Link to timeline: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eUyU9lGKLlfhpvyxnS2-8CGxaxml_Q73rjE3J6nC6p4/edit#gid=0
In this timeline, I attempt to tell the story of the 1996 Mount Everest Disaster. Although the time frame was very short (May 10-11, 1996) it is quite complex. All 26 people involved had their own harrowing story to share, and sometimes even disagreed on what happened. From the very beginning I had to select timeline points that gave the gist of the story without losing critical information. For this reason although I tried to give a sense as to what happened to everyone in the expedition, I primarily focused on the story of Rob Hall and Beck Weathers - even the deaths of other climbers, Doug Hansen, Andy Harris, and Yasuko Namba had to be told in relation to Hall and Weathers.
I was first introduced to this story through Ed Viesturs' book No Shortcuts to the Top and Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. To verify the timeline, I relied heavily on PBS's hour-by-hour Frontline website, "Storm Over Everest" and Jon Krakauer's radioed reports, as well as Wikipedia, articles in Medium, and news reports from the aftermath. I also researched the science of the storm, which made it into the timeline, and the science of human physiology during oxygen deprivation, which didn't. Please see my full list of resources below.
I had 3 main challenges with this project. The first was keeping the timeline to a manageable length. I had to gloss over many important factors - Anatoli Boukreev's early descent is a major controversy which I didn't dive into, and I didn't even mention the deaths of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police - Subedar Tsewang Samanla, Lance Naik Dorje Morup, and Head Constable Tsewang Paljor. This leads to my second difficulty, deciding whose stories to prioritize. Unfortunately the Indo-Tibetan expedition is reported as a "background" event to the disaster, meaning there simply wasn't enough information for me to coherently bring it into the storyline. However, their stories are important and equally tragic, as fully half of their expedition team died.
Finally, my third challenge was the need to carefully use passive voice to tell parts of the story, specifically as surrounds the controversy relating to the fixed ropes. If I had actively stated "Sherpas did not set fixed ropes, and this caused the deaths of 8 climbers" it would have been technically true but would also have glossed over the equivalent truth, "Western climbers were fighting over who was responsible to pay for the ropes." Hence my phrasing, "Fixed ropes were not placed."
References
1996 Indo-Tibetan Border Police expedition to Mount Everest. (2021, April 14). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Indo-Tibetan_Border_Police_expedition_to_Mount_Everest
1996 Mount Everest disaster. (2021, April 13). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Mount_Everest_disaster
Alderman, J., and K. Arnold. (1996, September). The descent, step by step. Outside Magazine. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20160404180321/http://www.outsideonline.com/1845086/descent-step-step
AP. (1996, May 14). Climber radioed his wife before dying on Everest -- He assured her but knew there was no rescue. Seattle Times, https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19960514&slug=2329189
Daniels, P. (2020, January 23). 1996 Mount Everest Disaster: Death on Top of the World. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/1996-mount-everest-disaster-4043349
Davies, B. (2020 April 29). The True Story of Everest 1996: One of Mountaineering's Worst Tragedies. Wired for Adventure. https://www.wiredforadventure.com/tragedies-on-the-mountain-everest-1996/
Frontline. (2008, May 13). Storm Over Everest: the Hour-by-Hour Unfolding Disaster. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/everest/stories/unfolding.html
Hogan, J. (2004, May 29-Jun 4). The day the sky fell on Everest. New Scientist 182(2449): 15. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18224492-200-the-day-the-sky-fell-on-everest/
Kangshung face. (2021, March 16). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangshung_Face
Kluger, J. (2001, June 24). Mountain without mercy. Time. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,136713,00.html
Krakauer, J. (2016, May 24). When you reach the summit of Everest, you are only halfway there. Medium. https://medium.com/galleys/into-thin-air-e5a2756a87c1
Minot, S. (2017, February 7). The Ill-fated 1996 Everest Expedition: 20 years on. SkyAboveUs. https://skyaboveus.com/climbing-hiking/The-Ill-fated-1996-Everest-Expedition-20-years-on
Ridley, J. (2015, September 17). Socialite vilified after Everest catastrophe breaks silence. New York Post. https://nypost.com/2015/09/17/socialite-everest-climber-speaks-out-im-no-villain/
An archivist’s job is to make archives accessible for use. Some archivists say they “collect, preserve, and describe” (Thompson, 2019). But collect what, and why? Preserve how? And what even does ‘describe’ mean? The Society of American Archivists says that archivists are “responsible for records of enduring value” (2020) which is about as useful as saying rocket engineers are responsible for making heavy things go up. It’s technically true, but it doesn’t get you very far. Here’s the inside scoop.
