Accessibility course

When I first started working at Cultivate Learning, I was introduced to a short course that had been modified for our department on accessibility. It had originally been created for professors in Washington state, but because Cultivate Learning staff create resources for educators across the country, it’s understood that these resources need to be created with accessibility in mind. I decided to work on the course along with my other onboarding materials, and it proved to be very practical and helpful. 

The first portion of the course covered the basics: what accessibility is, why it matters, and the overlap and difference between accessibility and accommodation; types of disabilities and barriers; assistive technology; accessible design principles and universal design; and relevant laws and policies. I had some basic understanding of some of this content, but it was incredibly useful having so much of this foundational knowledge bundled together, along with lots of helpful additional links and resources. After reviewing this portion of the course, I felt like I had a much better understanding of accessibility, especially as it relates to educational contexts. 

The second part of the course dove into more specifics around the how of accessibility, focusing specifically on the creation of digital content. We covered information on how to create accessible Word documents, PDFs, PowerPoint presentation decks, videos, images, and websites. Some of this content was a review from when I took the HTML and CSS course in grad school. Since it had been a few years, I was definitely rusty, and it was great having the chance to put accessibility steps into practice with hands-on exercises. In particular, I had never made an accessible PowerPoint presentation before, and I learned where specific tools were located and factors to keep in mind (slide titles, element reading order, etc). I was able to learn more about the creation of helpful alt-text through seeing examples and trying it out myself, and it was drilled home how important the use of headings and structure is across so many different types of digital files. I also had the chance to add captions to a video, a first for me.

Screenshots of different orientation and support materials I created for our digital asset management system, which included both accessibility and universal design principles (upper left: PDF summary structured with headings, upper right and lower left: PowerPoint decks with written instructions and screenshots with alt-text, lower right: captioned narrated video).

Our final assignment for the course asked us to evaluate and commit to ways in which we could make our day-to-day work more accessible. I outlined how I would make email correspondence and documentation on our digital asset management (DAM) system and its surrounding protocol and policies accessible. I also committed to making training materials for our DAM system using both accessibility and universal design principles. I recently followed through with this through the creation of a set of multimedia orientation and support content for standard users of the system. This includes narrated videos, detailed written instructions with screenshots, and brief silent video clips on a range of topics about the system: an overview of what DAM is, a tour of the interface, as well as basics on how to search the system, share and download assets, and create virtual collections. All this content was bundled into PowerPoint decks and a PDF which contained links to all the materials, all of which was made as accessible as possible. It was a fun challenge to think through all of the aspects of this project and find as many ways to make this information clear and engaging. 

I’m grateful to have had the chance to take this course as part of my onboarding, as accessibility is key to my role in making information available to the folks who need it. I knew I was a novice around many of these issues, and while I have a much better understanding of some basics, these modules have fostered an even greater sense of curiosity and excitement around learning more. As is the case with so many factors and identities to be considered in fostering inclusion, lifelong learning and ongoing tangible application is necessary.

VRAF Workshop: Beyond Licenses

In January, I was able to attend the rescheduled workshop ‘Beyond Licenses: Integrating Creative Commons, RightsStatements.org, and Traditional Knowledge into Permissions,’ which was organized by the Visual Resources Association Foundation. My new role as digital asset specialist at Cultivate Learning involves managing a variety of rights and usage considerations, and this workshop was a helpful resource for refreshing some existing knowledge I had and learning more. The workshop description:

“Today’s visual resource professionals must understand that copyright is just one element of intellectual property rights and a multitude of “other” considerations that may need to be reviewed when undertaking licenses for reproductions of collection objects. This workshop will provide a baseline review of applicable intellectual property rights, including U.S. copyright law and the fair use limitation on exclusive rights, before delving into a deeper understanding for the potential integration of Creative Commons licenses, RightsStatements.org, and Traditional Knowledge labels with collection objects to expand existing permissions practices at galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs). Participants will be introduced to a variety of resources and examples to help guide them and their constituents in making appropriate decisions as they navigate evolving permissions practices, including Open Access initiatives, at GLAM institutions.”

Screenshot of a slide from the workshop, which provides the scope of what the right to privacy covers.

The workshop was presented from the perspective of visual resources professionals in the United States, though some differences were touched upon in regards to other countries’ rules and regulations. The instructor Anne Young went over in detail all the legal aspects of use we must consider: copyright, underlying rights, trademarks, patents, right to privacy, right to publicity, contractual restrictions, and licensing agreements. These issues are complicated on their own, especially when it comes to often murky copyright status with cultural heritage materials. Since Cultivate Learning works with a number of different organizations and grant bodies, copyright is an area I need to dig in more. I also need to spend some time with waivers and potential contractual restrictions, given that the majority of my organization’s assets depict or record individuals, and often minors. There is protocol and policy in place to handle this from the asset creation side of our workflow, and I want to ensure that the same thought and consideration is applied in the ongoing use and reuse of these assets. 

Screenshot of a slide from the workshop, which provides a definition of traditional knowledge labels.

I was particularly interested in the section of the workshop that dealt with some other considerations around use - namely those moral or ethical considerations like sensitive materials and traditional knowledge. In library school, some of my professors spent time discussing how our education and the institutions we’d work in privilege western notions of knowledge and ownership, and how these approaches exclude and fail Indigenous communities. This same issue surfaced in the workshop. As one small part of decolonizing our work, it’s clear that we need to take into account and apply traditional knowledge concepts. This includes collaborating with representatives from Indigenous communities in order to assign traditional knowledge (TK) labels where appropriate. Of course, this doesn’t make up for situations where institutions have acquired Indigenous materials without these communities’ consent, and as we learned in the workshop, these labels should only be assigned by representatives from these communities. But in cases like the one at Cultivate Learning - where our organization is providing shared access and use of a digital asset management system for a tribal community college’s photographs - the application of traditional knowledge labels makes sense. We also learned about cultural institution (CI) labels and how institutions may apply these as a way of inviting collaboration around description and TK labels with different communities.

Screenshot of a slide from the workshop, which provides a definition of cultural institution labels.

I’ve had a few opportunities to learn some basics around copyright while working in the field of archives and asset management, and this workshop was a fantastic chance to further distill and clarify this complex information. Especially since I’m in a new professional environment, it was helpful to review these considerations in this context. 

Goodbye to AIC

Almost six years to the day after starting working at the Art Institute of Chicago, I said farewell to the museum, my colleagues, and my job last month. It was a bittersweet goodbye, and it’s incredible to look back at everything that’s happened in that time and how much I’ve grown and evolved professionally. The institutional photographic collection will always hold a special place in my heart - it’s the collection that acted as a springboard for me to learn about collections care, preventive conservation, archival best practices, and reference services. I completed a graduate certificate and masters degree using the collection as an opportunity to get hands-on experience and apply what I was learning. And the collection itself was such a joy to work with - lots of mysteries but also so many gems. 

Silent video tour of the archives.

Black and white contact sheets from the archives.

Aside from the images I worked with on a daily basis, I think I’ll most miss working with so many talented, passionate, and thoughtful colleagues. Museum workers truly are a unique breed, and though it took some time to find community, my experience working at the museum completely transformed once I formed relationships with peers across the institution. This was especially true with equity work through Mass Action, through the changes in communication brought about by the pandemic, and through the unionization efforts. Museum staff make a museum, they are the museum, and I feel so fortunate to have worked alongside so many amazing folks. I hope the field as a whole can evolve to better support everyone.

Black and white photograph in the archive; image depicts a photographer on scaffolding in a gallery.

Silent video of a drawer of exhibition image catalog cards from the archive.

I’m moving on in order to better care for myself, and hopefully to make more of a positive and direct impact on the world around me. Perhaps someday I’ll return to museum work someday, but for now, I have lots to look forward to in the form of a new job and entirely new field to learn about: early childhood education. I am going to be working as the digital asset specialist for Cultivate Learning, which is part of the University of Washington. I’m excited to begin this fully remote job and this next chapter in my career.

Barbara Kruger: THINKING OF YOU. I MEAN ME. I MEAN YOU.

In September, the Barbara Kruger exhibition opened at the Art Institute, and I opted to visit during one of my bi-weekly visits to work at the museum on a day when it was closed to the public. The exhibit is not a retrospective, but features work Kruger has created over several decades and in a variety of media - from small photo collages to video to full room installations. The website for the exhibition states:

“For more than 40 years, American artist Barbara Kruger has been a consistent, critical observer of the ways that images circulate through our culture. Combining images with provocative text, Kruger uses direct address—along with humor, vigilance, and empathy—to expose and undermine the power dynamics of identity, desire, and consumerism. As shrinking attention spans collide with the voyeurism and narcissism that define contemporary life, her immersive installations and widely circulated pictures and words invite us to reconsider how we relate to one another. THINKING OF YOU. I MEAN ME. I MEAN YOU. encompasses the full breadth of her career—from early and rarely seen “pasteups” (works that use an analog technique for physically arranging a page’s contents with manual “cut and paste”) to digital productions of the last two decades. The presentation includes works on vinyl, site-specific installations, animations, and multichannel video installations…The exhibition at the Art Institute—collaboratively designed with the artist—interrogates the specific cultural context of our museum, as it transcends the traditional exhibition space and extends into the museum’s public spaces and the city beyond. Kruger’s work not only fills the entirety of the museum’s largest exhibition space, the 18,000 square-foot Regenstein Hall, but also occupies Griffin Court—an 8,000-square-foot atrium running the length of the Modern Wing—with new site-specific work. Kruger’s text and images address both the architecture and relational spaces throughout the museum—from the windows in the historic Michigan Avenue building and the Modern Wing to various public spaces, some of which will also feature an ambient soundscape. Kruger will additionally engage the surrounding cityscape, creating work for billboards, the Chicago Transit Authority, and Art on theMART, among other locations and organizations.”

