Category: Articles

Tour with METRO at BAM’s Hamm Archives

On September 14th, the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) organized a tour, inviting professionals and students to look at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)’s Hamm Archives, located offsite in the neighborhood of Prospect Heights in Brooklyn.

View of BAM’s Hamm Archives     

After a roundtable introduction first by Davis Anderson, METRO’s Program Manager, and then by all attendees, Archives Manager Louie Fleck asked us to take a look at the archived materials that he pulled out and presented on the table. Each participant was asked to share a bit of our personal interest, whether archives, history, music or dance, and some questions about BAM or the archive, so that Louie could tailor the topics for the audience since there’s just so much to talk about.

A Table of Archived Materials

BAM opened its door in 1861, first located in an opera house in Brooklyn Heights then at the current address, neighbor to the Atlantic Barclays Center, after a tragic fire in 1903. Although there’s always been an archive within the organization, significant evolvement of the archives department took place within the last twenty plus years. Other than the 1903 fire which took away all records, another major damaging event to the archive was a flood in 1967. Since 1995, seeing the urgency of preserving the organization’s 157 years of history, BAM has done much investment in the archive, from applying grants for processing physical materials, adopting and refining a digital database, to promoting engagement with the archive to researchers and the general public.

According to Fleck, the largest and most important project the archive has taken on so far is the Harvey Lichtenstein Presidents’ Records. Lichtenstein served as the President and Executive Producer of BAM from 1967 to 1999. During the remarkable 32-year leadership, he integrated modern dance to be a renowned part of BAM, despite that it is namely a music institute. Figures such as Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, and Alvin Ailey have stopped by BAM for multiple seasons of production. The materials resulted from the span of years range from administrative records, presidents’ files, and production records. It is not exaggerating to say that records in this collection cast light on not only the entire history of that 32 years of BAM, but also the performance history of American modern dance and music.

Harvey Lichtenstein President Records
Harvey Lichtenstein President Records boxes
A Merce Cunningham Performance Program

Supported by a major grant from the Leon Levy Foundation, the archivists at BAM felt fortunate and honorable to preserve the history. Fleck suggested that the Lichtenstein Records is so far the best cataloged collection: best in terms of the amount of materials digitized and the use of standard acid-free archival materials for all physical records. Materials are cataloged on folder or box level, and majority of the records can now be accessed online with a search function.

After a thorough research, the archivists at BAM decided on Collective Access to be their main repository. Collective Access is a free open-source software targeting arts and cultural organizations. The software gives its user large amount of flexibility in customizing their own database structure and vocabularies, and this is a prominent feature that attracted BAM’s archivists to Collective Access, in that they could construct a system almost from scratch and every single aspect will be tailored to their own cataloging needs. In fact, as Fleck said, since neither of the two full-time staff could program, a major amount of grant money did go to the salary of a programmer who did extensive configurations to reach the current state of the database. In addition, Collective Access encourages hosting organizations to not only set the archived content open, but also make the already-customized system, the skeleton of the database, downloadable for other organizations. This is another feature that sounds favorable to the archivists. With this attribute, smaller organizations with diverse programming could obtain the same database that BAM uses, a fact that the archivists added to the grant application, with the idea of virtual collaboration through the sharing of database structure. “This just fabulous to us. We didn’t want something that just benefits us, but something we created that could be for all,” said Fleck proudly.

Screenshot of a Photograph on Collective Access

The tour continued with a deep dive into exploring Collective Access. Fleck demonstrated structure of the database by showing the program’s backend to us. Year-Season-Production/Special Events is the spine of the information hierarchy. Productions are then categorized according to genre of arts: music, musical, opera, dance, etc. Each production is assigned a 5-digit production ID that will be added to every item under the production as an identifier. Special  event includes artist talk, educational programs, fundraising galas and more. Fleck took an photograph item to show the differences yet between the backend and the online portal. At the backend, each photograph, other than basic information appearing on at front end such as title, date, photographer, subjects, and identifier, will also have size, a more detailed descriptive, special technique, and master status. As said, not all information is public yet, but researchers are encouraged to pay on-site visit to BAM’s archive, as many researchers have done so already.

Seeing the abundance of materials collected here while thinking about recent event such as the devastating fire wiping out the National Museum of Brazil, one archivist in the tour group asked about if BAM’s archive has sought to retrieve information lost in either the 1903 fire or the 1967 flood. Since a large number of materials are ephemera/promotional papers that highly likely have had numerous copies, by crowdsourcing or through other means, the archive may be able to recover the history bit by bit. Fleck agreed on crowdsourcing as a good approach though never done, and mentioned about the collaborations with other Brooklyn cultural institutions. BAM was able to locate relevant materials from the archives of both Brooklyn Historical Society and Brooklyn Public Library. Moreover, BAM’s archivists had a seminar with collections of Brooklyn Museum. The collaboration later resulted in the form of BAM borrowing materials from the museum, digitizing them, and returning the objects along with the images to the museum. On the other hand, for years in 20th century, BAM was under the umbrella organization – Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (BIAS) – which included three other institutions: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Botanical Garden, and Brooklyn Children’s Museum. Through collaborating with these institutions for the archive of BIAS, BAM was also able to discover additional materials that speak to the organization’s history.

Bulletin of BIAS (Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences)

For an signature organization then and now like the Brooklyn Academy of Music, comprehensiveness of the preservation project not only benefits the organization itself but the larger arts community of Brooklyn, and of New York City. The brief tour at BAM’s Hamm Archives kindles various issues, from heritage preservation, digital construct of an archive, to inter-organizational collaboration. To learn more about the archive, please find it here: http://levyarchive.bam.org/

Posted on by Evian Yiyun Pan 0

NYC Open Data 101（& 102!）

On Monday, I attended an event of high interest and of great appreciation. This is a free workshop held by Civic Hall of New York City, located at 118 West 22nd Street, 12th Fl, New York City, NY 10010.