You can break down the role of archivists into three big pots: selection, preservation, and description. I’ll explain these more in detail, but none of this will make sense if you don’t know what an archive is. Archives (and it's usually written with the "s") are the collection of things related to the life and work of a person or group, stored for the sake of historical significance and future researchers. “Things” is intentionally vague here, because it can include almost anything - scrapbooks, patents, photographs, animal skins, fossils, emails, videos….Some archives are set up to maintain the records created by their own organization. For example, the university I work at has an internal archive which contains things related to university business, like meeting minutes and memos. Other archives collect things created by external groups based on a specific subject. For example, Vanderbilt University includes in their archives a collection of materials related to the history of playing cards, which includes manuscripts and books about the history as well as historic playing card sets (Vanderbilt University, n.d.).
"Everybody's gotta have a little place for their stuff. That's all life is about. Trying to find a place for your stuff." — George Carlin, who has his own archives now at the National Comedy Center (Blair, 2016)
My own archival collection would include things like my paper journals, my gardening sketches and notes, letters and short stories I’ve written, and knitting patterns I’ve designed. These would be a “record of my life’s work” - the things, unique and banal, that make up my life. But the biggest part of Sagan’s Collection would be online - emails, schoolwork, photos and videos, Facebook and Instagram posts, this blog. None of these things have ever been a “physical” item, but would be included in my archives all the same. Once you start to inventory things, the list of what could go in an archives gets huge!
This is why the first job of an archivist is to select what comes into the archives. This is one of those statements that sounds much easier than it actually is. The archivist has to evaluate if a collection is “worthy” of being archived for the use of future generations, but also if the collection should be archived at their particular institution. Let’s go back to Sagan’s Collection. It’s pretty unlikely that the Archives at University of Hawai’i would want it. They have a limited amount of space, and even though I want my descendents to have a nice tropical destination to view my stuff, I’ve never even been to Hawai’i and I don’t have a connection with the university. However, imagine there’s an archives being set up that focuses on collections related to Portlanders who survived the 2020 Pandemic. My archives would fit much better with their mission, and the Portland archivists would be more likely to select it than the Hawai’ian archivists.
These are some pretty basic examples of selection. Keep in mind that life is rarely simple. Space is always limited, even for digital collections. Processing time is also limited - I’ll tell you more in a moment about preparing archival collections, but keep in mind here that even the task of moving materials into the archives takes time (and money, since your archivists most likely don’t work for free). Archivists have to balance the amount of work it would take to get the collection ready with how important that collection will be to history and to researchers in the future. Is the Sagan Collection the only representation we have of pandemic life, or is it one of hundreds? Does it contain materials that might be useful, historically speaking? Does the collection physically fit in the archives? Context matters, and deeply.
Lucky me! The archivist at the Portland COVID Archives has selected Sagan’s Collection for inclusion. The next step will be to ensure the collection can be safely kept in the archives. Preservation starts before the items even arrive at the archives. Items need to be carefully moved to keep them from being damaged, but also to keep them in their original configuration. It’s like an archaeological dig - it makes more sense if you don’t jumble the bones together. In the archives world, collections are kept in the same organizational pattern as the person who made it decided. That means if I organized my gardening notes by season, the archivist isn’t going to re-organize them by plant species.