Banners of Kruger’s work installed on the exterior of the museum.

Kruger work installed on the risers of stairs leading to Regenstein Hall in the Art Institute of Chicago.

I wandered around the museum to several of the locations where work was installed and spent the majority of my time in Regenstein Hall. The first gallery space immediately immerses you in Kruger’s work, with all of the walls and floor being completely covered in large text. Exploring the rest of the exhibit, each space had a different feel, especially varying when time-based media was installed. I was the only one in the exhibit, and the clear sight-lines to the large scale works and at times jarring audio felt overwhelming at times. It’s likely this experience changes significantly with visitors present. 

First gallery of Kruger’s work in Regenstein hall, with text wraps covering the walls and floor.

Video work by Kruger.

Photography collage by Kruger.

Two large-scale Kruger works hang on the walls of a gallery, with a text wrap covering the floor.

It was an interesting tour, and I left thinking about the content and messages of Kruger’s work, the tension between the messaging and the museum itself, and what visitors to the museum would make of the exhibit.

Two large-scale text works by Kruger hang in a gallery.

Two works by Kruger in a gallery; the piece on the right is a video piece.

Text wrap by Kruger covering a gallery wall.

Society of American Archivists Annual Conference 2021

The annual Society of American Archivists conference was once again held in a digital format this year. Given my feeling of burnout, I attended with the hopes that it would help reignite my interest in archival work. Fortunately, the conference did not disappoint!

It was wonderful to see so many sessions that seemed to be focused on two general themes: reparative description and community archives. These are both topics that I have been interested in and wanting to learn more about, and given the number of sessions that addressed issues around both, I feel as though I walked away with a variety of perspectives. 

Samip Mallick presenting during the session ‘Community Archives Collaborative: Transforming Archival Work with Community-based Archives.’ The quote on his slide underscores the importance of archival records to communities, especially those that aren’t a part of dominant culture.

The sessions that I attended (both synchronously and asynchronously) that looked at the possibilities for inclusive metadata practices included: Instituting Sustainable Reparative Work from Where We Are; Language Matters: NARA and LAC Tackle Reparative Description; Temporal Ties: Addressing Harmful Pasts, Towards Imagining Just Futures; Foundations for Culturally Competent, Racially Conscious Metadata; and Making Product Less Problematic: Considerations of MPLP and Conscientious Description. The panelists in each session represented a range of different institutions - from government agencies to university libraries to small archives. It was helpful to find common threads throughout much of the discussion:

• Understanding your positionality (race, class, gender, nationality, disability status, etc) and how personal identity terms are not neutral are critical aspects to being mindful about this work, and also acknowledging that even with the best intentions it is very possible to perpetuate harm, especially if you belong to dominant identities

• Starting somewhere, even with small or basic steps like remedying collection-level description; progress over perfection

• Knowing that as archivists we often won’t know everything and need to reach out to subject experts, who are almost always members of the communities represented in and/or created by our collections

• Seeking community collaboration - not only around terms but also what priorities should be - can help archivists to be more strategic and create paths forward

• Embracing the reality that this work is iterative and that our workflows and resourcing (staff, time, etc) should take this into account; programs not projects so that the work is sustained rather than one-off

• Accepting that we may use technology to aid in speeding up some of this work - using a script to identify lists of problematic or harmful terms in finding aids, for example - but that redescription requires human intervention and judgment calls

• Accepting that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to redescription and reparative metadata work

• Approaching the work with an ethic of care and cultural humility

• Leaving notes on what was changed or amended for future users and archivists, considering if/when it is appropriate to retain previous harmful or erasing description

Sam Winn presenting during the session ‘Foundations for Culturally Competent, Racially Conscious Metadata.’ The slide provides reflections on the politics of naming.

Betts Coup presenting during the session ‘Making Product Less Problematic: Considerations of MPLP and Conscientious Description.’ The slide suggests that there should be normalization of not knowing and that learning and change should be key components to archival work.

I’m still mulling over all these ideas, and how care is so critical to a seemingly straightforward practice like description. That human-centered focus was a central theme to the sessions on community archives, as well. These sessions included: Temporal Ties: Addressing Harmful Pasts; Considering the Power of Naming Practices in Community-Based Archives; and Community Archives Collaborative: Transforming Archival Work with Community-based Archives. Some of my takeaways from these conversations:

• Many communities have grappled with symbolic annihilation from archives, which is when you and your community is not represented in mainstream collections; as a result these individuals and communities’ relationships with “traditional” repositories may be strained

• Community-based archives can provide an antidote to the traditional archival model in enabling folks to own their stories and history - in all its variation - outside those traditional repositories; self-determination, cultural sovereignty, and agency are key

• Some community-based archives may opt to adopt a post-custodial approach so that the owners/creators of the materials are able to retain the originals and the archive can then provide access to and unify materials digitally 

• Community-based archives serve to help people process generational trauma and heal, and also connect with previous generations and reclaim heritage; these archives can be a way of finding home and a way of continuing to keep the culture going

• Community is complicated! Marginalized communities aren’t a monolith, and it’s always important to take power dynamics into account with interactions; what is our relationship to power and how do we use it?

• Community-based and driven archives aren’t just about a repository collecting materials from a community but rather can and should be about disrupting existing power structures, including but not limited to training community archivists and providing them with free archival materials

• Depending on the nature of the organization, community-based archives may benefit non-hierarchical organizational structure and consensus based decision making

• Aside from simply amassing and providing access to materials, community-based archives can be uniquely positioned to activate their collections through collaborations

Joyce Gabiola and Gabrielle Garcia presenting during the session ‘ Temporal Ties: Addressing Harmful Pasts, Toward Imagining Just Futures.’ The slide reviews their framework for creating an inclusive environment at their organization.

Dominique Luster presenting during the session ‘Foundations for Culturally Competent, Racially Conscious Metadata.’ The slide asserts that archives are not neutral and that cultural competency is key in archival work.

I feel like so much of the work discussed during the sessions I attended critically looked at dismantling dehumanizing power structures in archives. The field has a long way to go in acknowledging and repairing the harm that has been done, often under the guise of neutrality and professionalism. It is heartening to see more folks working in the field centering human-centered archival work. 

Bisa Butler: Portraits

While working onsite recently, I finally made the time to go visit the Bisa Butler: Portraits exhibition. Being able to visit any exhibition at the museum is a big perk of working there, but I haven’t often taken advantage of this. In fact, even before the pandemic hit, I likely hadn’t wandered around the galleries in months. It felt good to finally remedy this.

The Safety Patrol, the first work you see when entering the exhibition.

Gallery view of Bisa Butler: Portraits

Butler’s portrait works are absolutely beautiful. Color and texture, shape and pattern, viewing her works felt like a balm for this worn out museum worker. The media of the works - largely comprised of fabric - lends a physicality that really drew me in. And I loved the fact that so many of her pieces are based off of archival photographs of Black folks throughout history. The exhibition website has this to say about Butler’s art:

“She strategically uses textiles—a traditionally marginalized medium—to interrogate the historical marginalization of her subjects while using scale and subtle detail to convey her subjects’ complex individuality. Together, Butler’s quilts present an expansive view of history through their engagement with themes such as family, community, migration, the promise of youth, and artistic and intellectual legacies.”

Gallery view of Bisa Butler: Portraits

Gallery view of Bisa Butler: Portraits, including the work Southside Sunday Morning (left), one of my favorite pieces in the show. It’s based on a 1941 photograph by Russell Lee of a group of boys seated on the hood of a car on Easter morning.

I found myself standing and looking at each of the pieces for much longer than I often do artworks in galleries, taken with the faces of the subjects in particular. The museum was closed to the public on the day I visited, so the galleries were largely silent and empty. In one gallery, however, the museum’s public affairs coordinator was working with a Chicago-based photographer on a shoot. The photographer was collaborating with Butler - who had not yet arrived by the time I headed back to my office - on in situ portraits with some of her artworks. Living artists represent a small fraction of the museum’s collections holdings and exhibition subjects, so it was so satisfying seeing this connection between contemporary artists play out in the gallery. This brought Butler’s life to work for me even further. 

Dear Mama by Bisa Butler

Detail from Dear Mama

The Princess by Bisa Butler

Detail from The Princess

This experience reminded me of how powerful artwork can be and the necessity of taking time to enjoy exhibitions like this one.

Reference request: staff clothing in the 1980s

One reference request that did help get my mind off my frustration surrounding the treatment of workers and continued uneasiness about being onsite during the pandemic was from an individual working in costuming for a television show. They are working on wardrobe for an episode set at the museum during the 1980s and were inquiring whether staff working at the museum wore uniforms during this period, and what those outfits looked like if so. They were seeking reference images to help ensure historical accuracy, which I appreciate. 

One of my favorite topics of the archive I manage are images of staff and staff at work. I think it’s important to make the work of museums more visible, to help visitors understand how their experience is the result of many hands and choices, not some singular, neutral entity. So I was keen to dive in and explore staff from this decade. I had some ideas on what jobs may have required or lent themselves to uniforms - security guards, housekeeping staff, and groundskeeping staff, for example - so I began by doing keyword searches in our databases for these terms to find unique identifiers corresponding to images. I also searched the much more generic term of “staff.” From these results, I narrowed the search to images created during the 1980s. Then I began looking in the archive itself for images with the selected unique identifiers, since few of the negatives had been previously digitized. Since most of the images are organized roughly chronologically, I also perused neighboring negatives to see if there were any other relevant images. 

