Archives & Manuscripts Post #12

Yesterday, in class, we discussed various “Archives in the News” stories that we had found over the course of the semester. I brought up the Freedmen’s Bureau Project. This project was spearheaded as a joint effort by the Smithsonian, National Archives, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, and Church of Latter-Day Saints and aims to digitize 1.5 million slavery-era documents produced by the Freedmen’s Bureau. This digitization project is being established in hopes of allowing for new genealogical and family history projects to flourish within the black community.[1] As I mentioned in class, these documents, comprised of government records on former-slaves in the Reconstruction-era South created in order to gather information on black communities in order to provide welfare services and assist communities in their adjustment to free life, do not necessarily represent the intimacies of black life that the project claims. Rather, they remain more indicative of interpretations of former slaves by white, Northern government employees of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Nonetheless, this project represents a significant archival outreach program. As I learned in my interview with NARA archivist Patrick Connelly, genealogy represents a huge portion of archives users at the National Archive, trumping the usage of materials by academic researchers. Timothy Ericson discusses in his article, “Preoccupied with our own Gardens,” projects like the Freedmen’s Bureau Project that stimulate interest in archival holdings amongst non-academic users remain a necessity in the archival profession in their ensuring of continual use of the archives.[2]

Regardless of how this project is being presented historically, its creation will allow for black communities to be further involved in genealogical work and archival usage. Due to the lack of historical documentation regarding black thought and daily life under slavery, it will still unfortunately more difficult for black genealogists to assemble their family trees than it is for white genealogists. Yet, this accessible nature of this project marks a significant step in engaging the larger American public in the capabilities that archival institutions offer its users. Furthermore, on the project’s website, organizations have called for volunteer help with digitizing documents. Volunteers are encouraged to pull up documents and enter the names and dates in spaces provided.[3] The information assembled by volunteers will eventually be incorporated into the archives’ digital database. Thus, in a sense, this volunteer effort will in a sense expose the public to the tasks of an archivist, furthering public awareness for the profession. My only hope is that this project gets more publicity, so that more people can benefit from the wonders of the archives.

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[1] “1.5 Million Slavery Era Documents Will Be Digitized, Helping African-Americans to Learn About Their Lost Ancestors,” Open Culture, June 24, 2015

[2] Timothy L. Ericson, " ‘Preoccupied With Our Own Gardens:’ Outreach and Archivists”, Archivaria 31 (1990): 115.  

[3] “Home Page,” The Freedmen’s Bureau Project, accessed November 19, 2015, http://www.discoverfreedmen.org

Archives and Manuscripts Post # 11

In my Social History class last week, we discussed public reaction to works of art during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of my classmates brought up the architectural styles of buildings that encompassed high society spaces like art museums, university lecture halls, and archives resembled fortresses. My classmate posited that during an era of increased class conflict and radicalism, these cultured spaces provided refuge from the despondency of industrializing America for the aristocratic class. By design, these spaces aimed to keep working-class peoples out by only opening during peak working hours and providing access only to members of the institution.[1]

Randall Jimerson makes a similar point in his essay, “Embracing the Power of the Archives.” In this essay, Jimerson represents the archive as a site of power in its decisions to preserve certain documents over others and potentially only allow access to certain types of people. The notion of scholarly objectivity has long been rejected, dispelling myths of the archivist as a neutral observer.[2] In fact, scholars like Michel-Rolph Trouillot have pinpointed archival preservation as a key moment in historical silencing, a process that entails the privileging of certain peoples and perspectives in the construction of historical narratives. According to Trouillot, because archivists select certain documents for preservation and neglect others, their selective processing techniques shape history to reflect certain perspectives and negate others. As one might imagine, the perspectives preserved by the archives have often been those of the powerful.[3]

While archivists of the past, whether consciously or not, favored the documents of the elite for preservation, the blame for such historical silencing cannot solely be blamed on them. Oppression is structural and sighting individuals for the wrongs of the past misses the point. What is archived is not solely the reflection of what the archivist deems historically important, but also a product of whom had access to literacy skills or political power at a particular time. For instance, to my knowledge, there is no archival document detailing the experiences of African-American slaves in a manner not obscured by racial power dynamics. Even the 1930s WPA interviews with former slaves remain scholarly problematic because of the lack of trust and uneven relationship existing between the black sharecroppers interviewees and the white government worker interviewer. Sadly, there are certain archival collections detailing marginalized experiences that will simply never exist.

However, there is a glimmer of hope! Since the 1970s, archivists have been preserving more and more collections detailing subaltern experiences. Furthermore, the increasing literacy and political participation of the twentieth century by oppressed groups provides archivists with an actual shot at preserving these often ignored histories. Unfortunately, There will probably always be silences and manifestations of power within our historical narratives. Yet, it is important to realize that the archive possesses the power to potentially write these wrongs if the researcher so chooses.

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[1] Michael Kammen, Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 152-3.

[2] Randall C. Jimerson, “Embracing the Power of Archives.” American Archivist 69 (2006): 21.

[3] Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 28-30.

Archives & Manuscripts Post #10

I often think about what history will look like in the future. What types of sources will Historians use and what will they use them to say? In my mind, the Internet is a mixed bag when it comes to History and Archival work. I like that I can now listen to Alan Lomax’s amazing 17,000 song sound recording archive from the comforts of my bedroom and I think that examining facebook statuses could be an interesting way of understanding how people create identities for themselves in the twenty-first century. But, I don’t like that researchers demand more and more digitized archival collections without really understanding the difficulty and legal liabilities involved in doing so. I’m not sure there’s any resolution be had, but it’s definitely worth thinking about.

In his 2003 article “Scarity or Abundance: Preserving the Past in the Digital Age,” Roy Rosenweig illustrates the potential gains and pitfalls of historical research and archiving with digital sources. Many researchers do not realize the difficulty involved in the historicization of the digital age. For instance, internet sources raise significant provenance issues. With many pages, it is difficult to identify a creator or the origins behind an Internet website. Furthermore, many cites, like blogs and other social media platforms, can be instantly deleted or edited with little trace of such an action.[1]

Rosenweig also illuminates how digitized sources like e-books are licensed and not sold to libraries, making it impossible for archival users to make copies. As Rosenweig shows, not offering ownership of materials to archives makes it ultimately impossible for archivists to preserve those materials.[2]

However, digitizing materials will also allow archives the chance to expand its users and possibly, even expanding the pool of persons interested in historical research. There are undoubted hurdles involved, but large-scale, interactive digitization projects could serve as a significant outreach tool. The future presents many possibilities for archivists and historians.

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[1] Roy Rosenzweig, “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era.”

American Historical Review 108  (2003): 740.

[2] Rosenzweig, 744.