible and most powerful inhabitants, scholar and archivist, and in particular, their shared enterprise as it relates to Canadian literature. There is distinctly Canadian tradition of scholarly interest in nature of communication, an area in which archival record plays an essential part. Its most prominent trajectories have been traced work of Harold Innis, George Grant, and Marshall McLuhan. Innis, historian and pioneering communications theorist, saw in Canada representation of balance between civilization and power. Grant, in contrast, found a lack of morality and vision in this technological dynamo, which also incorporated technocratic bureaucracies, while McLuhan concerned himself with the impact of technological media, which include media of record, on user (Taylor 2003, 174).' Arthur Kroker, more recent contributor to discourse on communication technology, has described Canada's unique situation midway between future of New World and of European (1984, 7). He sees Canada by virtue of historical circumstance and geographical accident to be forever marginal to 'present mindedness' of American culture (a society which ... does not enjoy recriminations of historical remembrance) and as incapable of being more than ambivalent on cultural legacy of our European past (8). We will be considering archive here in context both of cultural communication and of what Ursula Franklin has called technology as practice (1999, 2), involving organization, procedures, symbols, new words, equations, and, most of all, mindset (3). This volume will also demonstrate that ready availability of more material elements of technology, particularly Internet, has both illuminated and complicated archival space for scholars and archivists alike. In special issue of English Studies in Canada (ESC), The Event of Archive, (March 2004), co-editors Michael O'Driscoll and Edward Bishop commence with necessary question: just what do we mean term archive? …

Educating archival professionals in the twenty‐first century

Archival education has progressed tremendously in the past 30 years. The numbers of archival programs, full‐time tenure track faculty and courses offered have all increased exponentially. Archival science is no longer seen as a sub‐specialization of library science or history and the efforts to legitimize archives as a separate field worthy of in‐depth inquiry at both the Master's and doctoral levels have succeeded. Most recently, however, the convergence of the information disciplines has called the distinctions between related disciplines into question. This poses both challenges and opportunities for archival education. This article places archival education in its historical and professional context, and will then discuss some of the issues relating to convergence and integration in the information professions.

The Safeguarding of Memory

Archivists and librarians are entrusted with the responsibility of preserving manuscripts, books and electronic format. Since its invention, the written word and all of the media upon which it is inscribed have been susceptible to destruction. This article examines those acts of annihilation of libraries and archives during the last five millennia and likens these acts to cultural genocide. The recent attacks of September 11 have reiterated the need for library and archival professionals to be vigilant in the preservation of their collections.

Sir Henry Wellcome's Archival Legacy and the Contemporary Historian

The Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, London has an international reputation in the fields in which it specialises. The Archives and Manuscripts Section of the Library, staffed by a team of fully qualified archive professionals, contains unique collections of original material of value to many types of researcher. This article will deal briefly with the life and work of the man whose bequest established the Library on its present footing, Henry Wellcome, and then with the archive material that is held by the Library. The emphasis of the article is on material of interest to the contemporary historian, and contemporary medical archives

Sir Henry Wellcome's Archival Legacy and the Contemporary Historian

The Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, London has an international reputation in the fields in which it specialises. The Archives and Manuscripts Section of the Library, staffed by a team of fully qualified archive professionals, contains unique collections of original material of value to many types of researcher. This article will deal briefly with the life and work of the man whose bequest established the Library on its present footing, Henry Wellcome, and then with the archive material that is held by the Library. The emphasis of the article is on material of interest to the contemporary historian, and contemporary medical archives