I found a variety of images that seemed to fit the request, so I digitized as many of these negatives and transparencies as I could while onsite. Staff who appear to have worn uniforms during this time included my original suspicions of security guards and housekeeping and groundskeeping staff. Included here too were facilities staff, carpenters, and some art handlers. Other behind-the-scenes office staff, including curators, collection managers, photographers, and editors, did not appear to wear uniforms; nor did docents. 

Transparencies showing staff at the museum who wore uniforms around this time period.

I’m forever thankful that photographers captured what they did, and that the archive has kept these images safe. Even if some of these images were considered unimportant or even boring at the time - and some may still think of them that way today - they still hold value in functioning as a snapshot of the time. In this case, the focus was the clothing, but these images can tell many stories. 

VRA Conference 2021

In March, I attended the annual Visual Resources Association conference, which was a virtual event. After a year of doing many things online, it felt fairly natural to return to my screen for the conference. It’s definitely more challenging making organic connections with others in this format, but I do appreciate that the organizers encouraged attendees to contribute to community notes documents and that most sessions were recorded. It can be difficult retaining all the information presented at events like this one, so I’m glad I can have materials to turn back to at a later date. 

The sessions I attended were great, and I was drawn in particular to those that centered people in the archives. The first of these was titled Cash Rules Everything Around Me:

“[this session] will gather a diverse range of GLAM professionals to discuss financial/compensation transparency and how it relates to the field. It will generate a fruitful discussion surrounding compensation at various points in one’s career and across the field at large. Everyone is encouraged to attend. Students and emerging professionals, in particular, will leave feeling empowered with strategies to navigate employment, and managers/administrators will gain insight into potential discrepancies and inequities.”

The conversation was moderated and organized by two members of the Equitable Action Committee and two additional members of the VRA. They began by presenting findings from a survey sent out to visual resources professionals regarding education and training, job advancement, pay and benefits, among other practical aspects of working in this field. Those who participated in the survey also had the opportunity to pass along advice to emerging professionals, and excerpts were shared during the session. The results of that survey can be found in the presentation slide deck. Next, a panel of folks with a lot of experience working in the field discussed their career paths, strategies for getting promotions and raises, and general tips on navigating employment in difficult times. There was a ton of helpful content shared, some of the notes I jotted down are below.

• Document anything you do that benefits work; this includes overtime, special projects, and professional development. This documentation can come in handy when asking for a promotion, raise, better benefits, and/or applying for new jobs.

• Start salary conversations before the end of fiscal year. Think of annual reviews as an opportunity for negotiation.

• Present salary justification information as a one page briefer to both your boss and HR.

• Prepare a script for discussing salary and benefits for a job offer. The script could include: thanks, here’s what I bring, here’s what my research has told me about what’s fair for a salary, maybe 1-3 more things in addition to salary if she isn’t asking for a lot more money (ex: 5 extra vacation days), “what are your thoughts on this?”

• Lots of public institutions have accessible databases where you can look at salaries for people with your job title or for the job title you are applying for. This is a valuable tool when you negotiate for a starting salary or raises.

• If a salary or salary range isn’t posted, ask for that information when scheduling an interview, as it wastes everyone’s time if there’s a misunderstanding about this.

• Talk to peers at your current institution (similar educational requirements, responsibility) and compare numbers to understand your current salary and benefits situation better.

• Research a potential employer and use professional networks to learn more. This can help you decide if the position might be a good fit and if you’ll receive adequate compensation.

• Negotiation strategies in COVID world: think about non-compensation things you can ask for - days off, flex schedule, etc

• Financial literacy is important especially if you don’t have much experience with it. Take advantage of any financial planning info provided through work

At conferences, it often feels like there’s a focus on the work professionals do, so it was a nice change of pace to see the focus shift to those doing the work. The field of visual resources is nothing without those doing the labor. I’m grateful for the folks who organized this session, and it seemed that those who attended were also glad to have a platform to talk about these issues.

Allie Scholten and a slide from her presentation ‘Remediating Records: Critical Cataloging and Keywork Reparation’ during the Emerging Voices Lightning Round session.

I also really enjoyed the Emerging Voices Lightning Round Session, organized the Visual Resources Emerging Professionals Committee, which:

“provides emerging professionals in the visual resources field and related, the opportunity to present topics from exceptional coursework, such as a master's thesis, or topics with which they are engaged early in their professional life. Emerging professionals are defined as either students in programs leading to a career in visual resources or related, or those within 10 years of the start of their career. Topics presented reveal new ideas as well as different ways of thinking about established concepts. Speakers will give the conference attendees a glimpse of interests and current discourses of the newest VRA members.” 

The slide deck for the five presenters can be found here. The emerging professionals who spoke were:

• Hilary Wang - Findings: A Survey on the State of Web Accessibility in Archives and Special Collections

• Cassie Tanks - “Can You Hear Me OK?”: Launching a Story Based Archive During COVID-19

• K. Sarah Ostrach - Photos from Taipei in Washington, DC: Processing a Chinese Collection at the National Gallery of Art

• Allie Scholten - Remediating Records: Critical Cataloging and Keywork Reparation

• Jack O'Malley - Protecting Employment and Building Capacity During a Crisis

All of the presentations were engaging. Even though I’m only barely out of the “emerging professionals” category, I still found it interesting to see what areas of the profession are being pushed and pulled - all for the better. In this lightning round too, there was a focus on people in archival settings, both those doing the work and those using the visual resources materials. I hope this focus propels the field forward.

Steven De'Juan Booth as the keynote speaker, sharing one image of President Obama and visitors to the Oval Office, part of the Obama Presidential Library collection.

The keynote session was titled the Afterlife of What We Archive, and it was presented by Steven De'Juan Booth:

“an archivist, researcher, and co-founder of The Blackivists, a collective of trained Black memory workers ​who provide expertise on archiving and preservation practices to communities in the Chicagoland area. His work and research interests include analog and born-digital audiovisual materials, Black cultural heritage preservation, community archives, and digital scholarship. He is currently the archivist/project manager of the Johnson Publishing Company Archive for the Getty Research Institute and the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

In 2020, Steven co-edited with Stacie Williams Loss/Capture, an editorial project exploring the state of Black cultural archives in and beyond Chicago, presented by Sixty Inches From Center, a Chicago-based arts publication and archiving initiative. ​He is currently working on a book project with Barrye Brown documenting the contributions and impact of African American archivists in SAA. He is also researching Black LGBTQIA spaces and newsletters published in the Midwest as sites and sources of knowledge production and sharing.  

Steven is part of a long lineage of Black information professionals who have matriculated from Morehouse College (BA in Music) and Simmons College (MS in Library Science). You can read more about his work on his website at http://www.stevendbooth.com/.”

He spoke about his journey to working in archives and how his experience working in the field has shaped his perception of what archives are and can be. I was drawn to his assertion that archives are as much about relationships (with donors, subjects, users, communities, fellow archivists) as they are about stuff - archives are about connection. This connection comes into play intrapersonally, and between individuals and their history and community. As such, radical empathy is key in archives. Archivists need to learn how to better talk to our communities in order to do this. We’re good at talking to other archivists but can’t always bridge the gap with folks who don’t have training in this field. And we need to spend more time listening with the understanding that sometimes users want to be heard without needing a concrete thing from the archives. He told some amazing stories about connecting with patrons to the Obama Presidential Library which clearly illustrated how to embrace this person-centered approach to the work. His talk was inspiring.

Kate Thornhill and a slide from her presentation ‘Decolonizing knowledge within Afro-Indigenous traditions‘ in the session Power and Respect: Giving Back IPR Rights to Vulnerable Communities.

The last session I’ll write about is Power and Respect: Giving Back IPR Rights to Vulnerable Communities:

“How can intellectual property rights be leveraged, documented, and framed in order to hold up the rights of vulnerable communities, provide repatriations to them, and ensure their data security? As curators, archivists, and librarians who participate in documenting future histories and hidden histories, how do we include marginalized communities into the documentation of their own visual media histories? For this VRA 2021 conference session, presenters who work in archives, digital scholarship, and museums will share techniques, methodologies, and policies that consider vulnerable communities ownership of intellectual property rights when building digital archives, digital collections, and digital humanities projects.”

A panel of four presenters discussed projects and work that navigated the boundaries of creation and ownership. These speakers were: Kate Thornhill on decolonizing knowledge within Afro-Indigenous traditions, April Hathcock on the Femifesto project, Meredith Hale on the Voices out loud project, and IP manager at San Francisco Museum of Art Sriba Kwadjovie Quintana who spoke about her experiences in that role and working with living artists.

Their presentations and the following discussion underscored how archivists and visual resources professionals need to - and in many cases are - shift away from the idea of our institutions as benevolent and rightful owners of all knowledge. Not all knowledge can and should be acquired, described, and be made accessible to all users. The wishes of creators and subjects of materials should always be centered, above the right of users’ access, especially when it comes to systemically, historically marginalized groups. I was drawn to the three pillars of the Femifesto project, as a means of summarizing what this type of relationship between communities and professionals can look like: (1) building relationships, (2) ethical cataloging and metadata creation, and (3) responsible sharing and accessibility.

The Q&A session at the end of the presentations resulted in some interesting dialogue around navigating care with creators and communities while working in institutional settings that are often more rigid, and how to handle individuals and communities in cases where legal protections are no longer in place. The panelists underscored that we operate in colonialist, capitalist systems - both at work and in our broader society. They stressed that we must acknowledge these realities, be transparent about processes and limitations, build trust and relationships, advocate for these groups, explore post-custodial models, and always consider ethics even if the law doesn’t come into play in any given situation.