I found this governmental class on Eventbrite, this class is among several classes, seminars, conferences and networking events held under the organization named BetaNYC. Thanks to the platform Eventbrite, for making events open and known by all internet users.

To my surprise, I entered Civic Hall through a normal size door located at 22nd Street, which is just a 10 min walk from PMC. I thought of Civic Hall as large as New York Public Library, or even a site of tourism. It is not the same case here, but I am equal excited.

I looked for the event organizer Civic Hall, when I got home, they call themselves a “community space”  and there is a new place called Civic Hall @ Union Square just received approval by the full NYC City Council on August, 2018 and a estimated opening in the fall of 2020.

On the 12th floor, there is a welcome desk on the right hand side. It is of no difficulty to find the exact classroom, as there is an obvious big welcoming notice on the right white board, even when there is no one waiting at the welcome desk. In the “hall” of Civic Hall, there is another workshop going on, which made me less nervous as I am just one of many learners or participants with similar goals.

 

 

 

 

 

I am delighted to  find there are a number of classmates who share the same goal with me and as a hand craft lover, I am more excited when i see playful cards in this data related class. In the introduction session, I mentioned I am participating this class because event attendance related to my academic focus area is requested by my professor. However when I finished this interactive class I am just keenly waiting for the next open class. I am not a pure outsider with no knowledge of data as I have taken classes from school for several weeks. Still, this class is successful and reaching out of my expectation.  I will explain why I would recommend this type of classes.

At the beginning of class, it was a normal lecture with fundamental knowledge of information and introduction to NYC open data set. Then comes the “human data icebreaker”, which makes the class much warmer and everyone more relaxed.

Human data icebreaker, is a class activity, with everyone holding one piece of service request of different cases under  several categories, changing shapes of lines in order to simulate the function of “filter”,”sort”,”Group by”,”Roll-up”, “Count”. For example, under the instruction: Rank the top 5 complaint types. First we need to “Group” our cases into different complaint types; then we “Count” how many cases are there; then we “Sort” our team into correct order of groups in line. After these steps and actual steps of walk we took, we are clear and correct to tell, which are the top 5 complaint types, interactively and visually.

After the icebreaker exercise, everyone get to know each other better and feel closer, as we have been in the same data set and under one task. Each of us act as datum and we served together for a common purpose. We moved to the next activity : Playing with cards!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before cases begin, we are introduced that there are four types of cards, “Story”,”Action”,”Data Column” and “Data Value”.  We are encouraged to generate task on our own and then process the task as placing cards in possible steps. In this time, steps are taken with cards as displays rather than actual steps on our feet. This is much easier to understand and compare, instead of hypothetically calculating or processing in mind. After each case we need to introduce the task and the possible actions we took in order to accomplish the task, by processing as a data platform ourselves, we became confident when we actually operate the data set by NYC Open Data.

After several rounds of “card games”, we were provided with handout of this class and we were informed that the second class Open data 102 would be held on Thursday.

Thanks to  Noel Hidalgo, who gave this wonderful class (the first gentleman from left). Big Thanks to Beta NYC  (or NYC Open Data ) who provided Class handout, Slides and Cards to everyone. Thanks to Sloan Foundation who sponsored this class.

Additionally, here is the handout and slides for NYC Open Data class 102! Looking forward to the following classes.

Posted on by De Han 0

The School of Visual Arts Archives & The Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives

On September 19, 2018, I visited the School of Visual Arts archive collection to meet their head archivist, Beth Kleber, and assistant archivist, Lawrence Griffin. During my observation, Kleber and I discussed the SVA archives, their work in it, and their background overall. During our conversation, they discussed the specific needs of working in an academic archive and art material, the skills they developed in this process, and their perceptions of how the field has changed in the past years.

The SVA Archives was started by Kleber when a designer and professor decided to donate his collection to the donated to the school. The Archives has grown since its establishment in 2006 and now as a repository of historical records, work by professors, work by students and alumni, and internal documentation. Material, which was stored in grey boxes and flat files in two rooms, date back to when the school was founded. Since the university is “like a family owned business,” much of the material remains within the university and has support from the President’s Office.

The collection can be divided into two, with one side being the Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives (art and design material), and the other being the SVA Archives (history of the school). Kleber and Griffin work with both sides of the collection. The archives is considered a nonprofit (due to donations), but has close ties with the library of the university (which is not a nonprofit). As a result, the Archives collection is physically housed in the back of the floor of the Library. Most of the material being hosted in a temperature controlled room. The two sides of the collection are housed together, which is possible because so many designers have relationships with the school and have designed for the school in some way. Numerous designers, as well as photographers and illustrators, are active professors at the school.

The observation day was not during a period in which archives were being actively used, but Kleber explained that the archive is usually used by visiting classes, researchers, and designers. It is open to the SVA community as well as the public. She mentioned visitors coming from other states, and even other countries, and noted that some boxes near a flat table were used for such visits. Because of the material type, most objects are stored flat. Items such as film can be scanned or put on a portable lightbox for viewing. There was also an overhead camera for digitization. Kleber noted that, in some cases, she sends material out to be scanned if the intention was for reprinting. Some people visit because of the Instagram that the archivist manage, illustrating that the archives had a virtual presence and existed well beyond the two storage rooms.

Griffin described some of the skills he used during the past year and half in which he has been at SVA. Among them were digital skills such as Photoshop and coding. He manages the web archiving through a subscription program, Archive-It. He also has machines for older technology, such as reel-to-reel and cassettes, in his office. He and Kleber also perform a lot of administrative work, such as answering email inquiries, scheduling appointments, meeting with academic departments, and filing paperwork.

