“Archives, records, power: three words which now resonate across a range of academic disciplines and professional pursuits (Schwartz & Cook, 2002).”

Since our readings on the archival profession I have been curious to learn more about the various archiving organization within New York, and to better understand their methods and means of connectivity.

I have been meeting with the folks at Pioneer Books to discuss course development within their bookstore surrounding archives, and the ways that we can educate the Red Hook community about archives and the importance of creating our own. Archives serve access of information to their communities, and we have been developing a curriculum that would educate our community about the archives they can gain access to. In all of our research it has surprised me how little information surrounding the “outreach” aspects of archives exists. There is very little that seems to be done to educate the public about the existence of certain archives or the ways that they can be accessed. The archival world is rather insular, and I have been curious to learn about how and if professionals in the field are working to change that.

When I heard that board members from The Archivist Roundtable were coming to have a discussion with Pratt’s chapter of the Society of American Archivists, I thought it would be a great opportunity to connect with archivists in the field, learn more about their individual professions and places of work, and ask them some questions about archive accessibility.

The Archivist Round Table (ART) president, Kerri Anne Burke, programming director, Alex Lederman, membership director, Rebecca Chandler, outreach director, Lindsay Anderberg, and, mentorship chair, Melissa came to speak about their organization and the ways that they can help students who are entering into the archival profession.

ART was founded in 1979 as a non-profit organization that strives to connect the community of archivists, librarians, and various other information professionals within the New York metropolitan area. It is seen as an alternative or a supplementary organization to the Society of American Archivists.

The Archivist Round Table (ART) strives to…

“educate the public about the legal, historical and cultural value of public and private archives and manuscript collections.

provide a forum, through monthly meetings, where members of the archival community can discuss issues of professional concern.

promote professional development through continuing education workshops and professional education opportunities.

advocate the preservation and use of historical materials. (Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc.)”

The panelists made a strong argument for the benefits of joining ART versus joining the SAA as students. The first being that the SAA has a high membership fee. For students it is only $50 for the year, but continuing the membership beyond your studies is not always possible for everyone. They also said that a lot of archival positions will pay for your membership once you are hired. Membership for students to ART is just $10 for the year and gives you access to most events for free or a very low cost. It is also fairly easy to volunteer with ART, which gives you access to events for free.

The second argument being that ART focuses on the New York Metropolitan area which is where most of us are currently working and focusing our studies. Many of the board members expressed that they felt lost in the larger SAA community. Even at conferences or participating in panels, it seemed that the scope was too large, and they were not finding much value within SAA as students. With nearly 600 members in ART all located in New York, it is easier to make and build connections with a smaller collection of professionals who live in your city and work within your community.

Both ART and SAA offer a mentorship program for students, but the ART program connects students to professionals in New York, which allows for face to face meet ups, and the building of connections that could potentially lead to jobs. The SAA program pairs people across the country, which is valuable in many ways, but not as much for job searching if you are hoping to stay in New York.

ART events are held in the city at least eight times per year. Events are generally held in different locations, which gives greater access to the information that is being discussed. In essence, getting the archives out of the enclosed box that so many people associate with them. Holding the events in different locations also allows for people who might not be familiar with the organization or archives to listen in and learn more.

Event schedules can be found on their website, nycarchivists.org. You can also join their mailing list to receive updates.

After the presentation on the organization’s history, philosophy, and organization, the group opened the room up to questions and someone asked if each board member would talk about their background, where they went to school, and what their career path post graduate school has been.

This was incredibly interesting to me. Having come from a varied background, and entering grad school as an avenue towards a second career, I have felt somewhat self-concious about my indirect path to being an the information professional. I was surprised to find that I was not alone. Almost everyone on the panel had held other jobs before entering into archives, and nearly everyone on the panel did something completely different from each other. It was inspiring to see how many different kinds of jobs exist under the archival umbrella.

Although we ran out of time before I was able to ask any questions specific to archival outreach, I was able to connect with the programming director, Alex, after the discussion. We were able to talk for a bit about general archival struggles, and agreed to have coffee soon to discuss more of the ways that archives can strive to be inclusive.

To be continued…

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Schwartz, J. M., & Cook, T. (2002). Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory. Archival Science, 2(1/2), 1-19.

In late November, I chose to attend a panel on experiments in academic publishing hosted by the Scholarly Communication Program at Columbia University. Each of the three panelists addressed the issues faced by the academic community in the publication and distribution of scholarly work. The forward-looking discussion focused on strategies for reworking the funding structure of academic journals and alternative systems for the dissemination of research works.

The first presenter was Mackenzie Smith, University Librarian at UC, Davis. Her presentation focused on the unsustainable costs associated with maintaining academic journal collections from the perspective of someone in her position as university librarian. Due to the combination of inflating costs of subscriptions – which have been rising at a rate of 5% to 8% a year – and stagnant or shrinking library budgets, the number of libraries capable of affording such collections is decreasing. To address this problem, Smith assessed various alternative systems which hold the potential to reduce costs and improve access.