These sessions and all the others that I attended at the conference gave me a lot to consider as I return to work. Though a lot of these issues don’t come up in my current role, given the limitations of working with an institutional collection, it is likely these scenarios may be more relevant in future positions. And ultimately, the overarching idea that people matter as much, if not more, than the “stuff” in our collective stewardship, is an important one to carry back to any job in this field.

Accessibility & Archives

One of the ways that I’ve been passing the time while being furloughed is attending workshops and webinars on topics of interest to me. Some of these have focused on technology in the field of image management and archives, and some have focused on decolonizing and creating racial equity in the GLAM field. I have also attended sessions focused on accessibility: Accessible Design for the NYC Digital Humanities (NYCDH) week and Reimagining Access: Inclusive Technology for Archives & Special Collections an IMLS funded symposium hosted by ArtCenter College of Design. This is one area of equity work which I haven’t spent as much time with, and both sessions were incredibly helpful.

THE NYCDH workshop focused on accessibility on the web. The presenter Heather Hill first provided some foundational information on accessibility more broadly, explained why folks in digital humanities should be concerned with this, then gave an overview of universal design and some of its limitations. Since no one approach to accessibility will be perfect for every individual, I really appreciated these takeaways:

• Remain flexible and adaptive

• Universal design is a process, not a goal

• We are trying to move in the right direction

Next, Hill covered basic concepts of accessible design in the web, including the structure and design, theme, and content of websites and digital experiences. We had the chance to learn about specifics, including the impact of proper heading and subheading usage for those using screenreaders, the importance of keyboard shortcuts for those navigating primarily by keyboard rather than a mouse, and how distracting features like automatic playing videos or audio can be distracting for some neurodivergent folks. 

The last portion of the workshop provided time for all the participants to test out a few of the accessibility tools that are available for evaluating websites: HTML CodeSniffer, WAVE, Tota11y, W3C HTML checker and CSS checker, and SortSite. My group took a look at the HTML CodeSniffer. It was overwhelming at first decoding the errors, warnings, and notices. After spending some time experimenting, it became clear how much helpful information the tool provides: it points to the location on the page that doesn’t align with the W3C recommendations for accessibility, it links to the specific W3C recommendation that’s being violated, and it provides the corresponding snippet of code for the offending issue. One of my graduate courses covered web accessibility for one lesson - which is hardly enough - and this workshop demonstrated to me how much more I have to learn. Fortunately, the presenter provided copies of her slides and additional resources so I can continue to dive into these issues.

The same day, the ArtCenter College of Design hosted its symposium on accessibility in archives and special collections. The first speaker, Joshua Halstead, discussed design logics and paradigms, and how the framing of disability matters. He discussed the established (medical, functional limitations, social, minority group) and emerging (critical disability theory, disability justice, political/relational model) approaches to disability and how these different models impact design. He looked at different approaches to disability and design - through the lens of universal design, adaptive design, inclusive design, and critical design - and asserted that there is the potential for disability design to extend beyond just the immediate and practical to positively impact everyone. His talk underscored the idea that there are no stable definitions or universals when thinking about disability, and that we need to take this into account when thinking about design.

The following discussion featured members of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Accessibility and Disability Section: Michelle Ganz, Dr. Lydia Tang, and Sara White. They provided a history of SAA’s efforts in creating guidelines for accessibility and an overview of the revised document, which is much more expansive and inclusive in its definition of disabilities - including vision, movement, hearing, communication, interaction, and mental health disabilities. The new guidelines cover core values, effective communication, the physical environment, public services, exhibitions and public programming, workplace accessibility, and digital content. It was helpful to learn about specific examples of how recommendations were being implemented in real world scenarios - installing variable height desks and chairs in reading rooms, and using supporting audio via sound domes for exhibitions - in order to understand how practically drafted SAA’s guidelines are. I will definitely be spending more time with this document.

The last portion of the symposium I was able to attend was dedicated to perspectives from archivists, users and designers with a range of disabilities: Michelle Ganz, Dr. Jeffrey Swada, and Sara White. They shared with attendees their personal experiences navigating archives and libraries as researchers and as employees. Dr. Swada presented a series of videos of his screenreader reading several archival repository websites, digital portals, and finding aids. Through his discussion, he provided some invaluable tips on how to help tools like this one more clearly and effectively present digital information. It is common to see a focus on accessibility in this field on patrons, so it was a welcome addition to get the perspective of staff navigating accessibility issues, as well. Ganz and White talked about the ways in which their disabilities intersected with and impacted working with larger teams, and ways in which they and other disabled archivists have faced discrimination. While the field is making some progress, it’s clear that we have much work to do. And I’m so thankful for those who shared their lived experiences, so that we all might better understand how inaccessible archives and libraries often are so we can make necessary changes.

These sessions have been reminders of what I enjoy and care about working in archives and archives-adjacent positions, they’ve been helpful chances to find grounding and connection while I’m away from work. Ultimately, I want to connect folks with information that is useful and of interest to them, and accessibility is core to that. And critically, this work should be infused with an ethic of care. Learning about the experiences of other folks is one important step to that end. 

Onsite visits to the museum during COVID-19

My first trip back to the museum for work happened in mid-September, and I’ve been back once a month since then. Core essential staff have been required to be onsite since the closure - teams including security, facilities, and housekeeping. Over the summer, limited additional teams whose work required them to be on campus were allowed to return in a controlled manner. This coincided with institution-wide layoffs and restructuring. I kept my job, but was moved to a new department. Regardless, both my old and new departments were permitted to return onsite. And so, to date, I’ve made three trips back to the museum.

The first trip back marked six months since the majority of the museum started working remotely. I had quite a few reference requests that required access to our card catalog and physical archives, so this took up a substantial portion of my time. I also ensured that the collection was generally intact, and that there were no glaring environmental or other condition issues that needed attention. I wrapped up the trip by gathering some information about the collection itself for my old department’s standard operating procedures manual - documentation that’s proven to be helpful in the transition to my new department.

The second and third trips back felt slightly less frenzied in pace. Given the shorter time between these visits, far fewer reference requests had built up. This meant that I had time to turn to another project: digitizing our exhibition documentation catalog cards. Totalling roughly three drawers, these cards hold information for which exhibitions at the museum were documented between the early 1900s and 1970s. After this time, this information was captured digitally in a series of databases for the department. I managed to get through the digitization of all 3,000+ cards. 

Since queries for exhibitions are common, my hope is that the digitized cards will be a useful reference for me and other staff. But to make access even easier, I plan on transcribing the exhibition titles and unique identifiers for the corresponding negatives or transparencies. And to facilitate future plans for the comprehensive digitization of all these photographic materials, and to link the images with the exhibition records in our collections management system, I aim to link the archive’s unique identifiers with the exhibition record IDs. In turn, this should result in many more archival images on the exhibition portal of the public website.

I’ve struggled with the idea that non-essential organizations like our museum should open, given the very real risk of COVID in our city, state, and country. The museum has recently been forced by our governor to close the museum to the public given the surge in cases leading up the holidays, though this closure does not apply to staff. I feel extraordinarily lucky to have been able to set my own schedule for returning to work, and I wish that this was the case for everyone. I hope that the exhibition documentation catalog card project can provide additional work for museum staff working remotely, especially if we return to a broader closure of the campus. It’s hard to anticipate what the future will bring these days, but I’m grateful to still be employed, to have found ways of doing my work, and for all the support and camaraderie of my colleagues. 

VRA EAC community hours, Institutional Responses to BLM

In April, I joined the Visual Resource Association’s (VRA) Equitable Action Committee (EAC). This group evolved from the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee in fall of 2019, and is now tasked to:

“Advance and support an equitable, diverse, accessible, and inclusive association. With critical reflection and a steady eye on the future, this committee seeks to strengthen the association’s membership by welcoming, embracing, and supporting historically marginalized people, voices, and narratives. The committee also aims to educate and empower the association’s membership on issues of accessibility and disability inclusion opportunities. This committee will advise the Executive Board on creating equitable and inclusive practices.”

I wanted to join the committee because this work is critical, and I wanted to do this work outside my workplace. MASS Action and the fairly newly formed Equity Working Groups at the museum have been great opportunities for staff to push for necessary change and support each other through our individual learning and growth. I wanted to find a similar community outside our institution’s walls, especially given the limited capacity in which we’ve been able to do this work since the museum shuttered in March. This group has been really amazing in all those and so many more capacities. The co-chairs and other members are all wonderful, kind, and dedicated folks working in the broader visual resources field. 

The committee has organized a set of regular online discussion forums called community hours, in order to support professionals working in the field. Since April 2020, they’ve hosted community hours around topics including: employee and student privacy during the pandemic, setting remote work boundaries, examining gaps in support, critical cataloging, and professional development. These have varied in format from more traditional presentations and Q&A to looser discussions with some guiding prompts. Folks in VRA and beyond have been welcomed to come as they’re interested and available, and community-generated notes are available for all on the EAC’s website. Feedback has been positive for these events.

Given the mission of EAC, after the murder of George Floyd and resulting uprisings, the committee decided that we wanted to address racial equity in the visual resources field. The proliferation of racial equity statements coming from museums, archives, and libraries seemed like a good place to start. So we opted to organize two community hours around these statements: one looking at the responses of institutions from a communication perspective, and a second looking at concrete action that has or has not come from supposed commitments to racial justice.  