Both Griffin and Kleber have knowledge of archival practices, but also use their knowledge of design and design history in their work. Kleber, who has an impressive memory, was able to connect names to posters, faces, and events over the course of years. She also pulls posters from the Library bulletin in order to preserve them, because not all academic departments send all of their material to the Archives. However, for those who do, Kleber and Griffin were able to build a collection of posters, booklets, publications, flyers, and other types of digital and physical material of various mediums. As mentioned during class discussions, the archivist can shape the narrative of a collection with their decision to keep, or not keep, material. Kleber’s specific history with the archive, being there since the first object entered the collection, her knowledge informs how materials relate, even if pieces arrive at the archive years after. At the same time, her history with the archive means she often sees an overabundance of material from academic departments year after year. In some cases, some materials may be difficult to keep.

Among their collection were profiles on professors and exhibitions related to their Photography Department. They had copies of an interview with photographer Duane Michals. They also had postcards of images made by professors, among them Penelope Umbrico. For designers, the design side of their archive is named after the famous Milton Glaser, most well-known for his “I Love New York” design. He works as a professor in the MFA Design program and donated much of his work to the collection. The Archives also has work by another professor, Keith Godard, who among other things, created the hat mosaics in the 23rd Street Station on the MTA R line.

In discussing the changes in the field, Kleber and Griffin noted the some technological and conceptual differences in the graduate programs they attended, compared to programs today. Kleber attended Queens College, but found working as a librarian more valuable in teaching her about the field than school. She noted that Queens College did not have an archive focus when she was attending her courses, but that the New York Public Library had a program that paid for her studies while she worked in various branches throughout the city. She eventually became an archivist due to Glaser’s donation to the school, and built the archive ever since.

Griffin also attended Queens College, and also found the experience of working to be more valuable. Unlike Kleber, who mainly worked in city libraries and archives, Griffin also worked for government organizations and historical societies. He noted that the experiences in different organizations vary dramatically, mostly on an administrative level.

The visit to the SVA Archives provided valuable information about academic archives, especially those in an art or design focused school. A lot of the archive is dependent on the work of the archivist, and the relationships the archivists can make with professors and departments. It is also valuable to know the subject matter, such as the name of designers and time periods, in order to perform research and connect information. While skills such as material preservation and digitization are important, what seems clear is that the field is shifting differently. The academic experience of the SVA archivists is very different from archive programs today, and the technology that one needs to know seems more specific on the institution rather than the field. Beyond technical standards and social concepts, archivists will need to know social media and communication skills in order to gain the cooperation and enthusiasm of the greater community.

Alvina Lai

 

Posted on by Alvina Lai 0

The Museum of Interesting Things’ Monthly Speakeasy

Taylor Norton Event Attendance

For my event attendance, I went to the Museum of Interesting Things’ Monthly Speakeasy. Held in a loft in Soho, I was one of approximately 40 people in attendance. The museum is described on its site as “a traveling interactive demonstration/exhibition of antiques and inventions inspiring innovation and creativity – learning from the past to invent a better future.” For this night, whose theme was “I Spy: Spy, Cipher, Crime, and Communication Tech,” the museum was held in a loft in order for attendees to not only handle and interact with objects, such as an enigma rotor, a pair of hoodwink goggles, watch cameras used by detectives, 16 mm films, and an encoding machine paired with a carrier pigeon vest, but also to eat, drink, and meet others also interested in the same topic. People in attendance could look at 20thcentury mug shots hanging on the wall and flip them over to read the crimes committed while others could take selfies while wearing the hoodwink goggles.

Initially, the most striking thing to me was how poorly preserved and displayed many of the items were. Old ephemera, mug shots, books, and technology were housed in plastic Ziploc bags while some photos were displayed in an envelope with a transparent windowpane. Other objects were simply placed on the table with no protection at all as people leaned over precariously with a full glass of red wine in their hand. Also, none of the items had labels for a viewer to properly identify them. However, I soon realized this was only minimally problematic as I witnessed the night’s host and the museum’s owner, Denny Daniel, explain every item in detail to whoever took an extended period of time looking at an object. He saw the explanation of each object as an opportunity to connect with others and engaged with everyone who was there. After talking with Daniel, I also found out that when the items are not being displayed at travelling shows and educational events, he stores them in his home and four storage units around the city. I could not help but think of how most preservationists would lament at the rate of deterioration from such handling and the lack of a controlled environment. While considering this dilemma, a quote from Roy Rosenzweig’s article, “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era” resonated with me. While Rosenzweig refers to preservation in a digital era when he writes about “who has the right and responsibility to preserve them [materials],” (Rosenzweig paragraph 16) I found that the same notion could be applied to physical objects without a digital presence as well. The idea of responsibility and ownership of the past’s object has always been assumed to be that of museums, historians, catalogers, and archivists but here was a single person preserving and showcasing items.

With that being said, I actually believe that more people should host events like the one I attended. While most professionals would have dismissed Daniel’s attempts at sharing his antiques as unsustainable and minimally factual, he had an audience who was diverse in age, gender, and race that was fully engaged in their environment and eager to learn about the objects at hand—literally. They were closely examining objects, questioning how others used the items, and critiquing the creative techniques used in the creation of WWII propaganda 16mm films. Should that not be a main goal of a museum and/or a collection? And while there was a lack of what most would define as professionalism that a larger institution would have, his museum was still serving the same purpose of transferring knowledge and understanding of the past and past narratives.

This museum is clearly a passion project, which is reinforced when reading Daniel’s call to action on his brochure that “Maybe we can think of ways to use yesterday’s technology to power the future.” And while it was a small event, his passion could have easily been harnessed and sponsored by a larger entity that could have displayed things in a neater and more professional matter and reached a larger audience. However, I say that hesitantly because I also recognize that the larger the institution, the more control over objects is inherently introduced. Daniel explains that “the beauty of our programs is that they can be tailored to the interests or curriculum of any range of age groups from Kindergarten-high school, spec. edu, college, adults and seniors. Moreover, our programs can be presented in almost any type of venue- large or small and indoors or outdoors.” While many would dismiss Daniels collection as merely that of an enthusiast, what Daniels is actually doing is vital because he is making information not only accessible but also interesting to a vast array of the general public.