To begin, Smith compared North American and European models of academic publish. The model we are more familiar with in the US relies on libraries to pay the cost of publishing through subscriptions. In Europe, researchers (or, more likely, their institutions or grants) pay what is called an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in journals which then provide open access to scholarly works. On the contention that the international nature of academic work forces the adoption of uniform publication systems, Smith proceeds with an investigation into how a global APC-funded, open access system would impact large North American research universities such as her employer.

It was found that, if the processing charge for all research publications in a given year was covered by UC Davis, the cost would amount to almost double the annual journal subscription budget. Furthermore, shifting the burden of publishing costs to those institutions which produce the most research would disincentivize publication without resolving the problem of funding. Her research also showed that the attitudes of academics to the acceptable amount of processing charge depending on where the money was coming from. Broadly, they were insensitive to the cost of publication if funds were derived from institutional sources or the library budget. On the other hand, if this cost was taken from their discretionary research or departmental funds, they tended to be much more frugal. In conclusion, Smith suggested that this price-sensitivity could be leveraged to initiate competition between publishers and induce them to lower their processing charges.

The second presenter was Kevin Hawkins, Assistant Dean of Scholarly Communication for the University of North Texas Libraries. His presentation focused on future strategies for collection and proper usage of “big data about published research.” Hawkins was concerned that such a quantitative picture of the academic publishing would could improperly inform the evaluation of different fields and be used to marginalize certain fields based on their poor performance in the realms of purchasing, licensing and online usage. His presentation thus focused on developing a “consensus framework” and some sort of cooperative of “libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, aggregators, and other stake holders.” Membership would provide entities with the relevant big data while also stipulating adherence to a code of conduct which would prohibit its misuse.

The final presenter was Peter Muennig, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at Mailman School of Health. His work was directed at the development of a free journal which requires neither subscription or publication fees that reworks the structure of incentives to encourage peer-review and commentary by verified scholars. Broadly targeting scientific research, OurJournal will combine text-mining and other automated techniques to connect articles in need of peer-review with scholars whose research interests match the article’s subject. The software then sends an automated “natural language” email to potential reviewers who will receive increased presence on the platform. The novelty of Muennig’s project is the use of a digital/social platform to expedite the lengthy peer-review process, the way it ensures the visibility of less established contributors and its optimization for hand-held devices.

Overall, the panel gave the impression that the academic publishing is in crisis. Conventional academic publications are increasingly unaffordable even to the university libraries whose mission is to provide students with access to a wide range of current academic works. It is hard to grapple with the fact that the scholarly community which both publishes and consumes all of these works is mediated by a dysfunctional system of publications which sets financial barriers to either the transmission or the receipt of knowledge produced.

While some of the presenters proposals gave hope for an improved solution, I was left wondering – likely because of my lack of prior engagement with issues of scholarly communication – why the tactics focused on restructuring funding of journals or creation of new journals. Instead, now that the means of distributing information are exceedingly cheap, why not abandon the publishers altogether? Muennig’s platform seemed to come closest to this by rejecting money altogether. However, his platform is still understood to be an open access, free and online journal rather than a wholly new model. At the onset of the panel the  host encouraged the audience of scholars to make use of Columbia’s Academic Commons and noted that “note everyone has the privilege that we have to have access to the information and we want to increase that access through the AC.” I hope that, after the collapse of the current regime, this sort of scholarly communication network will prevail and remove all barriers to access both within and without research institutions.

On November 20 2016 I went to the New York Public Library and entered the Rose  Reading Room for the first time. It had been reopened for only a few weeks. After seeing the amount of hype and press surrounding the reopening alone I was pretty excited to see how the new retrieval system worked, how many people would be interacting with the new materials available again to the public, and who would use the other resources available within the room. I observed the room for three hours on Sunday and found that many people are not there for the books now available to the public, or to use the resources found within the library itself; but for the space to use their own devices to use New York Public Library’s wifi.

I stayed in the Rose Reading room on a Sunday afternoon for two reasons: that is when I assumed people that lived in the city had the most free time, and the materials found in the rose reading room are not able to physically leave the room. This restriction forces users to remain in the room for however long it takes them to digest the material. The hours I remained in the reading room were from two o’clock to five o’clock.

When I entered the room it was divided into two sections, I chose the South Hall because it allowed tours to enter and take pictures, then leave in order to truly get a sense of how much traffic the Reading Room was receiving. I also chose this side of the room, because there was only one scanner. If someone wanted access to the materials in the room, but could not dedicate the time to fully read it, the possibility to scan the work is of great interest. I assessed every half an hour how many people were currently within my half of the room taking pictures, how many people were sitting at the tables, using their own computers, as opposed to the computers in the room itself, had books, were on their mobile device, used the scanner or copy machine, and spoke to the librarians.

