Browsing by Subject "Archives"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    The Archival Intersection: Cooperation Between Collecting Repositories and Nonprofit Organizations
    (Midwest Archives Conference, 1990) Klaassen, David J.
    The records of nonprofit organizations constitute a valuable but endangered species of historical documentation. Organizations frequently lack the combination of resources, perceived need, and will necessary to operate their own archival programs. If such records are to be preserved, archivists will have to intervene, either to encourage the organization to establish its own archives, or to arrange a transfer to an appropriate collecting repository. Collaboration between the organization and the collecting repository challenges some existing conceptions about the nature of archives and offers opportunities for creative interaction.
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    Beyond the closet: LGBT and queer archiving in the United States
    (2014-12) Colleary, Eric Joseph
    This dissertation explores the ways sexual identity and culture are produced, imagined, performed, shaped, re-shaped, and deconstructed in LGBT archives in the United States. While a great deal of research has been conducted within the past two decades on LGBT historiography, there has been a dearth of studies examining the archival sites from which histories of LGBT identity are being written. This dissertation reveals that the construction of non-heterosexual sexual identities has been a conscious, careful process - borrowing from established historiographic, feminist, and colonial and postcolonial theories to establish archives of LGBT history and culture counter and in relation to dominant heteronormative narratives. There are times, however, when every archive fails to capture the complexity and diversity of LGBT experience. Rather than see these moments as failures, I "read" them as queer opportunities to rethink and reposition identities which may have become politically and socially stagnant. In each chapter, I focus on a particular archive and a specific individual (an archivist or a collector) who helped make it. The first chapter explores W. Dorr Legg's efforts in the 1950s to establish the discipline of homophile studies through the ONE Institute in Los Angeles as a way of creating a historical and archivable past for a collective homosexual minority that was just beginning to take shape. Chapter Two focuses on the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn and Joan Nestle's radical reimagining of what an archive could be through the lens of 1970s lesbian separatist feminism. Chapter Three looks at the acquisition and organization methods of Jean Tretter of the Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies at the University of Minnesota as a way of describing the queer possibilities of encountering the unexpected in an archive. The fourth and final chapter theorizes what a queer archive might look like, grounding this theorization in the collection of 1960s performance artist Jack Smith, which has recently been acquired by the Gladstone Gallery in New York.
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    Birds of a Feather: Some Fundamentals on the Archives–Ecology Paradigm
    (Association of Canadian Archivists, 2007) Moore, Erik A.
    This article reviews the concepts of preservation, conservation, and ecology in order to establish archival theory and practice, and environmental philosophy and protection as intellectually related domains, not merely analogous subjects. Moving beyond the organic metaphor peppered throughout the professional literature, it challenges archivists to look more widely at the parallel ideas and applications in archives and ecology that can influence and inform their decision-making process, and encourages archivists to move further away from the positivism that has directed much of their activities toward a more pluralistic paradigm evident in the biological and physical sciences. The outcome is a fundamental understanding of the theoretical intersection of archives and ecology coupled with models that can guide practical applications in appraisal and access for archives.
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    Creating Videos for Reference and Instruction
    (Archival Practice, 2014-12) Engseth, Ellen
    The author provides a case study of creating screencasts rendered as videos and disseminated as learning objects to support archival reference and instruction. These videos fit into a broader learning object experience at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (UWM) Libraries. The project's context, implementation, and evaluation and recommendations are provided.
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    Developing electronic records capacity in the small collecting repository: the Documenting Internet2 Project
    (OCLC/RLG, 2006-08-15) Akmon, Dharma; Kaplan, Elisabeth
    What options are available to a small scale collecting repository when the core documentation in its primary subject area is no longer created in traditionally manageable formats? How well do traditional methods for appraising institutional records, which were developed in the context of stable, structured organizations, adapt to increasingly distributed, dynamic organizations whose records are primarily born-digital? For a collecting repository whose subject area is high technology, the problem feels particularly acute: the irony of trying to capture adequate documentation of developments in information technology in paper only is ever present. These questions were at the core of a collaborative project, funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and administered by the University of Minnesota’s Charles Babbage Institute (CBI) Center for the History of Information Technology between 2003 and 2005. In this article, we describe a few of the methods, findings, and ideas for further exploration generated during “Documenting Internet2: A Collaborative Model for Developing Electronic Records Capacities in the Small Archival Repository.”
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    Interpreting Privacy: A Survey of the HIPAA Privacy Rule's Application in Archives and Precedents for Future Directions
    (Science, Technology, and Health Care Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists, 2007) Moore, Erik A.
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    Strategies for Implementing a Mass Digitization Program
    (Practical Technology for Archives, 2014-11) Moore, Erik A.
    In 2008, the University of Minnesota Archives developed a low-cost, in-house solution for routine mass digitization of university publications, reports, and records. The strategies offered in this paper highlight a practical program for the mass digitization of organizational archival records using a rapid capture process that is replicable regardless of the size or resources of the repository. It will review the establishment of the rapid capture workflow at the University of Minnesota Archives; provide details on how it functions, including equipment information, scanner settings, and workflow procedures; explain the selection process for scanning; describe how it has helped to create inreach opportunities; and finally, examine how it has changed not only daily operations, but the perspective on what it means to provide broad access to the collections.
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    We are what we collect, we collect what we are: Archives and the construction of identity
    (Society of American Archivists, 2000) Kaplan, Elisabeth
    This essay considers the role of archives and archivists against a backdrop of the contemporary debate on identity, illustrated by research on the establishment and early years of the oldest extant ethnic historical society in the United States-the American Jewish Historical Society-and the construction of American/Jewish identities. Recent intellectual debate has examined questions of national, ethnic, gender, class, and community identities, of individual and group identity, and of the formation of identity. A spectrum of positions has emerged from this debate. On one end, identity is viewed as "real," intrinsic to individuals and communities or even biologically based. On the other, identity is conceived of as social fiction, constructed culturally for political and historical reasons. On the whole, serious scholars have rejected the former view. Archivist5 should be cognizant of this fact because they are major players in the business of identity politics, whether they are conscious of it or not. Archivists appraise, collect, and preserve the props with which notions of identity are built. In turn, notions of identity are confirmed andjustified as historical documents validate their authority.