It was my own bias to Daniel’s museum that made me reaffirm how important it is to recognize how things are presented and by whom. Had his enigma rotor been showcased in London’s Imperial War Museum, I am sure nobody would have thought twice about its efficacy. However, because it was placed on a foldout card table, its initial presence was questioned. While thinking about how I momentarily did not want to take Daniel’s collection seriously because it lacked the traditional standards of storing and showcasing items, a quote from Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook’s article, “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory,” came to mind: “In the design of record-keeping systems, in the appraisal and selection of a tiny fragment of all possible records to enter the archive, in approaches to subsequent and ever-changing description and preservation of the archive, and in its patterns of communication and use, archivists continually reshape, reinterpret, and reinvent the archive. This represents enormous power over memory and identity, over the fundamental ways in which society seeks evidence of what its core values are and have been, where it has come from, and where it is going. Archives, then, are not passive storehouses of old stuff, but active sites where social power is negotiated, contested, confirmed” (Schwartz 1). While I know Daniel’s collection is not an archive, it shares the same parallels of power and how it can be presented and reinforced. The past use and importance of the items he had did not change by themselves, but rather by the context in which they were viewed.

 

Rosenzweig, Roy. (2003). “Scarcity or abundance? Preserving the past in a digital era,” The American Historical Review 108(3): 735-763. http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/links/pdf/introduction/0.6b.pdf

Schwartz, Joan M. & Terry Cook. (2002). “Archives, records, and power: the making of modern memory,” Archival Science 2: 1–19.

Posted on by Taylor Norton Gallery 0

Knowledge Creation and Artist Archives: The Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, A Two Part Review.

The Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc. is a unique professional organization, due in part to the wealth of cultural, academic, public & private institutions located in NYC that are home to professionals in the archives field. ART produces educational programs, provides support for professional development, advocates for historical preservation, and gives archivists the opportunity to network at social events. At the start of their fall season, ART hosted a two-part series revolving around art and archives pertaining to David Wojnarowicz. The first program—New Approaches to Artists’ Archives: The Artist Archives Initiative & The David Wojnarowicz Knowledge Base—was a talk given by NYU Professor and MoMA Conservator Glenn Wharton along with Special Collections Librarian Nicholas Martin at Fales Library and Special Collections, NYU Bobst. The talk was followed by a brief lecture from Hugh Ryan, curator of The Unflinching Eye: The Symbols of David Wojnarowicz, an exhibition at the Mamdouha Bobst Gallery comprised of archival material from the Fales Collection. The second program—History Keeps Me Awake At Night: David Wojnarowicz Exhibition Tour—occurred the following week at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The tour was guided by Tara Hart, a graduate of Pratt’s MSLIS program who is currently the Archives Manager at the Whitney. The tour also featured an introduction to the Whitney and it’s facilities by the Director of Research Resources, Farris Wahbeh. I attended both of these events, including the networking and “happy hour” portions that followed.

Part I

The Fales Library and Special Collections, located on the third floor of ElmerHolmes Bobst Library at NYU, is a cozy space featuring antique card file cabinets—some of the Fales Special Collections still utilizes the card catalog—and wooden bookcases with glass doors. Behind the bibliographical threshold lay the archives; notably, The Downtown Collection, which holds archival material related to the LES and SoHo art scene as it developed from the 1970s through the 1990s. Within this collection, amongst other treasures, are the David Wojnarowicz papers, ca. 1954-1992. Consisting of 128 linear feet of documents, from journals and interviews, to phone-logs, to art-objects, this collection contains the primary source materials for the topic of the discussion today, The David Wojnarowicz Knowledge Base (DWKB), the premiere project of the Artist Archives Initiative (AAI). 

The Artist Archives Initiative is an ongoing experiment in contemporary art which seeks to address a need for evolving information resources based on cooperative efforts between artists and scholars. In pursuit of this goal, the AAI produced the DWKB, not only with the artists’ papers, but by conducting interviews with artists, friends, and others who knew Wojnarowicz; inviting scholars to submit their research and writings; and by choosing MediaWiki software to build the database. MediaWiki software is open-source, allows for low-cost maintenance, provides a strong user community, and has a hierarchical menu that allows researchers to search the database “laterally” through text searches and links within articles to other pages, including more DWKB pages, outside resources, and references. 

I believe this project is an example of a strategic development in the application of archival materials towards increased accessibility, discoverability, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The next project that the AAI has underway is the Joan Jonas Knowledge Base. Joan Jonas is a performance artist who is still very active. She lives closely with her personal archive, and because of this, she can be directly involved in the development of her own Knowledge Base. The iterative aspects of performance art pose an interesting challenge for Wharton and co-creator Deena Engel; multimedia documentation and the potential for years or decades between performances of the same piece, adds an element to the project that was absent from the scope of the DWKB. Additionally, the Joan Jonas Knowledge Base will not be developed with the benefit of content from a pre-existing archive.  

In respect to the ART event itself, the talk with Glenn Wharton and Nicholas Martin was informational, conducted in conjunction with a slide presentation, and allowed for time at the end for questions. It was a pleasure to hear Hugh Ryan, the curator of the archive-based exhibition, discuss his kindred relationship with Wojnarowicz. He conveyed a deep understanding of the symbols of Wojnarowicz’ art that in part had developed through years of studying the materials on display.

Downstairs in the Mamdouha Gallery, two tables had been prepared with concessions; wine, seltzer, fruit & cheese platters, and truffles that were handmade by the Program Coordinator, Amye McCarther. Treats were well-displayed and enjoyed by the event attendees. I made a point to discuss ART programming at-large with several professionals in attendance who gave reviews of past events along the lines of, “high-end”, and “always different, but always good.”

Part II

Meeting in the lobby of the Whitney, ART members and volunteers formed a group around the Director of Research Resources, Farris Wahbeh, who offered an abridged history of the museum, focusing on it’s origins and architectural provenance. Shortly after, the group followed Archives Manager Tara Hart up to the exhibition, David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake At Night. 