For some items I check throughout the half hour, and others I checked stagnantly. In relation to the number of people that spoke to the librarian, and using the scanner and copy machine, I recorded throughout my time in the South Hall. For all other items I recorded every half hour, due to my inability to focus on them all at once and record my findings accurately.

During my first half an hour of observing, there were fifty-seven people seated in the room. There were ten people in the tourist area by the entrance taking pictures, and three people in total spoke to the librarian. There were only three people using the provided research computers, and two people used the copy machine. A total of five people had books on the tables in front of them. Thirty people of the fifty-seven had their own computers or laptops in front of them and nine were on their phones.

During my second half hour of observation there were sixty people seated, and eighteen in the tourist area. One person in total spoke to the librarian, three had books, and two were on the research computers. Independently, thirty two people were on their own computers, and nine were on their phones. One person in total used the copy machine.

From three pm to three-thirty sixty people remained seated, and thirty-six were standing in the tourist area. Thirty-four of them were using their own computers, three were using the research computers and ten people had books. Two people used the copy machine and nine were on their phones.

For the next half hour sixty people were seated and twenty five were in the tourist area. Fifty people were using their computers, and fifteen were on their phone. Seven people had books and two were on the research computers.

From four to four-thirty the number of seated people remained sixty, the tourists area had twenty-five people, fifty remained on their own computers, and fifteen on their phones. Seven had books and no one spoke to the librarian in an hour and a half.

For my last half hour of observing there were fifty people seated and twenty in the tourist area. No one spoke to the librarian or used the copy machine as in the previous half hour. Ten people were on their phones, two were on the research computers, and forty were on their own computers. Five people had books.

An important note on the low levels of usage for the scanner is that it does not do what most scanners are able. The scanner does not have the capacity to send scanned images to an e-mail address, they can only sent to USB. This is very limiting in that not everyone carries a USB drive with them, yet everyone has access to an email address. The copy machine costs ten cents a copy, this is the reason I assume there was so little use of these two resources.

I also attempted to take out books from the Rose Reading Room as a final test to see how well it performs as a lending library. I requested my books at two forty-five and the librarian dictated to me that the wait time would be forty-five minutes. In order to do so, I needed to have a library card, an address, a phone number, and an email address to fill out the form with the book information on it as well. I waited until the library closed at five o’clock that night and heard nothing about my book requests. I received an e-mail at ten o’clock that my books were then available and ready for pick up for the next five days. I never received my books nor did I have the time to return to the library and even look at them.

This kind of behavior from the largest public library in North American is unacceptable. The books I requested were not available to the public while the Reading Room was under renovation, and then the retrieval time for said books is much longer than the dictated amount. The amount of free time someone must have in order to interact with this system and be available to interact with the materials that the library houses is unrealistic for the average American living and working in New York City unless they have a certain amount of priviledge where they have hours of obligation-less time. For those well seasoned in how the New York Public Library functions, and is familiar with the long wait times, I do not see how this experience would be encouraging for a first time user’s repeat visit.

The article by danah boyd and Kate Crawford, “Critical questions for Big Data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon,” discusses the shortcomings of Big Data, specifically in correlation with social media. One of the arguments they put forth in their paper is the way in which data from Twitter is not what it appears to be. Since posts are public by default on Twitter, the “data” from the site is often analyzed or used in research, but those publishing their findings don’t always make it clear that Twitter posts aren’t necessarily representative of what they claim to be. As boyd and Crawford point out, “Twitter does not represent ‘all people’, and it is an error to assume ‘people’ and ‘Twitter users’ are synonymous: they are a very particular sub-set…Nor can we assume that accounts and users are equivalent” (2012, p. 669). As they go on to explain, some users have several accounts, or many people use the same account, or tweets on an account are generated by a bot. There are also those who use Twitter in a passive sense: rather than participate, they simply look at what others are saying. These varying types of users are indicative of the fact that Twitter cannot be relied upon as a representative sample of the population. Unfortunately, however, although some researchers do point out the inherent flaws of using data from Twitter, many news sources do not. Thus, many people don’t question the analysis of what users are expressing on Twitter, or statements relating to statistics of what is happening on the site.

It is this lack of questioning, and lack of awareness, that is worrisome. Big Data is everywhere we turn, yet many people don’t stop to think about the ways in which it is all around us. When the iPhone came out with the touchpad home button, many people didn’t think twice about turning over their thumbprint to their phones (and, as an extension, the company that makes them). Payton and Claypoole write in their book, Privacy in the Age of Big Data, “As business and government collects and benefits from all of this data, capturing data becomes an end in itself. We must have more and more data to feed the insatiable appetite for more. And yet, we are not having a serious public discussion about what information is collected about each of us and how it is being used” (2014, p. vii). This is most likely because the average person does not stop to think how creepy many of these tracking systems are; they either don’t care or don’t realize it’s happening. To return to iPhones as an example: several updates ago, location tags suddenly appeared on photos. As I am very paranoid about any possible intrusions into my private information, I immediately went to my settings and turned off location services for every single app except for Google Maps (and even then, the location is activated only while I am using the app). However, when I brought the issue up to friends, no one else seemed to care that their phones were essentially tracking them.

