Public History & Philly

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Post #9: Examining Avenues for Archival Outreach to the Public

This week, my classmates and I discussed the myriad of ways that archival and special collections staff can advocate for the vitalness of their work as well as the ways that they may take action to connect with the public through outreach activities. This conversation reminded me of the appraisal activity that I completed while at Temple’s SCRC this past October. During this activity, I looked through the “Arthur Hall Papers”: a collection that contained papers and documents about the renowned choreographer of African dance, Arthur Hall, who traveled around Philadelphia to teach young children African dance within schools and other spaces of youth learning. With the size of Philadelphia and the variety of programs that take place today centered on youth learning and community activities, could collections like the Arthur Hall Papers be utilized to show Temple’s surrounding communities how the SCRC’s retainment of papers like these are integral to the success and fruitfulness of f...

Post #8: Important Discussions of Copyright and Digitization in Archival Spaces

This week’s discussion in Temple’s Archives and Manuscripts course concerning the protocols of copyright in the archival realm is one that many a researcher might find vital. As a traditional historian, I tend to utilize physical books and monographs. However, I often utilize more contemporary research materials for my papers such as online articles, audio, and countless of other digital sources to input into my papers and assignments. I, like many other researchers, would like to avoid being guilty of copyrighting another’s work and or utilizing a work when it should be restricted or was wrongfully, whether intentionally or unintentionally, made to be used publicly. In Dharma Akmon’s Only With Your Permission: How Rights Respond (Or Don’t Respond) to Requests to Display Archival Materials Online , it is disclosed that many archives try to take multiple measures to ensure that works with complicated rights issues are not digitized to mitigate potential cases of copyright. [1] Th...

Post #7: Archival Ethics and Decisions on Document Preservation

After reading Timothy D. Pyatt’s article The Harding Affair Letters: How One Archivist Took Every Measure Possible To Ensure Their Preservation , I pondered upon the way that the letters were handled by archivist Ken Duckett and also how letters disclosing an affair of someone out of the public eye may have been treated during Duckett’s lifetime. For instance, if Duckett received a box which included documents about the life of someone who was a well-respected figure in their hometown, but not so much on a national or universal scale, would the same measures to preserve the Harding letters be illustrated in the case of this hypothetical figure? Would these measures have been different in Duckett’s time vs. what would occur today? Pyatt discloses that Duckett believed in preserving the letters to allow a fuller understanding of Harding’s narrative. [1] In contrast to the Harding letters, it can be argued that the letters of people who are not affiliated with political or public-r...

Post #6: Being Attentive to Culturally-Sensitive Collections in Special Collection and Archival Spaces

In Ellen M. Ryan’s Identifying Culturally Sensitive American Indian Material in a Non-tribal Institution (2014), the accessibility to the contents of a collection pertaining to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho found within the Special Collections and Archives of Idaho State University are called into question. This collection, the “J.A. Youngren Papers,” includes photographs of Shoshone-Bannock practices such as the “Sun Dance” (a ceremony of the Great Plains tribes) taken and acquired by the university in the early 20 th century without the consent of Shoshone-Bannock members. [1] In 2013, an undergraduate student and sun dancer tasked with processing and housing these photographs took note of the rituals captured within the photographs and the problematic nature of displaying these photographs online without the consent of tribal members. He thus brought this concern up to the Head of Special Collections of ISU and the photos were soon after ...

Post #5: Fair Compensation: Procuring Well-Deserved Funding for the Employees of Archives and Special Collections

Chela Scott Weber’s Research and Learning Agenda for Archives, Special, and Distinctive Collections in Research Libraries (2017) extensively explores options to improve the functions and quality of archives and special collections by placing attention on both the collections within these places as well as the skills that archivist, stakeholders, and others who work collections can offer to the public. [1] Weber also proclaims that to improve the innerworkings and missions of special collections and archives, diversity of the workforce as well as a push for accessibility and diverse collections must be prioritized. Weber argues that a blockade to drawing in more employees who want to instate these features is the reality of “soft money” funding: a highly unstable way to maintain employment of archivist and special collection staff. In this case, how can more concrete manners of pay be given to these employees? [2] From my knowledge, though this article was published in 2017, I w...

Post #4: Original Vs. Copy: What Do You Prefer?

James M. O’Toole’s On the Idea of Permanence examined archival topics such as archival language and its importance, the discord of what “permanence” is in an archival sphere, the shift from oral records to written records as well as the importance placed on both forms of recording history, and several other important facets of the archivist’s profession. Though I found these topics extremely enlightening and vital, the topic that many of us can relate to is the idea of the original document vs. a copy. In many archives, documents are digitized to allow more access to certain documents while also safeguarding a document’s condition. As a researcher myself, I like utilizing original documents for research, but I understand that that can not always be arranged. Having said this, a quote that O’Toole presents in the article struck me as important in analyzing the research process and digitization of documents moving forward. This quote was from the preservation researcher William J....