Among the first works in sight is an archival object that Nicholas Martin would refer to as “the big loan” during one of my subsequent tours of the Fales Collection—a Rimbaud Mask circa. 1978, which may have been used in Wojnarowicz’ early photo series, Arthur Rimbaud in New York. Archival material represents a sizable portion of the work on display. To name a few examples, there is an audio recording of a 1992 reading given by Wojnarowicz at The Drawing Center; a black and white unfinished film that was borrowed from the Fales Collection; and a vitrine containing a pamphlet from the American Family Association and the annotated Affidavit for David Wojnarowicz v. American Family Association and Donald E. Wildmon. 

These documents, again, on loan from the Fales, are evidence of one of Wojnarowicz’ contributions to defending artists’ rights, and a sad reminder of the value that the American court placed on his art. At the end of the text accompanying the documents in the vitrine was a prompt for the viewer to engage with yet another archival component—to listen to Wojnarowicz discuss the trial and his art practice with Terry Gross in a 1990edition of Fresh Air.

It was apparent to me that collections of primary source materials were integral to the present-day curation and exhibition of David Wojnarowicz’ work. Additionally, the presentation of archival materials enabled audience members to hear the artist’s voice and to learn about the politics and realities facing Wojnarowicz and his community at the time.

After the museum, the ART group reconvened for refreshments at a nearby bar. I was able to engage in conversation with McCarther, a practicing digital archivist who once participated in a Joan Mitchell Foundation CALL pilot program in Houston. CALL, which stands for Create A Living Legacy, provides resources to the public, supports late-career artists considering organizing their professional records, studios, and archives, and educates emerging artists who share these concerns in assisting older artists. It’s clear that a program like CALL operates on the opposite end of the spectrum compared to a project like the Artist Archives Initiative. However, it was helpful to participate in industry-relevant discussions and to meet like-minded individuals.

Posted on by Meghan Lyon 0

Protecting the Power (Value) of Voices: The New University in Exile Consortium

On September 6th of 2018, I attended The New University in Exile Consortium at The New School, in Manhattan, New York. The New University of Exile website describes the program by stating that: 

“We are an expanding group of universities and colleges publicly committed to the belief that the academic community has both the responsibility and capacity to assist persecuted and endangered scholars everywhere and to protect the intellectual capital that is jeopardized when universities and scholars are under assault.”

The New School has a long history of helping refugee scholars. Starting in 1933, The New School’s first president, Alvin Johnson, created the first University of Exile. During the rise of Nazism and the increasing threat of intellectual prosecution, Johnson hired many European scholars as the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. Johnson firmly believed that universities had to play a pivotal a role in protecting independent thought and research. He believed that it was a unendangered university’s responsibility to assist other universities that are under assault.

The New University in Exile has begun working again internationally with Scholar Rescue Fund, and Scholars at Risk, in the midst of new political and military attacks on scholars. In places like Turkey, Iran, India, Yemen, and Syria, universities are being weakened, shut down, and destroyed, forcing scholars to flee or face being prosecuted and jailed. The New University in Exile seeks to be a safe space for displaced scholars. The aim is to create a collaborative community in which these scholars can continue to do research and produce information. The New University has a growing membership of universities, primarily on the east coast, for now, that are joining in the fight for intellectual capital. 

During the program there was an in-depth conversation between Kati Marton, a Hungarian-American journalist, and David Miliband, the CEO of International Rescue Committee, that was mediated by the Director of The New School, T. Alexander Aleinikoff. Marton and Miliband discussed how they both where from families of refugees and how this movement was very important to them. One of the main topics that was being discussed dealt with the removal of access to information. Both Marton and Miliband feared that history is being lost with people. They described how “fake news” and social media has played a pivotal role in shaping ideas and opinions about topics ranging from refugees, political movements to advertisements. 

Marton discussed her growing fear of the relationship between media outlets and popular vote “demi-gods,” which tied directly into a conversation about the current American political position. Marton’s career as a journalist clearly amplified her worries on this subject, and she gave a clear opinion on America’s lost position as a sanctuary country. While discussing this topic, Miliband argued that we must keep recording all the facts and events to protect all voices.

Although, I agree with, and understand this sentiment, it also made me question the relationship between power, authority and context. Different poisons are going to have a different view of the value that is placed on an item over time. Value, as described by Michelle Caswell in her article, “’The Archive’ is not and an Archive: Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies,” is dependent on the way in which an item can attest to the events in which they emerged. Caswell states that “Like, ‘evidence,’ ‘value’ always exists for someone in a particular place at a particular time.” (Caswell, 2016, <p> 16) Therefore, the facts and events that are recorded today, may have different implications dependent on who saves them, how they are later represented, and who is viewing them in the future. 

I believe that the key point both Marton and Miliband were stressing though, had more to do with censorship and false media today. They were expressing a need for information access and reliability in today’s political environment in order to help save information capital. Information capital ties in very closely with ideas of information literacy. Information capital is the theory that agues that information has value. It alludes that sharing information is a means of sharing power. Although, the word value in this theory holds a similar meaning to the value that archivist Caswell mentions, I think there should be a distinction. Value as placed in the Information Capital theory places the importance on how information forms power, rather than how power is chosen in a material. It is important to note that The New University in Exile is working within the western tradition of knowledge. The power to make a record, to name, preserve, mediate, and access, (Schwartz & Cook, 2002, pp.5) is being placed in the hands of scholars and organizations. This does not however, change the importance stressed by Marton, Milibrand, and The New University in Exile, that the ability to have a chance to create information is powerful in its own right and should be a human right. 

At the end of the program we also heard from two scholars, that are currently working within the New University of Exile, describe their plight. Cem Ozatalay and Mohammat AlAhmad are professors that have fled their home countries and have begun teaching in America with the help of The New University in Exile, Scholar Rescue Fund and Scholars at Risk. Hearing these professors talk about the prosecution they faced and the struggles they endured to come to America was very moving. They talked about facing prison time for their thoughts and ideas and how they had to smuggle their families across borders to escape. Through these programs, these scholars were able to continue researching, learning and teaching. 