And yet, the joke is on me. Because GPS is not the only form of tracking on phones. Pinging between cell towers can also help determine location (the first season of “Serial” should have taught me that). It can also be tracked via WiFi, if the phone is continually searching for different networks (another default setting, although that function can of course be turned off – and it most certainly is on my phone). Not only does tracking happen through these types of relatively subtle ways, but it can also happen in the form of a game. As laid out in “Terms of Service,” the graphic novella by Keller and Neufeld, participating in social media can be highly compelling, even if it means giving away a plethora of information about yourself (apparently checking in on Foursquare enough times to become “mayor” of a space is enough to overcome any feelings of hesitation). For those who don’t participate in the technology at all, it can feel isolating: “Once enough people reveal their information, then NOT revealing your information becomes a stigma” (2015, p. 12). There is also a form of pressure that can happen when a person doesn’t have social media accounts: people may think or act like that person is weird for choosing to abstain.

Many of the services that are touted as time-saving and efficient, such as Amazon Go, are actually tracking insane amounts of data on each user. Of course, it’s clear that Amazon is on a mission to take over the world (and no one seems to be upset about it), but people should at least be on the alert about a service that is keeping tabs on users in multiple ways. Using Amazon Go would mean providing the company with data on your physical location, your buying and eating habits, and your credit card information. The convenience of it all (not having to stand in line to check out, not having to interact with another human being), as well as the novelty, is what consumers will focus on, but what if Amazon’s databases are broken into and suddenly a hacker knows everything about you? Not worth the convenience after all.

There are also, of course, the new types of technology that have recently begun to invade homes: Google Home, Amazon Echo, ivee, etc. Here are some very worrying default settings for the Echo (and the other devices work similarly): past recordings are kept to improve answers the for future questions; location services are activated, the better to suggest nearby stores and restaurants; and the microphone is ALWAYS ON (Studio One Networks, 2016). These settings can all be changed, but will the average consumer know/care to do that?

In this day and age, everyone needs to be aware of, and protective of, their privacy. It is all too easy for both corporations and the government to keep track of and use data that is collected on the average citizen. Knowing the ease with which your movements, preferences, beliefs, habits and more can be recorded and tracked, it is the responsibility of every person to, at the very least, be aware of the accessibility of their individual data. People can decide for themselves how much or how little to reveal through their use of products and websites, but it is important for everyone to question the necessity of the data they are putting out into the world. Knowledge of this, as in most cases, is power.

 

References:

Boyd, D. & Crawford, K. (2012). “Critical questions for big data: provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon.” Information, Communication & Society 15(5): 662–679. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/ 10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878

Keller, M. & Neufeld, J. (2015). “Terms of service: understanding our role in the world of big data.” Al Jazeera America. http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/terms-of-service/#1

Payton, T. & Claypoole T. (2014). Privacy in the age of big data: Recognizing threats, defending your rights, and protecting your family. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Studio One Networks. 2016. Expert Q & A: How private is the new Amazon Echo? Retrieved from http://www.yoursecurityresource.com/expertqa/how-private-is-new-amazon-echo/

For my observation I went to the Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where they have been since 1992. The archive itself is a product of the Women’s movement, the sexual revolution and the Gay Liberation movement of the 1960’s and 70’s. A group of women, including Joan Nestle and Deborah Edel, unhappy with sexism in the Gay Academic Union (GAU), branched out, forming a separate women’s consciousness-raising group, which became the basis of the LHA. For the first 15 years Nestle and Edel ran the archive out of Nestle’s apartment on 92nd st, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They relied on volunteers and women of like mind to help organize, catalog and educate people in the community. Their goal was, and still is, to “turn shame into a sense of cherished history, to change the meaning of history to include every woman who had the courage to touch another woman, whether for a night or a lifetime.” Their statement of purpose goes on to say that the archive “exists to gather and preserve records of Lesbian lives and activities so that future generations will have ready access to materials relevant to their lives,” which was and is important because these histories or stories had previously been denied “by patriarchal historians in the interests of the culture which they serve.” Originally they achieved community outreach through the creation of a newsletter and a slide show in the late 1970’s, today they achieve this through readings, workshops and women’s study classes that are free and open to the whole community. The principles the LHA are founded on are fundamentally different than more traditional archives, something that was made very apparent to me upon my visit. Principles like vowing to teach archival skills generationally to members of the lesbian community, making sure the archive is involved in the political struggle of being a lesbian, and ensuring that the archive itself resides physically in the community, as opposed to an academic setting.

