(4528,1,'2013-05-31 03:53:24','2013-05-31 03:53:24','The primal scene of archival research takes place in a dreary reading room. A researcher sits at her table, inert. An archivist enters, pushing a cart that bears a dozen dusty gray boxes.\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/5ykY6moIaDE?rel=0\" height=\"250\" width=\"333\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe>\r\n\r\nThe archivist unhinges a box, removes a numbered file folder and, placing it at the researcher’s elbow, steps back. The researcher stirs, then sits upright with a mechanical jolt. She turns sharply in the direction of the folder, flips it open and cocks her head towards the flimsy leaves inside; now she is reading. (Zoom in on the eyes as they click into focus.) Now she is reading, and now she truly comes alive; she bends towards the papers, taps her forehead in thought. A sheaf of blank paper and a pencil appear on her table, and she begins taking notes. Her fingers fly—and soon, so do the pages she is writing upon. Caught up in eddies of excitement, they swoop to the ceiling and around the room and down to the floor, where they fall together into perfect piles. Bindings sprout from the outer strata; the pages sew themselves into bright, tight, hard-cover books. These the archivist gathers up and places on the shelves that line the room, next to other books and gray boxes.\r\n\r\nI may have it backwards: in other versions of the fantasy, it is the archive that is first animated by the presence of the researcher, a Dr. Coppelius who waves a pencil and sets the dusty boxes to dancing. But either way, the archival imaginary posits a symbiotic relationship between researcher and source, a photogenic pas de deux that leads to a finished scholarly product. This work, in turn, enters the archive for the next generation of researchers; it might even be taken apart again so that its secret ingredients (notes, drafts, letters) can themselves be served up in a series of boxes. Such a strangely private form of publication it creates, the coupling of researcher and source.\r\n\r\nWhat Freudian trauma results from witnessing this sight? Only the harm that myth inflicts. This primal scene is a fiction, a dream of perfect union between researcher and source that ignores, first of all, the full cast of characters. What about the archivist, who is rendered invisible? What about all those within and without the archive, upon whose labor—acquiring, preserving, organizing, reading, cataloging, describing, interpreting, analyzing, debating, teaching, writing, editing, digitizing, referencing and publishing—the current project depends? More a barn dance than a pas de deux: an archival encounter is an enactment of social authorship long before the researcher enters the room. See Jerome McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) on the idea of social authorship, which could be described as “the dialectic between the historically located individual author and the historically developed institutions of literary production” that help create a work, eg, printers, publishers, editors and readers (81).\r\n\r\nBut even a barn dance is much too mannered a metaphor. The sketch above misleads us more generally about the experience on the ground. Doing time in an archive is often tedious, uncomfortable and bewildering. For librarians, there is the struggle to promote and simultaneously protect what you have; the difficulty of fitting unruly materials into arrangements and workflows; and worries about space and time—where to put it all, how to address your backlog. For researchers, there is the struggle to locate the archives you need and what matters to you inside them; the uncertainty created by unruly data; and worries about time and space— how to access what you need during your research trip, how to record and organize the information you gather. At both ends, the archival encounter is counter-cinematic and erratic, days of monotonous sifting and dead-ends punctuated by one or two, or maybe zero, hidden moments of vivid, peculiar joy.\r\n\r\nSo archival research does not fulfill its ideal outline. So what? Who cares? Why dredge up the fantasy? Because the fantasy continues to structure our archival encounters—what we expect and undertake in the reading room, what we allow it to mean. Twenty years ago, Alice Kaplan observed that “conventional academic discourse requires that when you write up the results of your archival work, you tell a story about what you found, but not about how you found it. The less the seams of your findings show, the better your discoveries lend themselves to use by others… tell[ing] these stories breaks their spell and violates the spirit of the archives.” ((Alice Yaeger Kaplan, “Working in the Archives,” Yale French Studies 77 (1990): 103-116; 103, 107.)) With a few word changes, the same could be said about what counts as professional archivist discourse: the impersonal, neutral genre of the finding aid, for example, should say what is in a collection, but should not discuss what is confusing or missing in it, or the problems it posed in processing. ((See, for example, James M. O’Toole and Richard J. Cox, Understanding Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2006).)) Despite the growing recognition that this sequestration is never completely possible—that the material conditions and social relations of the archive shape the work we do in it—that work continues to be represented in professional and scholarly publications as if it is. Despite the recent call to move to the fore “the backstage of the archives—how they are constructed, policed, experienced, and manipulated” in order to support historiography “not merely [as] a project of fact-retrieval” but as “a set of complex processes of selection, interpretation, and even creative invention,” the “backstage” stays in the background. ((Antoinette Burton, “Introduction: Archive Fever, Archive Stories,” Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, ed. Burton (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 7-8.)) Antoinette Burton may be correct that “many if not most historians operate under the assumption that history is a highly interpretive act,” but this belief is not yet reflected in the archival encounter: the ways that researchers (not just historians) and librarians report their experiences with primary sources; the ways that librarians and researchers work together; the ways librarians and researchers regard the involvement of “non specialists.” ((Burton, 8. Burton notes that “whether historians concede or fully countenance the impact of such contingencies on their work is another question. They rarely speak of them, and even more rarely do they do so in print” (8). Her books recuperates some of those archive stories but this effort, I’ll suggest below, is hampered by other kinds of obligations.)) While the advent of digitization and electronic resource sharing has revolutionized the research landscape, making primary sources public in unprecedented ways, there remains in the archive a habitus of secret knowledge—the “spell” that Kaplan is loathe to break. This is not necessarily intentional. It is rather the effect of layering recent shifts in technology, theory and professional definition onto older foundations: petrified conditions, relations, expectations and systems that continue to operate in part through the enduring power of fantasies about research. What we have in the archive is a stratified groundwork that still governs our archival encounters.\r\n\r\nBut, you will object, the archive has already changed. Now we have the “archival turn”—the scholarly interest in the archive not just as a source of evidence but as an epistemological mode. Surely, this attention to the constructedness of the archive has led to a revealing reconsideration of what actually goes on inside an archive; surely, as a result, those archaic fantasies have diminished. Have they? In what follows, I begin by unearthing one stratum of the archival turn, the decade of the 1990s, as represented by three texts: Kaplan’s essay mentioned above, “Working in the Archives” (1990)\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_369\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-2-kaplan.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-369\" alt=\"fig 2 kaplan\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-2-kaplan-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" /></a> Photocopy of Alice Yaeger Kaplan’s “Working in the Archives.”; Derrida’s Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1994/95)[/caption]\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_372\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-3-Derrida.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-372\" alt=\"Print out of Jacque Derrida’s “Archive Fever” from Diacritics.; and Carolyn Steedman’s Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (2001).\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-3-Derrida-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" /></a> Print out of Jacque Derrida’s “Archive Fever” from Diacritics.; and Carolyn Steedman’s Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (2001).[/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_373\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-4-steedman.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-373 \" alt=\"Library copy of Carolyn Steedman’s Dust. (Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” Diacritics 25.2 (Summer 1995): 9-63. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001).) \" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-4-steedman-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" /></a> Library copy of Carolyn Steedman’s Dust. ((Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” Diacritics 25.2 (Summer 1995): 9-63. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001).))[/caption]\r\n\r\nA cross-examination of these three texts reveals a pattern of interests, a set of efforts to defy customary practices—but only, it turns out, “in theory.” While certain practices are challenged in these texts, they leave mostly intact the older strata of archival research fantasies and conventions. Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman do not dislodge the forces that organize the actual archival encounter.\r\n\r\nHow does this happen? Why is practice so stubborn? We need another take on archival practice: not practice in theory, but practice in action; not the 1990s, but now; not in terms of textual patterns, but in terms that suit the subject: the terms of the archival encounter itself, and the eccentric, anachronistic and even monotonous experience it generates. My second look at practice will take the form of a series of vignettes about a real-life archive, the George Peabody Library in Baltimore. While this narrative structure may seem to recreate the division of labor between theory and practice, my hope is that—by giving practice the last word—we’ll be in a better position to synthesize the two.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>I. “The library doubles as a detective’s office.” [note number=\'7\']Kaplan, 114.[/note]</strong>\r\n\r\nThe archival turn could be dated to the founding of “scientific” history in the mid-nineteenth century, or to the development a century later of the quantitative methods of the Annales School, or to other evidence-based movements in the history of history, but what is generally meant by this phrase corresponds with the formation of cultural studies and the use of the archive as a conceptual category. That is, the archival turn has to do with the notion of the “figuration” of the archive, a parallel decline in its empirical authority and a related expansion of its relevance within domains that are not exclusively historiographic, like art, literary criticism, textual studies, media studies and information studies. [note number=\'8\']See the use of the term in, for example, Carolyn Hamilton et al, eds., Refiguring the Archive (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), Cheryl Simon, ed., Following the Archival Turn: Photography, the Museum, and the Archive, special issue of Visual Resources: A Journal of Documentation 18.2 (June 2002), and Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). This turn is partially construed as a “move from archive-as-source to archive-as-subject,” but also by the earlier metaphorical interest in “the archive” that goes back to the 1980s (Stoler, 44-45) and by Foucauldian descriptions of archives as “‘monuments to particular configurations of power” (Hamilton, qtd. in Burton, 6).[/note] But it is not irrelevant that a devotion to archival methods precedes by many decades contemporary theories of the archive; if the archival turn lacks a precise origin, this (we will see) is completely in keeping with its own preoccupations.\r\n\r\nKaplan therefore represents in some ways an arbitrary beginning for this cross-examination—clearly the archive as a conceptual category predates 1990—but her article does initiate something new: the recognition that there is something called an “archive story” that must remain hidden in order for the official “results” to function authoritatively. In admitting this bit of professional legerdemain, and in telling her own archive story in a prestigious scholarly journal, Kaplan not only commits the violation she prohibits but also contradicts it. Through its publication, Kaplan’s own archive story is elevated to the status of “results”—a kind of research that shadows conventional academic discourse. Indeed, Kaplan notes, such “fables” of research “can be analyzed like a text,” a “mixed up genre” that combines the “redemptive detective fiction” with the epic and the dime novel. [note number=\'9\']Kaplan, 106, 107.[/note]\r\n\r\nKaplan’s archive story thus marks a distinctive moment in the archival turn—one which gained its most prominent authorization in 1994, with a paper that Jacques Derrida delivered (in English) to a conference sponsored by the Freud Museum, the Courtauld Institute and the Société International d’Histoire de la Psychiatrie et de la Psychoanalyse. Called initially “The Concept of the Archive: A Freudian Impression,” the lecture was revised and published in 1995 as Mal d’archive: une impression freudienne in French; the published English version echoed the French publication with its 1995 title Archive Fever. As Carolyn Steedman points out in Dust: The Archive and Cultural History, however, this work that has been assigned a seminal status in archival studies “for the main part… is not about archives at all, but is rather a sustained contemplation of a work of history, of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable (1991),” itself a sustained contemplation of Moses and Monotheism—which (according to Steedman) Yerushalmi examines through Freud’s description of the work as a “‘historical novel,’ or a kind of historical story,” undertaken “in order to understand the period of baroque anti-semitism through which he was living.” [note number=\'10\']Steedman, 3.[/note]\r\n\r\nDizzy yet? Let’s undertake a more careful reading of this splatter pattern of intra-references—or, to stick with the archaeological metaphor, let’s call them groups of potsherds buried in the 1990s layer of the “archival turn.” Digging down to reassemble them reveals a set of interests with special implications for archival practice.\r\n\r\nThe most prominent group of sherds to note are the fragments of disciplinarity: the inter-, multi- or perhaps simply anti-disciplinarity of the texts, authors and audiences caught up in these three archival addresses. Kaplan, an American scholar of French literature, calls the post-theory exchange between literature and history a “cross-pollination of desire between historians and literary critics” undertaken “with the curiosity and energetic passion of collectors.” [note number=\'11\']Kaplan, 107-108.[/note] Steedman, a British historian, performs this cross-pollinating process without comment: her epigraph to Dust is from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, one chapter treats George Eliot’s Middlemarch in depth… in fact, almost every chapter depends on a literary text. [note number=\'12\']Another chapter invokes Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1848 novel Mary Barton, a third is anchored by W. H. Auden’s poem “Homage to Clio,” and a fourth finds its most eloquent examples in Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend.[/note] Derrida, a French philosopher, produced a work that has been exceptionally mobile across disciplines, forms, languages and professional domains. He gave his initial talk to an audience drawing on three different kinds of institutions; Mal d’Archive was published in book form in both French and English, but also made an intermediate appearance as an essay in the journal diacritics. All of these texts, it seems, respond to the provocations of the archive—to the materials and circumstances of discovery—rather than to the disciplinary distinctions that arguably divide the archive from itself.\r\n\r\nArchive Fever has become a founding document even though, as Steedman notes in the very beginning of her book, many in Derrida’s audience “knew the ‘archival turn’ to be [already] well underway” at the time of his talk. [note number=\'13\']Steedman, 2.[/note] As it happens—and this is the second group of sherds I see—these three essays have in common an investment in or a problem with origins, especially with the failure of origins. Derrida, for example, defines archive fever as a kind of Freudian death drive—a drive to fix and preserve which at the same time “works to destroy the archive: on the condition of effacing but also with a view to effacing its own ‘proper’ traces… [it] is above all anarchivic, one could say, or archiviolithic… the archive always works, and a priori, against itself.” [note number=\'14\']Derrida, 14. [/note] If the archival impulse is driven to destroy its own work, then the question of origins ultimately point to the larger question of disorder. [note number=\'15\']The disorder of origins makes frequent appearances in the essay but one example will make the point—in the “Preamble” where he recounts how he titled the talk that he had not yet written and was to give at the Freud Museum. The “Preamble” starts with his reflections on the word “impression,” which has several simultaneous registers of meaning for him. One of these is the “scriptural or typographic” register: that of the graphic impression that marks a substrate. In English, “impression” is phonetically related to “repression” and “suppression,” key words in the Freudian vocabulary, translated respectively from the German Verdrängung and Unterdrückung. English, that is, retains the rhyming relationship of the two German terms, and “impression” in this company comes to have a vaguely Freudian meaning as well. But in French, Verdrängung is “refoulement,” which means something more like expulsion, a driving away. The Freudian sense of the French word “répression” has been reserved for Unterdrückung. So English “repression” defines a phenomenon that must be distinguished from the French “répression.” These translational shifts “directly concern the structures of archivization,” Derrida says, “because they touch on the topic differences and thus on the location of the substrates of traces\" (Derrida, 23). In other words, how do you classify concepts whose meanings shift across languages? Where do you store them in a disciplinary grammar—or in an archive? How do these asymmetrical linguistic structures shape the establishment and extension of a new science? For Derrida, the difference between “repression” and “répression” is “enough to disrupt the tranquil landscape of all historical knowledge, of all historiography, and even of all self-consistent ‘scholarship’” (Derrida, 23).[/note]\r\n\r\nOrigin failure appears both as deliberate performance and as unintentional oversight in these essays. Derrida stages his own inability to get past “go”; with an introductory section, and subsequent sections sub-titled “Exergue,” “Preamble,” “Foreword,” his essay functions, Steedman notes, like a “primer offering instruction in the principle of deferral.” [note number=\'16\']A short notice called “Priere d’inserer,” published only in the French book version, carried the bulk of an argument for which there was no room in the lecture. Steedman, 7.[/note] For all her insight into Derrida’s titling adventures, however, Steedman’s title is marked by its own origin aporia. While her first chapter is devoted to Archive Fever—a “let’s begin at the beginning” homage to the seminal text—her book’s title, Dust, seems more indebted to the last sentence of Kaplan’s essay, published five years before Derrida’s: “Usually there is no mother lode, no original manuscript to be retrieved—the gold is all in the dust.” [note number=\'17\']Kaplan, 116.[/note] Kaplan, however, is never mentioned. [note number=\'18\']Kaplan also begins her essay with a brief consideration of the “arche,” the Greek and Latin term for the public records office, which is a major starting point for Derrida. Is he borrowing from her, or is she borrowing from him, given that this sort of etymological investigation was an established signature of Deconstruction?[/note]\r\n\r\nKaplan, for her part, unravels her own archive story. She gives us a kind of “whodunit”—her search for the ephemeral sources of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s anti-semitic pamphlet Bagatelles pour un massacre (1937). She uses this account to exemplify her effort to “move through the archival process and recover some of the stories that get deleted in the final scholarly form.” [note number=\'19\']Kaplan, 104. For this reason, perhaps, Kaplan never reveals what she ultimately discovers in her successful search for Celine’s sources. In fact, it’s not entirely clear whether her pre-emptive and truncated treatment of her archive story is deliberate or not. Is this treatment meant to indirectly support her official claim about “results”? Or does the presence of the archive story suggest that telling it is an impulse she can’t quite control? Thanks, Lauren Coats, for helping tease this problem out.[/note] These beginnings are preemptively struck out, however, by what seems to be her main claim: “the passion of the archives must finally be used to eradicate all personal stories in the interests of the dry archival report, fit for a public.” [note number=\'20\']Kaplan, 103.[/note] Only in the “para-text”—a preface, for example—can the archive story appear without “interrupt[ing] or complicat[ing] the narrative so much that no results could ever be understood or perceived.” [note number=\'21\']Kaplan, 104.[/note] Despite this unequivocal assertion, the personal “whodunit” prevails in her essay, especially in the final section set in the Centre du documentation juive contemporain (CDJC). [note type=\'figure\' number=\'5\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-5-cdjc-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-423\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-423\" title=\"fig 5 cdjc\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-5-cdjc1-333x250.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Website for the Centre de documentation juive contemporain.[/note] It is this library, where Kaplan solves the mystery of Céline’s sources, that “doubles as a detective’s office.”\r\n\r\nWhile Kaplan’s research mystery resolves neatly, the truth about archives is that they are full of gaps, mistakes and excesses: in the words of one of the CDJC librarians, “‘ici on trouve tout’—there’s some of everything here”—but not, one could add, all of anything. [note number=\'22\']Kaplan, 115.[/note] Kaplan’s essay ends by nullifying both her detective story success and her “dry archival report,” by recognizing the disorder on which both of these narratives are unsteadily perched: “The archive is constituted by these errors, these pieces out of place, which are then reintegrated into a story of some kind.” [note number=\'23\']Kaplan, 115.[/note] “A story of some kind”? So much for “results.”\r\n\r\nKaplan sets us up to perceive one final potsherd pattern common to these three essays. If origin-less disorder is the order of the archive, it is a disorder that is generated out of human loss—a disorder that joins the body and the material world. The archive is always predicated on historical violence of some sort, whatever is censored, erased, excluded, trumped up, used up, misplaced, conquered, killed. Moreover, the archival categories that mark both the visible victories and hidden defeats do not stay within their walls; the archive is both a repository of existing schemas and a means of perpetuating them in the world beyond. While we might usually think of this disciplinary activity as a pact between the archive and its political authors, Steedman makes it clear that the dilemmas of order shape the archival body in many ways. For example, she takes literally the provocation of Derrida’s title Archive Fever to investigate the illness that researchers contract on the penultimate day of their trip to the archive: prompted by the anxiety of the task that remains unfinished, they end their research with night-sweats and head-aches. But what seems like a strangely specific malady is transformed by Steedman into a far-reaching social symptom: by relating the researcher’s “archive fever” to the terrible diseases suffered by tanners, skinners and other workers in the trades associated with paper and leather, Steedman expands our sense of who is in the archive—the bodies whose specialized labors populate our libraries with books, the many kinds of expertise the archive consumes.\r\n\r\nFor Derrida, the relation between the material archive and its human architects focuses on one kind of “graphic mark,” a particular “private inscription”: circumcision as the archival signature that is also the signature of patrimoine, with Freud’s relationship to his father as his main example. [note number=\'24\']Derrida, 19.[/note] It is perhaps not a coincidence that the body in question in both Kaplan’s and Derrida’s archive is Jewish, for that is a body that has come to symbolize the destructive power of classificatory regimes. Despite her contention that the private passions motivating research must be kept secret, Kaplan is fascinated by the “missing person stories” at the CDJC: by the “quantity of people who are there for personal reasons,” the survivors of occupation or deportation or camps, or their descendants, quietly looking up their lost ones or noisily dropping off their memoirs. [note number=\'25\']Kaplan, 113.[/note] This disorganized crowd of dead and living bodies tries to meet up with an equally disorganized crowd of materials—individual letters, trial transcripts, pamphlets, newspapers, first-person accounts, books, photographs, lists. The monumental task of match-making, the librarians’ work, is never complete. More papers are always generated or declassified or discovered, different human questions and needs emerge. The tidy choreography of the research fantasy, where the detective always finds her man, is not so much in evidence; what we have instead is corpora in excess of existing categories.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\nKaplan, Derrida and Steedman open up the archival body. They show us how paper meets the press of flesh; they make us feel just how intimate it is. [note number=\'26\']This interest in the corporeal dimensions and effects of order, its human and non-human components, has in common with their other gestures—an experimental attitude towards conventional disciplinarity and attention to the priority of disorder—the circumstances of the academic humanities in the 1990s. Since the archival turn came out of the ascent of cultural studies and allied intrigues in the 1970s and ‘80s, the circles in the Venn diagram of these ventures will necessarily overlap. We could also say that the archive took off when it did precisely because it made a clever new container for these preoccupations, thick in the humanities atmosphere at the time, where they were distilled and united. [/note] But for all their revelations about the limits of discipline and the multiplicities of disorder in the archive, these texts do not disclose the specific methods of engagement that led to their existence. While Kaplan offers up her own archival victory and outlines several other such stories, she still insists on their marginalization. [note number=\'27\']“Were the story of how you got the story really to be told inside the book, it would interrupt or complicate the narrative so much that no results could be understood or even perceived. Every story of success in the archives is emotionally charged, for only the most extreme emotions can drive people to the drudgery, to the discomfort, of sitting and sifting through dog-eared documents, manuscripts, microfilms. To reveal those emotions would not only gum up the narrative, it would threaten its credibility, by showing on what thin strands of coincidence, accident, or on what unfair forms of friendship, ownership, geographical proximity, the discoveries were based” (Kaplan, 104).[/note] If these texts are not concerned with actual practices in the archive or changes in its methodologies, what do they tell us?\r\n\r\nFirst, they suggest one reason for the perpetuation of myths about the archive. While Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman are eager to show how archival materials do not conform to disciplinary distinctions—an enthusiasm related to other disruptive tendencies in late twentieth-century humanist scholarship –they seem less cognizant of a related phenomenon: the archive does not obey strict professional divisions, either. In Kaplan’s library-as-detective’s-office metaphor, the scholar is the detective, but does the “Eureka” moment belong only to the scholar who pieces together a narrative? What about the people who prepared those pieces? The archivist is still missing in action. Likewise, these essays do not dwell on missing boxes, illegible papers, neglected citations. There are no descriptions of archival slogging, no admissions that some materials failed to be relevant. And of course, there are no prescriptions for a different order. It is not the main aim of Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman to effect an evolution of practice; archival turnistas are not interested in disorder in order to re-order. But it is worth remembering that it is not in their professional interest as scholars to make their practices more transparent.\r\n\r\nSecondly, along the same lines, these texts inform us of the duplicity of speculative practices that reveal but cannot live out the instability of their archival mandates. Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman are put into the position of saying, “Yes, the archive is biased, idiosyncratic and treacherous—but the observations I draw from it are flawless.” [note number=\'28\']Derrida, unlike Kaplan and Steedman, makes no claims to work inside an actual archive, unless we consider Yerushalmi’s book as a kind of archive. But the fact that the essay was written self-consciously for presentation at the Freud Museum suggests that it was made out of an archive indirectly—in its construction, if not in its contents. [/note]\r\n\r\nFinally, these texts suggest why archival studies that attempt to be explicit about the messy nature of the archive have become instead “archive studies.” In more recent works like Refiguring the Archive (2002), Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions and the Writing of History (2005) and Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2009), the archive appears as a subject in its own right. Although the archival scenarios that are put into play in each of these books incorporate different disciplines—art, history, anthropology, literature, post-colonial studies—they have essentially created a new discipline. “Archive studies” is something we might, in the taxonomy of disciplines, see as the love-child of cultural studies, history and archival methodology. Moreover, this new discipline has in common with other humanities disciplines a complete blindness about its professional investments; it does not register much awareness of the professional investments of librarians, archivists, curators and “non-specialists,” or invite insights from those perspectives. Perhaps this is inevitably what happens when academics must give legitimacy to something new, which in turn reflects the pressures of scholarly communication: a topic must be delineated in conventional terms in order to merit publication. [note number=\'29\']Perhaps this is also the moment to ask why we—I—have been using the term “archive” all along, with its statist resonances, rather than the term “collection,” which has institutional but also personal resonances. Does “archive” bring us closer to recognizably “serious scholarship”?[/note] But it is also true that in these more recent books, which openly investigate the archive’s power-politics, the disorderly drift of the archive and its hybrid corporeality have mostly been bent towards a particular narrative about the archive as an agent of history rather than as a set of ongoing practices. It is as if the historical archive has been assembled in ways that reflect and reiterate power relations, but the contemporary archive has not; it is as if the researcher’s own research travails remain a transparent layer over the body of work that it constructs. [note number=\'30\']Of course, this is precisely what Derrida meant about the “death drive” of the archival impulse. Archive Stories is something of an exception; researchers speak openly here about themselves as researchers. It is interesting, however, that this book—like Steedman’s—doesn’t cite Kaplan’s essay as a precursor text despite the clear titular link.[/note]\r\n\r\nPerhaps it would also be fair to note that, if archival studies are now being formulated as an interdisciplinary discipline called “archive studies,” this might be just another stage in the turn. It might be that what comes next reconfigures the premise of disciplinarity and the promise of disorder, with a different approach to the human/non-human interactions that the archive documents and realizes: a more diffuse and multi-vocal set of practices in place of a new field. One way to imagine this approach would be to fully embrace Kaplan’s idea of the archive story as an account of what one hoped for, looked for and found, what one did and did not do, in the archive—an account loosed from the quarantine she advocates. Some very basic genre precedents for the archive story do exist; the bibliographic essay and the methodology statement, for example, have played an important role in many disciplines in the past and still do in some. Instead of a para-textual nod towards that archive story (in Kaplan’s sense), why not create a parallel text written collaboratively by the researcher(s) and the librarian(s), or by one person acting in both professional capacities, that runs alongside the official “results”? Or in a set of expanded notes that address not just the “what” and “where” but the “how” and “why” of sources, which are lifted from their small-type, bottom-of-page basement up into the light? Or—to add yet another layer—parallel texts that also offer room for exchange with other researchers, archivists and even interested “non specialists,” like collectors, bibliophiles and fans?