The New University in Exile is clearly making a stand that stresses the importance of creation and dissemination of information. The university as a mode of expressing and sharing ideas has been a long standing tradition in the western world. The act of a political power silencing voices, and the need to protect them, overrides my concerns about future value placed on the information produced by the voices, at this time. I, like Marton, and Miliband, believe that the most important thing right now is to create, so at least sometime in the future, there will be a possibility of both sides of history being present. 

Important websites for more information on this topic:

https://newuniversityinexileconsortium.org

http://www.scholarrescuefund.org

https://www.scholarsatrisk.org

References:

AlAhmad, M., Aleinikoff, A., Fanton, J., Mack, A., Marton, K., Miliband, D., Ozatalay, C., Van Zandt, D. (2018, September). The New University in Exile Consortium, The New School, New York. 

Caswell, M. (2016). “‘The Archive’ Is not an archives: On acknowledging the intellectual contributions of archival studies.” Reconstruction: Studies in contemporary culture, 16. Retrieved from https://esscholarship.org/uc/item/7bn4v1fk

Schwartz, J., & Cook, T. (2002). “Archives, records and power: The making of modern memory.” Archival Science, 2, pp. 1-19. 

Posted on by Amber Pasiak 0

Engaging Shared Heritage @ NYPL

Wednesday Sept 26 I attended the talk at NYPL on ‘Engaging Shared Heritage.’ Academics from around the world shared with each other the projects they are working on and the challenges they face. The panel on “Preserving Cultural Heritage” shared the different types of preservation work they were engaged in. The following panel, “Engaging through Research and Dissemination,” discussed how they connect their work to other cultural heritage institutions and to the larger public. Instead of briefly touching on each person who spoke, I am going to focus on the panelists whose research most aligned with my interests and what we are studying in Foundations of Information.

 

Challenges to Preservation

Dr. Annie Sartre-Fauriat explained the destruction of historic sites such as the Temple of Bel and Palmyra and the loss of artifacts because of the civil war in Syria is irrecoverable. The proposition Sartre-Fauriat made was to reconstruct the damaged heritage sites from a variety of different periods. She warned against what she called “a Disney style approach” but contested that since Syria has had such a diverse history that the reconstruction shouldn’t look like any one particular era. She explained they do have enough archival resources to create a deep reading of these sites’ histories, but she admits that they while they have unlimited ideas and potential, everything else they need is non-existent. Currently Russian mercenaries are in control of the area and people are quiet freely looting the world heritage sites. She said that at the moment there is virtually no control and no ability to organize any sort of enforcement.

Father Samer Yohanna, a priest from Salahaddin University-Erbil in Iraq, explained the lack of trust that exists at all levels of society in Iraq. He said that between fellow countrymen, neighboring countries, and Westerners there are few areas where large swaths of society can work together. They have had to move their collections 5 times and at the moment they are not disclosing their location to anyone outside of the organization. He stressed the need in Iraq for places of community that give people incentive to see their history as shared, and work to preserve it.  

Father Yohanna also stressed the danger of working with artifacts in the modern Iraqi political climate. This is something that I partly dealt with in my undergraduate thesis, so I was eager to hear his perspective. There is intense pressure for different societal groups to prove their place in Iraq’s history, and against influences that have come in from the West. Yohanna explains ownership of artifacts and control of the narratives that surround them is a volatile issue that makes doing archival work very dangerous in Iraq.

The perspectives represented at this event were a reminder that free unfettered access to information in the context of a civil society might provide healthy debate, but could serve as fodder for violence in an area with few formal avenues to scholarly interpretation. This reflects what we read in the Dabello article, albeit in a different context, about traditional expertise not being able to play the role as gatekeeper as it once did in the face of an active public (Dabello, 2009). Our ability to create a publicly shaped identity I think directly relates to the amount of trust society has in each other and our institutions. When asked about opening up the their online platforms to community input Yohanna and Stewart (mentioned below) said they both have a moderated comment section that often provides insight, but with an undereducated public and a turbulent political climate, maintained that primary interpretation should remain in control of those with library and archive expertise. Respect for expertise and the potential power of crowdsourced information is a tension that continues to come up in this course.

 

Digitizing Responsibly  

The next panelist, Columbus Stewart, was a Benedictine monk from a monastery I am very familiar with back in Minnesota. He works with Hill Museum Manuscript and Library (HMML). Their mission starting out was to protect Benedictine manuscripts in Eastern Europe directly after WWII. Since then they have expanded to preserving Muslim and Christian manuscripts across the Middle East. HMML began preserving manuscripts in Syria before the civil war broke out. One of his primary points was that we must do preservation work preemptively, especially for things as fragile as manuscripts, because it is often impossible to predict where conflict will break out. He cites their work in Mosul just before the civil war as evidence. Thus far they have digitized 40,000 manuscripts. From their website (https://www.vhmml.org) people can then export their own data sets. The only barrier to access they put up is the creation of a free account to access the images and the export function; people can access the index information without an account.

The key to their success has been working with local communities. He explained the general consensus that Americans find a way to monetize everything they touch. Distrust is something they always face, but their position as monks he said actually helps convince people they are not there to turn a profit. By working with locals they are able to gain a richer understanding of the texts. As a result the metadata that locals generate is far more accurate than what they would produce on their own. Drabinski illustrated this same point with the anecdote about the term “Kafir” in Zambian context (Drabinski, 2013). When digitizing any material we would be repeating past colonial mistakes if we continue to attest that description can be done neutrally. Father Stewart’s team takes this role very seriously. They train and pay locals to take photographs of manuscripts, teach them how to work with the data sets. This results in the spreading of expertise as well as the creation of rich digital databases.  