Pears get treated one way to preserve them, paper preservation needs something entirely different. Preservation can get particularly complex in the archives world. Books alone can be made from multiple materials - paper, leather, thread and glue - and each material might need a special preservation technique. Digital items need still other preservation methods, including preserving the technology needed to actually use them. And you know how you’d never mistake canned pears for fresh? Preservation techniques can certainly extend the life of something, but sometimes only by irrevocably changing it. Archivists need to understand the ramifications of what they are doing in order to maintain the integrity of the collection.
In addition to preservation work for the items in the collection, archives rooms are often built specifically to better preserve the items within. This can include temperature and climate-controlled housing, storage in acid-free boxes, and even special fire extinguishers that don’t use water to put out fire. Preservation is also why archives are typically much less publicly accessible than libraries and museums - access needs to be carefully controlled so things aren’t stolen, lost, or damaged by spilled canned pears.
“What’s in the box?”
But access is still vitally important for archives. That’s why the third important job of an archivist is description. It’s not enough to box up materials and shove them in a warehouse. Archivists need to communicate what their archives include. Labeling boxes, creating detailed guides to the collection, inventorying, and teaching researchers how to find things are all part of the job of making archives more accessible.
Description is especially important because many collections aren’t, and may never be, digitized. Unlike an e-book which can at least be searched for keywords, in many archives collections the only thing a researcher will have to go on is the commentary the archivist has written. There are tools an archivist can use to make this process easier such as standardized ways of writing collection guides or technical languages to highlight the most useful components of the collection. These descriptions need to be complete enough to be useful to the researcher, without being so exhaustive the archivist can never finish the job.
Because in the end, finishing the job isn’t as important as having archives that can be used. Archives are a vitally important piece of our culture. Why are archives important? Why is memory important? Humans are social, and we thrive on stories. Every archive has a piece of human knowledge in it. Piece by piece, archives put together the story of humanity, not just for us, but for the future. We can’t save everything, but what we can save has the potential to edify and inspire us.
This collection, dated 1944-1946, includes Eric T. (“Ted”) Carlson’s personal correspondence, transcripts, army orders, identification paperwork, news clippings and passes. The majority of correspondence is between Carlson and his parents. Additional documents relate to Carlson’s scientific work in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Monsanto Chemical Company, and his education at the Iowa State College.
Series 1: Correspondence. This series ranges from 1944-1946 and includes correspondence between Carlson and his parents and friends. It is organized alphabetically by correspondent name, then by date. A prominent subseries includes correspondence with Carlson’s parents.
Series 2: Academic paperwork. This series includes Carlson’s course schedules, transcripts, letters of commendations, and official inquiries with Wesleyan University, the Iowa State College, and Cornell University.
Series 3: U.S. Army documentation. This series includes official U.S. Army documentation including draft paperwork, transfer and training orders, identification cards, and correspondence regarding Carlson’s promotions and discharge. Much of the documentation includes paperwork related to Carlson’s scientific work in the Army Corps of Engineers and the Monsanto Chemical Company.
Container List
The first folder would contain Ted Carlson’s personal correspondence. This would be organized into subfolders:
Subfolder 1: correspondence between Ted Carlson and his parents. This folder would be organized chronologically based on the date written on the letter.
Subfolder 2: all other personal correspondence. It would be organized alphabetically by the last name of Carlson’s correspondent, then chronologically.
The second folder includes academic paperwork. This includes official correspondence to and from the colleges, transcripts and course schedules. This folder is arranged chronologically.
The third folder includes official U.S. Army documentation, including draft documents, transfer orders, training paperwork and discharge orders. This would be organized chronologically from the date the paperwork was issued.
This is the abstract and biographical note for the Module #2 Assignment for INFO-256 with Erin Lawrimore.
Abstract:
This collection includes Eric T. (“Ted”) Carlson’s correspondence and private papers from 1944-1946. The personal letters discuss Carlson’s opinions on the World War 2 efforts and U.S. Army reserves corps life, as well as references to popular films and pastimes. Other materials include documentation of his army assignments and Carlson’s school records.