(http://www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/history.html)

So there I found myself on November 17th, walking up the steps of a very unassuming brownstone on the outskirts of Prospect Park, with only a small gay flag in the window, not really sure what to expect upon entering. I was greeted by a woman named Red, an English and Women’s Studies teacher at Hunter College, and a member of the LHA. Straight away I was given a very warm welcome and a tour. The archive encompasses both floors of the brownstone, intermingling areas of living with areas of books, files and organization. Most documents, journals, and records are kept on the 2nd floor, along with their t-shirt collection, button collection, audio tapes and other miscellaneous memorabilia. Downstairs there is a library of sorts, with lesbian pulp fiction, a wonderful collection of literature written by women, reference materials, and even a small children’s book collection. After the tour I was basically left to my own devices, told I could go through and look at whatever I wanted, and to come ask for assistance if I needed it. I have to admit, this was a little overwhelming at first. A feeling akin to being a kid in a candy store, frozen with anticipation, and thoughts of where to begin. So I headed upstairs and started with their Special Collections area. This area was organized by topic, and each topic was kept in a small filing box on a standing bookshelf and on shelves built into a walk-in closet. There were categories like “Dinah Shore and the History of Women’s Golf,” “Lilith Fair,” “Coming Out Stories,” “Places to Love,” “Gay and Lesbian Association of Students (GLASS),” and of course, one of the founder, Joan Nestle. In this same area were cabinet files, broken down into Biographical Files, Geographic Files, Conference Files and Unpublished Files. There were bins of documents, news clippings and ephemera to still be filed, simply resting on top of the cabinet files. The arrangement of everything felt very organic and grassroots. With living lesbians and histories coexisting with those of the past in a figurative sense, but also physically, given that people who run the archive actually live in the same residence. It lends a specific type of energy to the space. On our tour, Red pointed out that the archives had unpublished papers by Gertrude Stein, Alice Walker and Adrienne Rich, an area she frequently accessed for her own research. This area peaked my interest as well and the next thing I know I am sitting on the ground reading an unpublished lecture that Adrienne Rich, a favorite poet of mine, wrote and gave in 1983 at Scripps College in Claremont, California. After, I moved on to look at their small exhibition area, with a small exhibit of clothing and one of pins. Red had said that a lot of people come to look at these exhibits. The clothing exhibit contained a military jacket, some t-shirts and a famous black slip that belonged to Joan Nestle. The pin collection was set up over an area that was once a sink, with lots of pins spread out for viewing, while others were contained in receptacles with small drawers. The pins were a lovely visual timeline of lesbian and female struggle, with sayings such as, “Women Make Policy, Not Coffee,” “We Won’t Go Back. Keep Abortion Legal, April 5, 1995, rally in Washington, D.C.” and “The New Right Preaches The Old Wrongs.” The t-shirt collection was also in this area, although not really on view. It is archived in long garment boxes on the floor and in sliding closet areas built into the wall. After looking at the exhibits, I made my way over to another section of the upstairs that contained the archives of the archives (very meta), boxes of audio tapes containing oral histories (which they have labeled, “love tapes”) and an area of mostly cataloged magazines and scholarly journals. After perusing, I made my way back downstairs, where Red and I listened to 2 oral histories on audio tape, while simultaneously looking at photographs that Morgan Greenwald had taken of Sagaris. Sagaris was a Vermont based, collectively run, feminist institution created in 1975. The goal was to have a place of feminist education, without hierarchy, patriarchy, and a strict structure, where the foremost feminist thinkers could gather, to communicate with and teach other women. Some of the original members and faces found in Greenwald’s photographs include, Rita Mae Brown, Charlotte Bunch, Mary Daly, Dorothy Allison and Susan Sherman. However, listening to the oral histories was the real prize for me. The history we listened to first belonged to Mabel Hampton, one of the original organizers of LHA. Hampton was an African-American woman living on 131st st. in Harlem at the time and she spoke of her coming out story. As she tells it, she walked into a sandwich shop in Jersey City, was so fascinated by a woman that she went home with her and didn’t leave for 40 years. She lived and had a relationship with this woman from 1932 until 1978, when she died. As she saw it, she was “already half in the light, may as well step all the way in,” a lighthearted but courageous move at the time. The second oral history we listened to belonged to a woman named Gerry, who spoke of being born for the first time, at age 39, in a sleazy, secret gay bar in Greenwich Village called The Els Bar, sometime in the late 1940’s. This woman was a real firecracker, she described herself as always being gay, but was “just too stupid to know it.” Until, that is, a woman bought her a beer, kissed her on the palm and told her to come back soon. And even though she lived in Woodstock, she went back the very next night and was never the same. She described bars like The Els Bar and the Pony Stable as being the only places where gay people could mingle socially. The bar was kept in complete darkness, except for a single light on the area where the bartender made drinks and received money. And the dance floor was so small, it was the “size of a postage stamp.” Stories like this deserve to be preserved and shared. They have the power to enlighten and to comfort. It is stories and histories such as these that led me towards the field of library science. My experience that day at the Lesbian Herstory Archives was both priceless and an affirmation of my chosen path.