 

Archives and Peace

In the next panel, Vincent Lemire introduced us to Open Jerusalem which is trying to index as many archives as possible in Jerusalem and across the Middle East. Some of his points reflected what we have been discussing in class. For example he explained that with archives, unlike books, the producer is not the author and the contents of the archive is always composed of diverse material. They must find a way to describe the archive deeply while also applying a standardization that can be searchable in a database. Also because of the location and history of Israel, they are working with materials written in many different languages and described in different languages still during their various stages of provenance. For this reason they only focus on making the indexes digital, not the actual material.

Lemire explained that it is very difficult to have any mutual basis when inferences from the records lead opposing sides to drastically different conclusions. How they have overcome this, to an extent, is to start at the most basic irrefutable positions such as “this material is a book, it is written in Arabic, it is on such and such type of paper,” and build from there. He sees this as a practical, project-based form of peacemaking. While uninspired by the effects that formal peace talks have had on the region, Lemire argues that having to get through an insurmountable amount of archives forces people to develop a working relationship even if they still deeply disagree. McChesney stressed in “Digital Disconnect,” the importance of having public spaces in order for democratic civil society to flourish (McChesney, 2013). Panelists Yohanna and Lemire both echoed McChesney’s sentiment with the calls for spaces, such as a reading rooms, for people to be able to benefit from materials and develop a local concept of community.

 

Works Cited

Caswell, M. L. (2016). ‘The Archive’ is Not An Archives. Reconstruction 16(1).

Dalbello, M. (2009). Digital Cultural Heritage: Concepts, Projects, and Emerging Constructions of Heritage. Proceedings of the Libraries in the Digital Age (LIDA) conference, 25-30.

Drabinski, E, (2013). Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction. The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 83(2). pp 94-111.

McChesney, R. (2013) Digital Disconnect. New York, NY: The New Press.

 

Event information and feature image credit can be found at:  https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2018/09/26/engaging-shared-heritage

Posted on by Elizabeth Phyle 0

Open Access in the Screening of “Paywall: The Business of Scholarship”


On Thursday, September 20th, I went to the NYU Cantor Film Center to watch the screening of the new documentary film Paywall: The Business of Scholarship directed by Jason Schmitt, a communications and media scholar at Clarkson University, New York. Paywall is a 65-minute film which seems to advocate for the need of open access (OA) practices that lack in the academic publishing industry focused on research and science. The documentary weaves two overarching inquiries: it examines the 35-40% profit margin associated particularly with Elsevier and other top academic publishers and compares this with the incomes of the most profitable tech companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google. The film also questions the high financial costs of subscription-based academic journals and how scholarship and innovation in general is affected by these costs when scholars, students, and researchers hit paywalls that deny them access to the most updated research.

The format of Paywall is presented through sequenced interviews of a wide range of scholars, publishers, and OA advocates from across the world. One of the key issues that strucked me of the interviews is when I learned that most scientific research is publicly funded by government agencies or universities, and yet this research is locked behind expensive paywalls and kept from access to the general public. It was also surprising to see why the academic publishing industry is extremely profitable. John Adler, a professor of neurosurgery at Standford University who appeared early on in the film, said “publishing is so profitable because workers do not get paid.” He referred to workers as the people who create the products for academic journals – authors and reviewers. This brings to question how come writers do not get paid for their services and how is this business model sustainable for them?

While the documentary do not delve into the perspectives of authors and scholars who provide their labor to academic journals, it examines the way top publishers have sustained their business model in the market. They have made themselves indispensable to their clients, in this case universities, with a set of policies that allow them to be excessively profitable. Some interviewees in the film including library professionals, explain that universities are required to keep in confidentiality the costs they pay for subscription-based academic journals. In this way, publishers can charge any rate to each university without revealing their different charging practices with other schools, which prevents others to compete against them. Universities also lack the power to decide which journals they should buy or should not because they need all the latest scholarship work that is controlled by legacy publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, and Sage.

These issues with control and power over information exerted by top publishers brought me back to Robert McChesney’s ideas in Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy when he discusses the political economy of communication (PEC). The author explains that the PEC examines the institutions, market structures, support mechanisms, and labor practices that define a media or communication system, and determines whether those practices are conducive or not to democratic values. For instance, McChesney analizes the case with Microsoft which has become a proprietary software company indispensable to society. The reading states that “Microsoft has been able to exploit the dependence of a wide range software applications on its underlying operating system in order to lock in its system permanently, allowing it to enjoy long-term monopoly-pricing power. Any competitor seeking to introduce a new rival operating system, faces an enormous ‘applications barrier to entry’ ” (p. 73). This business model of dependency and monopoly aligns with they way academic journals have also employ their power with paywalls. A model that interferes with the progression of a modern democracy.

Schmitt’s film also addresses the negative consequences of paywalls to broader societal issues. Two medical doctors from Nepal and Nigeria who participated in the interviews testified the experiences of students in their countries with subscription-based journals. They mentioned that paywalls deny students access to the latest literature and this prevents the professional development of students and contributions to their field to happen. This exclusion is due in part for the high costs of paywalls that do not correspond with the inequities of the currency of countries from the developing world. Therefore, this is harmful not only for them and researchers from the developing world, but also for scholarship itself. A vital aspect of scholarship is innovation and this flourishes when a great diversity of people and knowledges contribute to it.

Although most Paywall’s interviewees seemed to support the idea that society would be better if scholarly articles are distributed in an open access world, the documentary do not explore adequately the challenges that OA publishing would face – the costs and risks associated with it. Additionally, the film does not address the reasons why scholars choose to sign away their rights to their scholarly work to commercial publishers, instead of making their papers freely available to their academic institutions. This question is brought up in Siva Vaidhyanathan’s article Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto which states that academics frequently “overreact to perceived ‘threats’ that someone is teaching ‘their’ course or relying too heavily on ‘their’ data.” Vaidhyanathan also mentions that “[t]oo often, academic leaders forget their ethical duty to the community of scholars and world citizens at large. Their rabidly protect their ‘intellectual property’ to the detriment of the scholarly world (an the species) as a whole…” (p. 26). These issues helped me to be more aware of the complexities that scholarship work entails.