\r\n\r\nIf it is hasn’t been clear already that I have scrupulously avoided so far the other kind of archive, the digital archive, it will be now. What I am imagining would be far too complicated to produce or consult in print, but would not be at all difficult to organize as a digital object—as an archive in its own right. By avoiding the digital archive up to this point, I have also finessed the fact that our current archival research methods are completely reliant on the digital archive, along with the development of online research tools and electronic instruments of data discovery and organization. Those conditions probably bear the most responsibility for making the archive visible as something that warranted a “turn” in the first place. Even Derrida refers in each version of Archive Fever to the computer on which he is currently composing, predicting that email will not only totally transform the archive as he knows it, but will make his own essay obsolete.\r\n\r\nIn short, we already have in place both the theory and the media that will make it possible to enact a radical new archival practice. We have in place what we need to integrate the archive story into the archive itself, while making it visible as a new form of “results.”\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>II. The library doubles as a librarian’s office.</strong>\r\n\r\nI could end here, with a triumphant firing of the starter pistol and a rousing cheer. But that would be a bit disingenuous, given that the starter pistol for both the archival turn and the academic use of the internet actually went off decades ago. So the question remains, what stands in the way of the practical enactment of the archival turn’s speculative insights? I’d like to engage this question by following Kaplan’s example (but not her main claim): through some archive story-telling about the George Peabody Library. These three vignettes, identified as “typical” through conversations with my colleague Paul Espinosa, illustrate the intractable formations that present-day archival encounters come up against.\r\n\r\n<strong>1. The Perils of Description.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>A group of Russian speakers visits the Peabody Library. The dozen men and women sit down around the screen that Paul has set up. He narrates a brief slide-show about the Peabody’s history, then leads them to a table where a dozen books from the collection have been laid out in cradles. He tells them about each book: what it is, why it is interesting. Each phrase of his presentation is painstakingly translated by the group’s leader into Russian.</blockquote>\r\nWhen academic and community groups visit the Peabody, my colleagues and I draw upon a standard tour-guide’s repertoire to describe it. We explain that George Peabody was a tradesman cum financier cum philanthropist who decided in 1857 that Baltimore needed a cultural institution to support the arts and learning. We talk about the evolution of the Peabody Institute, the four-part athenaeum that resulted, with its art gallery, lecture series, conservatory and free, public, non-circulating library. We discuss the model of philanthropy that George Peabody initiated and its wide-ranging influence. We point out the signal features of the awe-inspiring architecture of the current library, built to accommodate a rapidly growing collection in 1878. But when it comes to the library itself, as a collection, it is hard to know what to say. How to accurately translate the library’s holdings into a succinct and memorable statement that conveys an appropriate level of detail to different audiences? While it poses specific challenges, the Peabody also exemplifies more general problems of collection description.\r\n\r\nWe do not lack evidence for the evolving contents of the Peabody. We have the two-volume printed list of “desiderata” drawn up by the Peabody’s first librarian, John G. Morris. [note number=\'31\']Alphabetical Catalogue of Books to be Purchased for the Library of the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, Vols. 1 and 2 (Baltimore: John D. Toy, 1861, 1863).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'6\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-6-alpha-index-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-395\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-395\" title=\"fig 6 alpha index\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-6-alpha-index1-336x484.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"484\" /></a>Alphabetical index from Alphabetical Catalouge (“desiderata”).[/note] We have the collections register for several decades’-worth of acquisitions, recording bibliographic information and accession numbers that can still be found on the inside front end papers of many of the books in the collection. We have the librarians’ annual reports to the library trustees. [note number=\'32\']The Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore: The Founder’s Letters and the Papers Relating to its Dedication and History, Up to the 1st January, 1868 (Baltimore: William K. Boyle, 1868); and subsequent Annual Reports, 1869, etc.[/note] We have the library’s first printed catalogue, an unsurpassed achievement when first published in 1883, which listed 100,000 volumes by author and title. [note number=\'33\']Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, Vols. 1-5 (Baltimore: Isaac Friedenwald, 1883; reprinted Boston: G. K. Hall, [1961?]; also on googlebooks), and Second Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, Including the Additions Made Since 1882, Vols. 1-8 (Baltimore: Deutsch Lithographic and Printing, 1896; reprinted Boston: G. K. Hall, 1961).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'7\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-7-print-cat/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-396\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-396\" title=\"fig 7 print cat\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-7-print-cat-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Reprinted volumes of the Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute (1883).[/note] We have the cards from the Dewey decimal system card catalogue, which replaced the printed catalogue in the 1910s. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'8\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-8-card-cat/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-397\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-397\" title=\"fig 8 card cat\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-8-card-cat.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"448\" /></a>One of two card catalogues in the Peabody.[/note] Now, of course, the library’s collections are represented in an online catalogue that integrates them with other collections in the Hopkins library system.\r\n\r\nThese markers of the collection, however, fail to satisfy some contemporary research queries for reasons that are both practical and philosophical. The transfer of the printed index, organized by author, to the Dewey decimal system, organized by topic, represented a major epistemological shift that facilitated browsing by subject category. But of course, those categories are embedded in historically-bound notions about the subjects and structures of knowledge: Dewey was invented in the 1870s, and the 22 revisions it has undergone since then cannot overcome its essential organizational distortions. For example, the literature range—the 800s—offers only 10% of its categorical space to literatures in languages other than English, Germanic and Romance languages, Greek and Latin.\r\n\r\nIn the case of the Peabody, the Dewey arrangements overlay even older systems of knowledge hierarchy. Should we continue to offer, for example, a description of the Peabody’s “voyages and travels” books? This category represents a Renaissance schematic that was still in service in the mid-nineteenth century; while actual “voyages and travels” were extended by colonial ventures, the category was eventually disbanded. Dewey combined it with geography to make a sub-category of “history.” In keeping active the old-fashioned phrase “voyages and travels,” we are participating in a centuries-long project of euphemism about the material aims and actual activities of colonialism; we are privileging an early phase of the Peabody’s evolution over later phases; we may even be confusing modern researchers. And yet, as one of the topics in Morris’s “desiderata,” a considerable portion of the Peabody’s collection was acquired with the aim of fleshing out that descriptor. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'9\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-9-index-detail/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-398\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-398\" title=\"fig 9 index detail\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-9-index-detail-336x274.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"274\" /></a>Detail of subject index from Alphabetical Catalouge No. 2 (“desiderata”).[/note]\r\n\r\nYet another classificatory dilemma is expressed by George Peabody’s original statement of the library’s purpose: that it “be furnished in every department of knowledge, with the most approved literature… It should consist on the best works on every subject… to satisfy the researches of students who may be engaged in the pursuit of knowledge not ordinarily attainable in the private libraries of the country.” [note number=\'34\']“Letters from George Peabody, Esq.: Baltimore, February 12th, 1857,” in Founder’s Letters, 7.[/note] The Peabody was founded as a cultural institution for the people of Baltimore, but from the first, this democratic ambition was in conflict with the intellectual aspirations of the first librarians and their desire to facilitate civic “self-improvement.” Morris (a doctor of divinity), his successor Nathaniel Holmes Morison (a schoolmaster and poet), and Morison’s assistant and successor Philip Uhler (who had trained as an entomologist) were all devoted to the nineteenth-century idea of the scholar-librarian. Morison wrote in one annual report that “Education always proceeds from the above downward, from the best to the common minds, from the leaders of the people to the people themselves. Furnish... the foundations of intelligence and thought, and they will... stimulate and improve the whole community.\" [note number=\'35\']Qtd. in Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, “PIB Ref. Library. 8-Morison\'s Philosophy of Excellence,” in George Peabody (1795-1869): A-Z Handbook of the Massachusetts-Born Merchant in the South, London-Based Banker, and Philanthropist\'s Life, Influence, and Related People, Places, Events, and Institutions. . 11 Mar. 2011.[/note] When the Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1876 in close proximity to the Peabody—in large part to take advantage of the library—the tendency of the librarians to address scholarly needs and “approved literature” over popular desires was given additional momentum. In keeping with these ideas, the Peabody’s librarians kept careful track of their readers’ choices, noting with special caution the numbers of novels that were requested. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'10\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-10-annual-report-detail/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-399\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-399\" title=\"fig 10 annual report detail\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-10-annual-report-detail-336x452.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"452\" /></a>Detail from First Annual Report showing chart of books read, with special mention of fiction.[/note] This schism at the heart of the library’s collecting paradigm was not unique to the Peabody; the question of reading matter—should it offer leisure for the masses or the means of social uplift?—was central to the public library movement of the second half of the nineteenth century. [note number=\'36\']See, for example, Alexis McCrossen, “’One Cathedral More’ or ‘Mere Lounging Places for Bummers’? The Cultural Politics of Leisure and the Public Library in Gilded Age America,” Libraries &amp; Culture 41.2 (2006): 169-188; Paul Sturges, “The Public Library and Reading by the Masses: Historical Perspectives on the USA and Britain 1850-1900,” ; Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, Upon the Objects to be Attained by the Establishment of a Public Library, 12 Dec. 2010.[/note]\r\n\r\nFinally, the Peabody’s “desiderata” acquisitions and librarians’ selections were supplemented by book donations from local elites—bibliophiles with extensive private collections that included incunabula, classical authors in Renaissance editions, expensive illustrated atlases. At the same time, book donations came in from more plebian sources. The Peabody’s growth overlapped with the decline of the local social libraries, and it eventually absorbed some of the books from the Library Company of Baltimore, Robinson’s Circulating Library and several small professional and mechanics’ libraries. And I haven’t even touched on the Peabody’s twentieth-century fate.\r\n\r\nThe variety of philanthropic impulses, resource streams and classification philosophies that have fed the Peabody over the 150 years of its existence has led to a collection that does not so much map the nineteenth-century mind as signal its odd amalgam of popular and scholarly investments. The Peabody’s collection effectively evades succinct description—at least, any kind of description that pretends to be coherent, that is not perforated by its stakes in local history, library history, book history. But more importantly, it suggests the degree to which accident and opportunity and prejudice and wealth and the changing winds of cataloguing rules shape any archive. Description, which should be the most fundamental tool of communication between librarians and researchers, turns out to be utterly elusive. Yet we do not know what to replace them with, these inadequate descriptions, these exercises in stilted and partial translation.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>2. The Researcher’s Progress.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>I am preparing for my class about women and nineteenth-century print culture, which meets in the Peabody; we have reached the part of the syllabus where we look at gift books and annuals. I want students to examine several examples of these literary miscellanies, offering some illustration of their variety, and I have a list of such items that I have used in the past. But since I also want to show the students new acquisitions, I need to refresh my list. I will start with “gift book” as a keyword in the online catalogue.</blockquote>\r\nIn place of perfect and commensurate description—not possible—what we have are cataloguing systems that indexically represent collections through data and metadata that are, as I have already suggested, historically marked and inevitably inconsistent. In the case of the Peabody, these records are further compromised: Dewey cards developed from a nineteenth-century print index do not offer Library of Congress subject terms or detailed tables of contents; they also frequently lack other kinds of information. [note number=\'37\']Many of the electronic records for Peabody books have been copy-cataloged, that is, developed from records for identical books in other libraries. But these records might also be incomplete or inconsistent, given that many are quite old. The expense of original cataloging prevents our staff from creating full, new records for every item in the Peabody’s collection of over 300,000 titles.[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'11\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-11-ddc-cards/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-400\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-400\" title=\"fig 11 ddc cards\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-11-ddc-cards-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Dewey cards for “gift books.”[/note] My search for “gift book” will turn up bequests—the term “gift book” is often attached to these donations—and it will miss many of the nineteenth-century gift books and annuals in our collection whose records lack subject classifications, or whose subject classifications reference the book’s contents, not its format. For example, the 1848 Rough and Ready Annual: or, Military Souvenir published by Appleton’s has been assigned the subject “Mexican War, 1846-1848—Anecdotes.” [note number=\'38\']Rough and Ready Annual (New York: D. Appleton; Philadelphia: G.S. Appleton, 1848).[/note]\r\n\r\nThe problem of finding is perhaps only a sub-set of the problem of description, but I want to give it special attention because it introduces another variable: the physical space of the object. My search for gift books in the Peabody also entails the privilege of retrieving the books from the stacks. There are two search processes, the intellectual and the physical, that I must navigate. The intellectual search in this case requires a variety of keyword/date range combinations, and ultimately, recourse to my prepared bibliography—a holdover from pre-catalogue research methods. Now the second search begins.\r\n\r\nThe Rough and Ready Annual is at 973.62 A5121, in the “general history of North America; United States” category. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'12\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-12-rr/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-401\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-401\" title=\"fig 12 r&amp;r\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-12-rr-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The Rough and Ready Annual in the stacks.[/note] This call number range is on the second floor, west side. Other items on my list are in very different parts of the library. Orange Blossoms: A Gift Book for All Who Have Worn, Are Wearing, Or are Likely to Wear Them, edited by the temperance writer T. S. Arthur and published in London, has been given the call number 813 A7910 duodecimo—fourth floor east, in the “American literature in English, fiction” section. [note number=\'39\']Orange Blossoms: A Gift Book for All Who Have Worn, Are Wearing, Or are Likely to Wear Them (London: Knight &amp; Co., [1857]). This title does not appear in at least one Arthur bibliography; see Donald A Koch, \"Timothy Shay Arthur,\" Antebellum Writers in New York and the South, ed. Joel Myerson (Detroit: Gale Research, 1979), from Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Feb. 2011. To check on this, I need Mitchell Sharpe Jr.’s A Bibliography of the Published Books of Timothy Shay Arthur (Atlanta: Emory University, 1954), a typewritten quarto at 012 A791S, but it seems to be missing.[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'13\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-13-orange/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-402\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-402\" title=\"fig 13 orange\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-13-orange-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Orange Blossoms in the stacks.[/note] Arthur shows up again as co-editor of The Baltimore Book: A Christmas and New-Year\'s Present, which has received more extensive description as it contains the first printing of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Siope.” [note number=\'40\']The Baltimore Book: A Christmas and New-Year\'s Present (Baltimore: Bayly and Burns, [1838]).[/note] We have two copies of this very genteel little gift book, one at 808.83 B2175 (rhetoric &amp; collections of literature), and one at 810.8 C297 (American literature in English). The New Casket: A Gift Book for All Seasons is in the rare book room at the south end of the third floor. [note number=\'41\']The New Casket: A Gift Book for All Seasons (London: The Religious Tract Society, ca. 1850).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'14\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-14-rbr/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-403\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-403\" title=\"fig 14 rbr\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-14-rbr-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The rare book room.[/note] In this case, the book’s rarity has to do with a lovely fore-edge painting. It has been assigned to 820.8 N42017 (general books about literature). On the other end of the “rare” continuum is The Family Circle and Parlor Annual, volume 5 in a series, which is shelved up on the sixth floor with the periodicals at 051 F198 (serials in American English). [note number=\'42\']The Family Circle and Parlor Annual (New York: Comstock, 1847).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'15\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-15-parlor/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-404\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-404\" title=\"fig 15 parlor\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-15-parlor-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The Parlor Annual in the stacks.[/note]\r\n\r\nI’ll fill out call slips for each book, stick the slips into red flags, and put the flags in an order that will help me chart a logical course through the stacks. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'16\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-16-slips/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-405\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-405\" title=\"fig 16 slips\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-16-slips-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Call slips and flags.[/note] It’s easiest to start on the sixth floor and work one’s way down, picking up books along the way. Usually I find other interesting items as I go, so I carry a batch of blank call slips and extra flags. (On this occasion, for example, I find The New American Reader: Containing Choice Pieces, in Prose and Verse; published in 1813 and inscribed by its owner in 1817, it pre-dates by several years the official beginning of the gift book phenomenon. It might be more of a “literary almanac.” [note number=\'43\']The New American Reader: Containing Choice Pieces, in Prose and Verse (Philadelphia: David Hogan, 1813).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'17\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-17-new-reader/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-406\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-406\" title=\"fig 17 new reader\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-17-new-reader-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Inscription in The New American Reader.[/note]) Usually I am also unable to locate at least one of the books I have set out to find. Most likely the book has been misshelved, so I’ll check the quartos and folios, which are shelved separately; then I’ll check the rare book room’s octavo, duodecimo and quarto shelving areas. It used to astonish me that books were still shelved by format in the Peabody, but it does save space. At the same time, this shelving system—along with the multiple distinct areas within the library where books may reside, eg the rare book room, the reference section, the genealogy books, the Limited Editions Club, and several discrete named collections—means that retrieving a few books can take quite a long time, as I traipse up and down the six floors of the library, thread through stacks, open secured doors with multiple keys, turn lights on and off, and maneuver a book truck in and out of a tiny service elevator built in the 1920s. By the end of the journey, the library and I will have exchanged dust; I’ll take on a few streaks of red rot, and the library will have taken in particles from my body as well.\r\n\r\nWhile the Peabody is unique, these conditions are not in the end very unusual. In terms of the intellectual search, the absence of “gift book” from many of the catalogue records is no less egregious than the absence of other information—the names of all the contributors; the subjects of the illustrations. The metadata is potentially infinite. The “gift book” only exists as a category because of scholars who teased out this cultural phenomenon; it would be very difficult to define its absolute borders. In terms of the physical search, the Peabody might be messier than, say, a rare book library that has assigned current LC call numbers to all its contents and houses them in compact shelving, but it exemplifies the general on-the-ground situation. As I wind my way through the Peabody stacks, I remember how much more difficult it is to gather research materials from several different institutions.\r\n\r\nThe fact is, for scholars who rely on archives, research is something you do only after you have already undertaken a rigorous search. It is the search that provides you with the foundational sense of your subject. But the search is rarely acknowledged or accredited; even the foot-soldier craft of bibliography, the link between “librarianship” and “scholarship,” has largely lost its scholarly status.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>3. An Architecture of Disctinction.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>A non-affiliate researcher contacts the Peabody about our H. L. Mencken collections. Since she will bring a couple of graduate students with her, I set up a group work space in one of the library alcoves where the three of them can share materials and talk without disturbing other readers. I pull the requested volumes with the help of some students and set the cart up within easy reach of the alcove. When the researchers arrive, I show them the Mencken collections on the ground floor. Then I lead them to their group work space and leave them, returning to the glassed-in office behind the reading room, the vantage point that allows me to monitor the otherwise empty reading room.</blockquote>\r\nIn “The Silence of the Library: Environment, Situational Norm, and Social Behavior,” a team of Dutch sociologists investigates the library as a space that is strongly marked by situational norms—“knowledge-based beliefs about how to behave in particular situations that are shaped by social influence.” [note number=\'44\']Henk Aarts and Ap Dijksterhuis, “The Silence of the Library: Environment, Situational Norm, and Social Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84.1 (2003), 19.[/note] Their research leads them to argue, however, that such norms do not require direct social influences to be triggered; in fact, “the situation can activate mental representations of normative behaviors automatically. And once activated, these representations provide the knowledge necessary for guiding one’s own situationally appropriate behavior.” [note number=\'45\']Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 19.[/note] Physical environments do not necessarily prompt these behaviors; rather, the behavior “depend[s] on whether the environment is of immediate behavioral relevance.” [note number=\'46\']Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 20.[/note] Talking in a quiet voice in the library, a normative behavior, is only activated for those who plan to visit the library.\r\n\r\nTen years ago, when the research for this article was conducted, the “silence of the library” was still a widespread norm. While the situation is now often reversed—in our main campus library, we must designate specific quiet areas because otherwise a sociable undergraduate din would take over—the norm of silence does continue to preside at the Peabody. Because it is off campus, the Peabody is often attractively under-populated compared to the crowded main library; it is mostly used by advanced researchers and those who seek a quiet place to study. The large central open area catches and amplifies even the smallest noises. The shelf-lined alcoves on either side of this central area offer the appearance of privacy, but in fact are little echo chambers. Visitors immediately detect these acoustics, and—except for the periodic tour groups—most spend their time in the Peabody in silence. But it is not just the physics of sound that shape behaviors here, as the Dutch researchers show; the social expectations of the space prefigure those behaviors.\r\n\r\nIn setting up a group work space for the Mencken researchers, I have quite deliberately contravened the usual norm of silence. Clearly, I am not inviting them to shout, and by putting them in an alcove in back, I have taken measures to protect any quiet-seeking visitors who might arrive. But in accordance with new ideas about the use of library space, my colleagues and I have decided that we must accommodate group study even if it might occasionally disrupt the silence desired by others. As it happens, the Mencken researchers’ conversation is eventually interrupted by a tour group, and the two activities play out side by side.\r\n\r\nI must admit that at moments I have mixed feelings about the tour groups and even the study cohorts. While my pedagogical instincts tend towards cheerful hub-bub, there is a part of me that is still in awe of the sanctuary-like atmosphere of the Peabody. John Morris called the library a “cathedral of books,” and clearly that’s what architect Edmund G. Lind had in mind. The central area with its grand skylight and the alcoves on its sides is like a nave bordered with chapels. Lind didn’t need a psychological study of environment-based situational norms to tell him that he might activate different behaviors within his building. The great central space inspires reverence—your eye is drawn to the skylight the way it would be drawn to the rose windows of Chartres, and on its way up catches row upon solemn row of books stowed behind gilded railings, a testament to the accumulated wisdom of the ages. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'18\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-18-skylight/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-407\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-407\" title=\"fig 18 skylight\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-18-skylight.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"448\" /></a>The skylight in the George Peabody Library.[/note] But step into an alcove, especially on the ground floor where each is filled with an immense wooden table, and you instantly feel something else, something no less grand but more human. The alcoves are study-sized, and once you sit down at one of those dark, gleaming, broad tables, it is like you are the master of your own private library. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'19\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-19-alcove/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-408\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-408\" title=\"fig 19 alcove\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-19-alcove-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Alcove in the George Peabody Library.[/note]\r\n\r\nIronically, the Peabody’s architecture was out-dated by the time it was completed. With the professionalization of librarianship and the evolution of library science in the late nineteenth century, librarians like William Frederick Poole advocated for a functional rather than decorative design of interior library space. [note number=\'47\']See William Frederick Poole, Remarks on Library Construction (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, 1884).[/note] Moreover, the actual use of space in the Peabody in the late nineteenth century was at odds with its symbolic appeal. The main library was known as the “stack room”; readers were seated in a comparatively plain reading room on the other side of the main doors. In this arrangement, the librarians reigned inside the gorgeous “cathedral of books,” but the building’s potential to civilize the masses was lost.\r\n\r\nNow, of course, we do not send readers outside. Inside the “stack room,” we explicitly call visitors’ attention to its beauty to explain the connections between the library’s architecture and its collections—how both speak eloquently of Victorian values. At the same time, we who staff the library have relegated ourselves to its periphery. We work in the glassed-in room at one end that serves as a monitoring point and occasional classroom; the official “librarian’s office” in one corner—its luxurious proportions suggesting something like a sacristy and something like a robber baron’s lair—is now shared work-space stuffed with several desks and laden book trucks. There is another monitoring station near the main doors. I often do my work at the photography station, in the back of one of the alcoves [note type=\'figure\' number=\'20\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-20-station/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-409\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-409\" title=\"fig 20 station\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-20-station-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Photography station in the George Peabody Library.[/note]. It offers some privacy but is close enough to the central reading tables to be accessible to readers.\r\n\r\nThe space of the Peabody initiates other situational behaviors besides the norm of silence, and our work-station arrangements testify to this. The spatial re-centralizing of readers and marginalization of staff is not merely practical; it is a reflection of the modern office of librarianship. We are there to be of service, in a para-textual position. Consequently, our work should be out of sight; it should be separate from and secondary to the work that readers do. Our locations call upon us, in other words, to support the scholar’s effort to hide the “seams of [her] findings” by hiding the ways we contribute to that work—by the ways we sometimes do that work.\r\n\r\nI think about these complications as I escort the Mencken researchers to their table and walk back to the glassed-in office, where there is nothing pressing for me to do. I’d rather spend more time talking with them. I’d like to learn about their research and introduce them to some underappreciated parts of the collection. I’d like to share with them what I learned curating an exhibition of Mencken-related magazines and writing about one of those magazines. But I don’t want to get in their way; it’s likely that they are ready to get on with work that they don’t see as connected to mine. The professional norms of the archive are strong, and although I know how to talk about my research in many contexts—in presentations, interviews, hotel elevators—I haven’t figured out how to mix my scholarly role with the curatorial role I am supposed to play here, in the Peabody. In the end, I say nothing. Professional segregation is another kind of silence in the library.