I gathered readings, developed prompts, and co-moderated these sessions, with the support (housekeeping announcements, screen and closed caption sharing, note taking) of our co-chairs. I’m not comfortable speaking in front of more than a couple of people, so I’m thankful to have worked with other members of the committee on this. Given the need for conversations around racial equity, and holding our respective institutions accountable, I knew I needed to set my discomfort aside to contribute to these community hours.

Both of the sessions drew around 20 participants, largely VRA members, and there was good dialogue and discussion. It was helpful to learn what other museums, archives, and libraries were or were not doing, especially to discover whether public statements were aligning with concrete anti-racism actions. The sessions provided space for folks to bring issues they were facing at work, and for resources to be shared around racial equity and anti-racism broadly and in our professional field.

The first conversation started with some guiding prompts as a jumping off point for further discussion. For the second session, we opted to turn some of the discussion prompts into poll questions to allow those joining to participate in a different format. We recognized that some joining may not have felt comfortable adding to either the chat or speaking up - even though these sessions are not recorded for the privacy of attendees - based on fear of voicing criticisms of their employer, discomfort in talking about racism and white supremacy, and/or discomfort in participating in group settings (or something else altogether!). 

I struggled during both sessions - with long pauses between written or verbal comments, with finding the “right” words and being an “effective” co-facilitator, and with wanting the sessions to be meaningful and helpful to those joining. I recognize that a lot of this is wrapped up in my own perfectionism (a characteristic of white supremacy culture), white fragility, and white silence. And I also recognize that my own desire to support tangible change and brainstorm plans for action are driven by urgency (again, a characteristic of white supremacy) and a general need to “fix” problems rather than to sit with difficult feelings. Since these community hours are community-driven, participants steered the conversation towards holding space for one another. And that’s ok, and it’s ok that I struggled. 

More than anything, I hope those who attended got something out of the sessions, that those who looked at the shared notes gleaned something from them, and that folks feel perhaps a little more empowered to do what they can to dismantle racism and white supremacy where they find it, including in our workplaces. We’re all learning and growing together, and sessions like these are just one step in that process. 

SAA Annual Conference 2020

As with all the other changes that COVID-19 has brought about, another has come in the form of conferences and symposium being shifted to virtual events. I had been looking forward to the Society of American Archivists’ annual conference, which was slated to take place in Chicago this summer. Instead, it took place online. Though it was definitely a different experience than comparable in-person conferences I’ve attended in the past, it was still full of great sessions.

There were a number of sessions that focused on diversifying archives, and I took away so much from these presentations and following discussions. The first plenary from Tempestt Hazel of Sixty Inches from Center dove into artists of color in Chicago and the grassroots effort of the organization to amplify, advocate for, and archive the work of these communities. Hazel spoke to the long tradition of gatekeeping in archives and the need to break down these barriers in order to collaborate with individuals often underrepresented in traditional repositories. I absolutely loved one of her closing thoughts that we should all work to create “a future that works for all of us not just some of us.”

I also attended the session ‘Beyond Diversity Initiatives: Nontraditional and Student-centered Approaches to Recruiting BIPOC into Archives and Special Collections Librarianship,’ which was described as following:

The purpose of this pop-up session is to discuss how Special Collections and Archives departments in academic libraries can provide mentorship and viable/meaningful professional development opportunities for BIPOC. Despite the growing focus on diversity and recruitment by library schools and institutions like SAA, ALA, ACRL among others, BIPOC not only remain underrepresented in the field, but many continue to encounter barriers within library cultures. As many diversity initiatives often focus on current LIS students or those with expressed interest in the profession, this panel will discuss how institutions can leverage their strengths to build and foster diversity programs aimed to recruit prospective undergraduate and graduate students, and library staff and student workers into the profession.

Based on critical pedagogy, and nontraditional and student-centered approaches, the Cal State LA Special Collections & Archives Student Assistant Program is designed to support and mentor students with potential in the field. Cal State LA is one of the largest and most diverse campuses in the CSU system and is uniquely positioned to recruit students into the profession by embedding community-centered archival practices into primary source instruction, outreach and reference services, and the library student worker experience. Topics discussed by the panelists will include: fostering and mentoring students; intentional engagement; student outreach; developing student agency; and the panelists' personal experiences navigating the profession.

The presenters provided some contextual information about the field, and the stubborn pattern of archivists being predominantly white. They outlined how they are working to welcome more BIPOC students to the profession through the Special Collections & Archives Student Assistant Program. They designed this experience to be student-centered and led, constructivist in pedagogical approach, with an emphasis on mentorship and creating tailor-fit projects. The idea presented that we need to implement diversity intentionally and as a priority, beyond just our mission statements, really resonated with me. 

Next, I attended the session ‘Showing Up: Community Engagement Events Toward a Better Cultural Record,’ which featured speakers from a number of institutions and addressed the ways in which repositories can engage with their local communities:

Increasingly, archives venture outside their walls to engage with community partners to create and amplify records of groups whose stories hadn't been previously collected. While building these collaborative relationships is time-consuming and demanding, it is imperative and rewarding too. This panel will explore the centrality of community partnerships in the diversification of the archival record, featuring programs that have hosted grant-funded community engagement activities to create and collect documentation of historically underrepresented groups.

Included were discussions about how an Indianapolis repository connected with African American communities in the area to form a new digital collection showcasing the community’s history, how a repository at a university in Northwest Ohio forged new ties with the Islamic community to bolster that collecting area, and a collaboration between the American Indian Center and a partnering university to support the AIC’s archive. Each of the presenters provided information on both the ways in which they grew these partnerships, and logistical and practical aspects of the work (copyright, digitization equipment, workflow, etc). Given the long history of archival repositories either excluding non-dominant cultures or taking materials from these communities with paternalistic intentions, it was refreshing to hear how some archivists are approaching these relationships differently today. Co-creation and co-ownership can and should be at the core of this work.

SAA also organized a ‘Diversity Forum: Black Lives and Archives Strategy Session,’ which was described as follows:

The Council of the Society of American Archivists released a statement on June 2, 2020, in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Council unanimously condemns harassment and violence against the Black community in this statement and calls for a space “for constructive discussion toward progressive change in the archival profession and true inclusivity of the archival record…” The 2020 Diversity Forum, hosted by SAA’s Diversity Committee, seeks to provide a collective space for SAA members to reflect on the statement and brainstorm ideas about creating change from top to bottom within SAA, with a particular emphasis on ensuring accountability to reduce harm to Black and brown people and begin repairing centuries of violence committed against Black people in our society and in our profession.

During the session, we split into groups and addressed specific paragraphs within the SAA’s statement. We were asked to consider: (1) what actions can you imagine in support of this statement, (2) what resources (time, labor, money) are needed to accomplish change in this area, and (3) what would accountability look like. Support for BIPOC archivists in the form of honorarium or other payments, bolstering of peer groups, and tailored training for coping in predominantly white spaces all surfaced as ideas to support the paragraph we reviewed. The group also identified the necessity of training for white archivists on white privilege and white supremacy, as well as active anti-racist work within the field. Our group also thought that best practices and revised standards could play a role as it related to credentialing in the field, and to core aspects of archival work like description. Ultimately, for the archival field to reflect our wider BIPOC society in our staffing, collections, and patrons, this work needs to be a priority, funding needs to be dedicated to the work, and we should include more BIPOC folks in these conversations to help us figure out how to go about doing this. 

I attended a number of other sessions, and have barely begun scratching the surface of the dozens of asynchronous sessions SAA released for the conference. While I miss having been able to experience this event live and in person, I’m glad that folks were still able to come together and to do so safely. Given the other crises we collectively face, especially racial justice, it was heartening to see speakers address issues head-on. There is no simple fix to any of the challenges we face in this professional field or beyond, but I hope conferences like this one can be the spark or support individuals need to carry out this work in their repository and community.

Shifting to remote work, part 2

I have been fortunate in some regards, as much of my daily work in our department was fairly easily translated into remote work, especially after I gained access to our servers. I have encountered roadblocks attempting to help staff and the public with reference requests - a substantial portion of our physical image archives have yet to be digitally cataloged or imaged, so they are inaccessible. My work assisting with the development of our department’s new order management system and museum’s new digital asset management system have continued during this time. I have created new keyword lists, a data dictionary for all museum users, and have spent a good bit of time testing functionality and reviewing existing documentation. So too has my own work improving documentation about the physical and digital archive - in the form of a completely revised section of our departmental standard operating procedures and revised protocol for metadata creation and quality control, for example.  

Our department was still hosting an intern when we transitioned to remote work, and my co-mentor and I had to adjust quickly in order to continue to support this student. While we no longer had the chance to continue archives digitization and photography studio work, we are able to shift our focus in order to continue providing learning opportunities. We met weekly and discussed ideas surrounding work in libraries, archives, and museums. These conversations were organic, and it was a welcome standing meeting on my calendar. Staff across our department also created a series of presentations on different topics: my co-mentor provided a walk-through of how to edit photographs she and the intern had worked on together, another staff member provided a deep dive into complex image editing in Photoshop, and I provided one on metadata and another on cultural heritage imaging standards and quality control. This was certainly not the ideal outcome for this internship - effectively cut short by a pandemic - but it was encouraging to know we could still connect. I hope we’ll be able to welcome our intern back someday soon, once we are no longer living in a socially-distanced world, to give this student a proper thank-you for all her hard work.

In July, new changes came in the form of layoffs and a museum-wide restructuring. My role shifted and title changed, and I became a part of the newly reimagined Research Center. I will now be a part of a centralized Archives unit, that is comprised of the Art, Architecture, and Design collection, Institutional Archives, and the Imaging Archives. Given my need to continue focusing on physical and born digital materials created by the Imaging team, I will still work closely with my old department. There are still many questions that remain about what this change will look like and how I’ll work with my colleagues. But if I’ve learned nothing else in 2020, it’s that I need to take things one day at a time.