Biographical Note:
Eric T. (“Ted”) Carlson was an army scientist who participated in the World War 2 chemical research. After graduating from Wesleyan University with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, Ted Carlson was drafted as a private into the United States Army in August 1944 at Fort Snelling, MN. He was then transferred to the Enlisted Reserve Corps where he worked at the Chrysler Corporation in Detroit, MI as a Laboratory Engineer. In October 1945 Carlson was called to active duty at Fort Sheriden, Illinois, received basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and finally was assigned to the Monsanto Chemical Company in Dayton, Ohio.
Carlson was discharged from the army on April 7, 1946, continuing his work at Monsanto as a Research Assistant Chemist. During this time he was the co-editor of the Dayton Scientist, a publication where he promoted the demilitarization of nuclear power. Carlson was accepted to Cornell University in 1946 under the G.I. Bill and moved to New York at the end of that year.
Note: This was originally written as a class project. Normally I take these down because yuck, who wants their homework online. But I thought this wasn't terrible so I'm saving it for posterity here.
James Gleick’s The Information is a broad scale “history of everything” book, similar to J. M. Hecht’s Doubt: a history or Y. N. Harari’s Sapiens: a brief history of humankind.
Gleick traces the history of our understanding of information, from
pre-history to modern times. In my first drafts of this review, I found
myself wanting to share too much about everything I learned. Hopefully
I’ve whittled it down enough to give you a taste of what he explores, to
whet your appetite to read the book yourself. Although I enjoyed the
book, I have some critiques, as well as some thoughts about our
relationship with information in general.
Alphabet Soup (pre-history to the 1800s)
The Information is subtitled “a history, a theory, a flood”,
and the book is structured in roughly these three parts. He begins with
the development of the alphabet, differences between orality and written
language, and the conceptual framework that arises from the act of
transmitting spoken words to written. This early sea change in thought
means “information has been detached from any person, detached from the
speaker’s experience. Now it lives in the words, little life support
modules” (p.39). Eventually people began to standardize these ‘life
support modules,’ and thus the dictionary was born – although, he notes,
“the word dictionary was not in it” (p. 57).
Enter Babbage (1800s – early 1900s)
Charles Babbage’s calculating machine is the first major turning
point in the book. Inventions appear at a rapid pace, and what
historically was only categorized (via dictionaries, etc) is beginning to be theorized about. Information became more tangible, with specific effects on the world.
Part of Babbage’s Difference Engine, a forerunner to the computer. Public domain.
“As [Babbage] looked to the future, he saw a special role for one
truth above all: ‘the maxim, that knowledge is power.’ He understood
that literally. Knowledge ‘is itself the generator of physical force,’
he declared. Science gave the world steam, and soon, he suspected, would
turn to the less tangible power of electricity: ‘Already it has nearly
chained the ethereal fluid.’” (p. 124).
Just as an understanding of forces and motion led to the theory of
physics, the development of alphabets, to writing, to various methods of
communication, coalesced to a theory of information. The increasing
speed of information transmission had widespread ramifications,
including the standardization of time, and new attempts to manage the
amount of messages being sent. Codes come to the forefront, not just in
the actual transmission via Morse code as a way to secure the public
messages. A new concept, encoding, became familiar. As Gleick writes,
“The Morse scheme took the alphabet as a starting point and leveraged
it, by substitution, replacing signs with new signs. It was a
meta-alphabet, an alphabet once removed. This process—the transferring
of meaning from one symbolic level to another—already had a place in
mathematics. Now it became a familiar part of the human toolkit” (p.
152).
Characteristica universalis (1900s and onwards)
Claude Shannon and information theory are nearly synonymous. His
theory, based on his work with cryptography and symbolic logic,
consisted of four key points: “uncertainty, surprise, difficulty, and
entropy” (p. 219). In essence, Shannon asked, what does information help
you know, and what are the barriers to this? His further work on
communication, defined as “reproducing at one point either exactly or
approximately a message selected at another point” (p. 221), was broad,
covering all of human and non-human behaviors. Computers could be interpreted using communication theory.