\r\n\r\nWe cannot change the archaeological record beneath our feet, but we can rearrange the fossils we dig up to create new narratives. We can tell different kinds of archive stories, including the story of what research in the archive was and is. Is it too idealistic to expect that dissolving the entrenched fantasies about archival research will make room for new methods? Is it naïve to imagine a space that, in putting into practice the archival turn’s preliminary insights about disciplinary and disorder, can support experimentation, facilitate connection across professions and disciplines, and enable new discoveries?','Disciplinarity and Disorder','','inherit','open','open','','2199-revision-22','','','2013-05-31 03:53:24','2013-05-31 03:53:24','',2199,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/2199-revision-22/',0,'revision','',0),(4529,1,'2013-05-31 03:53:30','2013-05-31 03:53:30','The primal scene of archival research takes place in a dreary reading room. A researcher sits at her table, inert. An archivist enters, pushing a cart that bears a dozen dusty gray boxes.\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/5ykY6moIaDE?rel=0\" height=\"250\" width=\"333\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe>\r\n\r\nThe archivist unhinges a box, removes a numbered file folder and, placing it at the researcher’s elbow, steps back. The researcher stirs, then sits upright with a mechanical jolt. She turns sharply in the direction of the folder, flips it open and cocks her head towards the flimsy leaves inside; now she is reading. (Zoom in on the eyes as they click into focus.) Now she is reading, and now she truly comes alive; she bends towards the papers, taps her forehead in thought. A sheaf of blank paper and a pencil appear on her table, and she begins taking notes. Her fingers fly—and soon, so do the pages she is writing upon. Caught up in eddies of excitement, they swoop to the ceiling and around the room and down to the floor, where they fall together into perfect piles. Bindings sprout from the outer strata; the pages sew themselves into bright, tight, hard-cover books. These the archivist gathers up and places on the shelves that line the room, next to other books and gray boxes.\r\n\r\nI may have it backwards: in other versions of the fantasy, it is the archive that is first animated by the presence of the researcher, a Dr. Coppelius who waves a pencil and sets the dusty boxes to dancing. But either way, the archival imaginary posits a symbiotic relationship between researcher and source, a photogenic pas de deux that leads to a finished scholarly product. This work, in turn, enters the archive for the next generation of researchers; it might even be taken apart again so that its secret ingredients (notes, drafts, letters) can themselves be served up in a series of boxes. Such a strangely private form of publication it creates, the coupling of researcher and source.\r\n\r\nWhat Freudian trauma results from witnessing this sight? Only the harm that myth inflicts. This primal scene is a fiction, a dream of perfect union between researcher and source that ignores, first of all, the full cast of characters. What about the archivist, who is rendered invisible? What about all those within and without the archive, upon whose labor—acquiring, preserving, organizing, reading, cataloging, describing, interpreting, analyzing, debating, teaching, writing, editing, digitizing, referencing and publishing—the current project depends? More a barn dance than a pas de deux: an archival encounter is an enactment of social authorship long before the researcher enters the room. See Jerome McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) on the idea of social authorship, which could be described as “the dialectic between the historically located individual author and the historically developed institutions of literary production” that help create a work, eg, printers, publishers, editors and readers (81).\r\n\r\nBut even a barn dance is much too mannered a metaphor. The sketch above misleads us more generally about the experience on the ground. Doing time in an archive is often tedious, uncomfortable and bewildering. For librarians, there is the struggle to promote and simultaneously protect what you have; the difficulty of fitting unruly materials into arrangements and workflows; and worries about space and time—where to put it all, how to address your backlog. For researchers, there is the struggle to locate the archives you need and what matters to you inside them; the uncertainty created by unruly data; and worries about time and space— how to access what you need during your research trip, how to record and organize the information you gather. At both ends, the archival encounter is counter-cinematic and erratic, days of monotonous sifting and dead-ends punctuated by one or two, or maybe zero, hidden moments of vivid, peculiar joy.\r\n\r\nSo archival research does not fulfill its ideal outline. So what? Who cares? Why dredge up the fantasy? Because the fantasy continues to structure our archival encounters—what we expect and undertake in the reading room, what we allow it to mean. Twenty years ago, Alice Kaplan observed that “conventional academic discourse requires that when you write up the results of your archival work, you tell a story about what you found, but not about how you found it. The less the seams of your findings show, the better your discoveries lend themselves to use by others… tell[ing] these stories breaks their spell and violates the spirit of the archives.” ((Alice Yaeger Kaplan, “Working in the Archives,” Yale French Studies 77 (1990): 103-116; 103, 107.)) With a few word changes, the same could be said about what counts as professional archivist discourse: the impersonal, neutral genre of the finding aid, for example, should say what is in a collection, but should not discuss what is confusing or missing in it, or the problems it posed in processing. ((See, for example, James M. O’Toole and Richard J. Cox, Understanding Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2006).)) Despite the growing recognition that this sequestration is never completely possible—that the material conditions and social relations of the archive shape the work we do in it—that work continues to be represented in professional and scholarly publications as if it is. Despite the recent call to move to the fore “the backstage of the archives—how they are constructed, policed, experienced, and manipulated” in order to support historiography “not merely [as] a project of fact-retrieval” but as “a set of complex processes of selection, interpretation, and even creative invention,” the “backstage” stays in the background. ((Antoinette Burton, “Introduction: Archive Fever, Archive Stories,” Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, ed. Burton (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 7-8.)) Antoinette Burton may be correct that “many if not most historians operate under the assumption that history is a highly interpretive act,” but this belief is not yet reflected in the archival encounter: the ways that researchers (not just historians) and librarians report their experiences with primary sources; the ways that librarians and researchers work together; the ways librarians and researchers regard the involvement of “non specialists.” ((Burton, 8. Burton notes that “whether historians concede or fully countenance the impact of such contingencies on their work is another question. They rarely speak of them, and even more rarely do they do so in print” (8). Her books recuperates some of those archive stories but this effort, I’ll suggest below, is hampered by other kinds of obligations.)) While the advent of digitization and electronic resource sharing has revolutionized the research landscape, making primary sources public in unprecedented ways, there remains in the archive a habitus of secret knowledge—the “spell” that Kaplan is loathe to break. This is not necessarily intentional. It is rather the effect of layering recent shifts in technology, theory and professional definition onto older foundations: petrified conditions, relations, expectations and systems that continue to operate in part through the enduring power of fantasies about research. What we have in the archive is a stratified groundwork that still governs our archival encounters.\r\n\r\nBut, you will object, the archive has already changed. Now we have the “archival turn”—the scholarly interest in the archive not just as a source of evidence but as an epistemological mode. Surely, this attention to the constructedness of the archive has led to a revealing reconsideration of what actually goes on inside an archive; surely, as a result, those archaic fantasies have diminished. Have they? In what follows, I begin by unearthing one stratum of the archival turn, the decade of the 1990s, as represented by three texts: Kaplan’s essay mentioned above, “Working in the Archives” (1990)\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_369\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-2-kaplan.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-369\" alt=\"fig 2 kaplan\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-2-kaplan-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" /></a> Photocopy of Alice Yaeger Kaplan’s “Working in the Archives.”; Derrida’s Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1994/95)[/caption]\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_372\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-3-Derrida.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-372\" alt=\"Print out of Jacque Derrida’s “Archive Fever” from Diacritics.; and Carolyn Steedman’s Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (2001).\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-3-Derrida-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" /></a> Print out of Jacque Derrida’s “Archive Fever” from Diacritics.; and Carolyn Steedman’s Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (2001).[/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_373\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-4-steedman.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-373 \" alt=\"Library copy of Carolyn Steedman’s Dust. (Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” Diacritics 25.2 (Summer 1995): 9-63. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001).) \" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-4-steedman-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" /></a> Library copy of Carolyn Steedman’s Dust. ((Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” Diacritics 25.2 (Summer 1995): 9-63. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001).))[/caption]\r\n\r\nA cross-examination of these three texts reveals a pattern of interests, a set of efforts to defy customary practices—but only, it turns out, “in theory.” While certain practices are challenged in these texts, they leave mostly intact the older strata of archival research fantasies and conventions. Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman do not dislodge the forces that organize the actual archival encounter.\r\n\r\nHow does this happen? Why is practice so stubborn? We need another take on archival practice: not practice in theory, but practice in action; not the 1990s, but now; not in terms of textual patterns, but in terms that suit the subject: the terms of the archival encounter itself, and the eccentric, anachronistic and even monotonous experience it generates. My second look at practice will take the form of a series of vignettes about a real-life archive, the George Peabody Library in Baltimore. While this narrative structure may seem to recreate the division of labor between theory and practice, my hope is that—by giving practice the last word—we’ll be in a better position to synthesize the two.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>I. “The library doubles as a detective’s office.” [note number=\'7\']Kaplan, 114.[/note]</strong>\r\n\r\nThe archival turn could be dated to the founding of “scientific” history in the mid-nineteenth century, or to the development a century later of the quantitative methods of the Annales School, or to other evidence-based movements in the history of history, but what is generally meant by this phrase corresponds with the formation of cultural studies and the use of the archive as a conceptual category. That is, the archival turn has to do with the notion of the “figuration” of the archive, a parallel decline in its empirical authority and a related expansion of its relevance within domains that are not exclusively historiographic, like art, literary criticism, textual studies, media studies and information studies. [note number=\'8\']See the use of the term in, for example, Carolyn Hamilton et al, eds., Refiguring the Archive (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), Cheryl Simon, ed., Following the Archival Turn: Photography, the Museum, and the Archive, special issue of Visual Resources: A Journal of Documentation 18.2 (June 2002), and Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). This turn is partially construed as a “move from archive-as-source to archive-as-subject,” but also by the earlier metaphorical interest in “the archive” that goes back to the 1980s (Stoler, 44-45) and by Foucauldian descriptions of archives as “‘monuments to particular configurations of power” (Hamilton, qtd. in Burton, 6).[/note] But it is not irrelevant that a devotion to archival methods precedes by many decades contemporary theories of the archive; if the archival turn lacks a precise origin, this (we will see) is completely in keeping with its own preoccupations.\r\n\r\nKaplan therefore represents in some ways an arbitrary beginning for this cross-examination—clearly the archive as a conceptual category predates 1990—but her article does initiate something new: the recognition that there is something called an “archive story” that must remain hidden in order for the official “results” to function authoritatively. In admitting this bit of professional legerdemain, and in telling her own archive story in a prestigious scholarly journal, Kaplan not only commits the violation she prohibits but also contradicts it. Through its publication, Kaplan’s own archive story is elevated to the status of “results”—a kind of research that shadows conventional academic discourse. Indeed, Kaplan notes, such “fables” of research “can be analyzed like a text,” a “mixed up genre” that combines the “redemptive detective fiction” with the epic and the dime novel. [note number=\'9\']Kaplan, 106, 107.[/note]\r\n\r\nKaplan’s archive story thus marks a distinctive moment in the archival turn—one which gained its most prominent authorization in 1994, with a paper that Jacques Derrida delivered (in English) to a conference sponsored by the Freud Museum, the Courtauld Institute and the Société International d’Histoire de la Psychiatrie et de la Psychoanalyse. Called initially “The Concept of the Archive: A Freudian Impression,” the lecture was revised and published in 1995 as Mal d’archive: une impression freudienne in French; the published English version echoed the French publication with its 1995 title Archive Fever. As Carolyn Steedman points out in Dust: The Archive and Cultural History, however, this work that has been assigned a seminal status in archival studies “for the main part… is not about archives at all, but is rather a sustained contemplation of a work of history, of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable (1991),” itself a sustained contemplation of Moses and Monotheism—which (according to Steedman) Yerushalmi examines through Freud’s description of the work as a “‘historical novel,’ or a kind of historical story,” undertaken “in order to understand the period of baroque anti-semitism through which he was living.” [note number=\'10\']Steedman, 3.[/note]\r\n\r\nDizzy yet? Let’s undertake a more careful reading of this splatter pattern of intra-references—or, to stick with the archaeological metaphor, let’s call them groups of potsherds buried in the 1990s layer of the “archival turn.” Digging down to reassemble them reveals a set of interests with special implications for archival practice.\r\n\r\nThe most prominent group of sherds to note are the fragments of disciplinarity: the inter-, multi- or perhaps simply anti-disciplinarity of the texts, authors and audiences caught up in these three archival addresses. Kaplan, an American scholar of French literature, calls the post-theory exchange between literature and history a “cross-pollination of desire between historians and literary critics” undertaken “with the curiosity and energetic passion of collectors.” [note number=\'11\']Kaplan, 107-108.[/note] Steedman, a British historian, performs this cross-pollinating process without comment: her epigraph to Dust is from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, one chapter treats George Eliot’s Middlemarch in depth… in fact, almost every chapter depends on a literary text. [note number=\'12\']Another chapter invokes Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1848 novel Mary Barton, a third is anchored by W. H. Auden’s poem “Homage to Clio,” and a fourth finds its most eloquent examples in Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend.[/note] Derrida, a French philosopher, produced a work that has been exceptionally mobile across disciplines, forms, languages and professional domains. He gave his initial talk to an audience drawing on three different kinds of institutions; Mal d’Archive was published in book form in both French and English, but also made an intermediate appearance as an essay in the journal diacritics. All of these texts, it seems, respond to the provocations of the archive—to the materials and circumstances of discovery—rather than to the disciplinary distinctions that arguably divide the archive from itself.\r\n\r\nArchive Fever has become a founding document even though, as Steedman notes in the very beginning of her book, many in Derrida’s audience “knew the ‘archival turn’ to be [already] well underway” at the time of his talk. [note number=\'13\']Steedman, 2.[/note] As it happens—and this is the second group of sherds I see—these three essays have in common an investment in or a problem with origins, especially with the failure of origins. Derrida, for example, defines archive fever as a kind of Freudian death drive—a drive to fix and preserve which at the same time “works to destroy the archive: on the condition of effacing but also with a view to effacing its own ‘proper’ traces… [it] is above all anarchivic, one could say, or archiviolithic… the archive always works, and a priori, against itself.” [note number=\'14\']Derrida, 14. [/note] If the archival impulse is driven to destroy its own work, then the question of origins ultimately point to the larger question of disorder. [note number=\'15\']The disorder of origins makes frequent appearances in the essay but one example will make the point—in the “Preamble” where he recounts how he titled the talk that he had not yet written and was to give at the Freud Museum. The “Preamble” starts with his reflections on the word “impression,” which has several simultaneous registers of meaning for him. One of these is the “scriptural or typographic” register: that of the graphic impression that marks a substrate. In English, “impression” is phonetically related to “repression” and “suppression,” key words in the Freudian vocabulary, translated respectively from the German Verdrängung and Unterdrückung. English, that is, retains the rhyming relationship of the two German terms, and “impression” in this company comes to have a vaguely Freudian meaning as well. But in French, Verdrängung is “refoulement,” which means something more like expulsion, a driving away. The Freudian sense of the French word “répression” has been reserved for Unterdrückung. So English “repression” defines a phenomenon that must be distinguished from the French “répression.” These translational shifts “directly concern the structures of archivization,” Derrida says, “because they touch on the topic differences and thus on the location of the substrates of traces\" (Derrida, 23). In other words, how do you classify concepts whose meanings shift across languages? Where do you store them in a disciplinary grammar—or in an archive? How do these asymmetrical linguistic structures shape the establishment and extension of a new science? For Derrida, the difference between “repression” and “répression” is “enough to disrupt the tranquil landscape of all historical knowledge, of all historiography, and even of all self-consistent ‘scholarship’” (Derrida, 23).[/note]\r\n\r\nOrigin failure appears both as deliberate performance and as unintentional oversight in these essays. Derrida stages his own inability to get past “go”; with an introductory section, and subsequent sections sub-titled “Exergue,” “Preamble,” “Foreword,” his essay functions, Steedman notes, like a “primer offering instruction in the principle of deferral.” [note number=\'16\']A short notice called “Priere d’inserer,” published only in the French book version, carried the bulk of an argument for which there was no room in the lecture. Steedman, 7.[/note] For all her insight into Derrida’s titling adventures, however, Steedman’s title is marked by its own origin aporia. While her first chapter is devoted to Archive Fever—a “let’s begin at the beginning” homage to the seminal text—her book’s title, Dust, seems more indebted to the last sentence of Kaplan’s essay, published five years before Derrida’s: “Usually there is no mother lode, no original manuscript to be retrieved—the gold is all in the dust.” [note number=\'17\']Kaplan, 116.[/note] Kaplan, however, is never mentioned. [note number=\'18\']Kaplan also begins her essay with a brief consideration of the “arche,” the Greek and Latin term for the public records office, which is a major starting point for Derrida. Is he borrowing from her, or is she borrowing from him, given that this sort of etymological investigation was an established signature of Deconstruction?[/note]\r\n\r\nKaplan, for her part, unravels her own archive story. She gives us a kind of “whodunit”—her search for the ephemeral sources of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s anti-semitic pamphlet Bagatelles pour un massacre (1937). She uses this account to exemplify her effort to “move through the archival process and recover some of the stories that get deleted in the final scholarly form.” [note number=\'19\']Kaplan, 104. For this reason, perhaps, Kaplan never reveals what she ultimately discovers in her successful search for Celine’s sources. In fact, it’s not entirely clear whether her pre-emptive and truncated treatment of her archive story is deliberate or not. Is this treatment meant to indirectly support her official claim about “results”? Or does the presence of the archive story suggest that telling it is an impulse she can’t quite control? Thanks, Lauren Coats, for helping tease this problem out.[/note] These beginnings are preemptively struck out, however, by what seems to be her main claim: “the passion of the archives must finally be used to eradicate all personal stories in the interests of the dry archival report, fit for a public.” [note number=\'20\']Kaplan, 103.[/note] Only in the “para-text”—a preface, for example—can the archive story appear without “interrupt[ing] or complicat[ing] the narrative so much that no results could ever be understood or perceived.” [note number=\'21\']Kaplan, 104.[/note] Despite this unequivocal assertion, the personal “whodunit” prevails in her essay, especially in the final section set in the Centre du documentation juive contemporain (CDJC). [note type=\'figure\' number=\'5\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-5-cdjc-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-423\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-423\" title=\"fig 5 cdjc\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-5-cdjc1-333x250.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Website for the Centre de documentation juive contemporain.[/note] It is this library, where Kaplan solves the mystery of Céline’s sources, that “doubles as a detective’s office.”\r\n\r\nWhile Kaplan’s research mystery resolves neatly, the truth about archives is that they are full of gaps, mistakes and excesses: in the words of one of the CDJC librarians, “‘ici on trouve tout’—there’s some of everything here”—but not, one could add, all of anything. [note number=\'22\']Kaplan, 115.[/note] Kaplan’s essay ends by nullifying both her detective story success and her “dry archival report,” by recognizing the disorder on which both of these narratives are unsteadily perched: “The archive is constituted by these errors, these pieces out of place, which are then reintegrated into a story of some kind.” [note number=\'23\']Kaplan, 115.[/note] “A story of some kind”? So much for “results.”\r\n\r\nKaplan sets us up to perceive one final potsherd pattern common to these three essays. If origin-less disorder is the order of the archive, it is a disorder that is generated out of human loss—a disorder that joins the body and the material world. The archive is always predicated on historical violence of some sort, whatever is censored, erased, excluded, trumped up, used up, misplaced, conquered, killed. Moreover, the archival categories that mark both the visible victories and hidden defeats do not stay within their walls; the archive is both a repository of existing schemas and a means of perpetuating them in the world beyond. While we might usually think of this disciplinary activity as a pact between the archive and its political authors, Steedman makes it clear that the dilemmas of order shape the archival body in many ways. For example, she takes literally the provocation of Derrida’s title Archive Fever to investigate the illness that researchers contract on the penultimate day of their trip to the archive: prompted by the anxiety of the task that remains unfinished, they end their research with night-sweats and head-aches. But what seems like a strangely specific malady is transformed by Steedman into a far-reaching social symptom: by relating the researcher’s “archive fever” to the terrible diseases suffered by tanners, skinners and other workers in the trades associated with paper and leather, Steedman expands our sense of who is in the archive—the bodies whose specialized labors populate our libraries with books, the many kinds of expertise the archive consumes.\r\n\r\nFor Derrida, the relation between the material archive and its human architects focuses on one kind of “graphic mark,” a particular “private inscription”: circumcision as the archival signature that is also the signature of patrimoine, with Freud’s relationship to his father as his main example. [note number=\'24\']Derrida, 19.[/note] It is perhaps not a coincidence that the body in question in both Kaplan’s and Derrida’s archive is Jewish, for that is a body that has come to symbolize the destructive power of classificatory regimes. Despite her contention that the private passions motivating research must be kept secret, Kaplan is fascinated by the “missing person stories” at the CDJC: by the “quantity of people who are there for personal reasons,” the survivors of occupation or deportation or camps, or their descendants, quietly looking up their lost ones or noisily dropping off their memoirs. [note number=\'25\']Kaplan, 113.[/note] This disorganized crowd of dead and living bodies tries to meet up with an equally disorganized crowd of materials—individual letters, trial transcripts, pamphlets, newspapers, first-person accounts, books, photographs, lists. The monumental task of match-making, the librarians’ work, is never complete. More papers are always generated or declassified or discovered, different human questions and needs emerge. The tidy choreography of the research fantasy, where the detective always finds her man, is not so much in evidence; what we have instead is corpora in excess of existing categories.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\nKaplan, Derrida and Steedman open up the archival body. They show us how paper meets the press of flesh; they make us feel just how intimate it is. [note number=\'26\']This interest in the corporeal dimensions and effects of order, its human and non-human components, has in common with their other gestures—an experimental attitude towards conventional disciplinarity and attention to the priority of disorder—the circumstances of the academic humanities in the 1990s. Since the archival turn came out of the ascent of cultural studies and allied intrigues in the 1970s and ‘80s, the circles in the Venn diagram of these ventures will necessarily overlap. We could also say that the archive took off when it did precisely because it made a clever new container for these preoccupations, thick in the humanities atmosphere at the time, where they were distilled and united. [/note] But for all their revelations about the limits of discipline and the multiplicities of disorder in the archive, these texts do not disclose the specific methods of engagement that led to their existence. While Kaplan offers up her own archival victory and outlines several other such stories, she still insists on their marginalization. [note number=\'27\']“Were the story of how you got the story really to be told inside the book, it would interrupt or complicate the narrative so much that no results could be understood or even perceived. Every story of success in the archives is emotionally charged, for only the most extreme emotions can drive people to the drudgery, to the discomfort, of sitting and sifting through dog-eared documents, manuscripts, microfilms. To reveal those emotions would not only gum up the narrative, it would threaten its credibility, by showing on what thin strands of coincidence, accident, or on what unfair forms of friendship, ownership, geographical proximity, the discoveries were based” (Kaplan, 104).[/note] If these texts are not concerned with actual practices in the archive or changes in its methodologies, what do they tell us?\r\n\r\nFirst, they suggest one reason for the perpetuation of myths about the archive. While Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman are eager to show how archival materials do not conform to disciplinary distinctions—an enthusiasm related to other disruptive tendencies in late twentieth-century humanist scholarship –they seem less cognizant of a related phenomenon: the archive does not obey strict professional divisions, either. In Kaplan’s library-as-detective’s-office metaphor, the scholar is the detective, but does the “Eureka” moment belong only to the scholar who pieces together a narrative? What about the people who prepared those pieces? The archivist is still missing in action. Likewise, these essays do not dwell on missing boxes, illegible papers, neglected citations. There are no descriptions of archival slogging, no admissions that some materials failed to be relevant. And of course, there are no prescriptions for a different order. It is not the main aim of Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman to effect an evolution of practice; archival turnistas are not interested in disorder in order to re-order. But it is worth remembering that it is not in their professional interest as scholars to make their practices more transparent.\r\n\r\nSecondly, along the same lines, these texts inform us of the duplicity of speculative practices that reveal but cannot live out the instability of their archival mandates. Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman are put into the position of saying, “Yes, the archive is biased, idiosyncratic and treacherous—but the observations I draw from it are flawless.” [note number=\'28\']Derrida, unlike Kaplan and Steedman, makes no claims to work inside an actual archive, unless we consider Yerushalmi’s book as a kind of archive. But the fact that the essay was written self-consciously for presentation at the Freud Museum suggests that it was made out of an archive indirectly—in its construction, if not in its contents. [/note]\r\n\r\nFinally, these texts suggest why archival studies that attempt to be explicit about the messy nature of the archive have become instead “archive studies.” In more recent works like Refiguring the Archive (2002), Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions and the Writing of History (2005) and Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2009), the archive appears as a subject in its own right. Although the archival scenarios that are put into play in each of these books incorporate different disciplines—art, history, anthropology, literature, post-colonial studies—they have essentially created a new discipline. “Archive studies” is something we might, in the taxonomy of disciplines, see as the love-child of cultural studies, history and archival methodology. Moreover, this new discipline has in common with other humanities disciplines a complete blindness about its professional investments; it does not register much awareness of the professional investments of librarians, archivists, curators and “non-specialists,” or invite insights from those perspectives. Perhaps this is inevitably what happens when academics must give legitimacy to something new, which in turn reflects the pressures of scholarly communication: a topic must be delineated in conventional terms in order to merit publication. [note number=\'29\']Perhaps this is also the moment to ask why we—I—have been using the term “archive” all along, with its statist resonances, rather than the term “collection,” which has institutional but also personal resonances. Does “archive” bring us closer to recognizably “serious scholarship”?[/note] But it is also true that in these more recent books, which openly investigate the archive’s power-politics, the disorderly drift of the archive and its hybrid corporeality have mostly been bent towards a particular narrative about the archive as an agent of history rather than as a set of ongoing practices. It is as if the historical archive has been assembled in ways that reflect and reiterate power relations, but the contemporary archive has not; it is as if the researcher’s own research travails remain a transparent layer over the body of work that it constructs. [note number=\'30\']Of course, this is precisely what Derrida meant about the “death drive” of the archival impulse. Archive Stories is something of an exception; researchers speak openly here about themselves as researchers. It is interesting, however, that this book—like Steedman’s—doesn’t cite Kaplan’s essay as a precursor text despite the clear titular link.