Archives

Documenting Rebellions is a study of four archives that were constituted with a common desire to preserve the memory and evidence of lesbian and gay people. They are The Lesbian Herstory Archives (New York), The ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives (Los Angeles), the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives (West Hollywood), and the ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archives (Toronto). Using a narrative approach that draws from first-person accounts and archival research, each chapter tells a story about how these organizations came to exist, who has supported them over time, and how they have survived for more than forty years. This book is the result of a five-year project that began in 2012 and builds on the author's own experience working with lesbian and gay archives. In Documenting Rebellions, Sheffield places lesbian and gay archives in the context of changing political opportunity structures that have afforded a liberal lesbian and gay rights movement some successes while continuing to marginalize intersectional, queer and trans people. The goal of this study is not to critique these organizations, but to show how this cohort of community archives has been affected by the very same combination of socio-political and economic factors that shape the cultural histories that they preserve. Documenting Rebellions consider the material needs of archives - space, money, and expertise - that are sometimes rendered invisible by the idiosyncratically subjective cultural theory model of 'the archive' that has emerged from within interdisciplinary studies. By tracing the emergence and development of these organizations, Sheffield uncovers representational politics, institutional pluralism, generational divides, shifting national politics, interpersonal relationships, and challenges with sustainability, both financial and otherwise. Rebecka Taves Sheffield is an archivist and archival educator based in Hamilton, Ontario. She has taught in graduate programs at Simmons University School of Library and Information Science, for the University of Toronto iSchool, and for Library Juice Academy. Presently, she is a senior policy advisor for the Archives of Ontario and works on digital recordkeeping strategies. Rebecka previously served as the Executive Director for the ArQuives (formerly the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives), where she spent the better part of a decade learning as much as possible about Canada's LGBTQ2+ histories. She has studied sociology, gender studies, publishing, and archives. She completed a PhD in information studies and sexual diversity studies at the University of Toronto.

This pioneering volume explores the Arctic as an important and highly endangered archive of knowledge about natural as well as human history of the anthropocene. Focusing on the Arctic as an archive means to investigate it not only as a place of human history and memory - of Arctic exploring, ›conquering‹ and colonizing -, but to take into account also the specific environmental conditions of the circumpolar region: ice and permafrost. These have allowed a huge natural archive to emerge, offering rich sources for natural scientists and historians alike. Examining the debate on the notion of (›natural‹) archive, the cultural semantics and historicity of the meaning of concepts like ›warm‹, ›cold‹, ›freezing‹ and ›melting‹ as well as various works of literature, art and science on Arctic topics, this volume brings together literary scholars, historians of knowledge and philosophy, art historians, media theorists and archivologists.

Analyzing how 1980s visual culture provided a vital space for women artists to theorize and visualize their own bodies and sexualities In 1982, the protests of antiporn feminists sparked the censorship of the Diary of a Conference on Sexuality, a radical and sexually evocative image-text volume whose silencing became a symbol for the irresolvable feminist sex wars. In Visible Archives documents the community networks that produced this resonant artifact and others, analyzing how visual culture provided a vital space for women artists to theorize and visualize their own bodies and sexualities. Margaret Galvan explores a number of feminist and cultural touchstones—the feminist sex wars, the HIV/AIDS crisis, the women in print movement, and countercultural grassroots periodical networks—and examines how visual culture interacts with these pivotal moments. She goes deep into the records to bring together a decade’s worth of research in grassroots and university archives that include comics, collages, photographs, drawings, and other image-text media produced by women, including Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker, Marybeth Nelson, Roberta Gregory, Lee Marrs, Alison Bechdel, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Nan Goldin. The art highlighted in In Visible Archives demonstrates how women represented their bodies and sexualities on their own terms and created visibility for new, diverse identities, thus serving as blueprints for future activism and advocacy—work that is urgent now more than ever as LGBTQ+ and women’s rights face challenges and restrictions across the nation.

The question of the (photographic) construction and representation of national identity is not limited to the ‘long 19th century’, but is a current issue in the post-colonial, post-global, digital world. The essays by international contributors aim at studying the relationship between photographic archives and the idea of nation, yet without focusing on single symbolic icons and instead considering the wider archival and sedimental dimension.

The digitalization of archives produces a huge mass of structured documents (Big Data). Due to the proactive approach of public institutions (libraries, archives, administrations ...), this data is more and more accessible. This book aims to present and analyze concrete examples of collective intelligence at the service of digital archives.

With new technologies and additional goals driving their institutions, archives are changing drastically. This book shows how the foundations of archival practice can be brought forward to adapt to new environments—while adhering to the key principles of preservation and access. Archives of all types are experiencing a resurgence, evolving to meet new environments (digital and physical) and new priorities. To meet those changes, professional archivist education programs—now one of the more active segments of LIS schools—are proliferating as well. This book identifies core archival theories and approaches and how those interact with major issues and trends in the field. The essays explore the progression of archival thinking today, discussing the nature of archives in light of present-day roles for archivists and archival institutions in the preservation of documentary heritage. Examining new conceptualizations and emerging frameworks through the lenses of core archival practice and theory, the book covers core foundational topics, such as the nature of archives, the ruling concept of provenance, and the principal functions of archivists, discussing each in the context of current and future environments and priorities. Several new essays on topics of central importance not treated in the first edition are included, such as digital preservation and the influence of new technologies on institutional programs that facilitate archival access, advocacy, and outreach; the changing legal context of archives and archival work; and the archival collections of private persons and organizations. Readers will also learn how communities of various kinds intersect with the archival mission and how other disciplines' perspectives on archives can open new avenues.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Jewish historian Zosa Szajkowski gathered up tens of thousands of documents from Nazi buildings in Berlin, and later, public archives and private synagogues in France, and moved them all, illicitly, to New York. In The Archive Thief, Lisa Moses Leff reconstructs Szajkowski's story in all its ambiguity. Born into poverty in Russian Poland, Szajkowski first made his name in Paris as a communist journalist. In the late 1930s, as he saw the threats to Jewish safety rising in Europe, he broke with the party and committed himself to defending his people in a new way, as a scholar associated with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Following a harrowing 1941 escape from France and U.S. army service, Szajkowski struggled to remake his life as a historian, eking out a living as a YIVO archivist in postwar New York. His scholarly output was tremendous nevertheless; he published scores of studies on French Jewish history that opened up new ways of thinking about Jewish emancipation, modernization, and the rise of modern antisemitism. But underlying Szajkowski's scholarly accomplishments were the documents he stole, moved, and eventually sold to American and Israeli research libraries, where they remain today. Part detective story, part analysis of the construction of history, The Archive Thief offers a window into the debates over the rightful ownership of contested Jewish archives and the powerful ideological, economic, and psychological forces that have made Jewish scholars care so deeply about preserving the remnants of their past.