A schematic of Claude Shannon’s theory of information. Public domain.
In the aftermath of World War II, numerous fields outside computer
science and cryptanalysis were reinterpreted in the light of information
theory. This happened in the aftermath of innovations from during and
directly after World War II: Computers entered the public domain, Von
Neumann created game theory, Alan Turing created his Turing test.
Psychology entered a new era as behavioral psychology fell out of
fashion – “[The behaviorists’] refusal to consider mental states became a
cage, and psychologists still wanted to understand what the mind was.
Information theory gave them a way in” (p. 258). Here and in other
fields, information theory became ubiquitous.
Rosalind Franklin at her microscope. Photo by Jenifer Glynn. CCA-SA.
Perhaps no scientific enterprise was harder hit than biology. With
the discovery of the structure of DNA (shamefully, Gleick fails to
mention Rosalind Franklin’s crucial contribution),
the very conception of how life functions could be interpreted
according to the theory of information – transferring information via
genes, mutations, and how entropy affects DNA. Gleick writes, “Where
then, is any particular gene—say, the gene for long legs in humans? This
is a little like asking where is Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E minor.
Is it in the original handwritten score? The printed sheet music? . . .
The music is the information. Likewise, the base pairs of DNA are not
genes. They encode genes. Genes themselves are made of bits” (p. 309).
“Most of the biosphere cannot see the infosphere; it is
invisible, a parallel universe humming with ghostly inhabitants. But
they are not ghosts to us—not anymore” (p. 323).
The final iteration, before Gleick considers some of today’s
ramifications of information theory, is quantum information theory,
where quantum mechanics is revealed to have information theory at its
base. “Why does nature appear quantized?” Gleick asks. “Because
information is quantized. The bit is the ultimate unsplittable particle”
(p. 357). Quantum effects could be used for information processing –
“Quantum error correction, quantum teleportation, and quantum computers
followed shortly behind” (p. 363).
Aftermath (today)
Information, quantum or not, is everywhere, and it is overwhelming.
“The persistence of information, the difficulty of forgetting, so
characteristic of our time, accretes confusion” (p. 373). This is not a
new problem – H.G. Wells in his 1937 essay “World Brain” attempts to
solve the influx of information through the creation of a world
encyclopedia. Wells wrote,
“Few people as yet, outside the world of expert librarians and museum
curators and so forth, know how manageable well-ordered facts can be
made, however multitudinous, and how swiftly and completely even the
rarest visions and the most recondite matters can be recalled, once they
have been put in place in a well-ordered scheme of reference and
reproduction” (para. 5).
Few people today, other than information professionals, understand this. The Information
is a critical text to learn more about how we came to think the way we
do about information. By understanding our past, we can better grasp our
next steps into the future. Today’s flood of information is more
approachable because we now know it is grounded in tenets put forward by
early theorizers. We are not alone in being overwhelmed by the quantity
of data – Gleick even references a viral message that was distributed
in 1933 — and we have new strategies we can use.
Some methods of data management would have been unbelievable even a
century ago. Crowdsourcing has given us Wikipedia, which compiles
information, evolving and self-correcting until its value surpasses
standard encyclopedias. Compare this to an early form of crowdsourcing,
writing the Oxford English Dictionary, where individuals mailed data
about definitions to the editor until the floorboards of the office
needed to be replaced (for more information, see Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman). All this for a dictionary–imagine the attempt to manually create an encyclopedia the size of Wikipedia via the mail.
Despite the breadth of Gleick’s book, there are glaring oversights. I
briefly mentioned Rosalind Franklin’s absence above; this is only one
example of his tendency to ignore the role of women. Ada Lovelace is the
only woman to have her theories somewhat developed; Margaret Mead is
mentioned in passing, and the rest of the women are mentioned only as
the wives of the key players.