[/note]\r\n\r\nPerhaps it would also be fair to note that, if archival studies are now being formulated as an interdisciplinary discipline called “archive studies,” this might be just another stage in the turn. It might be that what comes next reconfigures the premise of disciplinarity and the promise of disorder, with a different approach to the human/non-human interactions that the archive documents and realizes: a more diffuse and multi-vocal set of practices in place of a new field. One way to imagine this approach would be to fully embrace Kaplan’s idea of the archive story as an account of what one hoped for, looked for and found, what one did and did not do, in the archive—an account loosed from the quarantine she advocates. Some very basic genre precedents for the archive story do exist; the bibliographic essay and the methodology statement, for example, have played an important role in many disciplines in the past and still do in some. Instead of a para-textual nod towards that archive story (in Kaplan’s sense), why not create a parallel text written collaboratively by the researcher(s) and the librarian(s), or by one person acting in both professional capacities, that runs alongside the official “results”? Or in a set of expanded notes that address not just the “what” and “where” but the “how” and “why” of sources, which are lifted from their small-type, bottom-of-page basement up into the light? Or—to add yet another layer—parallel texts that also offer room for exchange with other researchers, archivists and even interested “non specialists,” like collectors, bibliophiles and fans?\r\n\r\nIf it is hasn’t been clear already that I have scrupulously avoided so far the other kind of archive, the digital archive, it will be now. What I am imagining would be far too complicated to produce or consult in print, but would not be at all difficult to organize as a digital object—as an archive in its own right. By avoiding the digital archive up to this point, I have also finessed the fact that our current archival research methods are completely reliant on the digital archive, along with the development of online research tools and electronic instruments of data discovery and organization. Those conditions probably bear the most responsibility for making the archive visible as something that warranted a “turn” in the first place. Even Derrida refers in each version of Archive Fever to the computer on which he is currently composing, predicting that email will not only totally transform the archive as he knows it, but will make his own essay obsolete.\r\n\r\nIn short, we already have in place both the theory and the media that will make it possible to enact a radical new archival practice. We have in place what we need to integrate the archive story into the archive itself, while making it visible as a new form of “results.”\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>II. The library doubles as a librarian’s office.</strong>\r\n\r\nI could end here, with a triumphant firing of the starter pistol and a rousing cheer. But that would be a bit disingenuous, given that the starter pistol for both the archival turn and the academic use of the internet actually went off decades ago. So the question remains, what stands in the way of the practical enactment of the archival turn’s speculative insights? I’d like to engage this question by following Kaplan’s example (but not her main claim): through some archive story-telling about the George Peabody Library. These three vignettes, identified as “typical” through conversations with my colleague Paul Espinosa, illustrate the intractable formations that present-day archival encounters come up against.\r\n\r\n<strong>1. The Perils of Description.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>A group of Russian speakers visits the Peabody Library. The dozen men and women sit down around the screen that Paul has set up. He narrates a brief slide-show about the Peabody’s history, then leads them to a table where a dozen books from the collection have been laid out in cradles. He tells them about each book: what it is, why it is interesting. Each phrase of his presentation is painstakingly translated by the group’s leader into Russian.</blockquote>\r\nWhen academic and community groups visit the Peabody, my colleagues and I draw upon a standard tour-guide’s repertoire to describe it. We explain that George Peabody was a tradesman cum financier cum philanthropist who decided in 1857 that Baltimore needed a cultural institution to support the arts and learning. We talk about the evolution of the Peabody Institute, the four-part athenaeum that resulted, with its art gallery, lecture series, conservatory and free, public, non-circulating library. We discuss the model of philanthropy that George Peabody initiated and its wide-ranging influence. We point out the signal features of the awe-inspiring architecture of the current library, built to accommodate a rapidly growing collection in 1878. But when it comes to the library itself, as a collection, it is hard to know what to say. How to accurately translate the library’s holdings into a succinct and memorable statement that conveys an appropriate level of detail to different audiences? While it poses specific challenges, the Peabody also exemplifies more general problems of collection description.\r\n\r\nWe do not lack evidence for the evolving contents of the Peabody. We have the two-volume printed list of “desiderata” drawn up by the Peabody’s first librarian, John G. Morris. [note number=\'31\']Alphabetical Catalogue of Books to be Purchased for the Library of the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, Vols. 1 and 2 (Baltimore: John D. Toy, 1861, 1863).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'6\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-6-alpha-index-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-395\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-395\" title=\"fig 6 alpha index\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-6-alpha-index1-336x484.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"484\" /></a>Alphabetical index from Alphabetical Catalouge (“desiderata”).[/note] We have the collections register for several decades’-worth of acquisitions, recording bibliographic information and accession numbers that can still be found on the inside front end papers of many of the books in the collection. We have the librarians’ annual reports to the library trustees. [note number=\'32\']The Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore: The Founder’s Letters and the Papers Relating to its Dedication and History, Up to the 1st January, 1868 (Baltimore: William K. Boyle, 1868); and subsequent Annual Reports, 1869, etc.[/note] We have the library’s first printed catalogue, an unsurpassed achievement when first published in 1883, which listed 100,000 volumes by author and title. [note number=\'33\']Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, Vols. 1-5 (Baltimore: Isaac Friedenwald, 1883; reprinted Boston: G. K. Hall, [1961?]; also on googlebooks), and Second Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, Including the Additions Made Since 1882, Vols. 1-8 (Baltimore: Deutsch Lithographic and Printing, 1896; reprinted Boston: G. K. Hall, 1961).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'7\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-7-print-cat/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-396\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-396\" title=\"fig 7 print cat\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-7-print-cat-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Reprinted volumes of the Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute (1883).[/note] We have the cards from the Dewey decimal system card catalogue, which replaced the printed catalogue in the 1910s. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'8\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-8-card-cat/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-397\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-397\" title=\"fig 8 card cat\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-8-card-cat.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"448\" /></a>One of two card catalogues in the Peabody.[/note] Now, of course, the library’s collections are represented in an online catalogue that integrates them with other collections in the Hopkins library system.\r\n\r\nThese markers of the collection, however, fail to satisfy some contemporary research queries for reasons that are both practical and philosophical. The transfer of the printed index, organized by author, to the Dewey decimal system, organized by topic, represented a major epistemological shift that facilitated browsing by subject category. But of course, those categories are embedded in historically-bound notions about the subjects and structures of knowledge: Dewey was invented in the 1870s, and the 22 revisions it has undergone since then cannot overcome its essential organizational distortions. For example, the literature range—the 800s—offers only 10% of its categorical space to literatures in languages other than English, Germanic and Romance languages, Greek and Latin.\r\n\r\nIn the case of the Peabody, the Dewey arrangements overlay even older systems of knowledge hierarchy. Should we continue to offer, for example, a description of the Peabody’s “voyages and travels” books? This category represents a Renaissance schematic that was still in service in the mid-nineteenth century; while actual “voyages and travels” were extended by colonial ventures, the category was eventually disbanded. Dewey combined it with geography to make a sub-category of “history.” In keeping active the old-fashioned phrase “voyages and travels,” we are participating in a centuries-long project of euphemism about the material aims and actual activities of colonialism; we are privileging an early phase of the Peabody’s evolution over later phases; we may even be confusing modern researchers. And yet, as one of the topics in Morris’s “desiderata,” a considerable portion of the Peabody’s collection was acquired with the aim of fleshing out that descriptor. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'9\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-9-index-detail/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-398\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-398\" title=\"fig 9 index detail\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-9-index-detail-336x274.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"274\" /></a>Detail of subject index from Alphabetical Catalouge No. 2 (“desiderata”).[/note]\r\n\r\nYet another classificatory dilemma is expressed by George Peabody’s original statement of the library’s purpose: that it “be furnished in every department of knowledge, with the most approved literature… It should consist on the best works on every subject… to satisfy the researches of students who may be engaged in the pursuit of knowledge not ordinarily attainable in the private libraries of the country.” [note number=\'34\']“Letters from George Peabody, Esq.: Baltimore, February 12th, 1857,” in Founder’s Letters, 7.[/note] The Peabody was founded as a cultural institution for the people of Baltimore, but from the first, this democratic ambition was in conflict with the intellectual aspirations of the first librarians and their desire to facilitate civic “self-improvement.” Morris (a doctor of divinity), his successor Nathaniel Holmes Morison (a schoolmaster and poet), and Morison’s assistant and successor Philip Uhler (who had trained as an entomologist) were all devoted to the nineteenth-century idea of the scholar-librarian. Morison wrote in one annual report that “Education always proceeds from the above downward, from the best to the common minds, from the leaders of the people to the people themselves. Furnish... the foundations of intelligence and thought, and they will... stimulate and improve the whole community.\" [note number=\'35\']Qtd. in Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, “PIB Ref. Library. 8-Morison\'s Philosophy of Excellence,” in George Peabody (1795-1869): A-Z Handbook of the Massachusetts-Born Merchant in the South, London-Based Banker, and Philanthropist\'s Life, Influence, and Related People, Places, Events, and Institutions. . 11 Mar. 2011.[/note] When the Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1876 in close proximity to the Peabody—in large part to take advantage of the library—the tendency of the librarians to address scholarly needs and “approved literature” over popular desires was given additional momentum. In keeping with these ideas, the Peabody’s librarians kept careful track of their readers’ choices, noting with special caution the numbers of novels that were requested. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'10\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-10-annual-report-detail/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-399\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-399\" title=\"fig 10 annual report detail\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-10-annual-report-detail-336x452.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"452\" /></a>Detail from First Annual Report showing chart of books read, with special mention of fiction.[/note] This schism at the heart of the library’s collecting paradigm was not unique to the Peabody; the question of reading matter—should it offer leisure for the masses or the means of social uplift?—was central to the public library movement of the second half of the nineteenth century. [note number=\'36\']See, for example, Alexis McCrossen, “’One Cathedral More’ or ‘Mere Lounging Places for Bummers’? The Cultural Politics of Leisure and the Public Library in Gilded Age America,” Libraries &amp; Culture 41.2 (2006): 169-188; Paul Sturges, “The Public Library and Reading by the Masses: Historical Perspectives on the USA and Britain 1850-1900,” ; Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, Upon the Objects to be Attained by the Establishment of a Public Library, 12 Dec. 2010.[/note]\r\n\r\nFinally, the Peabody’s “desiderata” acquisitions and librarians’ selections were supplemented by book donations from local elites—bibliophiles with extensive private collections that included incunabula, classical authors in Renaissance editions, expensive illustrated atlases. At the same time, book donations came in from more plebian sources. The Peabody’s growth overlapped with the decline of the local social libraries, and it eventually absorbed some of the books from the Library Company of Baltimore, Robinson’s Circulating Library and several small professional and mechanics’ libraries. And I haven’t even touched on the Peabody’s twentieth-century fate.\r\n\r\nThe variety of philanthropic impulses, resource streams and classification philosophies that have fed the Peabody over the 150 years of its existence has led to a collection that does not so much map the nineteenth-century mind as signal its odd amalgam of popular and scholarly investments. The Peabody’s collection effectively evades succinct description—at least, any kind of description that pretends to be coherent, that is not perforated by its stakes in local history, library history, book history. But more importantly, it suggests the degree to which accident and opportunity and prejudice and wealth and the changing winds of cataloguing rules shape any archive. Description, which should be the most fundamental tool of communication between librarians and researchers, turns out to be utterly elusive. Yet we do not know what to replace them with, these inadequate descriptions, these exercises in stilted and partial translation.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>2. The Researcher’s Progress.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>I am preparing for my class about women and nineteenth-century print culture, which meets in the Peabody; we have reached the part of the syllabus where we look at gift books and annuals. I want students to examine several examples of these literary miscellanies, offering some illustration of their variety, and I have a list of such items that I have used in the past. But since I also want to show the students new acquisitions, I need to refresh my list. I will start with “gift book” as a keyword in the online catalogue.</blockquote>\r\nIn place of perfect and commensurate description—not possible—what we have are cataloguing systems that indexically represent collections through data and metadata that are, as I have already suggested, historically marked and inevitably inconsistent. In the case of the Peabody, these records are further compromised: Dewey cards developed from a nineteenth-century print index do not offer Library of Congress subject terms or detailed tables of contents; they also frequently lack other kinds of information. [note number=\'37\']Many of the electronic records for Peabody books have been copy-cataloged, that is, developed from records for identical books in other libraries. But these records might also be incomplete or inconsistent, given that many are quite old. The expense of original cataloging prevents our staff from creating full, new records for every item in the Peabody’s collection of over 300,000 titles.[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'11\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-11-ddc-cards/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-400\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-400\" title=\"fig 11 ddc cards\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-11-ddc-cards-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Dewey cards for “gift books.”[/note] My search for “gift book” will turn up bequests—the term “gift book” is often attached to these donations—and it will miss many of the nineteenth-century gift books and annuals in our collection whose records lack subject classifications, or whose subject classifications reference the book’s contents, not its format. For example, the 1848 Rough and Ready Annual: or, Military Souvenir published by Appleton’s has been assigned the subject “Mexican War, 1846-1848—Anecdotes.” [note number=\'38\']Rough and Ready Annual (New York: D. Appleton; Philadelphia: G.S. Appleton, 1848).[/note]\r\n\r\nThe problem of finding is perhaps only a sub-set of the problem of description, but I want to give it special attention because it introduces another variable: the physical space of the object. My search for gift books in the Peabody also entails the privilege of retrieving the books from the stacks. There are two search processes, the intellectual and the physical, that I must navigate. The intellectual search in this case requires a variety of keyword/date range combinations, and ultimately, recourse to my prepared bibliography—a holdover from pre-catalogue research methods. Now the second search begins.\r\n\r\nThe Rough and Ready Annual is at 973.62 A5121, in the “general history of North America; United States” category. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'12\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-12-rr/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-401\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-401\" title=\"fig 12 r&amp;r\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-12-rr-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The Rough and Ready Annual in the stacks.[/note] This call number range is on the second floor, west side. Other items on my list are in very different parts of the library. Orange Blossoms: A Gift Book for All Who Have Worn, Are Wearing, Or are Likely to Wear Them, edited by the temperance writer T. S. Arthur and published in London, has been given the call number 813 A7910 duodecimo—fourth floor east, in the “American literature in English, fiction” section. [note number=\'39\']Orange Blossoms: A Gift Book for All Who Have Worn, Are Wearing, Or are Likely to Wear Them (London: Knight &amp; Co., [1857]). This title does not appear in at least one Arthur bibliography; see Donald A Koch, \"Timothy Shay Arthur,\" Antebellum Writers in New York and the South, ed. Joel Myerson (Detroit: Gale Research, 1979), from Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Feb. 2011. To check on this, I need Mitchell Sharpe Jr.’s A Bibliography of the Published Books of Timothy Shay Arthur (Atlanta: Emory University, 1954), a typewritten quarto at 012 A791S, but it seems to be missing.[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'13\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-13-orange/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-402\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-402\" title=\"fig 13 orange\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-13-orange-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Orange Blossoms in the stacks.[/note] Arthur shows up again as co-editor of The Baltimore Book: A Christmas and New-Year\'s Present, which has received more extensive description as it contains the first printing of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Siope.” [note number=\'40\']The Baltimore Book: A Christmas and New-Year\'s Present (Baltimore: Bayly and Burns, [1838]).[/note] We have two copies of this very genteel little gift book, one at 808.83 B2175 (rhetoric &amp; collections of literature), and one at 810.8 C297 (American literature in English). The New Casket: A Gift Book for All Seasons is in the rare book room at the south end of the third floor. [note number=\'41\']The New Casket: A Gift Book for All Seasons (London: The Religious Tract Society, ca. 1850).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'14\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-14-rbr/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-403\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-403\" title=\"fig 14 rbr\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-14-rbr-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The rare book room.[/note] In this case, the book’s rarity has to do with a lovely fore-edge painting. It has been assigned to 820.8 N42017 (general books about literature). On the other end of the “rare” continuum is The Family Circle and Parlor Annual, volume 5 in a series, which is shelved up on the sixth floor with the periodicals at 051 F198 (serials in American English). [note number=\'42\']The Family Circle and Parlor Annual (New York: Comstock, 1847).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'15\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-15-parlor/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-404\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-404\" title=\"fig 15 parlor\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-15-parlor-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The Parlor Annual in the stacks.[/note]\r\n\r\nI’ll fill out call slips for each book, stick the slips into red flags, and put the flags in an order that will help me chart a logical course through the stacks. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'16\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-16-slips/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-405\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-405\" title=\"fig 16 slips\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-16-slips-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Call slips and flags.[/note] It’s easiest to start on the sixth floor and work one’s way down, picking up books along the way. Usually I find other interesting items as I go, so I carry a batch of blank call slips and extra flags. (On this occasion, for example, I find The New American Reader: Containing Choice Pieces, in Prose and Verse; published in 1813 and inscribed by its owner in 1817, it pre-dates by several years the official beginning of the gift book phenomenon. It might be more of a “literary almanac.” [note number=\'43\']The New American Reader: Containing Choice Pieces, in Prose and Verse (Philadelphia: David Hogan, 1813).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'17\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-17-new-reader/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-406\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-406\" title=\"fig 17 new reader\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-17-new-reader-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Inscription in The New American Reader.[/note]) Usually I am also unable to locate at least one of the books I have set out to find. Most likely the book has been misshelved, so I’ll check the quartos and folios, which are shelved separately; then I’ll check the rare book room’s octavo, duodecimo and quarto shelving areas. It used to astonish me that books were still shelved by format in the Peabody, but it does save space. At the same time, this shelving system—along with the multiple distinct areas within the library where books may reside, eg the rare book room, the reference section, the genealogy books, the Limited Editions Club, and several discrete named collections—means that retrieving a few books can take quite a long time, as I traipse up and down the six floors of the library, thread through stacks, open secured doors with multiple keys, turn lights on and off, and maneuver a book truck in and out of a tiny service elevator built in the 1920s. By the end of the journey, the library and I will have exchanged dust; I’ll take on a few streaks of red rot, and the library will have taken in particles from my body as well.\r\n\r\nWhile the Peabody is unique, these conditions are not in the end very unusual. In terms of the intellectual search, the absence of “gift book” from many of the catalogue records is no less egregious than the absence of other information—the names of all the contributors; the subjects of the illustrations. The metadata is potentially infinite. The “gift book” only exists as a category because of scholars who teased out this cultural phenomenon; it would be very difficult to define its absolute borders. In terms of the physical search, the Peabody might be messier than, say, a rare book library that has assigned current LC call numbers to all its contents and houses them in compact shelving, but it exemplifies the general on-the-ground situation. As I wind my way through the Peabody stacks, I remember how much more difficult it is to gather research materials from several different institutions.\r\n\r\nThe fact is, for scholars who rely on archives, research is something you do only after you have already undertaken a rigorous search. It is the search that provides you with the foundational sense of your subject. But the search is rarely acknowledged or accredited; even the foot-soldier craft of bibliography, the link between “librarianship” and “scholarship,” has largely lost its scholarly status.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>3. An Architecture of Disctinction.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>A non-affiliate researcher contacts the Peabody about our H. L. Mencken collections. Since she will bring a couple of graduate students with her, I set up a group work space in one of the library alcoves where the three of them can share materials and talk without disturbing other readers. I pull the requested volumes with the help of some students and set the cart up within easy reach of the alcove. When the researchers arrive, I show them the Mencken collections on the ground floor. Then I lead them to their group work space and leave them, returning to the glassed-in office behind the reading room, the vantage point that allows me to monitor the otherwise empty reading room.</blockquote>\r\nIn “The Silence of the Library: Environment, Situational Norm, and Social Behavior,” a team of Dutch sociologists investigates the library as a space that is strongly marked by situational norms—“knowledge-based beliefs about how to behave in particular situations that are shaped by social influence.” [note number=\'44\']Henk Aarts and Ap Dijksterhuis, “The Silence of the Library: Environment, Situational Norm, and Social Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84.1 (2003), 19.[/note] Their research leads them to argue, however, that such norms do not require direct social influences to be triggered; in fact, “the situation can activate mental representations of normative behaviors automatically. And once activated, these representations provide the knowledge necessary for guiding one’s own situationally appropriate behavior.” [note number=\'45\']Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 19.[/note] Physical environments do not necessarily prompt these behaviors; rather, the behavior “depend[s] on whether the environment is of immediate behavioral relevance.” [note number=\'46\']Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 20.[/note] Talking in a quiet voice in the library, a normative behavior, is only activated for those who plan to visit the library.\r\n\r\nTen years ago, when the research for this article was conducted, the “silence of the library” was still a widespread norm. While the situation is now often reversed—in our main campus library, we must designate specific quiet areas because otherwise a sociable undergraduate din would take over—the norm of silence does continue to preside at the Peabody. Because it is off campus, the Peabody is often attractively under-populated compared to the crowded main library; it is mostly used by advanced researchers and those who seek a quiet place to study. The large central open area catches and amplifies even the smallest noises. The shelf-lined alcoves on either side of this central area offer the appearance of privacy, but in fact are little echo chambers. Visitors immediately detect these acoustics, and—except for the periodic tour groups—most spend their time in the Peabody in silence. But it is not just the physics of sound that shape behaviors here, as the Dutch researchers show; the social expectations of the space prefigure those behaviors.\r\n\r\nIn setting up a group work space for the Mencken researchers, I have quite deliberately contravened the usual norm of silence. Clearly, I am not inviting them to shout, and by putting them in an alcove in back, I have taken measures to protect any quiet-seeking visitors who might arrive. But in accordance with new ideas about the use of library space, my colleagues and I have decided that we must accommodate group study even if it might occasionally disrupt the silence desired by others. As it happens, the Mencken researchers’ conversation is eventually interrupted by a tour group, and the two activities play out side by side.\r\n\r\nI must admit that at moments I have mixed feelings about the tour groups and even the study cohorts. While my pedagogical instincts tend towards cheerful hub-bub, there is a part of me that is still in awe of the sanctuary-like atmosphere of the Peabody. John Morris called the library a “cathedral of books,” and clearly that’s what architect Edmund G. Lind had in mind. The central area with its grand skylight and the alcoves on its sides is like a nave bordered with chapels. Lind didn’t need a psychological study of environment-based situational norms to tell him that he might activate different behaviors within his building. The great central space inspires reverence—your eye is drawn to the skylight the way it would be drawn to the rose windows of Chartres, and on its way up catches row upon solemn row of books stowed behind gilded railings, a testament to the accumulated wisdom of the ages. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'18\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-18-skylight/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-407\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-407\" title=\"fig 18 skylight\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-18-skylight.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"448\" /></a>The skylight in the George Peabody Library.[/note] But step into an alcove, especially on the ground floor where each is filled with an immense wooden table, and you instantly feel something else, something no less grand but more human. The alcoves are study-sized, and once you sit down at one of those dark, gleaming, broad tables, it is like you are the master of your own private library. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'19\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-19-alcove/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-408\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-408\" title=\"fig 19 alcove\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-19-alcove-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Alcove in the George Peabody Library.[/note]\r\n\r\nIronically, the Peabody’s architecture was out-dated by the time it was completed. With the professionalization of librarianship and the evolution of library science in the late nineteenth century, librarians like William Frederick Poole advocated for a functional rather than decorative design of interior library space. [note number=\'47\']See William Frederick Poole, Remarks on Library Construction (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, 1884).[/note] Moreover, the actual use of space in the Peabody in the late nineteenth century was at odds with its symbolic appeal. The main library was known as the “stack room”; readers were seated in a comparatively plain reading room on the other side of the main doors. In this arrangement, the librarians reigned inside the gorgeous “cathedral of books,” but the building’s potential to civilize the masses was lost.\r\n\r\nNow, of course, we do not send readers outside. Inside the “stack room,” we explicitly call visitors’ attention to its beauty to explain the connections between the library’s architecture and its collections—how both speak eloquently of Victorian values. At the same time, we who staff the library have relegated ourselves to its periphery. We work in the glassed-in room at one end that serves as a monitoring point and occasional classroom; the official “librarian’s office” in one corner—its luxurious proportions suggesting something like a sacristy and something like a robber baron’s lair—is now shared work-space stuffed with several desks and laden book trucks. There is another monitoring station near the main doors. I often do my work at the photography station, in the back of one of the alcoves [note type=\'figure\' number=\'20\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-20-station/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-409\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-409\" title=\"fig 20 station\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-20-station-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Photography station in the George Peabody Library.[/note]. It offers some privacy but is close enough to the central reading tables to be accessible to readers.\r\n\r\nThe space of the Peabody initiates other situational behaviors besides the norm of silence, and our work-station arrangements testify to this. The spatial re-centralizing of readers and marginalization of staff is not merely practical; it is a reflection of the modern office of librarianship. We are there to be of service, in a para-textual position. Consequently, our work should be out of sight; it should be separate from and secondary to the work that readers do. Our locations call upon us, in other words, to support the scholar’s effort to hide the “seams of [her] findings” by hiding the ways we contribute to that work—by the ways we sometimes do that work.