As an archivist, I am no stranger to digitization. In 2009, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Society of American Archivists (SAA) issued a joint statement providing guidelines concerning access, stating “repositories must be committed to preserving research materials and to making them available for research as quickly as practicable following their acquisition.” The pressure to make collections digitally available has only increased in the seventeen years that followed.
Since I graduated from my program in 2014, the field has steadily embraced the move toward open access archiving. From an ethical standpoint, this is exactly what should be done. Libraries, archives, and museums have long been under the control of white male specialists that have controlled who may use the materials in their holdings, and dictated the way those resources are used and interpreted. When I started at my current position, I reviewed the institution’s policies and forms. The request for archival use form contained an interesting phrase – “the archive may be accessed by any legitimate researcher.” I still do not know what qualities my predecessor believed a researcher had to possess to be “legitimate,” but it was clear that he controlled access. I removed that phrase.
Digital archiving and open access, I believe, must be embraced for archives to remain relevant in our increasing interconnected world. However, I share the concerns of Michell Moravec.
How are we thinking about our responsibilities as the users of these digitized archival material, when what we write is online, and when our reuse of digitized materials may at the least violate copyright and the worst cause harm to individuals?
I am also concerned with these questions from the perspective of what are the responsibilities of those who make these sources available. What are collection managers’ responsibility to the material they digitize? How do we ensure that digitization does not violate copyright and respects the original creators and donors? What criteria are we using to determine what we digitize? S. L. Ziegler warns that we need to avoid the trap of digital data brokers, and act with high ethics and recognize the power we hold as we collect, digitize, analyze, and present the lives of individuals that left their materials in our care. As technology makes archival inquiry faster and more convenient, historians and archivists must recognize the limits and gaps of digital repositories, and work diligently to mitigate them. Lara Pitnam explained some of these issues. Historians spending less time in the archives and having an over-reliance on digital sources poses several risks: including the loss of contextualization, ignoring local or less known individuals as search tools favor certain actors over others, failure to understand existing institutional and societal structures, and the risk of creating a partial picture of the global past.
While historians need to regulate their own actions to ensure that they are taking these limits into account, archivists also have a responsibility to close the gaps. In addition to the biographic and provenance sections in finding aids, archivists could add a historical context section that outlines the cultural, social, political, etc realities that surrounded both the creator and the contents of a collection. Archivists should supplement their manuscript collections with community archives that are curated by the local citizens. This will allow the preservation of the cultural memory connected to contents of the digital collections. Additionally, repositories need to expand their cross reference practices to include other locations with materials that expand the knowledge of the subjects being examined.
Digitization is not going away, and the responsibility of ethical access is paramount. Years have been dedicated to creating digital archives, perhaps it’s time to work on building the digital reading room.
(1) Association of College and Research Libraries and the Society of American Archivists, “ACRL/SAA Joint Statement on Access,” National Historical Publications & Records Commission, National Archives, July, 2009, https://www.archives.gov/nhprc/administer/access.html.
(2) Michelle Moravec, “What would you do? Historians’ ethics and digitized archives,” On Archivy, Medium, April 14, 2016, https://medium.com/on-archivy/on-april-at-the-organization-of-american-historians-i-participated-in-a-roundtable-discussion-563213dc94a.
(3) L. Ziegler, “Open Data in Cultural Heritage Institutions: Can We Be Better Than Data Brokers?,” digital humanities quarterly 14, no. 2 (2020), https://doi.org/10.63744/jfyb9zym5am3.
(4) Lara Putnam, “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable,” The American Historical Review 121 no. 2 (2016), 377-378.
3 responses to “A Digital Reading Room?”
Denton,
I applaud you for addressing the “legitimate researchers” caveat in your institution’s access request form. While I understand the need to preserve the sanctity of the archive, gatekeeping is an aspect that causes researchers, or those who simply seek knowledge, to shy away from using archival materials. In my experience, a positive first interaction is likely to foster future visits, while a poor first experience is likely to do the opposite. I have only been in the archival field for a year and nine months, but it was evident from the start that I need to make sure researchers encounter a welcoming environment, especially if it is there first ever visit to an archive.
I would be interested to hear more about the archive you manage. Do you offer digital reading room access?
Best,
Andrew
Denton,
The idea of a “digital reading room” as you described really spoke to how I view digitized sources and archival databases. These spaces should be jumping off points that connect potential researchers to historical collections. As you rightly point out, digitizing breaks down barriers of access of who can research a collection, its a trend that only continues to foster engagement between institutions and the public!
The point you brought up about any “legitimate” researcher is very striking to me. I often find that, as much as the humanities view themselves as the progressives in countering narratives and righting the wrongs of the past in information and academia. I also feel that the humanities, behind closed doors, are still very elitist and controlling over information. I personally believe that when it comes to research material and information, there should be open access so we are free to pursue the expanse of knowledge. However, in this digital age, we face the question of whether giving access to anyone and everyone can be manipulated for evil. For example, As someone who loves to learn, I spend a lot of free time watching youtube videos by amatuer historians. I do try tostick to the ones that cite their sources and follow the same criteria of research that a professional would do. At the same time, in our political climate, there are more and more people who are doing similar videos, less sourced, but spreading alternate narratives and history to support false ideas and history. So now I question the idea of free access to these sources in hopes of preserving historical interpretation as a force for good.