His book is entirely western-centric. The only exception to this rule
is in his first chapter, which uses the African drums to introduce ways
of thinking of information transmission. In some ways this is due to
how westernized information theory is – expanding the scope to include
eastern schools of thought on skepticism and the nature of information
might have been too broad for one book. I recommend Doubt: a history as a counterpoint.
The Information is written as a progression of ideas leading
to a higher endpoint, and I think there was an opportunity here to
critically think about why some schools of thought might not agree with
the concepts of information theory, and how different perspectives might
interact with it. Pankl and Coleman’s (2010) definition of positivism
is a good starting point for critiquing this style of history-writing:
“Positivism is the belief and practice that valid knowledge is
objective, empirical, and static” (p. 4). Although their article is
written in the context of librarians’ interactions with students in the
research cycle, it gave me a lot of food for thought regarding how
Gleick reported his own research. While seeming exhaustive, Gleick’s
worldview left out a great deal of the story.
In a similar fashion, Gleick fails to examine the contextuality of
information. As a brief example, Buckland (1991) provides examples of
things that used to be considered information that are no longer
(“ducking” women to determine if they are a witch) and things that would
not be considered information in the Claude Shannon sense (antelopes).
In essence, Buckland argues, “We conclude that we are unable to say confidently of anything that it could not be information”
(“When is Information Not Information?”). Paradoxically, Gleick’s book
expanded my mind about how to treat information (by discussing Shannon’s
information theory and its ramifications) while also remaining too
narrow in focus.
The Information is an excellent starting point, but it is only
a starting point. I hope that whether the person reading this is an
information professional or a layperson, they use this as a framework to
reconsider how they interact with the information in their world.
Perhaps there will soon be a follow-up to address the gaps in this book
and expand the concept beyond a male, western-centric scope.
References
Buckland, M. (1991). Information as thing. Journal of the American Society of Information Science 42(5). Retrieved from http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/thing.html
Gleick, J. (2011). The information: A history, a theory, a flood. New York: Pantheon Books.
Pankl, E., & Coleman, J. (2010). ‘There’s nothing on my topic!’
Using the theories of Oscar Wilde and Henry Giroux to develop critical
pedagogy for library instruction. In M. Accardi, E. Drabinski, & A.
Kumbier (Eds.), Critical library instruction: theories and methods (pp.
Wells, H. G. (1937). The idea of a permanent world encyclopedia. ischool Berkeley. Retrieved from https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/wells/world_brain.html
“Archivists . . . need to be intersectional and inclusive.”
I had the good fortune to recently interview Courtney Gillie, Library Information Specialist at University of Missouri (MU or "Mizzou") in Columbia, Missouri. It’s always exciting to meet colleagues across the country, especially when I get to learn more about a side of library science that I don’t work on in my day-to-day. Courtney’s gregarious interview was truly fun and I hope our professional paths cross in the future.
Courtney came to the archival profession in a roundabout way. Their academic career began in engineering, but they ultimately got their bachelor’s degree in English literature at Columbia College. Through their schooling, they began to learn about the ethics and mission of libraries, as well as the specific needs of archives, and realized how closely this aligned with their own values and passion. They got their Master’s in Library and Information Science from University of Missouri, and took enough classes to qualify to test to be Certified Archivist. Today they are working in the Special Collections & Rare Books section of the University of Missouri Library Archives.
MU's Library facade
I saw a lot of parallels between the University of Missouri Library and my own institution (Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon). Both are land grant universities serving 20 to 30,000 undergraduates and several thousand graduate and post-graduate students. Both are university towns, which get busy during term but much quieter during breaks (“You can actually find parking!”). We both work within departments in the library, which report to department heads who then report to the associate university librarian (and from there to the university librarian, provost, and above). And we both have a teaching hospital on campus, although MU’s treats humans and OSU’s is a veterinary hospital.