“Certain stories are privileged and others are marginalized.”[1]
The archive is a powerhouse of memory and identity through materials and framing. If marginalized voices are not heard, then the world cannot remember them. Whether materials are created and/or valued is due to the social structure surrounding it. “Mining the Archive: A Conversation on Anti-Arab and Islamophobia in Visual Culture” was held on October 20th 2016 at NYU. It reflected on how acknowledgement of difference in treatment is the first step in reflecting on these issues within the United States. If marginalized groups can be acknowledged, and made important today, it will reflect in the archive of the future. The first step in understanding which direction the archive will remember this moment, is to look at how it is acknowledged now.

One example of a marginalized group in the United States is that of Arab and Islamic Americans. The “Conversation” was led by Salah D. Hassan, and Marina Budhos. Salah D. Hassan, is a professor at the University of Michigan where he does academic work on the representation of Anti-Arab and Islamophobic feelings in the United States. Marina Budhos is an award winning author who writes fiction and non-fiction work through her own lens, as an Arab immigrant herself who grew up in New York City. They both represent different lenses while looking at the same material. Hassan pointed out the political facts and statistics surrounding the Anti-Arab and Islamaphobic feelings within the United States, and the racial feelings of the average American about Arabs and Islamic Americans. He mentioned the agreement of 2014 that 60% of Americans believe that Arab peoples cannot perform their jobs if they held political office and other misconceptions that are results of visual representation. Budhos really looked at these issues from inside, she reads into this perspective, giving a voice to the victims of the visual culture reflected in the talk. Her perspective enhanced the “Conversation” by using her literary voice to depict the situations of discrimination Arabs and Islamic American communities face.

Television and mainstream visual representation was the focus of this discussion. Hassan had drawn the conclusion that the reason for such negative representation of Arabs and Islamic peoples is consistently based in specific political motives. Organized anti-Muslim feelings are tools for a political purpose, just as hate speech always has been. His research has found that historical events have little to do with the anti-Muslim feelings present in today’s America. He also found that the threat of anti-Muslim groups is higher to the general public than Muslim groups targeted for their expression. These are facts that are not accurately represented in American mainstream visual representation. In terms of the Archive, television is a medium that can be preserved easily. Framing is the issue. Through just representation in American television of Islamic peoples and Arabs, there is a different narrative than what actually occurred. Unless the Archive is sensitive to the marginalized voices, it will not accurately capture this moment in time. The Archive must frame it’s materials in a way that showcases this misconception and then the materials available, rather than feeding into this false representation.

As the discussion went on the topic of identity and the idea of “coming out” as Muslim became an idea that described the process of coming to terms with an ostracized identity. They are only their label without any humanizing traits assigned to them by the mainstream visual culture. For example, Arab and Islamic people are seen on TV as entering and building mosques on the news in order to create a sense of fear in people, without any knowledge of what mosques mean as social centers. The fact that Arab and Islamic people are regularly a topic of discussion but are not seen as people is something that does not only reflect political agendas, but also what stereotypes are active in American society. Watched, Marina Budhos’ book, investigates how identity changes in an inner city Iranian boy as he is intimidated by the police and integrates in American life. Her book reflects on how he is labeled, how he attempts to combat that, as well as how he reclaims his identity. Budhos read excerpts from her book that exemplified the boy’s relationship with his community and those outside it. The book reflected a narrative of someone that is connected to his community but is turned against it by an altered view of his reality. Stories like this one are why the archive is important. A well rounded archive can take a narrative like Budhos to frame a collection of visual media resources that contain Anti-Arab or Islamaphobic feelings, making it a positive representation of this historical moment.

The archive has enough power that it does not need to choose a side of the mainstream or the marginalized. The archive can remember everything that society deems important. Acknowledging these issues today is key in making them important for tomorrow. The power of the archive acts as a memory bank. But a hidden power of the archive, is its ability to choose the frame to which the nation remembers something. “Mining the Archive: A Conversation on Anti-Arab and Islamaphobic Visual Culture” created a dialogue about identity and memory which led to larger questions about how these themes effect the archive, and how the archive will use its power to represent or ignore the marginalized.

[1] Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook, “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory,” Archival Science 2 (2002): 1-19.

 

Adrianna Martinez

As I rang the doorbell at the end of a corridor deep in one of the New School’s campus buildings, I was hardly given the feeling of having arrived at a place of great power. I had set up an appointment with the University Archivist to conduct an informational interview a week hence and had envisioned something quite different—or, at least above ground. Instead of a grand place proper to the “power over the shape and direction of historical scholarship, collective memory, and national identity, over how we know ourselves as individuals, groups, and societies,” (Schwartz & Cook, p.2) I was received in a neat and very plain space about the proportions of a conference room.

The layout was divided by open bookshelves which almost reached ceiling height into three parallel areas according to their function. The dividers stop short of the edge of the room to allow for a small walkway on either side. The first such section is primarily used as a working space for researchers where they are provided large tables on which to spread out their documents of interest. In times when no researchers are present or expected, this space may also be used for meetings or as an auxiliary space for archival processing.