Watching this small garden grow has been grounding

Abruptly adjusting to working remotely during a pandemic has been challenging. It has been hard balancing the realities of life outside of work with the needs and demands of our museum. If nothing else, I am glad to be learning and growing both because of and in spite of what we’re collectively facing. I feel fortunate to have retained my job (so far). I sincerely hope that our institution, our field, and our society as a whole can recover from this reality.

Shifting to remote work, part 1

On March 13, the museum where I work made the announcement that it would be closing for the next two weeks due to COVID-19. This decision came after several weeks of mounting cases of the virus in the US. Commuting by public transit, I felt increasingly nervous during this time - apparently so too did many staff, as our leadership emailed the day prior to the announcement about our concerns expressed via the museum’s all staff email account. It became much more clear how real the situation was when word came that week of the Metropolitan Museum of Art opting to shutter temporarily. It felt like a matter of time before our museum did the same.

That Friday, we arrived at work with notice from our division head that we should begin creating a contingency plan for our department, just in case, that would cover: what equipment or resources we would need access to in order to work remotely; what work would need to be put on hold; and what projects we could turn our attention to while out of the office. Since our department was without a department head, the other manager and I turned our attention to building out a plan with our team. While there was no official word yet that the museum would be closing, it seemed best to prepare as if that were the case. Staff began gathering files onto external harddrives, requesting access for museum-owned laptops in order to get VPN access, and tending to any tasks they could only do while on site. Word finally came late in the afternoon that the museum would indeed be closing for two weeks.

Given the nature of our department’s work - photographing and managing the images that document the collections, exhibitions, people, and daily events at the museum - we knew that it would be difficult, if not impossible to translate much of this to remote working. The other manager and I had developed a list of items we could accomplish, namely working on documentation for various aspects of our work and boosting professional development. These two areas had repeatedly fallen by the wayside as a steady stream of high priority projects and a shrinking department kept the entire team busy. We broke these categories down with subtasks and proceeded to prioritize each to create a general plan. 

We also started to generate some “norms” for communication and check-ins. Given the highly collaborative nature of much of our department’s work, we knew it would be a substantial adjustment needing to proactively reach out to communicate with colleagues. We opted to set a standard for daily “stand-up” meetings at the start, to allow a forum for folks to connect, and to help provide guidance on what to do or troubleshooting on technology issues. As a second part of these meetings, we also tagged on a reading and discussion group. These would be focused around an article, white paper, video, or some other media that related in some way to our work. One staff member would be the leader and facilitate the discussion, all other staff would participate in the conversation. This responsibility would rotate among all staff on the team.

The following Monday, we all began working remotely, most of us for the first time ever while employed at the museum. Our daily meetings took up an hour to two hours daily in the first couple of weeks. Folks started easing into the documentation work our department had long put off. As we got the news from our leadership that the shutdown would continue for at least the next month, we spread our meetings out and reduced the frequency of our reading and discussion groups. Our stand-up meetings took on a concrete agenda, with prompts for each staff member to respond to: what have you been working on, what are you planning on working on, and what’s been keeping you busy outside of work? The team then dove into any questions we might want to get clarity on from leadership, specific technology issues we were facing, and resources we could share with one another. We also gained some breathing room around the projects we wanted to focus on - instead of needing to get this work done in two short weeks, we had much more time to reflect, write, and revise. 

Views from my home office.

As the weeks turned into months, we have continued to iterate on how we gather as a team, how often we do this, and the time we meet. We have also embraced flexibility as it relates to working on documentation. We have moved deadlines, shifted responsibilities, and allowed other unanticipated work to take the center stage when necessary. It has been challenging to juggle all this, especially in a completely new and largely unplanned for context. But it has been encouraging to see our department come together in ways we never previously had, to see staff more comfortable with expressing their opinions and asking for adjustments. It feels like we have all grown from this experience, difficult though it has been.

Virtual MLIS graduation

I graduated with a Masters of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from San Jose State University’s (SJSU) iSchool program in May 2020. I started this program back in January 2018, and this time felt like it went by in the blink of an eye. I went into my courses not knowing what to expect, but I’ve walked away having gained so much - breadth and depth of knowledge about information science, practical information for archival and digital asset management work, and new friends and mentors. Working full-time while taking two classes each semester was challenging, but I feel so fortunate to have put much of what I’ve learned to use in my job.

Celebrating digitally

Due to COVID-19, the in-person graduation ceremony for SJSU was postponed, and our ceremony was held online. Additionally, the iSchool created a website to gather information about the graduating class, award recipients, and the virtual graduation ceremony. Here’s my page on the iSchool website. Both venues - while not a 1:1 replacement for an in-person experience - provided a sense of closure and an opportunity to reflect and celebrate, which I appreciated. My family had the chance to attend the virtual ceremony, even while living hundreds of miles away, and it was great to surprise them with the news that I had received the Director’s Award for Excellence in Intellectual Inquiry.

Student speaker Sharaya Olmeda

Dr. Sandra Hirsh, the Associate Dean for Academics, College of Professional and Global Education provided the welcome address for the virtual convocation. She provided information about the history of SJSU’s iSchool as well as some features of this program being fully online, especially the ability to connect with students across the globe. Next, Dr. Ruth Huard, the Dean, College of Professional and Global Education, gave the Dean’s address. It felt affirming to hear her talk about human-centric approaches to information, and how our work can create community. Sharaya Olmeda, the recipient of the Ken Haycock Award for Exceptional Professional Promise and the student speaker, also discussed the potential for information to empower, build, and create unity among our communities. I had the chance to partner with Sharaya in a group project for our Information Retrieval Systems course in our first semester of the program - it was so wonderful to see her recognized for her hard work, and to hear her (incredibly inspiring!) perspectives on our field. She also pointed to our program being 100% online as making our cohort of roughly 600 graduating MLIS and MARA students being uniquely poised to help our communities adapt to a virtual world.

View of graduation in a time of COVID-19

The last speaker was Julius Jefferson, the graduation speaker, section head of the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress, and ALA President from 2020-2021. He underscored some of the ideas Dr. Huard and Sharaya discussed - that we can make a difference and information professionals and that we are prepared to thrive in a digital world. He also recognized our class for the challenges we have experienced in wrapping up our master’s degrees while facing the realities of COVID-19. I appreciated his thoughts on how information professionals are essential workers, because of the critical role of accurate, authoritative information in today’s always-changing world. This paralleled his assertion that librarianship (and information work more broadly) is a practice given the evolving nature of the work, and that ongoing professional development is key to understanding how to help our communities. As our professors have told us all along in this program - lifelong learning is important! He also touched on our global responsibilities, that human rights and information services go hand in hand, and that we need to integrate social justice in our work. Each of the speaker’s remarks and the virtual graduation ceremony as a whole was grounding for me, given our uncertain, troubled times. It felt nice to look to the future optimistically. 

I was hesitant to pursue a master’s degree for a lot of reasons, even though many friends and mentors in the field suggested this would be my best bet moving forward in my career. I am so happy I decided to take the leap, in spite of the long nights and weekends spent working on group projects, research projects, and coding assignments. I know I’ve grown so much as a result of this program, and I’m excited to see where my career path goes from here.

Hosting an intern & MoCP field trip

This winter and spring, my department is hosting a wonderful intern, and one of the other managers and I have been co-mentoring her. We’ve based our curriculum for her time with us on the life of an image - the core functionality of our department - photography creation, image editing, metadata creation, and image management. In addition to getting hands-on experience in these different aspects of our daily work, we’ve also arranged a few field trips. The first was a behind-the-scenes look at the museum’s Thorne Miniature Rooms, since our intern is working to digitize archival material from that collection (amazing drawings of some of the furniture!). 

One of the Thorne Miniature Rooms

Our second trip took us to the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) just down the road from us. My fellow co-mentor worked at MoCP while she was in college, so she clued me into the fantastic offerings they have for scheduling a visit. In addition to viewing the rotating exhibits on display, visitors can request exhibition tours and print viewings. For the print viewings, which is the option we went with for our field trip, the curators have pulled together groups of prints around different themes. We selected two of these print collections: alternative processes and techniques, and picturing Chicago. When the staff who facilitated our discussion heard that we were coming from the Art Institute of Chicago, they ended up pulling additional selections - which was so wonderful!

The majority of our department ended up tagging along on our field trip, as did an intern and fellow from the Photography department and a staff member from the Publishing department at the museum. We began our visit by spending some time in the exhibit on display, In Real Life, which was thought-provoking:

“As the powerful technology behind artificial intelligence grows more sophisticated, machines have developed the capacity to not only capture images but to “see” them as well. In Real Life is an exhibition seeking to examine the real-world impact of computer vision—from the murky ethics of data collection and surveillance to the racial and gender biases that abound in facial recognition technology.

Through the lens of seven artists working with a range of digital media, In Real Life presents works that grapple with the fraught relationship between humans and technology, with an emphasis on the social and aesthetic ramifications of machine “seeing.” With a charged underpinning of human biases, these pieces, many of which were generated through algorithmic technology, present a speculative near-future wherein the socio-political consequences of AI have already begun to compromise how we visualize the world—and our humanity.”

Installation of works from In Real Life

We then gathered in the instructional space upstairs with a couple of MoCP staff and the prints. They invited us to take a closer look, and we then dove into conversations about each of the prints - the materiality and process, the concept, the history, and more. Given the range of types of photography, from straight documentary to highly conceptual, there was a lot of great discussion around each of the works. It felt like being back in art school in some ways, and I really enjoyed our time spent together viewing and talking about the prints.