MU’s land grant status has a much greater impact on Courtney’s day-to-day work compared to mine, as the archives’ mission is to act as an institutional repository for university business, such as papers authored by MU affiliates. The archive also collects materials related to state history. A unique collection Courtney has worked on is a collection of documents related to campus political movements. They recently hosted an exhibit on the demands made by students during the 1960s, which unfortunately look incredibly similar to the racial needs today.
MU's West Entrance
The University Archives has 11 employees, of whom half are full time, in addition to a bevy of student workers. It is divided into Digital Services, Archives, and Courtney's immediate department, Special Collections. Courtney’s work includes processing archival materials, cataloging, and assisting with their social media campaigns in collaboration with their colleagues. Sometimes processing the materials can be very physical - taking steps to preserve the materials, avoiding acidic paper and removing rusty staples and even straight pins. They particularly enjoy this part of the job and how the hands-on work blends with the ethos of the archival profession.
Courtney shared some of their projects with me separately from our interview. One of these, a scrapbook of Christian College and Kemper Military School memorabilia, included items such as photographs of the school’s production of Rebecca, corsages from the spring formal, and the “5 cent a vote” fundraising competition for ugliest man. All of these items needed to be preserved in specific ways, cataloged to be findable, photographed and digitized with appropriate accessibility information. They worked with OCLC headings and completed the metadata information within ArchivesSpace in order to create finding aids to be hosted on the archives’ website (example here).
Typically, their patrons are student researchers, mostly at the graduate or postgraduate level. Occasionally they are able to support community members, who are often students at other universities needing their expanded archives. In general these patrons know the item they need, in which case Courtney assists them with finding and using the material. They also teach classes to undergraduate students, particularly introducing history, social studies, or Black studies majors to the materials in their collection.
The pandemic has greatly affected their work, especially the need for a lockdown, although they are quick to assure me they think the pandemic response is vital. However, “archives are a very physical product,” they told me. “You don’t get that personal connection as well...when you’re at a distance from the material.” They have come up with creative ways to combat this issue, such as video conferencing with students while they turn the pages of the document. Otherwise you’ll miss the details that make working with original documents so valuable - like a note saying “This meeting is so boring!” in the margins of someone’s meeting notes, or finding a surprising connection between seemingly unrelated topics. They miss the spontaneity and potential of this part of the research process.
Speakers Circle Entrance
“We have a duty to make sure white supremacy isn’t enshrined in the archives”
Another challenge they face is the stagnation of the profession. It’s a constant push to educate people about the needs for access and accessibility of archives. “We have a duty to make sure white supremacy isn’t enshrined in the archives,” she tells me, as well as to ensure anyone, no matter their physical ability, can access the materials. They read a lot of ‘Library Twitter’, as well as zines, articles, and conference presentations on the topic, in order to learn more. Their own niche - and here their face lit up they answered - was to push to digital archives to improve access and accessibility.
What’s the future of archives? The future of archives is in many ways, not in archives. “We need to be intersectional and inclusive,” she says. Archivists need to go beyond simple descriptions of what materials consist of and include the context of those materials as well. It’s not enough to describe when a picture was taken, one must also ask what is the context? What was the racial dynamic at play here? That intersectionality can only enhance the daily work of assisting students and professors do research, providing images for publications, and consulting about copyright. Otherwise, “archivists can get tunnel vision,” Courtney says.
Courtney’s passion for the intersection between racial justice, accessibility, and the archival profession was clear from our interview. From engineering school to the archives, their pathway may not have been as direct as many librarians. However, they seem to have found their niche in the library world.
Image credits: MU Library's facade, credit to Chris Yunker, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons | Other images courtesy Special Collections Staff, Ellis Library, "Speakers Circle Entrance"
This is the part of the year where I was like, "eh, what's 15 more books?" Which is a ridiculous statement that no one should ever be able to say! I had too much time on my hands and a willingness to avoid doing almost anything else. I'm not even certain I watched a movie during the last....half of 2020. Ah well, here we are.
The List Part G (and technically part of H, if we're dividing by 50s): 301-365
Rosalind Franklin at her microscope. Photo by Jenifer Glynn. CCA-SA.