The second, middle space had been set up as the offices of the University Archivist and her assistant. A pair of long desks framed the inside of this cordoned off area, each stretching the length of the bookshelves.  Two large iMac’s occupied the desk nearer to the back of the room, where the staff worked on finding aids and description work. The desk on the opposite side was left clear of any permanent items so they would be available for boxes which needed to be close at hand while working on the computer.

Behind the office area was the third space set up for storing, finding and processing documents. The back wall was made up of eight to ten large archival storage cabinets that moved along tracks in the floor as the archivist spun a ships wheel-shaped lever. Another table was set up near the cabinets for quick pulls from storage. Though this modern, compact shelving system provided several hundred linear feet of storage, approximately nine-tenths of the archives are hosted off-site on the other side of the Hudson River. The materials kept on-campus had either been requested in advance of future visits by researchers or were slated for processing/re-processing. The arrangement of the space was an almost perfect representation of its intended function: the ignoble and tedious tasks of re-foldering and arranging documents, describing and providing access to collections.

Judging only by appearances it is easily understood how Archivists come by their reputation as “objective, neutral, passive (if not impotent, then self-restrained) keeper(s) of truth.”(Ibid., p.5) The two-thirds of the archives – the office and storage areas – which are the domain of the archivist are laid out for tasks related to the preservation and retrieval of documents instead of analysis of their content which was relegated to the research space.

However, while the archivist typically does not produce research or build collections, the power to determine which collections would be either accessioned or relegated to the dumpster of history belongs mainly to the archivist. This is done in accordance with a document known as the institution’s collection development policy which details the purview of an archives’ collections. Typically, the parameters of a University Archives are fairly established, including materials of permanent value which are deemed relevant to notable alumni, faculty or institutional history. In certain cases, the committee responsible for deciding the scope of collection development will also accession materials which may not be related to the institution per se but to a subject area which has special significance to the university. In the case of the New School, whose most notable division is Parsons School of Design, it was decided that collections related to fashion and graphic design would be given special consideration during the appraisal process.

From this it clear that the archivists generally have some role in modifying their institution’s collection policy. Although the archives’ focus —  whether an institution, corporation or subject area – determines much of what is to be collected, archivists have further power outside of official policy in appraising a collection for accession.  Until recent decades, this has meant that archives “systemically excluded records about or by women from their holdings and, as institutions, have been willing agents in the creation of patriarchy by supporting those in power against the marginalized.” (Ibid., p.16) As a reflection of hierarchical social relations constructed on the basis of gender, race and class, there was created a strong tendency to preserve on that historical evidence which originates in or supports the master narrative. In the contemporary context, this may have the effect of rejecting collections for accessioning based on the archivist’s own prejudices as they inform the worthiness of preservation regardless of whether the materials fall within an archives’ scope of interest. Thankfully, as the archival profession has developed — growing increasingly self-conscious about their role in providing historical evidence to researchers in the distant future — a tendency to counteract the layers of historical exclusion by seeking out marginalized records has also grown. Archives, despite their pretensions of a neutral, professional outlook and humble, dusty circumstance do wield some power over what will be preserved.  Of course, archivists are still both limited to the documents which have been collected in the first place (often skewing towards those with greater resources) and directed by the research interests of those they serve (historians, the public and other collection committee members). The true power of the professional archivist to balance the elite-skewed record of events can be located in the actual appraisal process when applied to individual collections.

 

Bibliography:
1)Schwartz, J.M. & Cook, T. Archival Science (2002) 2: 1. doi:10.1007/BF02435628

On October 4th, I went to a panel discussion at the National Arts Club entitled “The Book as a Work of Art.” The panel was made up of four professionals: Kyle Triplett, who is the Rare Books Librarian at the New York Public Library; Peter Mendelsund, associate art editor at Alfred A. Knopf; Glenn Horowitz, a rare books dealer; and Benjamin Morse, co-founder and artistic director of the digital book company Orson & Co.

Unlike many of the panel discussions I’ve attended, in which a moderator asks specific questions for each person, or an overall question meant for everyone to answer in turn, this event was more like a series of presentations. The moderator was Karla Nielsen, who is the Curator of Literature at Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library. She started off by announcing to the audience that she and the panel had decided on the format of the discussion beforehand: each person had brought in an object that they would introduce to the audience, and then the four would give mini presentations on the theme (the book as a work of art).

Kyle Triplett went first, with a slide that contained a picture of an enlarged period from a book printed in 1665. He wanted the audience to realize that books have presence in a sculptural sense, and to lead them away from the idea that a period is simply a circle. Mr. Horowitz was next; he started by proclaiming that he approached books differently than the others on the panel, as his was from a financial point of view (the same could be said of both Mr. Morse and Mr. Mendelsund, but no matter). He had brought two volumes to show to the audience: William Faulkner’s first book, a copy of a collection of poetry, with an inscription to his father (which, according to Mr. Horowitz, was very rare – most of Faulkner’s inscribed books are made out to his mother), and One Hundred Years of Solitude, inscribed from Gabriel García Márquez to the son of the people to whom he dedicated the book. Mr. Morse displayed the cover of one of his ebook creations, and Mr. Mendelsund brought a “visual emblem” with which to represent his work: the copy of Joyce’s Ulysses that was published by Sylvia Beach. He said it inspired him when he was recently commissioned to create a new cover for the novel.