\r\n\r\nI think about these complications as I escort the Mencken researchers to their table and walk back to the glassed-in office, where there is nothing pressing for me to do. I’d rather spend more time talking with them. I’d like to learn about their research and introduce them to some underappreciated parts of the collection. I’d like to share with them what I learned curating an exhibition of Mencken-related magazines and writing about one of those magazines. But I don’t want to get in their way; it’s likely that they are ready to get on with work that they don’t see as connected to mine. The professional norms of the archive are strong, and although I know how to talk about my research in many contexts—in presentations, interviews, hotel elevators—I haven’t figured out how to mix my scholarly role with the curatorial role I am supposed to play here, in the Peabody. In the end, I say nothing. Professional segregation is another kind of silence in the library.\r\n\r\nWe cannot change the archaeological record beneath our feet, but we can rearrange the fossils we dig up to create new narratives. We can tell different kinds of archive stories, including the story of what research in the archive was and is. Is it too idealistic to expect that dissolving the entrenched fantasies about archival research will make room for new methods? Is it naïve to imagine a space that, in putting into practice the archival turn’s preliminary insights about disciplinary and disorder, can support experimentation, facilitate connection across professions and disciplines, and enable new discoveries?','Disciplinarity and Disorder','','inherit','open','open','','2199-revision-23','','','2013-05-31 03:53:30','2013-05-31 03:53:30','',2199,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/2199-revision-23/',0,'revision','',0),(4541,1,'2013-06-03 16:29:10','2013-06-03 16:29:10','Do not delete this page. Page content is generated with a custom template.','Blog Archive','','publish','closed','closed','','blog-archive','','','2013-06-03 16:29:10','2013-06-03 16:29:10','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/blog-archive/',0,'page','',0),(4540,1,'2013-06-03 16:29:10','2013-06-03 16:29:10','Do not delete this page. Page content is generated with a custom template.','Blog','','publish','closed','closed','','blog','','','2013-06-03 16:29:10','2013-06-03 16:29:10','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/blog/',0,'page','',0),(4539,1,'2013-06-03 16:29:10','2013-06-03 16:29:10','Do not delete this page. Page content is generated with a custom template.','Comments by Commenter','','publish','closed','closed','','comments-by-commenter-2','','','2013-06-03 16:29:10','2013-06-03 16:29:10','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/comments-by-commenter-2/',0,'page','',0),(4538,1,'2013-06-03 16:29:10','2013-06-03 16:29:10','Do not delete this page. Page content is generated with a custom template.','All Comments','','publish','closed','closed','','all-comments-2','','','2013-06-03 16:29:10','2013-06-03 16:29:10','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/all-comments-2/',0,'page','',0),(4537,1,'2013-06-03 16:29:10','2013-06-03 16:29:10','Do not delete this page. Page content is generated with a custom template.','General Comments','','publish','open','open','','general-comments-2','','','2013-06-03 16:29:10','2013-06-03 16:29:10','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/general-comments-2/',0,'page','',0),(4543,1,'2013-06-03 16:40:31','2013-06-03 16:40:31','<em>The Vodou Archive</em> is a collaborative partnership spearheaded by the University of Florida and Duke University that seeks to improve the understanding of a central Haitian and Haitian-American spiritual tradition by gathering the audiovisual and textual sources of Vodou communities, interpreting what we collect, expanding the holdings through a self-submission tool, and diffusing the knowledge via an open access digital library.  You can find the current prototype here &lt;<a href=\"http://www.dloc.com/vodou\">http://www.dloc.com/vodou</a>&gt;,  hosted within the existing <a href=\"http://dloc.com/\">Digital Library of the Caribbean</a> (dLOC). In addition to the twenty-seven international partners working with the Digital Library of the Caribbean, collaborators from the University of Notre Dame, the University of Miami, the Schrijversvakschool, Florida International University, the Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, and City Lore, among others, will contribute elements to <em>The Vodou Archive</em>. This project belongs to a tradition of scholarly work stretching back to the early twentieth century that has sought to counter reductionist and racist visions of the religion through ethnography, analysis of culture and music, and an exploration of the role of Vodou in Haiti’s founding revolution. Such work has long turned to the central texts in Haitian Vodou: its Creole-language songs.\n\nBuilding on my book, <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em>,<sup><a href=\"#_ftn1\">[1]</a></sup> <em>The Vodou Archive</em> project makes these songs available in Haitian Creole and English, along with substantial interpretative annotations and essays to contextualize the collection. The edited and curated materials in <em>The Vodou Archive</em> are of major literary, historical, cultural, and religious significance. The vast Vodou corpus stands out because it preserves a wealth of African cultural, ethnological, and historical knowledge.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn2\">[2]</a></sup> The oral and textual corpora of songs are comprised of the authentic and living traditions of the Vodou religion. They are primarily sung in the context of Vodou worship in public and domestic ceremonies, and they constitute the sacred literature of the religion. Vodou songs, a constant in ceremonies, address the mythologies and characteristics of the religion: Bondye (God), the Marasa (the Divine Twins), the lwa (spirits), and the dantan (ancestors), as well as their relations with humans and nature. Vodou songs are time capsules that reveal the history and origins of the Haitian people in Africa, their journey to the Americas in the French slave trade, and their lives in the French colony. Due to their sacred nature, they arewell-preserved records of African and Haitian history and culture.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn3\">[3]</a></sup> Ceremonies and songs preserve African historical (i.e. <em>Bosou, Achade, Legba, Danbala, Simbi, Ayizan</em>), cultural (i.e. <em>lwa, ounsi, ason, oungan, manbo</em>) and geographical (i.e.<em> Rada, Savalou, Boumba</em>) terms in a creolized or blended religious and cultural system.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn4\">[4]</a></sup> Likewise, there are numerous Vodou ceremonies (rites) classified by the African <em>nanchon</em> (nations/communities) where they originate, such as Rada, Petwo, Ginen, Seneka, Ibo, Danwonmen, Nago, Kongo, Kita, etc.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn5\">[5]</a></sup>\n\nUndergraduates played, and will play, a key role in this archive.  They contributed first drafts of transcriptions and translations of Vodou songs and interviews with Vodou practitioners for the book, <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em>. The undergraduate students worked on transcribing and translating interviews that I collected from Vodou priests in Haiti and they also transcribed and translated rare pre-existing published materials.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn6\">[6]</a></sup>  The students, Joanne Bartley, Vanessa Brissault, Kat Warwick, Wilmide Vernet, and Musset Apollon, were either paid hourly through grant funding or they earned credit for an independent study. We worked from manuscripts that employ a range of Haitian Creole spelling systems. The official variety, the “IPN,” named after the <em>Institut Pédagogique National</em>, was adopted for the first time in 1980. Many of our manuscripts predate 1980 and thus transcription required heavy correction and consultation with lexicographical works.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn7\">[7]</a></sup> The students had been exposed to the official variety of Haitian Creole spelling in my intermediate Haitian Creole course. After establishing the Haitian Creole source text, the students produced the first draft of the English translation. Then I corrected the Haitian Creole and English drafts in various cycles as the materials moved towards the finished products, either the book or <em>The Vodou Archive</em>.  (See Figure 1, and for the related Vodou Archive digital library, Figures 2 &amp; 3.)<span class=\"caption\" style=\"width: 166px; margin-bottom: 20px;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig1.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-2358\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;\" title=\"hebbelthwaite_fig1\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig1-166x250.jpg\" alt=\"Figure 1\" width=\"166\" height=\"250\" /></a> Figure 1: The book cover of<em> Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em>.</span>\n\n<span class=\"caption left\" style=\"margin-right: 20px; width: 266px; clear: none;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig2.jpg\"><img class=\" wp-image-2359\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" title=\"hebbelthwaite_fig2\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig2-333x208.jpg\" alt=\"Figure 2\" width=\"266\" height=\"166\" /></a> Figure 2: The homepage of the Vodou Archive.</span><span class=\"caption left\" style=\"margin-right: 10px; width: 266px; clear: none;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig3.jpg\"><img class=\" wp-image-2360\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px; clear: right;\" title=\"hebbelthwaite_fig3\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig3-333x208.jpg\" alt=\"Figure 3\" width=\"266\" height=\"166\" /></a> Figure 3: This screen shot presents the view inside of the Vodou Archive with the filter menu for narrowing results on the left hand side of the screen.</span>\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<li id=\"_ftn1\" class=\"footnote\">[1] Benjamin Hebblethwaite and Joanne Bartley, <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English </em> <em>= Chante vodou an kreyòl ayisyen ak angle</em> (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012).</li>\n<li id=\"_ftn2\" class=\"footnote\">[2] Max Beauvoir, <em>Le Grand Recueil Sacré ou Répertoire des Chansons du Vodou Haïtien </em>(Port-au-Prince: Edisyon Près Nasyonal d Ayiti, 2008).</li>\n<li id=\"_ftn3\" class=\"footnote\">[3] Claudine Michel, “Vodou in Haiti: Way of Life and Mode of Survival,” in <em>Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture: Invisible Powers, </em>ed. Claudine Michel and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 27–37.<em></em></li>\n<li id=\"_ftn4\" class=\"footnote\">[4] See Roger Brand, <em>Cultes vodoun et textes oraux des Wéménou du sud Bénin </em>(Munich: Lincom Europa, 2000); Brand, <em>Ethnographie et vocabulaire religieux des cultes vodoun </em>(Munich: Lincom Europa, 2000); Marc Monsia, <em>Religions indigènes et savoir endogène au Bénin </em>(Cotonou, Benin: Les Éditions du Flamboyant, 2003); Gilbert Rouget, <em>La musique et la transe </em>(Paris: Gallimard, 1991 [1980]); and Gilbert Rouget, <em>Initiatique vôdoun, images du rituel: Chants et danses initiatiques pour le culte des vôdoun au Bénin </em>(Saint-Maur, France: Éditions Sépia, 2001), v.</li>\n<li id=\"_ftn5\" class=\"footnote\">[5] Max G. Beauvoir, <em>Lapriyè Ginen </em>(Port-au-Prince: Edisyon Près Nasyonal d Ayiti. 2008), 109-110.</div>\n<li id=\"_ftn6\" class=\"footnote\">[6] Milo Marcelin, <em>Mythologie Vodou (Rite Arada)</em>,<em> </em>2 vols. (Pétionville: Éditions Canapé Vert, 1950); Laura Boulton, “Laura Boulton’s Songs” (1947), in <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English = Chante vodou an kreyòl ayisyen ak angle</em>, eds. Benjamin Hebblethwaite and Joanne Bartley (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012), 127-145;  J.L., “J.L. Songs,” in <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em>,<em> </em>147-184; Harold Courlander, unpublished manuscript (1939–1940), University of Michigan Special Collections Library; Milo Rigaud, <em>La tradition voudoo et le voudoo haïtien: Son temple, ses mystères, sa magie </em>(Paris: Éditions Niclaus, 1953).</div>\n<div id=\"_ftn7\" class=\"footnote\">[7] Albert Valdman, Iskra Iskrova, Jacques Pierre, and Nicolas André, <em>Haitian Creole-English Bilingual Dictionary</em> (Bloomington, IN: Creole Institute, 2007); Bryant Freeman and Jowel Laguerre, <em>Haitian-English Dictionary</em>, 5th ed. (Lawrence, KS: Institute of Haitian Studies, 2004).</div>\n</div>','Undergraduates in the Archives - Hebblethwaite 1','The Vodou Archive is a collaborative partnership spearheaded by the University of Florida and Duke University which seeks to improve the understanding of a central Haitian and Haitian-American spiritual tradition by gathering the audiovisual and textual sources of Vodou communities, interpreting what we collect, expanding the holdings through a self-submission tool, and diffusing the knowledge via an open access digital library.  ','inherit','open','open','','1504-autosave','','','2013-06-03 16:40:31','2013-06-03 16:40:31','',1504,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1504-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4544,1,'2013-05-04 21:15:48','2013-05-04 21:15:48','<em>The Vodou Archive</em> is a collaborative partnership spearheaded by the University of Florida and Duke University that seeks to improve the understanding of a central Haitian and Haitian-American spiritual tradition by gathering the audiovisual and textual sources of Vodou communities, interpreting what we collect, expanding the holdings through a self-submission tool, and diffusing the knowledge via an open access digital library.  You can find the current prototype here &lt;<a href=\"http://www.dloc.com/vodou\">http://www.dloc.com/vodou</a>&gt;,  hosted within the existing <a href=\"http://dloc.com/\">Digital Library of the Caribbean</a> (dLOC). In addition to the twenty-seven international partners working with the Digital Library of the Caribbean, collaborators from the University of Notre Dame, the University of Miami, the Schrijversvakschool, Florida International University, the Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, and City Lore, among others, will contribute elements to <em>The Vodou Archive</em>. This project belongs to a tradition of scholarly work stretching back to the early twentieth century that has sought to counter reductionist and racist visions of the religion through ethnography, analysis of culture and music, and an exploration of the role of Vodou in Haiti’s founding revolution. Such work has long turned to the central texts in Haitian Vodou: its Creole-language songs.\r\n\r\nBuilding on my book, <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em>,<sup><a href=\"#_ftn1\">[1]</a></sup> <em>The Vodou Archive</em> project makes these songs available in Haitian Creole and English, along with substantial interpretative annotations and essays to contextualize the collection. The edited and curated materials in <em>The Vodou Archive</em> are of major literary, historical, cultural, and religious significance. The vast Vodou corpus stands out because it preserves a wealth of African cultural, ethnological, and historical knowledge.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn2\">[2]</a></sup> The oral and textual corpora of songs are comprised of the authentic and living traditions of the Vodou religion. They are primarily sung in the context of Vodou worship in public and domestic ceremonies, and they constitute the sacred literature of the religion. Vodou songs, a constant in ceremonies, address the mythologies and characteristics of the religion: Bondye (God), the Marasa (the Divine Twins), the lwa (spirits), and the dantan (ancestors), as well as their relations with humans and nature. Vodou songs are time capsules that reveal the history and origins of the Haitian people in Africa, their journey to the Americas in the French slave trade, and their lives in the French colony. Due to their sacred nature, they arewell-preserved records of African and Haitian history and culture.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn3\">[3]</a></sup> Ceremonies and songs preserve African historical (i.e. <em>Bosou, Achade, Legba, Danbala, Simbi, Ayizan</em>), cultural (i.e. <em>lwa, ounsi, ason, oungan, manbo</em>) and geographical (i.e.<em> Rada, Savalou, Boumba</em>) terms in a creolized or blended religious and cultural system.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn4\">[4]</a></sup> Likewise, there are numerous Vodou ceremonies (rites) classified by the African <em>nanchon</em> (nations/communities) where they originate, such as Rada, Petwo, Ginen, Seneka, Ibo, Danwonmen, Nago, Kongo, Kita, etc.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn5\">[5]</a></sup>\r\n\r\nUndergraduates played, and will play, a key role in this archive.  They contributed first drafts of transcriptions and translations of Vodou songs and interviews with Vodou practitioners for the book, <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em>. The undergraduate students worked on transcribing and translating interviews that I collected from Vodou priests in Haiti and they also transcribed and translated rare pre-existing published materials.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn6\">[6]</a></sup>  The students, Joanne Bartley, Vanessa Brissault, Kat Warwick, Wilmide Vernet, and Musset Apollon, were either paid hourly through grant funding or they earned credit for an independent study. We worked from manuscripts that employ a range of Haitian Creole spelling systems. The official variety, the “IPN,” named after the <em>Institut Pédagogique National</em>, was adopted for the first time in 1980. Many of our manuscripts predate 1980 and thus transcription required heavy correction and consultation with lexicographical works.<sup><a href=\"#_ftn7\">[7]</a></sup> The students had been exposed to the official variety of Haitian Creole spelling in my intermediate Haitian Creole course. After establishing the Haitian Creole source text, the students produced the first draft of the English translation. Then I corrected the Haitian Creole and English drafts in various cycles as the materials moved towards the finished products, either the book or <em>The Vodou Archive</em>.  (See Figure 1, and for the related Vodou Archive digital library, Figures 2 &amp; 3.)<span class=\"caption\" style=\"width: 166px; margin-bottom: 20px;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig1.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-2358\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;\" title=\"hebbelthwaite_fig1\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig1-166x250.jpg\" alt=\"Figure 1\" width=\"166\" height=\"250\" /></a> Figure 1: The book cover of<em> Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em>.</span>\r\n\r\n<span class=\"caption left\" style=\"margin-right: 20px; width: 266px; clear: none;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig2.jpg\"><img class=\" wp-image-2359\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" title=\"hebbelthwaite_fig2\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig2-333x208.jpg\" alt=\"Figure 2\" width=\"266\" height=\"166\" /></a> Figure 2: The homepage of the Vodou Archive.</span><span class=\"caption left\" style=\"margin-right: 10px; width: 266px; clear: none;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig3.jpg\"><img class=\" wp-image-2360\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px; clear: right;\" title=\"hebbelthwaite_fig3\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hebbelthwaite_fig3-333x208.jpg\" alt=\"Figure 3\" width=\"266\" height=\"166\" /></a> Figure 3: This screen shot presents the view inside of the Vodou Archive with the filter menu for narrowing results on the left hand side of the screen.</span>\r\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\r\n<div id=\"_ftn1\" class=\"footnote\">[1] Benjamin Hebblethwaite and Joanne Bartley, <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English </em> <em>= Chante vodou an kreyòl ayisyen ak angle</em> (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012).</div>\r\n<div id=\"_ftn2\" class=\"footnote\">[2] Max Beauvoir, <em>Le Grand Recueil Sacré ou Répertoire des Chansons du Vodou Haïtien </em>(Port-au-Prince: Edisyon Près Nasyonal d Ayiti, 2008).</div>\r\n<div id=\"_ftn3\" class=\"footnote\">[3] Claudine Michel, “Vodou in Haiti: Way of Life and Mode of Survival,” in <em>Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture: Invisible Powers, </em>ed. Claudine Michel and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 27–37.<em></em></div>\r\n<div id=\"_ftn4\" class=\"footnote\">[4] See Roger Brand, <em>Cultes vodoun et textes oraux des Wéménou du sud Bénin </em>(Munich: Lincom Europa, 2000); Brand, <em>Ethnographie et vocabulaire religieux des cultes vodoun </em>(Munich: Lincom Europa, 2000); Marc Monsia, <em>Religions indigènes et savoir endogène au Bénin </em>(Cotonou, Benin: Les Éditions du Flamboyant, 2003); Gilbert Rouget, <em>La musique et la transe </em>(Paris: Gallimard, 1991 [1980]); and Gilbert Rouget, <em>Initiatique vôdoun, images du rituel: Chants et danses initiatiques pour le culte des vôdoun au Bénin </em>(Saint-Maur, France: Éditions Sépia, 2001), v.</div>\r\n<div id=\"_ftn5\" class=\"footnote\">[5] Max G. Beauvoir, <em>Lapriyè Ginen </em>(Port-au-Prince: Edisyon Près Nasyonal d Ayiti. 2008), 109-110.</div>\r\n<div id=\"_ftn6\" class=\"footnote\">[6] Milo Marcelin, <em>Mythologie Vodou (Rite Arada)</em>,<em> </em>2 vols. (Pétionville: Éditions Canapé Vert, 1950); Laura Boulton, “Laura Boulton’s Songs” (1947), in <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English = Chante vodou an kreyòl ayisyen ak angle</em>, eds. Benjamin Hebblethwaite and Joanne Bartley (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012), 127-145;  J.L., “J.L. Songs,” in <em>Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English</em>,<em> </em>147-184; Harold Courlander, unpublished manuscript (1939–1940), University of Michigan Special Collections Library; Milo Rigaud, <em>La tradition voudoo et le voudoo haïtien: Son temple, ses mystères, sa magie </em>(Paris: Éditions Niclaus, 1953).</div>\r\n<div id=\"_ftn7\" class=\"footnote\">[7] Albert Valdman, Iskra Iskrova, Jacques Pierre, and Nicolas André, <em>Haitian Creole-English Bilingual Dictionary</em> (Bloomington, IN: Creole Institute, 2007); Bryant Freeman and Jowel Laguerre, <em>Haitian-English Dictionary</em>, 5th ed. (Lawrence, KS: Institute of Haitian Studies, 2004).</div>\r\n</div>','Undergraduates in the Archives - Hebblethwaite 1','The Vodou Archive is a collaborative partnership spearheaded by the University of Florida and Duke University which seeks to improve the understanding of a central Haitian and Haitian-American spiritual tradition by gathering the audiovisual and textual sources of Vodou communities, interpreting what we collect, expanding the holdings through a self-submission tool, and diffusing the knowledge via an open access digital library.  ','inherit','open','open','','1504-revision-7','','','2013-05-04 21:15:48','2013-05-04 21:15:48','',1504,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1504-revision-7/',0,'revision','',0),(4545,1,'2013-05-21 02:07:52','2013-05-21 02:07:52','A few years ago, I was an undergraduate in the archive. In a class called “Dead Media Research Studio” at New York University (NYU), Professor Ben Kafka introduced me to the great quip about the chiasmic imperative of good research: to “make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.” With this echoing in my ears, I found myself in the entrails of Bobst Library interviewing two preservation specialists about a small but intriguing collection of wire recordings. The recordings, I found out, were of rather unknown origins in the early 1950s and contained some controversial tirades against President Truman. Though certainly not an exhaustive archive, the recordings provided me with my first meaningful interaction with historical primary sources. And it was a rather lonely endeavor; the hallways leading to troves of under-researched sources were woefully empty compared to the bustling study lounges located just a few floors above.\r\n\r\nMy research on wire recordings ended up as part of a dossier (similar to the format and scope of a Wikipedia entry) I wrote with two classmates for the Dead Media Archive. Professors Ben Kafka and Alex Galloway had rescued this archive from its own ironic demise as an e-mail list created by Bruce Sterling to catalog and describe obsolete technologies. The new Dead Media Archive, technically a wiki platform for simultaneous publishing and editing, became the centerpiece for two classes in the Department of Media, Culture, &amp; Communication (one undergraduate and one graduate). The semester in which I took the class, there were barely ten students enrolled. It puzzled me a bit, since Professor Kafka announced on the first day what every undergraduate seems to dream of hearing: there would be no exams, no papers, and very little reading. Instead, we were to be immersed in the city’s archives for a semester. Each student ended up producing three dossiers for the archive. In addition to one on wire recording, I also wrote an entry on spirit photography, a popular turn-of-the-century practice of “capturing” ghosts on film, which was accompanied by the rise of Spiritualism. A sizeable portion of my hard drive is still taken up by copies of the microform proceedings of the 1869 trial against William Mumler, a New York City spirit photographer accused of fraud (see Figure 1). My final dossier presented a more argumentative take on the “death” of media by cataloging marginalia, the scribbles in a text’s margins, as obsolete relics of a technological paradigm.<span class=\"caption right\" style=\"width: 200px; padding-left: 20px;\"><a href=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gotkin_fig1.png\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-2331 alignright\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;\" title=\"gotkin_fig1\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gotkin_fig1-193x250.png\" alt=\"Figure 1\" width=\"193\" height=\"250\" /></a>Figure 1: Microform copy of the proceedings of a 1869 court case against spirit photographer William Mumler.</span>\r\n\r\nBefore arriving at NYU, I would have scoffed at the idea of studying media history. There was much sighing on my first day in the required “History of Communication” course; I imagined, like many fellow undergraduates, that a degree in media studies would help me land a job in New York’s radio, television, or film industries. History, for us, was a roadblock in the path to careers less concerned with the past than with the frenetic present. The thrill of finding primary sources changed my mind. In the archive, I realized the opportunity to conduct original research. The excitement of archival work is shared by undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty alike; it is the thrill of finding something that has not been thought about enough, and then working hard enough to make it both familiar and strange.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Gotkin 1','','inherit','open','open','','1528-revision-12','','','2013-05-21 02:07:52','2013-05-21 02:07:52','',1528,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1528-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),(4546,1,'2013-05-04 21:15:53','2013-05-04 21:15:53','Since I came to Wesleyan nearly fifteen years ago, a key focus of my job has been outreach to the faculty, and thus the undergraduates, through the curriculum. To this end, I teach thirty-five to fifty class sessions each academic year in Special Collections &amp; Archives (SC&amp;A). Disciplines range from astronomy to writing, and just about everything in between.\r\n\r\nThough all class sessions have the common goal of raising undergraduate awareness of and interest in the holdings of SC&amp;A, each class presentation is different, based on both the subject of the course and the pedagogical purpose for which the materials will be used. Some sessions take a classic “dog and pony show” approach in which I, or sometimes the professor and I, present a group of interesting materials from our collections and talk briefly about each item, how it connects to the course, and/or how it might be used in the students’ research. In other sessions, students take a more active role by doing an in-class assignment. One such assignment we often use is the “mystery book exercise” that a History of Science faculty member and I developed together. “Mystery book” is a fun, fast-paced exercise that trains students to evaluate an unfamiliar source quickly and teaches information-literacy skills using books or documents connected to the subject of the course. After spending a few minutes looking at a book they have not seen before, students answer ten questions, which range from the (usually) easy identification of the author to more complex considerations of how the mystery book might inform their research. Still other classes use the visit to SC&amp;A to prepare for an in-depth paper or project that requires, or at least strongly encourages, the use of materials in SC&amp;A. These longer assignments are as varied as the classes, and they include traditional term papers, documentary editing projects, artists’ books, and creative writing based on primary sources, among others. For the full list of mystery book questions, other assignments, and comments from Wesleyan professors who use SC&amp;A in teaching, see the online exhibition, <em><a href=\"http://oldbooks.site.wesleyan.edu/\">Old Books, New Pedagogy: Special Collections and Archives in the Curriculum</a></em>.\r\n\r\nOf course, not all the work I do with undergraduates is teaching them about archives and special collections in class settings. Often class visits spark students to use SC&amp;A for other courses, senior theses or essays, co-curricular activities, or just simple personal interest. In many of these cases, I work one-on-one with the students to help them identify relevant materials, focus topics, find related books or documents, and understand the context, all of which are typical functions of reference and instruction librarians.\r\n\r\nMuch of my recent professional activity has focused on teaching undergraduates to use archives and special collections. I have just co-edited a volume of case studies on this topic, entitled <em>Past or Portal? Enhancing Undergraduate Learning through Special Collections and Archives</em>. The book, which was<a href=\"http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=3828\"> recently published by the Association of College and Research Libraries</a>, contains nearly fifty real-life examples of undergraduate curricular uses of archives and special collections in a wide variety of institutions.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Taraba 1','','inherit','open','open','','1558-revision-11','','','2013-05-04 21:15:53','2013-05-04 21:15:53','',1558,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1558-revision-11/',0,'revision','',0),(4547,1,'2013-05-15 02:21:48','2013-05-15 02:21:48','Engagement is a clear benefit. Many students are visibly excited, even awed, by their first visit to our Davison Rare Book Room, where the class sessions take place. The room is itself beautiful, echoing an eighteenth-century English gentleman’s library with glass-fronted bookcases and walnut paneling. The setting, combined with the intriguing materials presented, often inspires students to focus especially closely on the objects on display. The “wow” factor helps to make the experience memorable. While the visit to Special Collections &amp; Archives (SC&amp;A)and attendant procedures (such as signing in, only using pencils, stowing bags, etc.) could easily be intimidating for some students, we work hard to ensure that the department is welcoming and friendly so that students feel encouraged to return on their own.\r\n\r\nPedagogically and intellectually, first-hand encounters with special collections and archives facilitate students’ thinking outside the box as they identify and pursue research topics. Direct contact with primary sources can fuel students’ interests, and many students find captivating the detective work involved in teasing out meanings from unedited and unglossed documents. Learning about the history and technology of the book opens students’ eyes to aspects of texts that can be far less evident with the ubiquitous electronic sources and secondary readings that fuel so much of their research. Through studying rare books and other special collections, students begin to understand that marginalia, provenance, typography, design, binding, and illustrations—all the physical aspects of specific copies of a book—offer avenues for viewing the book in the context of its own time. They begin to appreciate the many people beside the author who helped create the physical book. Often the study of these aspects of books helps to frame the text in such a way that students can step outside of themselves to evaluate it and analyze it, not just from a twenty-first-century point of view, but within the intellectual and historical context of its own time.\r\n\r\nOf course the active use of SC&amp;A by undergraduates benefits the department and the library as well. The deep integration of SC&amp;A into Wesleyan’s curriculum helps to ensure that we are not marginalized, that we are truly part of the University’s academic community, and that the materials are well (albeit carefully) used. As circulating collections and electronic resources in academic libraries become more homogenous, the strengths of archives and special collections holdings are often what distinguish an academic library from its peers at other institutions.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Taraba 2','','inherit','open','open','','1562-revision-9','','','2013-05-15 02:21:48','2013-05-15 02:21:48','',1562,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1562-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(4548,1,'2013-05-15 02:21:41','2013-05-15 02:21:41','From 50,000 feet up, my greatest success is developing our program of outreach and teaching, and sustaining it over nearly fifteen years. In 1997-98, seven classes visited Special Collections &amp; Archives. Last semester, I taught thirty-one class sessions. The numbers document the faculty’s growing interest in bringing their classes to SC&amp;A and the success of our outreach. The value and enrichment to the curriculum and the students are, of course, harder to quantify.\r\n\r\nThe best, most rewarding experiences for me personally are those in which I can see the collections really come alive for students, when they come back to use our materials even when they are not required to do so, and when their enthusiasm for archives and special collections is clearly evident. There are many examples. At the most basic level, I know that students are engaged when they show up with their parents during our open house at Homecoming/Family Weekend, and they tell their families enthusiastically about their visit with an introductory astronomy class in which they saw, among other items, some of Einstein’s manuscripts and artists’ books with astronomical themes. This is a perfect example of how even the “dog and pony show” can reach students and provide a memorable experience. At the other end of the spectrum, some students find materials first encountered in a class visit so intriguing that they spend a full year (or sometimes more) researching them as the focus of a senior thesis. In recent years we have had excellent theses centered on a sixteenth-century German prayer book, a Shakespeare folio with eighteenth-century annotations, Civil War letters written by a Wesleyan alumnus, and the papers of a faculty member from the 1930s-50s, to name a few. In all of these cases, students have done high-level, truly original research that was sparked during a visit to SC&amp;A.