We wrapped up our trip with a tour of some of their collection storage space, a lucky bonus since we were coming from another museum! The staff were gracious enough to tour us around and talk about some of the other prints that are in the museum’s collection. Our intern let us know that she enjoyed this part of the field trip in particular, and as someone who nerds out about collection storage space, my heart grew after hearing this.

Some of my favorite spaces in libraries, archives, and museums are where all of the materials are stored

I can’t believe this was my first trip to MoCP, after living in Chicago for 10 years. It certainly won’t be my last visit, though! A huge thanks to all the staff there, and to my co-mentor, for making this visit possible.

College Art Association 2020 conference

The College Art Association (CAA) held its annual conference in Chicago this year, and I was one of the fortunate staff who was able to attend from my museum. While many of the sessions were geared more towards those working in academia - especially college professors in arts and art history - I went to a number of sessions that dealt with photography, archives, and technology.

The role of photography in Los Angeles’ redevelopment

The first such session was entitled ‘Documenting Community Change,’ which addressed tension between renewal and preservation through a photographic lens. There were four panelists who presented - Documenting Urban Change as a Civil Wrong: A Case of Photographic Evidence in the Construction of the New York City Subway; Framing the Formless: Photography’s Urban Renewal in 1940s Los Angeles; A Pioneering Experiment: Documenting Urban Renewal in Hyde Park, Chicago; and The Bottom: The Interstate and Highways Defense Act & Segregation in Baton Rouge. The first presentation provided a wonderful early case study of how photography can be used in the court of law. The transcripts of the court proceedings underscored how photography may be conceived as evidence, as facts, and how subjectivity and creativity may obscure this objectivity. This feels like a challenge we still face today in how we conceive of lens-based images. The second and third presentations looked at cases where photography was an integral - and once again biased - way in which groups (a government branch or a university, in these cases) make their case for sweeping change. In both cases, photography was a tool used to “document” urban blight, and in Los Angeles, photo composites and graphic design then functioned as a stand-in to show what could replace this blight. The final presentation looked at a contemporary example of documenting shifting landscapes. This project featured community participation and demonstrated the power of lens-based media when it isn’t being used to capitalize off its subjects. I walked away from this session thinking a lot about photography, the photographic archive, and how viewers and researchers create meaning from images.

Transcript of court proceedings featuring discussion of the limitations of photography as evidence

I also attended a session organized by the Visual Resources Association (VRA) - ‘Hands-on to Eyes-on: From Material Collections to Digital Exhibitions.’ Each of the presenters discussed the ways in which their institutions have leveraged special collections in classrooms at their colleges or universities. At Minneapolis College of Art and Design, for example, there is an object library of raw materials, replicas, original historic materials, tools, and pigments that art history professors can integrate into lectures. This allows students to more fully understand artwork as objects - materiality, process, creation - in conjunction with intellectual and aesthetic aspects of artwork. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago features a related teaching collection in the form of a textiles resource center - with 400 objects and 2,000 supporting books - and fashion collection - with 1,400 garments and accessories, and supporting videos and books. While these materials are fairly accessible to students, and staff managing these collections are actively digitizing and creating robust metadata to increase access. The last presentation brought in staff and faculty from the University of Chicago to discuss how the university has leveraged its art museum, the Smart Museum of Art, to incorporate hands-on curatorial training for students. Over the course of two quarter-long classes, university students had the chance to design and install an exhibit around a topic of the group’s choice, work that included: proposing theme ideas, combing the Smart Museum of Art’s collection for pieces to include, and generating interpretive text. The students functioned as a curatorial cohort and worked directly with museum staff on all aspects of the exhibit. It was fascinating to hear about the collaboration - the ways in which the museum benefited from the students’ insights, especially as it related to how objects were categorized in their catalog, and the ways in which the students were exposed to a range of work in the field. It is exciting to think about all the potential in archive, library, and museum collections, and how these materials can be used in educational contexts.

Special fashion and textiles collections at SAIC

Two sessions I attended towards the end of the conference dove into the role of technology in digitized and digital collections. In ‘Beyond the Algorithm: Art Historians, Librarians, and Archivists in Collaboration on Digital Humanities Initiatives,’ presenters discussed the ways in which their institutions are evolving with ever-changing tools and user expectations. They discussed IIIF, machine learning, collaborative projects, and database technologies. Conversations around metadata really resonated with me, especially the challenges of classification, geodata, and how we document gaps in our knowledge. It is encouraging to think about how linked open data may help to some of this end, as ownership and contribution of knowledge can be collectivized. The last session I attended, ‘Defining Open Access,’ evaluated if and how institutions should make available online their digitized and digital collections. There were compelling arguments from a variety of perspectives, and it was helpful to get a better grasp on some of the challenges: the manpower required to do this work; copyright, privacy, and traditional knowledge concerns; inconsistent rights statements in image records; understanding that open access may result in images or data being used in ways institutions do not always like. I am an advocate for making as much information - whether it be in the form of images, text, or time-based media - available to our users, and these presentations gave me a more nuanced understanding of when this may not be possible. 

The conference also included optional field trips, and I am so happy that I decided to make the trek to the Harold Washington Library Center, the main branch of the Chicago Public Library, in order to tour their special collections. Archivist Michelle McCoy provided us with background information about the library and its special collections unit; the creator communities represented in the collections; and the prints, books, and objects she pulled to show us. I had no idea that the library had materials like sculptures, paintings, and miniature models in its holdings, and it’s so heartening to know that anyone can come in to view these materials. 

The research room for the special collections at the Harold Washington Library Center

I decided to attend the conference fairly spur of the moment, and I walked away having learned so much. I feel fortunate to live in a city which is often host to larger conferences like these, and I hope to attend more like this one in the future.

DAM Systems & Institutional Collaboration

Over roughly the last year, I have been involved in discussions about implementing a new digital asset management system at our museum. My department - Imaging - has a vested interest in finding a new solution, because we are one of the power users of the existing system. I began advocating for clarity on our existing digital asset management system - what it was intended to be used for and what the development timeline was for the solution - shortly after it was launched in spring 2017. The system had potential, especially in its open-source foundations, but it has complicated workflows, frustrated users across the museum, and resulted in poor access to assets for staff. Unfortunately, due to limited staff resources, our custom in-house built system can no longer be adequately maintained or developed in order to meet basic institutional needs. As a result, we began searching for a replacement solution early in 2019.

I was selected to be a member of the evaluating team for vendor solutions based on my experience managing our department’s born digital and digitized image assets. There were two groups that looked at the options - one was focused on the technical-side of the system and the other was focused on the user experience. I was placed in this second group. We were provided with a rubric for evaluation based on specific core user needs for the software, and we watched presentations on the final selection of vendor software solutions. Together with other staff representing a wide range of departments - from Conservation to Curatorial departments to the Ryerson and Burnham Library and Archive - we sat through vendor demonstrations, rated the system based on these presentations, and discussed our overall impressions of the solutions compared with one another. It was helpful to work with such a cross-institutional team, as every member brought different experiences and ideas. The selection committee took into account the user experience and technical group ratings, as well as the cost estimate for each option, and made their decision based off this information.

After my experience in this collaborative and democratic group setting, I wanted to apply this same way of working and reaching decisions to another key component of digital asset management: metadata. I was in the midst of mapping my department’s metadata to some proposed fields for the new system. I realized that I was unclear on the meaning and scope of some of these new fields, and that other needs were likely missing. At the same time, I understood that my department’s needs were not reflective of all user metadata needs within the system. I inquired if I could form a metadata working group in order to brainstorm additional user needs, and I was permitted to move forward. I ended up leading this group, which was a new experience for me. I selected the team members from a range of departments, sent out communication, developed agendas and ran meetings, and served as coordinator about our work to other institutional stakeholders. 

We ended up meeting over the course of the fall to discuss the existing mapping work I had done to existing structure schema, user scenarios that needed to be represented in the metadata, additional fields, field scopes and definitions, and metadata field types (dropdown, free text, etc) and behaviors (searchable or not, editable or not). Once the chosen software was announced to the team, we also started determining which rough user groups (Imaging staff, Conservation staff, Curatorial staff, all staff) should be able to see and/or edit which fields. I presented our work to the administrators for the future system, and have been continuing to advise on metadata questions and issues since our working group has dissolved. This work will evolve as we move forward with implementation, but I am glad that we pursued this work with intention and focus, and that multiple perspectives were captured.

I am now part of the implementation working group for our new system. Our kickoff meeting occurred shortly before the new year, and our work will extend throughout 2020. I am representing my department and users who rely on our assets. Part of this process will involve sitting through instructional trainings on core components of the system - taxonomy, metadata, permissions - and part of it will involve shaping the user experience and structure of information within system. We will be making decisions about how metadata fields should be ordered, and which fields should also appear as faceted search options, for example. This group will also be creating documentation and training materials, and we will assist in teaching our peers how to use the system. In tandem with the administrators for the system, technical staff, and other working group members, I hope to ensure that we implement a solution that works well for all staff. 

My involvement in digital asset management at the museum has shifted and grown over the last several years. With this, my role in these collaborative working groups have varied over time - I have had the chance to both lead and advise. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been heard in my questions and concerns, and to be able to leverage the knowledge I have gained through my MLIS program.

Mentor training

My institution has begun hosting regular mentor orientation sessions for staff who are responsible for managing other staff, interns, or volunteers, or who are simply interested in learning more about the basics of mentoring. I attended one such session this winter. I have managed interns over the last several years as part of our archives digitization project, and we are hosting another intern as part of the Emerging Arts Leader (EAL) internship program at the museum. I appreciate having the opportunity to learn about mentorship in a more intentional way - so much of what I have learned has been on-the-fly, and I needed a chance to sit down and learn about some of the principles and theory behind this important work.