After watching the screening, there was a discussion among the audience mediated by NYU librarian April Hathcock. She started the conversation by asking us if this making-money business mindset belongs in to academic scholarship? Rather than providing answers in the room, there were more questions from the audience regarding advocacy, research efficiency, inclusivity, copyrights, commerce, quality, and innovation. A NYU PhD student referred the example of Sci-Hub, which was featured in the film, as a tool that helps him to find academic papers more easily and faster than the academic journals he is able to access through his university. He suggested that Sci-Hub’s website is more user-friendly and seamless. It was interesting to hear this perspective from a student who has the privilege to access to the most updated information in research from top subscription-based journals. His comment left me with questions regarding deficiencies of the website development and interface design of academic journals.

References

Paywall: The Business of Scholarship. Retrieved September 27, 2018, from https://paywallthemovie.com

McChesney, R. W. (2013). Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy (pp. 64-66, 73). New York: The New Press.

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2005). Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto (p. 26).

Posted on by Diana Cadavid 0

Power in New Pedagogies at MoMA PS1’s Art Book Fair

Across the board, I think it’s safe to say museums and other cultural institutions are working towards rectifying their troubling pasts and working towards a more inclusive future. Some museums are doing better than others in regards to seeing this goal into fruition. My visit to MoMA PS1’s Art Book Fair last weekend was a shining example of how museums can correctly and creatively invite underrepresented groups into their space to tell their stories. Two groups at the show,We the News  and Manufactoriel, really stood out to me as both engaged with issues of identity and place- the first through zines and social activism, and the latter through reimagining spaces through photography.

Lizania telling my friends and I about her work!

We the News

Lizania Cruz was the first artist I spoke to at the fair. I was drawn to the large prints that read “Go Home Yankees” in bright pink across a stark white background. Lizania’s booth was filled with provocative signage calling out white supremacy and colonialism in history as well as its lasting effects on the community here in Brooklyn. She said she’s very interested in exploring the Black Diaspora, the worldwide community of descendants from Africa. I picked up a zine titled “Navigating Nuances of Diasporic Blackness: Tensions within the Black Community” or “Navegando por los matices de la negritud diásporica tensiones dentro de la communidad negra”. Almost all of her publications are available in English and Spanish, which speaks to the intentional intercultural inclusivity within the black community. It’s also worth noting that these zines are typically free and distributed around the Bed-Stuy neighborhood by the We the News collective. In fact zines are a very important form of publications in the field of social activism. Scholar Anna Polleti articulates why the zine tradition is a critical example of disrupting what she describes as mainstream methods of story telling:

“Through the production of independent publications, zine culture seeks to erode the predominance of mainstream and commercial interests in particular cultural activities. The zine community is a form of alternative media, a subculture of story telling and knowledge sharing…” (Polleti 184).

 

Artists Books from Manufactoriel- “Amegbeto” can be see on the left and Salwat’s book “Zingatia” on the right.

Manufactoriel

Manufactoriel is a “research proposition in African and Black Contemeporary visual culture, art, and style” (Manufactoriel 2018). I was able to speak with Salwat, an artist in the collective about the work on their table. Each art book responded to themes like the consequences of colonialism and identity politics. One book “Amegbeto”, which means “the one who refused” in Tongan, documents a bi-racial artist’s experience meeting her Tongan family for the first time. My favorite book on the table was created by Salwat herself. She is conducting academic research on a museum in Zanzibar that houses a collection important to Swahili maritime culture, yet the museum is in ruins as a result of decolonization. The museum has no funding and the records and objects left behind are falling apart and forgotten. After she received her master’s degree, Salwat created a book artists book to document the museum’s state of disrepair including some images of the galleries but many blank pages to symbolize the absence or lack of information and care given to the collections.

All in all, the Art Book Fair was not just a space for artists and independent publishers to present their work; it is also a space for underrepresented community’s to share their narratives in a public platform. This is especially important when thinking about the lack of representation topics like the black diasporic experience, or the consequences of colonialism have in major institutions. In a book of essays titled “As radical, as mother, as salad, as shelter: What should art institutions do now” edited by Paper Monument, seeks to address the looming question of how we rectify museums as problematic institutions in the current political environment. The book is formatted in a series of questions and author responses, my favorite question is “Can an art institution go from being an object of critique to a site for organizing? How?” The answers vary. Some think museums should “decentralize the art object and emphasize the process” (Basha 6) others are less optimistic that this change will occur describing efforts made by major institutions as “lip service”.  Although I am often wary of museums efforts to be more inclusive, I think MoMA PS1 is doing a great job. Hosting this type of event, outside of the gallery space, creates a different type of information environment that gives vendors like Lizania and Salwat to tell their stories. Not to say that museums are obsolete, or that curated collections are unimportant, but I only mean to suggest that in exploring alternative forms of art consumption through art books, zines, and free events, MoMA PS1 had the opportunity to engage with a larger community. Currently museums are in what feels like the beginning stages of recognizing and rectifying difficult realizations about the foundations and funding surrounding institutions, the next steps to making change are more difficult to identify. But perhaps in thinking outside of the typical pedagogical playbook of what museums have been and should be, we can create spaces that are more creative, thoughtful, and inclusive.

“The Black Women’s Free Library”
One set of the many cool posters plastered around the walls of the outdoor area.

References

About. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2018, frmo https://www.manufactoriel.com/about-manufactoriel

Basha, R. (2018) As radical, as mother, as salad, as shelter: What should art institutions do now? Brooklyn, NY: Paper Monument

Liu, M. (2017, March 22). We The News. Retrieved from

We The News

Poletti, A. (2005). Self-Publishing in the Global and Local: Situating Life Writing in Zines. Biography,28(1), 183-192. doi:10.1353/bio.2005.0035

 

 

 

Posted on by Sloan Strader 0