It was then time for the presentations by each panelist. Mr. Triplett introduced the audience to four different versions of Euclid’s Elements: from 1484, 1570, 1847, and 2014. He showed how the each subsequent copy had borrowed or imitated attributes from the ones that came before. Mr. Morse presented History of a Pleasure Seeker, an ebook with the specialized features unique to Orson and Co, including interlaid photographs of the places mentioned in the book and audio narration (represented by a gramophone). Mr. Morse and his partner have deemed their creations “elumes,” a name and style inspired by illuminated manuscripts. Mr. Horowitz, who was the only speaker that didn’t use the assistance of projected slides,held forth about his experience as a bookseller. Unfortunately, as Mr. Morse had just used the room’s audio to display his ebook, the speakers were projecting a clicking noise throughout Mr. Horowitz’s entire speech; this, combined with the lack of visuals, made it hard to follow what he was saying. This was a shame, because his experience as a bookseller in New York is a fascinating history. He started his business at age twenty-four, and has recently been in charge of selling Bob Dylan’s estate (it was jointly acquired by the University of Tulsa and another foundation in Oklahoma). He said the book that had meant the most to him was the copy of Virginia Woolf that he had found on a dusty back shelf in a bookstore in London; when he started flipping through it, he discovered, among other notes made by her, an inscription on the fourth page from Ms. Woolf to her sister. He bought it for five dollars. Mr. Mendelsund went last, with a powerpoint detailing the many book covers he has created; he believes that since books live with people on their shelves, it is important for the covers to communicate what the book is about.

Although the topic could have been really interesting, the event felt very disjointed. This, I felt, was mostly because of the lack of a moderator to ask questions and lead the discussion. Since the panelists were coming from such different backgrounds and work experiences, they needed a guiding force to achieve cohesion. The mini presentations were interesting, but the event would have been taken to a whole new level if there was more crossover: the bookseller would have answered questions from such a different perspective than the librarian, and the designer of ebooks might have felt similarly or vastly different from the designer of book covers.

In terms of design, I felt especially curious about Mr. Morse’s evident disdain for ordinary ebooks, and the decision to call his electronic books “elumes.” He credited his high regard for illustrated manuscripts as the reason for the name, but I’m not sure that the average person would make that connection. The amount of time his company spends perfecting the features of the books are obvious, and there are some characteristics that are highly appealing: in the example he gave, History of a Pleasure Seeker, the use of photographs from the time period in which the book is set is very compelling. The choice of using a gramophone icon that the reader can press to hear special audio features reminded me of the Ecological Approach outlined by Rogers (2004), in which designers create “interface objects so as to highlight the importance of making ‘what can be done to them’ obvious” (p. 100). Except, in this case, Orson & Co decided to stay in the old fashioned realm and have the image be a gramophone, rather than a speaker. Which is a bit like having a “save” button represented by a floppy disk; that is a carry over from when floppy disks were actually used, however, and this is clearly a design decision meant to be in keeping with the rest of the book’s theme.

The event seemed to underscore, without meaning to, the commonly held belief of the sexiness of ebook and book cover design with the drab and dreary world of book collectors and librarians. It came to a head with Mr. Horowitz’s presentation, which was directly after the elume demonstration by Mr. Morse, and was plagued by technological difficulties (clicks of the microphone, lack of a visual presentation, etc.) Looking back, it makes me think of the Luddite rebellion example that was described in Sayers (2014), in which demonstrators broke wide-frame looms to try and stop the new technology from spreading. Not that Mr. Horowitz gave any indication of trying to halt the spread of ebooks, but the juxtaposition of the two professions (book dealer vs. ebook company owner), their ages (old vs. young), and the presentation styles (dry lecture vs. interactive electronic format) all seemed to emphasize the distance between their worlds.

Lastly: I keep harkening back to Mr. Morse, but his wish to make electronic books works of art, reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts, again reminded me of Sayers: “In our so-called digital age, many people would assume that interventions in technological processes are accessible to more people than ever before” (p. 5). His company’s use of technology to create the most beautiful and high-brow form of ebooks possible makes me think that the type of audience he is envisioning are those who are privileged, sophisticated, and whose sensibilities are more refined than the “average” ebook user.

 

References:

Rogers, Y. (2004) “New theoretical approaches for human-computer interaction.” Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 38, 87–143.

Sayers, J. (2014). “Technology.” In B. Burgett & G. Hendler (Eds.), Keywords for American Cultural Studies, (2nd ed.). New York, NY: New York University Press. Retrieved from http://keywords.nyupress.org/american-cultural-studies/essay/technology/