We began the session by introducing ourselves and sharing experiences we’d had with both good and bad supervisors or mentors over the years. It was eye-opening listening to other staff member’s stories, and the facilitators compiled a list for us to sit and consider. Though the list is by no means comprehensive, it gives a sense of qualities to actively attempt to embody and avoid. In particular, I was struck by the following positive experience descriptors: empathetic, flexible, attentive, human, approachable and accessible, modeling behavior, and taking the intern and internship seriously. I was also reflecting on my own experiences, and I found both internships and jobs that were the most rewarding also tended to be led by staff who were highly organized and who facilitated access to information. 

The facilitators then walked us through a series of slides about different roles a supervisor may take on - including manager, coordinator or coach, and mentor. A manager often focuses on structure, procedure, decisions, and results, and therefore tends to have a task focus (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). The coordinator or coach focuses on performance, process, empowerment, and dialogue (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). The mentor is focused on growth, facilitation, affirmation, and holistic aspects of the experience, and therefore tends to have a development focus (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). These roles range from immediate to mid-range to more future-facing work. The facilitators noted that the roles should not map exclusively to hierarchical power within a department, so for example, it should not only be curators (who often have a considerable amount of institutional power) who are future-thinking mentors. Ideally, junior staff or interns will benefit from this entire spectrum within those who are managing them. It is therefore a mentorship continuum, and I may need to step into any one of these roles, sometimes merging them, in order to make sure an intern can focus on learning. Fortunately, I am co-leading our future EAL intern, so the other Imaging staff member and I will likely flow between roles as is needed.

Next, we learned about the logistics and concrete steps being mentorships at the museum, especially as it relates to internships. First, we must consider the internship experience as a whole and ask - what do we have to offer, and what might an intern bring to our department (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019)? As a part of this process, staff are advised to develop a general internship model and create a plan (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). The plan includes an internship position summary with duties and responsibilities, and it includes specific objectives and outcomes we hope the intern will grow from. There are several internship models staff have used as the museum, which include exposure and general support - shadowing and a sort of sampler platter of work; project-based - focusing on a discrete and appropriately scoped project often informed by the intern’s experience or interest; and level up - which attempts to map the experience to the staff hierarchy within a department (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). These models may be blended or new models may be developed as is appropriate. The model my co-leader and I have developed is part exposure, part based off the lifecycle of work in our department. We are making sure that our intern has the opportunity to learn about and try work along the lifespan of an image asset - from image creation to editing to metadata creation to archiving to future repurposing and use. Hopefully this will provide a meaningful and educational experience.

The facilitators then discussed the application review, interview, and selection process for interns. They stressed the importance of fairly assessing candidates, and ensuring that there is consistency across questions posed during interviews (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). We developed a standardized list of questions while interviewing for our EAL internship position, at the suggestion of the program manager, and this was incredibly helpful. They also made it clear that we need to interrogate bias, and create some sort of rubric to help guide the decision-making process (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). This helps to reign in “expectations creep,” where we may be tempted to rank higher over-qualified candidates and come to expect over-qualification from all candidates (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). Our institution tends to favor highly trained and educated candidates, and it is important to ask with internships in particular, do we actually need this experience? 

The presenters then discussed onboarding, including setting goals and presenting the work plan, creating a schedule or project tracker, and ensuring that our intern is taking advantage of HR intern programming (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). From this initial introductory phase, we then learned about the bulk of the internship itself and working together with an intern. The facilitators discussed the importance of regular check-in meetings, where we can talk about accomplishments and growth, provide feedback, address questions, learn together via mentor or intern-led prompts or projects, and plan what’s next (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). Throughout the internship, we must support interns in navigating our unique work culture, which includes aspects of our work like unspoken norms, abbreviations and acronyms, and even some degree of bias or discrimination (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). Key in this is ensuring that an intern feels comfortable raising questions or issues with either managing staff within the department, internship program staff, or HR staff. Cross-cultural mentorship skills are an important aspect of this trust building:

• “Approach relationships with understanding, but not assumptions, of inherent power dynamics and social positions. Intellectual understanding does not equal lived experience.

• Affirm and advocate for interns and their work.

• Model vulnerability, share your own stories and struggles as appropriate.

• Amplify mentee contributions, and do not allow them to give you all the credit.

• Demonstrate humility to learn from your mentee.” (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019)

At the end of an internship, the presenters provided concrete steps for parting ways with the individual. Included in this is highlighting and bringing visibility to their work, perhaps through a presentation or brief summary of the work shared at a departmental meeting (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). It is also important to sit down with the intern and allow an opportunity for them to reflect and talk about what they learned, how they grew, and how this could translate to a future job (Art Institute of Chicago, 2019). Evaluation is a part of this conversation, too. A celebration helps to ensure that we are sending interns off, letting them know how much we appreciate their contributions. 

I left this session feeling much more clear about aspects of mentoring which I need to continue to focus on to grow and improve. And I also know where to go when I need further support - there will be further brown bag lunch opportunities for mentors to connect, and internship program staff have been incredibly helpful in answering questions. While I feel slightly uncomfortable with more traditional notions of power and management, I was encouraged by this session and how so much of the focus was on interpersonal relationships. Connecting emerging professionals with information and skills which might be useful to their future career is what drives my interest in mentoring interns, and this training provided me even more ways of thinking about this relationship. 

References:

Art Institute of Chicago. (2019). Mentor orientation. [Presentation slide deck].

Chicago Area Archivists: XML, EAD, ArchivesSpace

Northwestern University Library (NUL) hosted an event organized by the Chicago Area Archivists this fall. Two information professionals working in the archives and library presented on three topics: XML, EAD, and ArchivesSpace. I decided to attend the event given my increasing involvement in the sphere of metadata at work, and my interest in how other organizations adopt standards and tools.

First, the metadata specialist gave some basic foundational information about XML - extensible markup language - a plain text markup language. She provided a brief history of the language, context including related schemas (HTML, SGML), and examples of ways the data can be transformed via cascading style sheets (CSS) or extensible stylesheet language transformations (XSLT) (Miller, 2019). Next, she provided some basic structure and syntax rules, including “root” and “child” elements and limitations on characters (Miller, 2019). NUL uses XML given how flexible and powerful it can be as a way of organizing and transforming data. XML works well with a variety of structure schemas and controlled vocabularies that the institution relies on in order to publish the data on various platforms, and a well-formed XML document can be highly extensible. Oxygen is one software tool metadata librarians use at NUL to review and edit XML metadata, and the presenter provided a number of screengrab examples of this interface to show what XML looks like during her talk.

The metadata specialist then dove into EAD or encoded archival description. Once again, she provided some background information about the standard, especially as it related to the shift in making traditional paper finding aids machine-readable in order to make them more accessible (Miller, 2019). EAD is maintained by the Library of Congress and Society of American Archivists, and it is rooted in published standards for syntax and elements (Miller, 2019). The presenter discussed the core components of EAD next: the header, which describes the finding aid itself; front matter, which describes the finding aid publication information; and the archival description, which describes the collection (Miller, 2019). 

The archival description contains the core content of the finding aid, so the presenter spent the most time here. She outlined the type of information one might find here, including: the title, abstract, physical description, subject headings, biographical or historical note, collection description, scope and arrangement notes, provenance, custodial history, and access and use restrictions (Miller, 2019). The collection contents also fall under this section, and this allows for a hierarchical description of the collection - often mirroring the physical organization, broken down by box and folder level-information (Miller, 2019). Helpfully, EAD provides some structure for this way of outlining the content of a collection, allowing up to 12 layers of such “component elements” - numbered c01, c02, etc (Miller, 2019). EAD allows for an archivist or librarian to choose the degree of detail and levels of hierarchy for a finding aid, as it is not prescriptive. Finally, she discussed the use of attributes within EAD to make the components of a finding aid machine-readable. She touched on the ways in which attributes can be described through tags to provide greater specificity about the element - “label” is a label meant to be used in the display of the data, “normal” to indicate the established form of a heading like an ISO-formatted date, and “source” to indicate the source of a controlled vocabulary term (Miller, 2019).

One of the library’s archivists then provided a walk-through of NUL’s instance of ArchivesSpace, which is where the organization hosts its EAD finding aids. He discussed their workflow in ingesting documents into the system, the ways in which data can be further edited once it is in ArchivesSpace, and how it displays for the general public. The library has only been using it for a few years, but it sounds as though it is working well to make accessible finding aids for their archival collections. We had the opportunity to sit down in one of the library’s computer labs to try the system out in its test environment. This gave me a much better feel for the interface, and all of the ways in which you can manipulate and edit data. 

The day also included a tour of some of the library’s on-campus but off-site storage for archival collections. The archivist told us about the changes the library is undergoing in terms of staffing organization, and how this is impacting how special collections are conceived. Part of this will include some reorganization of the physical storage of collections, and it sounds like a daunting project they have ahead of them. I am always thankful for the chance to peer behind the scenes and see what these spaces look like at other organizations, especially since I never had the chance to visit this space when I worked at NUL years ago.

This was a wonderful opportunity to see how these elements that are often discussed in the abstract - XML, EAD - actually work in practice, and how they interface with tools like Oxygen and ArchivesSpace. I now feel like I have a much better grasp of these standards, especially in seeing examples of real finding aids. 

References:

Miller, K. (2019). Introduction to EAD and XML. [Workshop handout].