\r\n\r\nThere are non-curricular peak experiences as well. From time to time, students use the University Archives to research family members who attended Wesleyan in the past. These projects are often exciting in a deeply personal way for both the students and their families. Perhaps the most memorable search for a Wesleyan ancestor ended up with a student weeping in our reading room. She had found yearbook pictures and evidence of a vibrant social and intellectual life of a grandfather she had never known because he had committed suicide before she was born. It is hard for me to imagine an archival experience more moving than this. Still, there have been many times over the years when students’ connections—intellectual, emotional, or both—with our holdings have been deeply gratifying to me.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Taraba 3','','inherit','open','open','','1565-revision-9','','','2013-05-15 02:21:41','2013-05-15 02:21:41','',1565,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1565-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(4549,1,'2013-05-15 02:21:33','2013-05-15 02:21:33','The single biggest challenge my program faces is one of supply and demand. Demand for class sessions in Special Collections &amp; Archives (SC&amp;A) is increasing—all to the good!—but the supply of time for teaching is not. In this sense, we are the victims of our own success. More staff to share the teaching load would help. Increased use of digitized sources and online tutorials can help as well, and many institutions, both large and small, are exploring these options, some with considerable success. Digitization can help make our holdings more readily accessible to larger numbers of students. Naturally, care and preservation of materials that are heavily used is always a concern. Digitization helps to protect the originals from being damaged in the service of learning and scholarship, but the experience of using digital surrogates is not really the same as using the “real thing.” Best, of course, is when the original and a digital surrogate can be used in tandem.\r\n\r\nOften faculty find it difficult to squeeze a visit to SC&amp;A into an already full syllabus, even when it is pedagogically desirable. Scheduling extra sessions outside of regular class meetings can be complex in the extreme, since students are extraordinarily busy with academic and extracurricular commitments.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Taraba 4','','inherit','open','open','','1568-revision-9','','','2013-05-15 02:21:33','2013-05-15 02:21:33','',1568,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1568-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(4550,1,'2013-05-15 02:21:35','2013-05-15 02:21:35','Archival work <em>is</em> my curriculum. Integrating it into the broader university curriculum has been a long-term project. The year I started at Wesleyan, I began an intensive, perhaps even aggressive, approach to bringing classes into Special Collections &amp; Archives (SC&amp;A). The first step was to find a close connection between our holdings and Wesleyan’s curriculum. To do this, I studied the course catalog carefully and matched holdings to what was being taught. I wrote detailed letters to each faculty member whose course seemed to connect well to our holdings. Although I used the same basic form for each letter, I tailored each one with a specific list of items I would show to the class if they would come in for a visit. (At the time, a letter still had more impact than an email message.) In the first year alone, this effort resulted in twenty-four class sessions for nineteen different courses and a total of 276 students. As the program has grown, certain trends have emerged. Perhaps not surprisingly, the largest number of requests for class sessions comes from the American Studies, English, and History departments. Faculty in African American Studies; Astronomy; Classical Studies; Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Music; Romance Languages and Literatures; Science in Society; and Studio Art are regular participants as well. We have also hosted classes in atomic theory, computer science, dance, German, government, and sociology. By now, I have worked with upwards of one hundred different faculty members (including visitors and non-tenure-track faculty) to bring classes to SC&amp;A. This often includes helping them to design assignments that reinforce or build on the visit to SC&amp;A, while enhancing the pedagogical goals of the course and promoting the use of our collections. At this point, the program needs very little advertising to sustain itself, although I do still send reminders to some faculty to schedule a class visit, and I encourage new faculty to consider the possibility when our holdings are a good match for their courses.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Taraba 5','','inherit','open','open','','1571-revision-9','','','2013-05-15 02:21:35','2013-05-15 02:21:35','',1571,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1571-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(4551,1,'2013-05-04 19:57:30','2013-05-04 19:57:30','I am the director of the Undergraduate Program at the Folger Shakespeare Library, a program I created five years ago. It consists of two semester-long seminars in which students from universities in the D.C. area come to the Library to study book history and early modern culture. The goal of the seminars is for students to expand their knowledge of the period and their research skills by working directly with rare materials in the context of book history. The course is divided into three thematic concerns: books as physical objects (descriptive bibliography), the relationship between books and cultural forces (print culture), and books as vehicles for text (editorial theory and practice). By moving from how books are made to the economics of authorship and readers’ uses of books to how their manifestation in print affects books’ meanings, the course models different approaches to studying the histories of books and strives to explore how each approach is related to others. The class as a whole reads secondary sources (Darnton, McKenzie, McLeod, Sherman, Lesser), and class discussions make frequent use of rare materials brought into the classroom.  (The current syllabus for the course can be found <a title=\"Book and Early Modern Culture Syllabus\" href=\"http://sarahwerner.net/FolgerBooks\">here</a>.) When we discuss how books are printed, for instance, I will bring books into class that illustrate moments where the printing went askew—a misfoliated book, perhaps—in order to learn what the evidence of these mistakes can teach us about the process of making a book. Or we will devote a session to looking at bibles from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries in order to see how their physical appearance changes, to explore how physical characteristics suggest different ways to read and use the bibles, and to examine what they might reveal about cultural and religious battles.\r\n\r\nWhile the class works together on these discussions, each student is studying one book that they have chosen to focus on. With their own book, they research its makers (authors, translators, and compilers as well as printers, publishers, and booksellers), its intended audience, and its later users and collectors. At the end of the semester, each student produces a biography of their book using their primary research and the book’s physical characteristics to tell its life story, from its inception to its afterlife as both text and object.\r\n\r\nIn both of these ways, working with rare materials is integral to the course and to the students’ learning experiences. Students in the class are Readers at the Library on the same terms that any other scholar given a Reader’s Card is: they can use any of the modern and rare materials in our collections that are not normally restricted. They come to the Library weekly for the seminar and return to the Library regularly to conduct their research for the class. Their Reader’s Cards are good for twelve months, so students can return to the Library after the seminar is done to carry on their own research. In other words, through the Undergraduate Seminar, students learn not only to use rare materials in their studies, but to be citizens of rare materials libraries.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Werner 1','','inherit','open','open','','1541-revision-9','','','2013-05-04 19:57:30','2013-05-04 19:57:30','',1541,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1541-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(4552,1,'2013-05-15 02:22:34','2013-05-15 02:22:34','I think the biggest benefit of bringing students into special collections through this course is that students own the process of discovery. In many undergraduate humanities courses, students learn about a subject through reading about it and, sometimes, conducting research on a topic of their choosing. But their research is rarely significant in terms of discovering new knowledge or generating a new perspective on something. Anyone who has taught a Shakespeare course can attest to the fact that even the best student papers do not often contribute something new to the field of Shakespeare studies; they might be interesting, and insightful, and they might be genuinely exciting to the student, but they are not new. But when students work with primary materials in special collections, they can be working with something that no one else has considered before. Sure, many people have written about More’s <em>Utopia</em>, but no one else may have produced a history of the particular copy of the third English edition of his book, which can now be found at the Folger with the call number STC 18096 Copy 1. More importantly, I have not done that either. In creating the biographies of their books, students are on their own, doing utterly original research. I can provide guidance, and so can generations of scholars before them, but students will not have that sinking feeling of realizing that somebody else has already written what they want to say, and has written it better.\r\n\r\nThat ownership of their research shifts how students see themselves as scholars. They are each experts on their own book, and everyone teaches everyone else when it comes to sharing insights into the nature of the book trade, the shape of authorship, or the variety of book use. Students produce long research papers on their final biographies, having revised earlier drafts, rethought their assumptions, and spent countless hours in the Library and at home working through their books’ stories. There is a consistent level of engagement with the material that I have not seen in other advanced-level seminars I have taught. Their papers routinely go above and beyond the expectations I have set for the projects; I have learned to suggest word limits as minimum expectations, not maximum cut-offs, since when I ask for a 3000-word paper, there are always students who have produced such rich research that they need 5000 words to do it justice.\r\n\r\nI suppose some might question the scholarly benefit of pouring all that energy into one copy of one edition of one book. But by limiting their attention to one copy, students have the room to fully explore the range of connections and complications for that book, and with that knowledge, students are able to extrapolate to the production of other books and to the ways in which knowledge passes from one generation to the next. The history of who read and collected the 1597 English <em>Utopia</em> over the centuries sheds light on our reading and use of the text today. More importantly, the skills students learn exploring one book can be used to explore any book, even a book made after the hand-press period. And because students are genuinely excited by the sense of discovery, they absorb and retain those ideas, bringing them to their other courses and to their lives following graduation. Being able to discover and to be real scholars as undergraduates opens up doors to them long after our class is done.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Werner 2','','inherit','open','open','','1544-revision-9','','','2013-05-15 02:22:34','2013-05-15 02:22:34','',1544,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1544-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(4553,1,'2013-05-15 02:22:29','2013-05-15 02:22:29','Oh my, this is a hard one to answer. Without intending to sound unbearably sappy, there are nearly too many moments of success for me to count! My favorite moments are those that come outside the seminar: when a student makes a connection between what we have been discussing and what another class of hers is doing; when a professor tells me that a former student has been teaching them all to pay attention to the textual history of a poem they are reading; or when a former student sends me an e-mail to point out a newspaper article about books he found interesting. All those moments mean that the lessons they have learned in our seminar are living on for them in other contexts.\r\n\r\nOther favorite moments have been when students have found something out about a book that is news to the Library’s catalogers. Given how tremendous the Folger catalogers are, that is hard to do! But, for instance, one student was working on <em>The essayes of a prentise</em>, a book that had been written by King James in 1594, when he was James VI of Scotland and not yet James I of England. The student’s interpretation of the book was that it was deeply embedded in James’s perspective as a Scottish monarch and aspirant to the English throne, especially since the book was bound as a presentation copy for Lord Burghley. But the catalog record for the book, following standard name authority rules, listed the author as James I. Given the student’s research, however, the book’s record now includes a note clarifying the nature of James’s title when it was written. (You can see a blog post I wrote about the book and this issue <a href=\"http://sarahwerner.net/blog/index.php/2009/09/essayes-of-a-prentise/\">here</a>; you can find the catalog record for it <a href=\"http://shakespeare.folger.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=163210\">here</a>.)\r\n\r\nAnother student was working on James Smith’s <em>The generall historie of Virginia</em> (1624) and was struck by its odd binding, in which one armorial device was stamped on top of another. The Folger’s catalog identified one of them as James I’s, but it took some joint sleuthing for her and I to work out that the stamp on top of James’s was that of George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham. As far as I can work out, no one else had noticed that, not the previous owners, the booksellers, or the Library’s catalogers. (That record still does not include the additional information about the binding because I have not yet brought it to their attention. But you can read about the book and see some pictures of the binding <a href=\"http://sarahwerner.net/blog/index.php/2011/04/an-armorial-binding-mystery/\">here</a>; the catalog record is <a href=\"http://shakespeare.folger.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=164134\">here</a>.)','Undergraduates in the Archives - Werner 3','','inherit','open','open','','1547-revision-9','','','2013-05-15 02:22:29','2013-05-15 02:22:29','',1547,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1547-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(4554,1,'2013-05-15 02:22:22','2013-05-15 02:22:22','The first set of challenges is logistical. Bringing students into the Library changed some of the Library’s usual operating procedures and has made me adjust some of my own habits of teaching. The Undergraduate Program was the first time the Library allowed undergraduates into the Library to conduct research in any sort of ongoing basis. (There is an established fellowship for Amherst students that brings two or three students down to do research at the Library for a couple of weeks each year, but the intense use of rare materials and the duration of the fellowship are significantly different from the structure of the Undergraduate Seminars.) Even though the Library was supportive of my program and eager to help adjust policy, understandably there was some concern about how needy the students would be: Would they require a lot of supervision? Would they be asking for a lot of assistance? Would they be disruptive to the other readers? (The answer to all of these is no. In part because of the intensive training they receive in the classroom about how to handle books and how to find the resources they need, the students are in many ways better prepared to work in the Reading Rooms than many others!) There were also procedural questions that needed to be resolved. Before my program, rare materials were not routinely brought into the Library’s classrooms and were never handled by non-staff members in classrooms. Putting together a new policy on classroom use (how many items, how they could and could not be handled, the number of staff members necessary to supervise, etc.) was vital. And it was not difficult, thanks to the supportive curatorial staff. I did have to adjust my own teaching style. My preference is to decide what I am going to do in any given class as I go along. I might decide to try a particular approach the day before class, if my sense of how the class is proceeding suggests it. But I cannot decide at the last minute to bring a set of rare books into the seminar room because curators need to vet the rare materials in advance. That is not a big obstacle, but it has required me to adjust.\r\n\r\nA bigger challenge has been getting used to not having all the answers. My students come from a wide range of majors: English and history, to be sure, but I have also taught majors in French, theology, art history, music, drama, medieval studies, physics, and economics. And because I let them choose any work that was printed before 1700 for their research project, students often choose works that I have never heard of. What this means is that I need to learn along with them. A student working on <em>Utopia</em> is fairly easy; a student working on a Czech herbal (a book describing plants and their medicinal properties) is a lot harder to guide. But this is also a challenge that is fun and beneficial: if I knew everything, I’d be bored and my students wouldn’t have room for discovery.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Werner 4','','inherit','open','open','','1550-revision-9','','','2013-05-15 02:22:22','2013-05-15 02:22:22','',1550,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1550-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(4555,1,'2013-05-15 02:22:15','2013-05-15 02:22:15','In addition to what I have already addressed, I will just add that if you want to include archival work in your courses, you need to work closely with your librarians. Before you assume that students can have access to any rare materials, or that they can take notes on a rare book, or compare multiple manuscripts, check your special collections’ policies. And before you assume that your library does or does not have material relevant to your course, talk with the librarians. You might be surprised to learn that some books are too fragile to be handled, for instance, or that there is a large number of books relevant to the history of science in the 1700s. No one knows a special collection better than its librarians, and they are your first resource and your first ally in making archival work relevant to your curriculum.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Werner 5','','inherit','open','open','','1553-revision-10','','','2013-05-15 02:22:15','2013-05-15 02:22:15','',1553,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1553-revision-10/',0,'revision','',0),(4556,1,'2013-05-31 03:59:14','2013-05-31 03:59:14','The primal scene of archival research takes place in a dreary reading room. A researcher sits at her table, inert. An archivist enters, pushing a cart that bears a dozen dusty gray boxes.\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/5ykY6moIaDE?rel=0\" height=\"250\" width=\"333\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe>\r\n\r\nThe archivist unhinges a box, removes a numbered file folder and, placing it at the researcher’s elbow, steps back. The researcher stirs, then sits upright with a mechanical jolt. She turns sharply in the direction of the folder, flips it open and cocks her head towards the flimsy leaves inside; now she is reading. (Zoom in on the eyes as they click into focus.) Now she is reading, and now she truly comes alive; she bends towards the papers, taps her forehead in thought. A sheaf of blank paper and a pencil appear on her table, and she begins taking notes. Her fingers fly—and soon, so do the pages she is writing upon. Caught up in eddies of excitement, they swoop to the ceiling and around the room and down to the floor, where they fall together into perfect piles. Bindings sprout from the outer strata; the pages sew themselves into bright, tight, hard-cover books. These the archivist gathers up and places on the shelves that line the room, next to other books and gray boxes.\r\n\r\nI may have it backwards: in other versions of the fantasy, it is the archive that is first animated by the presence of the researcher, a Dr. Coppelius who waves a pencil and sets the dusty boxes to dancing. But either way, the archival imaginary posits a symbiotic relationship between researcher and source, a photogenic pas de deux that leads to a finished scholarly product. This work, in turn, enters the archive for the next generation of researchers; it might even be taken apart again so that its secret ingredients (notes, drafts, letters) can themselves be served up in a series of boxes. Such a strangely private form of publication it creates, the coupling of researcher and source.\r\n\r\nWhat Freudian trauma results from witnessing this sight? Only the harm that myth inflicts. This primal scene is a fiction, a dream of perfect union between researcher and source that ignores, first of all, the full cast of characters. What about the archivist, who is rendered invisible? What about all those within and without the archive, upon whose labor—acquiring, preserving, organizing, reading, cataloging, describing, interpreting, analyzing, debating, teaching, writing, editing, digitizing, referencing and publishing—the current project depends? More a barn dance than a pas de deux: an archival encounter is an enactment of social authorship long before the researcher enters the room. See Jerome McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) on the idea of social authorship, which could be described as “the dialectic between the historically located individual author and the historically developed institutions of literary production” that help create a work, eg, printers, publishers, editors and readers (81).\r\n\r\nBut even a barn dance is much too mannered a metaphor. The sketch above misleads us more generally about the experience on the ground. Doing time in an archive is often tedious, uncomfortable and bewildering. For librarians, there is the struggle to promote and simultaneously protect what you have; the difficulty of fitting unruly materials into arrangements and workflows; and worries about space and time—where to put it all, how to address your backlog. For researchers, there is the struggle to locate the archives you need and what matters to you inside them; the uncertainty created by unruly data; and worries about time and space— how to access what you need during your research trip, how to record and organize the information you gather. At both ends, the archival encounter is counter-cinematic and erratic, days of monotonous sifting and dead-ends punctuated by one or two, or maybe zero, hidden moments of vivid, peculiar joy.\r\n\r\nSo archival research does not fulfill its ideal outline. So what? Who cares? Why dredge up the fantasy? Because the fantasy continues to structure our archival encounters—what we expect and undertake in the reading room, what we allow it to mean. Twenty years ago, Alice Kaplan observed that “conventional academic discourse requires that when you write up the results of your archival work, you tell a story about what you found, but not about how you found it. The less the seams of your findings show, the better your discoveries lend themselves to use by others… tell[ing] these stories breaks their spell and violates the spirit of the archives.” ((Alice Yaeger Kaplan, “Working in the Archives,” Yale French Studies 77 (1990): 103-116; 103, 107.)) With a few word changes, the same could be said about what counts as professional archivist discourse: the impersonal, neutral genre of the finding aid, for example, should say what is in a collection, but should not discuss what is confusing or missing in it, or the problems it posed in processing. ((See, for example, James M. O’Toole and Richard J. Cox, Understanding Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2006).)) Despite the growing recognition that this sequestration is never completely possible—that the material conditions and social relations of the archive shape the work we do in it—that work continues to be represented in professional and scholarly publications as if it is. Despite the recent call to move to the fore “the backstage of the archives—how they are constructed, policed, experienced, and manipulated” in order to support historiography “not merely [as] a project of fact-retrieval” but as “a set of complex processes of selection, interpretation, and even creative invention,” the “backstage” stays in the background. ((Antoinette Burton, “Introduction: Archive Fever, Archive Stories,” Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, ed. Burton (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 7-8.)) Antoinette Burton may be correct that “many if not most historians operate under the assumption that history is a highly interpretive act,” but this belief is not yet reflected in the archival encounter: the ways that researchers (not just historians) and librarians report their experiences with primary sources; the ways that librarians and researchers work together; the ways librarians and researchers regard the involvement of “non specialists.” ((Burton, 8. Burton notes that “whether historians concede or fully countenance the impact of such contingencies on their work is another question. They rarely speak of them, and even more rarely do they do so in print” (8). Her books recuperates some of those archive stories but this effort, I’ll suggest below, is hampered by other kinds of obligations.)) While the advent of digitization and electronic resource sharing has revolutionized the research landscape, making primary sources public in unprecedented ways, there remains in the archive a habitus of secret knowledge—the “spell” that Kaplan is loathe to break. This is not necessarily intentional. It is rather the effect of layering recent shifts in technology, theory and professional definition onto older foundations: petrified conditions, relations, expectations and systems that continue to operate in part through the enduring power of fantasies about research. What we have in the archive is a stratified groundwork that still governs our archival encounters.\r\n\r\nBut, you will object, the archive has already changed. Now we have the “archival turn”—the scholarly interest in the archive not just as a source of evidence but as an epistemological mode. Surely, this attention to the constructedness of the archive has led to a revealing reconsideration of what actually goes on inside an archive; surely, as a result, those archaic fantasies have diminished. Have they? In what follows, I begin by unearthing one stratum of the archival turn, the decade of the 1990s, as represented by three texts: Kaplan’s essay mentioned above, “Working in the Archives” (1990)\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_369\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-2-kaplan.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-369\" alt=\"fig 2 kaplan\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-2-kaplan-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" /></a> Photocopy of Alice Yaeger Kaplan’s “Working in the Archives.”; Derrida’s Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1994/95)[/caption]\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_372\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-3-Derrida.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-372\" alt=\"Print out of Jacque Derrida’s “Archive Fever” from Diacritics.; and Carolyn Steedman’s Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (2001).\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-3-Derrida-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" /></a> Print out of Jacque Derrida’s “Archive Fever” from Diacritics.; and Carolyn Steedman’s Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (2001).[/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_373\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-4-steedman.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-373 \" alt=\"Library copy of Carolyn Steedman’s Dust. (Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” Diacritics 25.2 (Summer 1995): 9-63. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001).) \" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-4-steedman-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" /></a> Library copy of Carolyn Steedman’s Dust. ((Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” Diacritics 25.2 (Summer 1995): 9-63. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001).))[/caption]\r\n\r\nA cross-examination of these three texts reveals a pattern of interests, a set of efforts to defy customary practices—but only, it turns out, “in theory.” While certain practices are challenged in these texts, they leave mostly intact the older strata of archival research fantasies and conventions. Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman do not dislodge the forces that organize the actual archival encounter.\r\n\r\nHow does this happen? Why is practice so stubborn? We need another take on archival practice: not practice in theory, but practice in action; not the 1990s, but now; not in terms of textual patterns, but in terms that suit the subject: the terms of the archival encounter itself, and the eccentric, anachronistic and even monotonous experience it generates. My second look at practice will take the form of a series of vignettes about a real-life archive, the George Peabody Library in Baltimore. While this narrative structure may seem to recreate the division of labor between theory and practice, my hope is that—by giving practice the last word—we’ll be in a better position to synthesize the two.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>I. “The library doubles as a detective’s office.” ((Kaplan, 114.))</strong>\r\n\r\nThe archival turn could be dated to the founding of “scientific” history in the mid-nineteenth century, or to the development a century later of the quantitative methods of the Annales School, or to other evidence-based movements in the history of history, but what is generally meant by this phrase corresponds with the formation of cultural studies and the use of the archive as a conceptual category. That is, the archival turn has to do with the notion of the “figuration” of the archive, a parallel decline in its empirical authority and a related expansion of its relevance within domains that are not exclusively historiographic, like art, literary criticism, textual studies, media studies and information studies. ((See the use of the term in, for example, Carolyn Hamilton et al, eds., Refiguring the Archive (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), Cheryl Simon, ed., Following the Archival Turn: Photography, the Museum, and the Archive, special issue of Visual Resources: A Journal of Documentation 18.2 (June 2002), and Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). This turn is partially construed as a “move from archive-as-source to archive-as-subject,” but also by the earlier metaphorical interest in “the archive” that goes back to the 1980s (Stoler, 44-45) and by Foucauldian descriptions of archives as “‘monuments to particular configurations of power” (Hamilton, qtd. in Burton, 6).)) But it is not irrelevant that a devotion to archival methods precedes by many decades contemporary theories of the archive; if the archival turn lacks a precise origin, this (we will see) is completely in keeping with its own preoccupations.\r\n\r\nKaplan therefore represents in some ways an arbitrary beginning for this cross-examination—clearly the archive as a conceptual category predates 1990—but her article does initiate something new: the recognition that there is something called an “archive story” that must remain hidden in order for the official “results” to function authoritatively. In admitting this bit of professional legerdemain, and in telling her own archive story in a prestigious scholarly journal, Kaplan not only commits the violation she prohibits but also contradicts it. Through its publication, Kaplan’s own archive story is elevated to the status of “results”—a kind of research that shadows conventional academic discourse. Indeed, Kaplan notes, such “fables” of research “can be analyzed like a text,” a “mixed up genre” that combines the “redemptive detective fiction” with the epic and the dime novel. ((Kaplan, 106, 107.))\r\n\r\nKaplan’s archive story thus marks a distinctive moment in the archival turn—one which gained its most prominent authorization in 1994, with a paper that Jacques Derrida delivered (in English) to a conference sponsored by the Freud Museum, the Courtauld Institute and the Société International d’Histoire de la Psychiatrie et de la Psychoanalyse. Called initially “The Concept of the Archive: A Freudian Impression,” the lecture was revised and published in 1995 as Mal d’archive: une impression freudienne in French; the published English version echoed the French publication with its 1995 title Archive Fever. As Carolyn Steedman points out in Dust: The Archive and Cultural History, however, this work that has been assigned a seminal status in archival studies “for the main part… is not about archives at all, but is rather a sustained contemplation of a work of history, of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable (1991),” itself a sustained contemplation of Moses and Monotheism—which (according to Steedman) Yerushalmi examines through Freud’s description of the work as a “‘historical novel,’ or a kind of historical story,” undertaken “in order to understand the period of baroque anti-semitism through which he was living.” ((Steedman, 3.))