From Monday to Wednesday I had the great privilege of attending the annual Digital Library Federation Forum. DLF is the brand new host of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance, which convened its first annual meeting under new leadership immediately following the Forum. Four days, two conferences, and one election later, I’d like to share some reflections about my work and the work of others in my field. A bit of a disclaimer: between this year’s election results and two powerful keynote addresses, the week was emotionally charged for myself and many of my colleagues. We continually came back to the idea of care and inclusivity in our profession and the danger of idealizing neutrality. I’d like to clearly state that any opinions I express on this post, no matter how obliquely, do not necessarily reflect the official stance or policies of Brown University or the Library.
The DLF forum and NDSA meeting certainly saw their share of tool & workflow chatter. Two librarians from the University of Miami spoke on creating rights statements for 52,000 objects in their ContentDM repository. It was not a full-time project for either of them, so their presentation doubled as a master class in project management. They diligently built a matrix for assessing each object then used that tool over the course of a year to assign statements. Project management came up over and over. Two librarians, one from the University of Iowa and another from Emerson College, detailed their experiences in digital initiatives and shared their own PM techniques. They underscored the importance of relationship in the workplace, especially when managing and encouraging the work of coworkers they did not supervise.
It was surprising to me how many people were willing to get vulnerable about their work without openly eliciting pity. The most affecting presentation in that regard came from an archivist who attempted to accession the email archive of a defunct non-profit organization. Although an authority figure from that organization encouraged the accession, former employees were troubled by the idea. Apparently a select number of employees used a secret listserv to correspond privately about confidential matters. Employees had also used their professional email for delicate personal matters. The presenter tried to adjust the scope of the accession, but ultimately abandoned the project. We often learn about our colleagues’ most notable successes at conferences, but hearing a story of failure was empowering and educational. Hindsight is always 20/20, and her willingness to share some of those lessons meant a lot.
Vulnerability, in a lot of ways, feels like the antithesis of professionalism. We’re supposed to stay neutral and focus on the work, which should, itself, be neutral. But as the two keynotes I saw so clearly outlined, we are affected by our work and our work affects others. On Monday morning, Stacie Williams’s DLF keynote outlined how work and care are seen as separate acts, when often they are inextricably bound. Preserving information and delivering it to those who seek its edification, she argued, is an act of care. It’s impossible to talk about inclusion and diversity in our workforce or collections without recognizing the care involved with that work. Williams’s talk was in direct dialogue with Bergis Jules’s NDSA keynote, who spoke on Wednesday.
Jules’s words came the afternoon after the U.S. election, which had visibly affected the crowd. He spoke on care in libraries and archives and insisted that historical erasure is an act of violence. Jules played an interview with Reina Gossett, a Black trans artist and activist, who spoke on the historical isolation she felt from other trans women of color. This isolation led her to the archives and motivated her to make the movie “Happy Birthday Marsha!” about trans pioneer Marsha P. Johnson. Jules drew a direct line from Gossett’s historical isolation to the epidemic of Black trans murders in 2016.
“We have to ask ourselves, what do we owe these victims and the trans community, as fellow humans, as archivists, as culture keepers, and as people who’ve charged ourselves with deciding who gets remembered and who doesn’t? What do we owe communities that are constantly victimized because of erasure and by erasure?”
Saving these legacies, Jules said, is made complicated by prioritizing standards and technology over human relationships. Although standards are important, they can lead to elitism and exclusion.
“The more selective and specialized space of digital collections, prioritizes professionalism, technical expertise, and standards, over a critical interrogation of the cultural character of our records. So this is certainly an appropriate venue to ask questions about the diversity represented in our historical records. Because for digital collections, who gets represented is closely tied to who writes the software, who builds the tools, who produces the technical standards, and who provides the funding or other resources for that work.”
Our profession tells itself we should remain neutral and that #AllLivesMatter, but without active collecting of marginalized communities, how can we ensure that collecting around a white, straight, cismale paradigm won’t persist?
Many of the people gathered there (myself included) were already feeling dread that the election outcome made vulnerable populations more vulnerable, and so Jules’s words were especially profound. After his talk, a librarian stood up and expressed concern that his brand new green card, his brand new husband, and the cultural heritage job he loves so much would all be taken away from him. It was a deeply affecting moment, and it was heartening to see the care Williams and Jules spoke about shown to him inside and outside of the ballroom.
So what now? I’m inspired by Samantha Abrams work at the University of Wisconsin and the emerging Doc Now project to rethink my role at Brown and the broader community. Now that we’re done talking, it’s time to get to work.