\r\n\r\nDizzy yet? Let’s undertake a more careful reading of this splatter pattern of intra-references—or, to stick with the archaeological metaphor, let’s call them groups of potsherds buried in the 1990s layer of the “archival turn.” Digging down to reassemble them reveals a set of interests with special implications for archival practice.\r\n\r\nThe most prominent group of sherds to note are the fragments of disciplinarity: the inter-, multi- or perhaps simply anti-disciplinarity of the texts, authors and audiences caught up in these three archival addresses. Kaplan, an American scholar of French literature, calls the post-theory exchange between literature and history a “cross-pollination of desire between historians and literary critics” undertaken “with the curiosity and energetic passion of collectors.” ((Kaplan, 107-108.)) Steedman, a British historian, performs this cross-pollinating process without comment: her epigraph to Dust is from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, one chapter treats George Eliot’s Middlemarch in depth… in fact, almost every chapter depends on a literary text. ((Another chapter invokes Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1848 novel Mary Barton, a third is anchored by W. H. Auden’s poem “Homage to Clio,” and a fourth finds its most eloquent examples in Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend.)) Derrida, a French philosopher, produced a work that has been exceptionally mobile across disciplines, forms, languages and professional domains. He gave his initial talk to an audience drawing on three different kinds of institutions; Mal d’Archive was published in book form in both French and English, but also made an intermediate appearance as an essay in the journal diacritics. All of these texts, it seems, respond to the provocations of the archive—to the materials and circumstances of discovery—rather than to the disciplinary distinctions that arguably divide the archive from itself.\r\n\r\nArchive Fever has become a founding document even though, as Steedman notes in the very beginning of her book, many in Derrida’s audience “knew the ‘archival turn’ to be [already] well underway” at the time of his talk. ((Steedman, 2.)) As it happens—and this is the second group of sherds I see—these three essays have in common an investment in or a problem with origins, especially with the failure of origins. Derrida, for example, defines archive fever as a kind of Freudian death drive—a drive to fix and preserve which at the same time “works to destroy the archive: on the condition of effacing but also with a view to effacing its own ‘proper’ traces… [it] is above all anarchivic, one could say, or archiviolithic… the archive always works, and a priori, against itself.” ((Derrida, 14.)) If the archival impulse is driven to destroy its own work, then the question of origins ultimately point to the larger question of disorder. The disorder of origins makes frequent appearances in the essay but one example will make the point—in the “Preamble” where he recounts how he titled the talk that he had not yet written and was to give at the Freud Museum. The “Preamble” starts with his reflections on the word “impression,” which has several simultaneous registers of meaning for him. One of these is the “scriptural or typographic” register: that of the graphic impression that marks a substrate. In English, “impression” is phonetically related to “repression” and “suppression,” key words in the Freudian vocabulary, translated respectively from the German Verdrängung and Unterdrückung. English, that is, retains the rhyming relationship of the two German terms, and “impression” in this company comes to have a vaguely Freudian meaning as well. But in French, Verdrängung is “refoulement,” which means something more like expulsion, a driving away. The Freudian sense of the French word “répression” has been reserved for Unterdrückung. So English “repression” defines a phenomenon that must be distinguished from the French “répression.” These translational shifts “directly concern the structures of archivization,” Derrida says, “because they touch on the topic differences and thus on the location of the substrates of traces\" (Derrida, 23). In other words, how do you classify concepts whose meanings shift across languages? Where do you store them in a disciplinary grammar—or in an archive? How do these asymmetrical linguistic structures shape the establishment and extension of a new science? For Derrida, the difference between “repression” and “répression” is “enough to disrupt the tranquil landscape of all historical knowledge, of all historiography, and even of all self-consistent ‘scholarship’” ((Derrida, 23.))\r\n\r\nOrigin failure appears both as deliberate performance and as unintentional oversight in these essays. Derrida stages his own inability to get past “go”; with an introductory section, and subsequent sections sub-titled “Exergue,” “Preamble,” “Foreword,” his essay functions, Steedman notes, like a “primer offering instruction in the principle of deferral.” ((A short notice called “Priere d’inserer,” published only in the French book version, carried the bulk of an argument for which there was no room in the lecture. Steedman, 7.)) For all her insight into Derrida’s titling adventures, however, Steedman’s title is marked by its own origin aporia. While her first chapter is devoted to Archive Fever—a “let’s begin at the beginning” homage to the seminal text—her book’s title, Dust, seems more indebted to the last sentence of Kaplan’s essay, published five years before Derrida’s: “Usually there is no mother lode, no original manuscript to be retrieved—the gold is all in the dust.” ((Kaplan, 116.)) Kaplan, however, is never mentioned. ((Kaplan also begins her essay with a brief consideration of the “arche,” the Greek and Latin term for the public records office, which is a major starting point for Derrida. Is he borrowing from her, or is she borrowing from him, given that this sort of etymological investigation was an established signature of Deconstruction?))\r\n\r\nKaplan, for her part, unravels her own archive story. She gives us a kind of “whodunit”—her search for the ephemeral sources of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s anti-semitic pamphlet Bagatelles pour un massacre (1937). She uses this account to exemplify her effort to “move through the archival process and recover some of the stories that get deleted in the final scholarly form.” ((Kaplan, 104. For this reason, perhaps, Kaplan never reveals what she ultimately discovers in her successful search for Celine’s sources. In fact, it’s not entirely clear whether her pre-emptive and truncated treatment of her archive story is deliberate or not. Is this treatment meant to indirectly support her official claim about “results”? Or does the presence of the archive story suggest that telling it is an impulse she can’t quite control? Thanks, Lauren Coats, for helping tease this problem out.)) These beginnings are preemptively struck out, however, by what seems to be her main claim: “the passion of the archives must finally be used to eradicate all personal stories in the interests of the dry archival report, fit for a public.” ((Kaplan, 103.)) Only in the “para-text”—a preface, for example—can the archive story appear without “interrupt[ing] or complicat[ing] the narrative so much that no results could ever be understood or perceived.” ((Kaplan, 104.)) Despite this unequivocal assertion, the personal “whodunit” prevails in her essay, especially in the final section set in the Centre du documentation juive contemporain (CDJC). It is this library, where Kaplan solves the mystery of Céline’s sources, that “doubles as a detective’s office.”\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_423\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"333\"]<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-5-cdjc-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-423\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-423\" title=\"fig 5 cdjc\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-5-cdjc1-333x250.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a> Website for the Centre de documentation juive contemporain.[/caption]\r\n\r\nWhile Kaplan’s research mystery resolves neatly, the truth about archives is that they are full of gaps, mistakes and excesses: in the words of one of the CDJC librarians, “‘ici on trouve tout’—there’s some of everything here”—but not, one could add, all of anything. ((Kaplan, 115.)) Kaplan’s essay ends by nullifying both her detective story success and her “dry archival report,” by recognizing the disorder on which both of these narratives are unsteadily perched: “The archive is constituted by these errors, these pieces out of place, which are then reintegrated into a story of some kind.” ((Kaplan, 115.)) “A story of some kind”? So much for “results.”\r\n\r\nKaplan sets us up to perceive one final potsherd pattern common to these three essays. If origin-less disorder is the order of the archive, it is a disorder that is generated out of human loss—a disorder that joins the body and the material world. The archive is always predicated on historical violence of some sort, whatever is censored, erased, excluded, trumped up, used up, misplaced, conquered, killed. Moreover, the archival categories that mark both the visible victories and hidden defeats do not stay within their walls; the archive is both a repository of existing schemas and a means of perpetuating them in the world beyond. While we might usually think of this disciplinary activity as a pact between the archive and its political authors, Steedman makes it clear that the dilemmas of order shape the archival body in many ways. For example, she takes literally the provocation of Derrida’s title Archive Fever to investigate the illness that researchers contract on the penultimate day of their trip to the archive: prompted by the anxiety of the task that remains unfinished, they end their research with night-sweats and head-aches. But what seems like a strangely specific malady is transformed by Steedman into a far-reaching social symptom: by relating the researcher’s “archive fever” to the terrible diseases suffered by tanners, skinners and other workers in the trades associated with paper and leather, Steedman expands our sense of who is in the archive—the bodies whose specialized labors populate our libraries with books, the many kinds of expertise the archive consumes.\r\n\r\nFor Derrida, the relation between the material archive and its human architects focuses on one kind of “graphic mark,” a particular “private inscription”: circumcision as the archival signature that is also the signature of patrimoine, with Freud’s relationship to his father as his main example. ((Derrida, 19.)) It is perhaps not a coincidence that the body in question in both Kaplan’s and Derrida’s archive is Jewish, for that is a body that has come to symbolize the destructive power of classificatory regimes. Despite her contention that the private passions motivating research must be kept secret, Kaplan is fascinated by the “missing person stories” at the CDJC: by the “quantity of people who are there for personal reasons,” the survivors of occupation or deportation or camps, or their descendants, quietly looking up their lost ones or noisily dropping off their memoirs. ((Kaplan, 113.)) This disorganized crowd of dead and living bodies tries to meet up with an equally disorganized crowd of materials—individual letters, trial transcripts, pamphlets, newspapers, first-person accounts, books, photographs, lists. The monumental task of match-making, the librarians’ work, is never complete. More papers are always generated or declassified or discovered, different human questions and needs emerge. The tidy choreography of the research fantasy, where the detective always finds her man, is not so much in evidence; what we have instead is corpora in excess of existing categories.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\nKaplan, Derrida and Steedman open up the archival body. They show us how paper meets the press of flesh; they make us feel just how intimate it is. [note number=\'26\']This interest in the corporeal dimensions and effects of order, its human and non-human components, has in common with their other gestures—an experimental attitude towards conventional disciplinarity and attention to the priority of disorder—the circumstances of the academic humanities in the 1990s. Since the archival turn came out of the ascent of cultural studies and allied intrigues in the 1970s and ‘80s, the circles in the Venn diagram of these ventures will necessarily overlap. We could also say that the archive took off when it did precisely because it made a clever new container for these preoccupations, thick in the humanities atmosphere at the time, where they were distilled and united. [/note] But for all their revelations about the limits of discipline and the multiplicities of disorder in the archive, these texts do not disclose the specific methods of engagement that led to their existence. While Kaplan offers up her own archival victory and outlines several other such stories, she still insists on their marginalization. [note number=\'27\']“Were the story of how you got the story really to be told inside the book, it would interrupt or complicate the narrative so much that no results could be understood or even perceived. Every story of success in the archives is emotionally charged, for only the most extreme emotions can drive people to the drudgery, to the discomfort, of sitting and sifting through dog-eared documents, manuscripts, microfilms. To reveal those emotions would not only gum up the narrative, it would threaten its credibility, by showing on what thin strands of coincidence, accident, or on what unfair forms of friendship, ownership, geographical proximity, the discoveries were based” (Kaplan, 104).[/note] If these texts are not concerned with actual practices in the archive or changes in its methodologies, what do they tell us?\r\n\r\nFirst, they suggest one reason for the perpetuation of myths about the archive. While Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman are eager to show how archival materials do not conform to disciplinary distinctions—an enthusiasm related to other disruptive tendencies in late twentieth-century humanist scholarship –they seem less cognizant of a related phenomenon: the archive does not obey strict professional divisions, either. In Kaplan’s library-as-detective’s-office metaphor, the scholar is the detective, but does the “Eureka” moment belong only to the scholar who pieces together a narrative? What about the people who prepared those pieces? The archivist is still missing in action. Likewise, these essays do not dwell on missing boxes, illegible papers, neglected citations. There are no descriptions of archival slogging, no admissions that some materials failed to be relevant. And of course, there are no prescriptions for a different order. It is not the main aim of Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman to effect an evolution of practice; archival turnistas are not interested in disorder in order to re-order. But it is worth remembering that it is not in their professional interest as scholars to make their practices more transparent.\r\n\r\nSecondly, along the same lines, these texts inform us of the duplicity of speculative practices that reveal but cannot live out the instability of their archival mandates. Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman are put into the position of saying, “Yes, the archive is biased, idiosyncratic and treacherous—but the observations I draw from it are flawless.” [note number=\'28\']Derrida, unlike Kaplan and Steedman, makes no claims to work inside an actual archive, unless we consider Yerushalmi’s book as a kind of archive. But the fact that the essay was written self-consciously for presentation at the Freud Museum suggests that it was made out of an archive indirectly—in its construction, if not in its contents. [/note]\r\n\r\nFinally, these texts suggest why archival studies that attempt to be explicit about the messy nature of the archive have become instead “archive studies.” In more recent works like Refiguring the Archive (2002), Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions and the Writing of History (2005) and Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2009), the archive appears as a subject in its own right. Although the archival scenarios that are put into play in each of these books incorporate different disciplines—art, history, anthropology, literature, post-colonial studies—they have essentially created a new discipline. “Archive studies” is something we might, in the taxonomy of disciplines, see as the love-child of cultural studies, history and archival methodology. Moreover, this new discipline has in common with other humanities disciplines a complete blindness about its professional investments; it does not register much awareness of the professional investments of librarians, archivists, curators and “non-specialists,” or invite insights from those perspectives. Perhaps this is inevitably what happens when academics must give legitimacy to something new, which in turn reflects the pressures of scholarly communication: a topic must be delineated in conventional terms in order to merit publication. [note number=\'29\']Perhaps this is also the moment to ask why we—I—have been using the term “archive” all along, with its statist resonances, rather than the term “collection,” which has institutional but also personal resonances. Does “archive” bring us closer to recognizably “serious scholarship”?[/note] But it is also true that in these more recent books, which openly investigate the archive’s power-politics, the disorderly drift of the archive and its hybrid corporeality have mostly been bent towards a particular narrative about the archive as an agent of history rather than as a set of ongoing practices. It is as if the historical archive has been assembled in ways that reflect and reiterate power relations, but the contemporary archive has not; it is as if the researcher’s own research travails remain a transparent layer over the body of work that it constructs. [note number=\'30\']Of course, this is precisely what Derrida meant about the “death drive” of the archival impulse. Archive Stories is something of an exception; researchers speak openly here about themselves as researchers. It is interesting, however, that this book—like Steedman’s—doesn’t cite Kaplan’s essay as a precursor text despite the clear titular link.[/note]\r\n\r\nPerhaps it would also be fair to note that, if archival studies are now being formulated as an interdisciplinary discipline called “archive studies,” this might be just another stage in the turn. It might be that what comes next reconfigures the premise of disciplinarity and the promise of disorder, with a different approach to the human/non-human interactions that the archive documents and realizes: a more diffuse and multi-vocal set of practices in place of a new field. One way to imagine this approach would be to fully embrace Kaplan’s idea of the archive story as an account of what one hoped for, looked for and found, what one did and did not do, in the archive—an account loosed from the quarantine she advocates. Some very basic genre precedents for the archive story do exist; the bibliographic essay and the methodology statement, for example, have played an important role in many disciplines in the past and still do in some. Instead of a para-textual nod towards that archive story (in Kaplan’s sense), why not create a parallel text written collaboratively by the researcher(s) and the librarian(s), or by one person acting in both professional capacities, that runs alongside the official “results”? Or in a set of expanded notes that address not just the “what” and “where” but the “how” and “why” of sources, which are lifted from their small-type, bottom-of-page basement up into the light? Or—to add yet another layer—parallel texts that also offer room for exchange with other researchers, archivists and even interested “non specialists,” like collectors, bibliophiles and fans?\r\n\r\nIf it is hasn’t been clear already that I have scrupulously avoided so far the other kind of archive, the digital archive, it will be now. What I am imagining would be far too complicated to produce or consult in print, but would not be at all difficult to organize as a digital object—as an archive in its own right. By avoiding the digital archive up to this point, I have also finessed the fact that our current archival research methods are completely reliant on the digital archive, along with the development of online research tools and electronic instruments of data discovery and organization. Those conditions probably bear the most responsibility for making the archive visible as something that warranted a “turn” in the first place. Even Derrida refers in each version of Archive Fever to the computer on which he is currently composing, predicting that email will not only totally transform the archive as he knows it, but will make his own essay obsolete.\r\n\r\nIn short, we already have in place both the theory and the media that will make it possible to enact a radical new archival practice. We have in place what we need to integrate the archive story into the archive itself, while making it visible as a new form of “results.”\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>II. The library doubles as a librarian’s office.</strong>\r\n\r\nI could end here, with a triumphant firing of the starter pistol and a rousing cheer. But that would be a bit disingenuous, given that the starter pistol for both the archival turn and the academic use of the internet actually went off decades ago. So the question remains, what stands in the way of the practical enactment of the archival turn’s speculative insights? I’d like to engage this question by following Kaplan’s example (but not her main claim): through some archive story-telling about the George Peabody Library. These three vignettes, identified as “typical” through conversations with my colleague Paul Espinosa, illustrate the intractable formations that present-day archival encounters come up against.\r\n\r\n<strong>1. The Perils of Description.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>A group of Russian speakers visits the Peabody Library. The dozen men and women sit down around the screen that Paul has set up. He narrates a brief slide-show about the Peabody’s history, then leads them to a table where a dozen books from the collection have been laid out in cradles. He tells them about each book: what it is, why it is interesting. Each phrase of his presentation is painstakingly translated by the group’s leader into Russian.</blockquote>\r\nWhen academic and community groups visit the Peabody, my colleagues and I draw upon a standard tour-guide’s repertoire to describe it. We explain that George Peabody was a tradesman cum financier cum philanthropist who decided in 1857 that Baltimore needed a cultural institution to support the arts and learning. We talk about the evolution of the Peabody Institute, the four-part athenaeum that resulted, with its art gallery, lecture series, conservatory and free, public, non-circulating library. We discuss the model of philanthropy that George Peabody initiated and its wide-ranging influence. We point out the signal features of the awe-inspiring architecture of the current library, built to accommodate a rapidly growing collection in 1878. But when it comes to the library itself, as a collection, it is hard to know what to say. How to accurately translate the library’s holdings into a succinct and memorable statement that conveys an appropriate level of detail to different audiences? While it poses specific challenges, the Peabody also exemplifies more general problems of collection description.\r\n\r\nWe do not lack evidence for the evolving contents of the Peabody. We have the two-volume printed list of “desiderata” drawn up by the Peabody’s first librarian, John G. Morris. [note number=\'31\']Alphabetical Catalogue of Books to be Purchased for the Library of the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, Vols. 1 and 2 (Baltimore: John D. Toy, 1861, 1863).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'6\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-6-alpha-index-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-395\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-395\" title=\"fig 6 alpha index\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-6-alpha-index1-336x484.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"484\" /></a>Alphabetical index from Alphabetical Catalouge (“desiderata”).[/note] We have the collections register for several decades’-worth of acquisitions, recording bibliographic information and accession numbers that can still be found on the inside front end papers of many of the books in the collection. We have the librarians’ annual reports to the library trustees. [note number=\'32\']The Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore: The Founder’s Letters and the Papers Relating to its Dedication and History, Up to the 1st January, 1868 (Baltimore: William K. Boyle, 1868); and subsequent Annual Reports, 1869, etc.[/note] We have the library’s first printed catalogue, an unsurpassed achievement when first published in 1883, which listed 100,000 volumes by author and title. [note number=\'33\']Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, Vols. 1-5 (Baltimore: Isaac Friedenwald, 1883; reprinted Boston: G. K. Hall, [1961?]; also on googlebooks), and Second Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, Including the Additions Made Since 1882, Vols. 1-8 (Baltimore: Deutsch Lithographic and Printing, 1896; reprinted Boston: G. K. Hall, 1961).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'7\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-7-print-cat/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-396\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-396\" title=\"fig 7 print cat\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-7-print-cat-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Reprinted volumes of the Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute (1883).[/note] We have the cards from the Dewey decimal system card catalogue, which replaced the printed catalogue in the 1910s. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'8\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-8-card-cat/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-397\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-397\" title=\"fig 8 card cat\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-8-card-cat.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"448\" /></a>One of two card catalogues in the Peabody.[/note] Now, of course, the library’s collections are represented in an online catalogue that integrates them with other collections in the Hopkins library system.\r\n\r\nThese markers of the collection, however, fail to satisfy some contemporary research queries for reasons that are both practical and philosophical. The transfer of the printed index, organized by author, to the Dewey decimal system, organized by topic, represented a major epistemological shift that facilitated browsing by subject category. But of course, those categories are embedded in historically-bound notions about the subjects and structures of knowledge: Dewey was invented in the 1870s, and the 22 revisions it has undergone since then cannot overcome its essential organizational distortions. For example, the literature range—the 800s—offers only 10% of its categorical space to literatures in languages other than English, Germanic and Romance languages, Greek and Latin.\r\n\r\nIn the case of the Peabody, the Dewey arrangements overlay even older systems of knowledge hierarchy. Should we continue to offer, for example, a description of the Peabody’s “voyages and travels” books? This category represents a Renaissance schematic that was still in service in the mid-nineteenth century; while actual “voyages and travels” were extended by colonial ventures, the category was eventually disbanded. Dewey combined it with geography to make a sub-category of “history.” In keeping active the old-fashioned phrase “voyages and travels,” we are participating in a centuries-long project of euphemism about the material aims and actual activities of colonialism; we are privileging an early phase of the Peabody’s evolution over later phases; we may even be confusing modern researchers. And yet, as one of the topics in Morris’s “desiderata,” a considerable portion of the Peabody’s collection was acquired with the aim of fleshing out that descriptor. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'9\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-9-index-detail/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-398\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-398\" title=\"fig 9 index detail\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-9-index-detail-336x274.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"274\" /></a>Detail of subject index from Alphabetical Catalouge No. 2 (“desiderata”).[/note]\r\n\r\nYet another classificatory dilemma is expressed by George Peabody’s original statement of the library’s purpose: that it “be furnished in every department of knowledge, with the most approved literature… It should consist on the best works on every subject… to satisfy the researches of students who may be engaged in the pursuit of knowledge not ordinarily attainable in the private libraries of the country.” [note number=\'34\']“Letters from George Peabody, Esq.: Baltimore, February 12th, 1857,” in Founder’s Letters, 7.[/note] The Peabody was founded as a cultural institution for the people of Baltimore, but from the first, this democratic ambition was in conflict with the intellectual aspirations of the first librarians and their desire to facilitate civic “self-improvement.” Morris (a doctor of divinity), his successor Nathaniel Holmes Morison (a schoolmaster and poet), and Morison’s assistant and successor Philip Uhler (who had trained as an entomologist) were all devoted to the nineteenth-century idea of the scholar-librarian. Morison wrote in one annual report that “Education always proceeds from the above downward, from the best to the common minds, from the leaders of the people to the people themselves. Furnish... the foundations of intelligence and thought, and they will... stimulate and improve the whole community.\" [note number=\'35\']Qtd. in Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, “PIB Ref. Library. 8-Morison\'s Philosophy of Excellence,” in George Peabody (1795-1869): A-Z Handbook of the Massachusetts-Born Merchant in the South, London-Based Banker, and Philanthropist\'s Life, Influence, and Related People, Places, Events, and Institutions. . 11 Mar. 2011.[/note] When the Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1876 in close proximity to the Peabody—in large part to take advantage of the library—the tendency of the librarians to address scholarly needs and “approved literature” over popular desires was given additional momentum. In keeping with these ideas, the Peabody’s librarians kept careful track of their readers’ choices, noting with special caution the numbers of novels that were requested. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'10\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-10-annual-report-detail/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-399\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-399\" title=\"fig 10 annual report detail\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-10-annual-report-detail-336x452.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"452\" /></a>Detail from First Annual Report showing chart of books read, with special mention of fiction.[/note] This schism at the heart of the library’s collecting paradigm was not unique to the Peabody; the question of reading matter—should it offer leisure for the masses or the means of social uplift?—was central to the public library movement of the second half of the nineteenth century. [note number=\'36\']See, for example, Alexis McCrossen, “’One Cathedral More’ or ‘Mere Lounging Places for Bummers’? The Cultural Politics of Leisure and the Public Library in Gilded Age America,” Libraries &amp; Culture 41.2 (2006): 169-188; Paul Sturges, “The Public Library and Reading by the Masses: Historical Perspectives on the USA and Britain 1850-1900,” ; Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, Upon the Objects to be Attained by the Establishment of a Public Library, 12 Dec. 2010.[/note]\r\n\r\nFinally, the Peabody’s “desiderata” acquisitions and librarians’ selections were supplemented by book donations from local elites—bibliophiles with extensive private collections that included incunabula, classical authors in Renaissance editions, expensive illustrated atlases. At the same time, book donations came in from more plebian sources. The Peabody’s growth overlapped with the decline of the local social libraries, and it eventually absorbed some of the books from the Library Company of Baltimore, Robinson’s Circulating Library and several small professional and mechanics’ libraries. And I haven’t even touched on the Peabody’s twentieth-century fate.\r\n\r\nThe variety of philanthropic impulses, resource streams and classification philosophies that have fed the Peabody over the 150 years of its existence has led to a collection that does not so much map the nineteenth-century mind as signal its odd amalgam of popular and scholarly investments. The Peabody’s collection effectively evades succinct description—at least, any kind of description that pretends to be coherent, that is not perforated by its stakes in local history, library history, book history. But more importantly, it suggests the degree to which accident and opportunity and prejudice and wealth and the changing winds of cataloguing rules shape any archive. Description, which should be the most fundamental tool of communication between librarians and researchers, turns out to be utterly elusive. Yet we do not know what to replace them with, these inadequate descriptions, these exercises in stilted and partial translation.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>2. The Researcher’s Progress.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>I am preparing for my class about women and nineteenth-century print culture, which meets in the Peabody; we have reached the part of the syllabus where we look at gift books and annuals. I want students to examine several examples of these literary miscellanies, offering some illustration of their variety, and I have a list of such items that I have used in the past. But since I also want to show the students new acquisitions, I need to refresh my list. I will start with “gift book” as a keyword in the online catalogue.</blockquote>\r\nIn place of perfect and commensurate description—not possible—what we have are cataloguing systems that indexically represent collections through data and metadata that are, as I have already suggested, historically marked and inevitably inconsistent. In the case of the Peabody, these records are further compromised: Dewey cards developed from a nineteenth-century print index do not offer Library of Congress subject terms or detailed tables of contents; they also frequently lack other kinds of information. [note number=\'37\']Many of the electronic records for Peabody books have been copy-cataloged, that is, developed from records for identical books in other libraries. But these records might also be incomplete or inconsistent, given that many are quite old. The expense of original cataloging prevents our staff from creating full, new records for every item in the Peabody’s collection of over 300,000 titles.[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'11\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-11-ddc-cards/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-400\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-400\" title=\"fig 11 ddc cards\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-11-ddc-cards-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Dewey cards for “gift books.”[/note] My search for “gift book” will turn up bequests—the term “gift book” is often attached to these donations—and it will miss many of the nineteenth-century gift books and annuals in our collection whose records lack subject classifications, or whose subject classifications reference the book’s contents, not its format. For example, the 1848 Rough and Ready Annual: or, Military Souvenir published by Appleton’s has been assigned the subject “Mexican War, 1846-1848—Anecdotes.” [note number=\'38\']Rough and Ready Annual (New York: D. Appleton; Philadelphia: G.S. Appleton, 1848).[/note]\r\n\r\nThe problem of finding is perhaps only a sub-set of the problem of description, but I want to give it special attention because it introduces another variable: the physical space of the object. My search for gift books in the Peabody also entails the privilege of retrieving the books from the stacks. There are two search processes, the intellectual and the physical, that I must navigate. The intellectual search in this case requires a variety of keyword/date range combinations, and ultimately, recourse to my prepared bibliography—a holdover from pre-catalogue research methods. Now the second search begins.\r\n\r\nThe Rough and Ready Annual is at 973.62 A5121, in the “general history of North America; United States” category. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'12\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-12-rr/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-401\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-401\" title=\"fig 12 r&amp;r\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-12-rr-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The Rough and Ready Annual in the stacks.[/note] This call number range is on the second floor, west side. Other items on my list are in very different parts of the library. Orange Blossoms: A Gift Book for All Who Have Worn, Are Wearing, Or are Likely to Wear Them, edited by the temperance writer T. S. Arthur and published in London, has been given the call number 813 A7910 duodecimo—fourth floor east, in the “American literature in English, fiction” section. [note number=\'39\']Orange Blossoms: A Gift Book for All Who Have Worn, Are Wearing, Or are Likely to Wear Them (London: Knight &amp; Co., [1857]). This title does not appear in at least one Arthur bibliography; see Donald A Koch, \"Timothy Shay Arthur,\" Antebellum Writers in New York and the South, ed. Joel Myerson (Detroit: Gale Research, 1979), from Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Feb. 2011. To check on this, I need Mitchell Sharpe Jr.’s A Bibliography of the Published Books of Timothy Shay Arthur (Atlanta: Emory University, 1954), a typewritten quarto at 012 A791S, but it seems to be missing.[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'13\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-13-orange/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-402\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-402\" title=\"fig 13 orange\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-13-orange-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Orange Blossoms in the stacks.[/note] Arthur shows up again as co-editor of The Baltimore Book: A Christmas and New-Year\'s Present, which has received more extensive description as it contains the first printing of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Siope.” [note number=\'40\']The Baltimore Book: A Christmas and New-Year\'s Present (Baltimore: Bayly and Burns, [1838]).[/note] We have two copies of this very genteel little gift book, one at 808.83 B2175 (rhetoric &amp; collections of literature), and one at 810.8 C297 (American literature in English). The New Casket: A Gift Book for All Seasons is in the rare book room at the south end of the third floor. [note number=\'41\']The New Casket: A Gift Book for All Seasons (London: The Religious Tract Society, ca. 1850).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'14\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-14-rbr/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-403\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-403\" title=\"fig 14 rbr\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-14-rbr-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The rare book room.[/note] In this case, the book’s rarity has to do with a lovely fore-edge painting. It has been assigned to 820.8 N42017 (general books about literature). On the other end of the “rare” continuum is The Family Circle and Parlor Annual, volume 5 in a series, which is shelved up on the sixth floor with the periodicals at 051 F198 (serials in American English). [note number=\'42\']The Family Circle and Parlor Annual (New York: Comstock, 1847).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'15\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-15-parlor/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-404\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-404\" title=\"fig 15 parlor\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-15-parlor-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The Parlor Annual in the stacks.[/note]\r\n\r\nI’ll fill out call slips for each book, stick the slips into red flags, and put the flags in an order that will help me chart a logical course through the stacks. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'16\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-16-slips/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-405\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-405\" title=\"fig 16 slips\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-16-slips-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Call slips and flags.[/note] It’s easiest to start on the sixth floor and work one’s way down, picking up books along the way. Usually I find other interesting items as I go, so I carry a batch of blank call slips and extra flags. (On this occasion, for example, I find The New American Reader: Containing Choice Pieces, in Prose and Verse; published in 1813 and inscribed by its owner in 1817, it pre-dates by several years the official beginning of the gift book phenomenon. It might be more of a “literary almanac.” [note number=\'43\']The New American Reader: Containing Choice Pieces, in Prose and Verse (Philadelphia: David Hogan, 1813).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'17\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-17-new-reader/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-406\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-406\" title=\"fig 17 new reader\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-17-new-reader-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Inscription in The New American Reader.[/note]) Usually I am also unable to locate at least one of the books I have set out to find. Most likely the book has been misshelved, so I’ll check the quartos and folios, which are shelved separately; then I’ll check the rare book room’s octavo, duodecimo and quarto shelving areas. It used to astonish me that books were still shelved by format in the Peabody, but it does save space. At the same time, this shelving system—along with the multiple distinct areas within the library where books may reside, eg the rare book room, the reference section, the genealogy books, the Limited Editions Club, and several discrete named collections—means that retrieving a few books can take quite a long time, as I traipse up and down the six floors of the library, thread through stacks, open secured doors with multiple keys, turn lights on and off, and maneuver a book truck in and out of a tiny service elevator built in the 1920s. By the end of the journey, the library and I will have exchanged dust; I’ll take on a few streaks of red rot, and the library will have taken in particles from my body as well.\r\n\r\nWhile the Peabody is unique, these conditions are not in the end very unusual. In terms of the intellectual search, the absence of “gift book” from many of the catalogue records is no less egregious than the absence of other information—the names of all the contributors; the subjects of the illustrations. The metadata is potentially infinite. The “gift book” only exists as a category because of scholars who teased out this cultural phenomenon; it would be very difficult to define its absolute borders. In terms of the physical search, the Peabody might be messier than, say, a rare book library that has assigned current LC call numbers to all its contents and houses them in compact shelving, but it exemplifies the general on-the-ground situation. As I wind my way through the Peabody stacks, I remember how much more difficult it is to gather research materials from several different institutions.\r\n\r\nThe fact is, for scholars who rely on archives, research is something you do only after you have already undertaken a rigorous search. It is the search that provides you with the foundational sense of your subject. But the search is rarely acknowledged or accredited; even the foot-soldier craft of bibliography, the link between “librarianship” and “scholarship,” has largely lost its scholarly status.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>3. An Architecture of Disctinction.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>A non-affiliate researcher contacts the Peabody about our H. L. Mencken collections. Since she will bring a couple of graduate students with her, I set up a group work space in one of the library alcoves where the three of them can share materials and talk without disturbing other readers. I pull the requested volumes with the help of some students and set the cart up within easy reach of the alcove. When the researchers arrive, I show them the Mencken collections on the ground floor. Then I lead them to their group work space and leave them, returning to the glassed-in office behind the reading room, the vantage point that allows me to monitor the otherwise empty reading room.</blockquote>\r\nIn “The Silence of the Library: Environment, Situational Norm, and Social Behavior,” a team of Dutch sociologists investigates the library as a space that is strongly marked by situational norms—“knowledge-based beliefs about how to behave in particular situations that are shaped by social influence.” [note number=\'44\']Henk Aarts and Ap Dijksterhuis, “The Silence of the Library: Environment, Situational Norm, and Social Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84.1 (2003), 19.[/note] Their research leads them to argue, however, that such norms do not require direct social influences to be triggered; in fact, “the situation can activate mental representations of normative behaviors automatically. And once activated, these representations provide the knowledge necessary for guiding one’s own situationally appropriate behavior.” [note number=\'45\']Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 19.[/note] Physical environments do not necessarily prompt these behaviors; rather, the behavior “depend[s] on whether the environment is of immediate behavioral relevance.” [note number=\'46\']Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 20.[/note] Talking in a quiet voice in the library, a normative behavior, is only activated for those who plan to visit the library.\r\n\r\nTen years ago, when the research for this article was conducted, the “silence of the library” was still a widespread norm. While the situation is now often reversed—in our main campus library, we must designate specific quiet areas because otherwise a sociable undergraduate din would take over—the norm of silence does continue to preside at the Peabody. Because it is off campus, the Peabody is often attractively under-populated compared to the crowded main library; it is mostly used by advanced researchers and those who seek a quiet place to study. The large central open area catches and amplifies even the smallest noises. The shelf-lined alcoves on either side of this central area offer the appearance of privacy, but in fact are little echo chambers. Visitors immediately detect these acoustics, and—except for the periodic tour groups—most spend their time in the Peabody in silence. But it is not just the physics of sound that shape behaviors here, as the Dutch researchers show; the social expectations of the space prefigure those behaviors.\r\n\r\nIn setting up a group work space for the Mencken researchers, I have quite deliberately contravened the usual norm of silence. Clearly, I am not inviting them to shout, and by putting them in an alcove in back, I have taken measures to protect any quiet-seeking visitors who might arrive. But in accordance with new ideas about the use of library space, my colleagues and I have decided that we must accommodate group study even if it might occasionally disrupt the silence desired by others. As it happens, the Mencken researchers’ conversation is eventually interrupted by a tour group, and the two activities play out side by side.\r\n\r\nI must admit that at moments I have mixed feelings about the tour groups and even the study cohorts. While my pedagogical instincts tend towards cheerful hub-bub, there is a part of me that is still in awe of the sanctuary-like atmosphere of the Peabody. John Morris called the library a “cathedral of books,” and clearly that’s what architect Edmund G. Lind had in mind. The central area with its grand skylight and the alcoves on its sides is like a nave bordered with chapels. Lind didn’t need a psychological study of environment-based situational norms to tell him that he might activate different behaviors within his building. The great central space inspires reverence—your eye is drawn to the skylight the way it would be drawn to the rose windows of Chartres, and on its way up catches row upon solemn row of books stowed behind gilded railings, a testament to the accumulated wisdom of the ages. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'18\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-18-skylight/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-407\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-407\" title=\"fig 18 skylight\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-18-skylight.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"448\" /></a>The skylight in the George Peabody Library.[/note] But step into an alcove, especially on the ground floor where each is filled with an immense wooden table, and you instantly feel something else, something no less grand but more human. The alcoves are study-sized, and once you sit down at one of those dark, gleaming, broad tables, it is like you are the master of your own private library. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'19\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-19-alcove/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-408\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-408\" title=\"fig 19 alcove\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-19-alcove-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Alcove in the George Peabody Library.[/note]\r\n\r\nIronically, the Peabody’s architecture was out-dated by the time it was completed. With the professionalization of librarianship and the evolution of library science in the late nineteenth century, librarians like William Frederick Poole advocated for a functional rather than decorative design of interior library space. [note number=\'47\']See William Frederick Poole, Remarks on Library Construction (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, 1884).[/note] Moreover, the actual use of space in the Peabody in the late nineteenth century was at odds with its symbolic appeal. The main library was known as the “stack room”; readers were seated in a comparatively plain reading room on the other side of the main doors. In this arrangement, the librarians reigned inside the gorgeous “cathedral of books,” but the building’s potential to civilize the masses was lost.\r\n\r\nNow, of course, we do not send readers outside. Inside the “stack room,” we explicitly call visitors’ attention to its beauty to explain the connections between the library’s architecture and its collections—how both speak eloquently of Victorian values. At the same time, we who staff the library have relegated ourselves to its periphery. We work in the glassed-in room at one end that serves as a monitoring point and occasional classroom; the official “librarian’s office” in one corner—its luxurious proportions suggesting something like a sacristy and something like a robber baron’s lair—is now shared work-space stuffed with several desks and laden book trucks. There is another monitoring station near the main doors. I often do my work at the photography station, in the back of one of the alcoves [note type=\'figure\' number=\'20\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-20-station/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-409\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-409\" title=\"fig 20 station\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-20-station-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Photography station in the George Peabody Library.[/note]. It offers some privacy but is close enough to the central reading tables to be accessible to readers.\r\n\r\nThe space of the Peabody initiates other situational behaviors besides the norm of silence, and our work-station arrangements testify to this. The spatial re-centralizing of readers and marginalization of staff is not merely practical; it is a reflection of the modern office of librarianship. We are there to be of service, in a para-textual position. Consequently, our work should be out of sight; it should be separate from and secondary to the work that readers do. Our locations call upon us, in other words, to support the scholar’s effort to hide the “seams of [her] findings” by hiding the ways we contribute to that work—by the ways we sometimes do that work.\r\n\r\nI think about these complications as I escort the Mencken researchers to their table and walk back to the glassed-in office, where there is nothing pressing for me to do. I’d rather spend more time talking with them. I’d like to learn about their research and introduce them to some underappreciated parts of the collection. I’d like to share with them what I learned curating an exhibition of Mencken-related magazines and writing about one of those magazines. But I don’t want to get in their way; it’s likely that they are ready to get on with work that they don’t see as connected to mine. The professional norms of the archive are strong, and although I know how to talk about my research in many contexts—in presentations, interviews, hotel elevators—I haven’t figured out how to mix my scholarly role with the curatorial role I am supposed to play here, in the Peabody. In the end, I say nothing. Professional segregation is another kind of silence in the library.\r\n\r\nWe cannot change the archaeological record beneath our feet, but we can rearrange the fossils we dig up to create new narratives. We can tell different kinds of archive stories, including the story of what research in the archive was and is. Is it too idealistic to expect that dissolving the entrenched fantasies about archival research will make room for new methods? Is it naïve to imagine a space that, in putting into practice the archival turn’s preliminary insights about disciplinary and disorder, can support experimentation, facilitate connection across professions and disciplines, and enable new discoveries?','Disciplinarity and Disorder','','inherit','open','open','','2199-revision-24','','','2013-05-31 03:59:14','2013-05-31 03:59:14','',2199,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/2199-revision-24/',0,'revision','',0),(4557,1,'2013-06-04 01:52:22','2013-06-04 01:52:22','The primal scene of archival research takes place in a dreary reading room. A researcher sits at her table, inert. An archivist enters, pushing a cart that bears a dozen dusty gray boxes.\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/5ykY6moIaDE?rel=0\" height=\"250\" width=\"333\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe>\r\n\r\nThe archivist unhinges a box, removes a numbered file folder and, placing it at the researcher’s elbow, steps back. The researcher stirs, then sits upright with a mechanical jolt. She turns sharply in the direction of the folder, flips it open and cocks her head towards the flimsy leaves inside; now she is reading. (Zoom in on the eyes as they click into focus.) Now she is reading, and now she truly comes alive; she bends towards the papers, taps her forehead in thought. A sheaf of blank paper and a pencil appear on her table, and she begins taking notes. Her fingers fly—and soon, so do the pages she is writing upon. Caught up in eddies of excitement, they swoop to the ceiling and around the room and down to the floor, where they fall together into perfect piles. Bindings sprout from the outer strata; the pages sew themselves into bright, tight, hard-cover books. These the archivist gathers up and places on the shelves that line the room, next to other books and gray boxes.\r\n\r\nI may have it backwards: in other versions of the fantasy, it is the archive that is first animated by the presence of the researcher, a Dr. Coppelius who waves a pencil and sets the dusty boxes to dancing. But either way, the archival imaginary posits a symbiotic relationship between researcher and source, a photogenic pas de deux that leads to a finished scholarly product. This work, in turn, enters the archive for the next generation of researchers; it might even be taken apart again so that its secret ingredients (notes, drafts, letters) can themselves be served up in a series of boxes. Such a strangely private form of publication it creates, the coupling of researcher and source.\r\n\r\nWhat Freudian trauma results from witnessing this sight? Only the harm that myth inflicts. This primal scene is a fiction, a dream of perfect union between researcher and source that ignores, first of all, the full cast of characters. What about the archivist, who is rendered invisible? What about all those within and without the archive, upon whose labor—acquiring, preserving, organizing, reading, cataloging, describing, interpreting, analyzing, debating, teaching, writing, editing, digitizing, referencing and publishing—the current project depends? More a barn dance than a pas de deux: an archival encounter is an enactment of social authorship long before the researcher enters the room. See Jerome McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) on the idea of social authorship, which could be described as “the dialectic between the historically located individual author and the historically developed institutions of literary production” that help create a work, eg, printers, publishers, editors and readers (81).\r\n\r\nBut even a barn dance is much too mannered a metaphor. The sketch above misleads us more generally about the experience on the ground. Doing time in an archive is often tedious, uncomfortable and bewildering. For librarians, there is the struggle to promote and simultaneously protect what you have; the difficulty of fitting unruly materials into arrangements and workflows; and worries about space and time—where to put it all, how to address your backlog. For researchers, there is the struggle to locate the archives you need and what matters to you inside them; the uncertainty created by unruly data; and worries about time and space— how to access what you need during your research trip, how to record and organize the information you gather. At both ends, the archival encounter is counter-cinematic and erratic, days of monotonous sifting and dead-ends punctuated by one or two, or maybe zero, hidden moments of vivid, peculiar joy.\r\n\r\nSo archival research does not fulfill its ideal outline. So what? Who cares? Why dredge up the fantasy? Because the fantasy continues to structure our archival encounters—what we expect and undertake in the reading room, what we allow it to mean. Twenty years ago, Alice Kaplan observed that “conventional academic discourse requires that when you write up the results of your archival work, you tell a story about what you found, but not about how you found it. The less the seams of your findings show, the better your discoveries lend themselves to use by others… tell[ing] these stories breaks their spell and violates the spirit of the archives.” ((Alice Yaeger Kaplan, “Working in the Archives,” Yale French Studies 77 (1990): 103-116; 103, 107.)) With a few word changes, the same could be said about what counts as professional archivist discourse: the impersonal, neutral genre of the finding aid, for example, should say what is in a collection, but should not discuss what is confusing or missing in it, or the problems it posed in processing. ((See, for example, James M. O’Toole and Richard J. Cox, Understanding Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2006).)) Despite the growing recognition that this sequestration is never completely possible—that the material conditions and social relations of the archive shape the work we do in it—that work continues to be represented in professional and scholarly publications as if it is. Despite the recent call to move to the fore “the backstage of the archives—how they are constructed, policed, experienced, and manipulated” in order to support historiography “not merely [as] a project of fact-retrieval” but as “a set of complex processes of selection, interpretation, and even creative invention,” the “backstage” stays in the background. ((Antoinette Burton, “Introduction: Archive Fever, Archive Stories,” Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, ed. Burton (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 7-8.)) Antoinette Burton may be correct that “many if not most historians operate under the assumption that history is a highly interpretive act,” but this belief is not yet reflected in the archival encounter: the ways that researchers (not just historians) and librarians report their experiences with primary sources; the ways that librarians and researchers work together; the ways librarians and researchers regard the involvement of “non specialists.” ((Burton, 8. Burton notes that “whether historians concede or fully countenance the impact of such contingencies on their work is another question. They rarely speak of them, and even more rarely do they do so in print” (8). Her books recuperates some of those archive stories but this effort, I’ll suggest below, is hampered by other kinds of obligations.)) While the advent of digitization and electronic resource sharing has revolutionized the research landscape, making primary sources public in unprecedented ways, there remains in the archive a habitus of secret knowledge—the “spell” that Kaplan is loathe to break. This is not necessarily intentional. It is rather the effect of layering recent shifts in technology, theory and professional definition onto older foundations: petrified conditions, relations, expectations and systems that continue to operate in part through the enduring power of fantasies about research. What we have in the archive is a stratified groundwork that still governs our archival encounters.\r\n\r\nBut, you will object, the archive has already changed. Now we have the “archival turn”—the scholarly interest in the archive not just as a source of evidence but as an epistemological mode. Surely, this attention to the constructedness of the archive has led to a revealing reconsideration of what actually goes on inside an archive; surely, as a result, those archaic fantasies have diminished. Have they? In what follows, I begin by unearthing one stratum of the archival turn, the decade of the 1990s, as represented by three texts: Kaplan’s essay mentioned above, “Working in the Archives” (1990)\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_369\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-2-kaplan.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-369\" alt=\"fig 2 kaplan\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-2-kaplan-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" /></a> Photocopy of Alice Yaeger Kaplan’s “Working in the Archives.”; Derrida’s Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1994/95)[/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_372\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-3-Derrida.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-372 \" alt=\"Print out of Jacque Derrida’s “Archive Fever” from Diacritics.; and Carolyn Steedman’s Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (2001).\" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-3-Derrida-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" /></a> Print out of Jacque Derrida’s “Archive Fever” from Diacritics.; and Carolyn Steedman’s Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (2001).[/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_373\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"300\"]<a href=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-4-steedman.jpg\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-373 \" alt=\"Library copy of Carolyn Steedman’s Dust. (Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” Diacritics 25.2 (Summer 1995): 9-63. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001).) \" src=\"http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-4-steedman-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" /></a> Library copy of Carolyn Steedman’s Dust. ((Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” Diacritics 25.2 (Summer 1995): 9-63. Web. 1 Dec. 2010. Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001).))[/caption]\r\n\r\nA cross-examination of these three texts reveals a pattern of interests, a set of efforts to defy customary practices—but only, it turns out, “in theory.” While certain practices are challenged in these texts, they leave mostly intact the older strata of archival research fantasies and conventions. Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman do not dislodge the forces that organize the actual archival encounter.\r\n\r\nHow does this happen? Why is practice so stubborn? We need another take on archival practice: not practice in theory, but practice in action; not the 1990s, but now; not in terms of textual patterns, but in terms that suit the subject: the terms of the archival encounter itself, and the eccentric, anachronistic and even monotonous experience it generates. My second look at practice will take the form of a series of vignettes about a real-life archive, the George Peabody Library in Baltimore. While this narrative structure may seem to recreate the division of labor between theory and practice, my hope is that—by giving practice the last word—we’ll be in a better position to synthesize the two.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>I. “The library doubles as a detective’s office.” ((Kaplan, 114.))</strong>\r\n\r\nThe archival turn could be dated to the founding of “scientific” history in the mid-nineteenth century, or to the development a century later of the quantitative methods of the Annales School, or to other evidence-based movements in the history of history, but what is generally meant by this phrase corresponds with the formation of cultural studies and the use of the archive as a conceptual category. That is, the archival turn has to do with the notion of the “figuration” of the archive, a parallel decline in its empirical authority and a related expansion of its relevance within domains that are not exclusively historiographic, like art, literary criticism, textual studies, media studies and information studies. ((See the use of the term in, for example, Carolyn Hamilton et al, eds., Refiguring the Archive (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), Cheryl Simon, ed., Following the Archival Turn: Photography, the Museum, and the Archive, special issue of Visual Resources: A Journal of Documentation 18.2 (June 2002), and Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). This turn is partially construed as a “move from archive-as-source to archive-as-subject,” but also by the earlier metaphorical interest in “the archive” that goes back to the 1980s (Stoler, 44-45) and by Foucauldian descriptions of archives as “‘monuments to particular configurations of power” (Hamilton, qtd. in Burton, 6).)) But it is not irrelevant that a devotion to archival methods precedes by many decades contemporary theories of the archive; if the archival turn lacks a precise origin, this (we will see) is completely in keeping with its own preoccupations.\r\n\r\nKaplan therefore represents in some ways an arbitrary beginning for this cross-examination—clearly the archive as a conceptual category predates 1990—but her article does initiate something new: the recognition that there is something called an “archive story” that must remain hidden in order for the official “results” to function authoritatively. In admitting this bit of professional legerdemain, and in telling her own archive story in a prestigious scholarly journal, Kaplan not only commits the violation she prohibits but also contradicts it. Through its publication, Kaplan’s own archive story is elevated to the status of “results”—a kind of research that shadows conventional academic discourse. Indeed, Kaplan notes, such “fables” of research “can be analyzed like a text,” a “mixed up genre” that combines the “redemptive detective fiction” with the epic and the dime novel. ((Kaplan, 106, 107.))\r\n\r\nKaplan’s archive story thus marks a distinctive moment in the archival turn—one which gained its most prominent authorization in 1994, with a paper that Jacques Derrida delivered (in English) to a conference sponsored by the Freud Museum, the Courtauld Institute and the Société International d’Histoire de la Psychiatrie et de la Psychoanalyse. Called initially “The Concept of the Archive: A Freudian Impression,” the lecture was revised and published in 1995 as Mal d’archive: une impression freudienne in French; the published English version echoed the French publication with its 1995 title Archive Fever. As Carolyn Steedman points out in Dust: The Archive and Cultural History, however, this work that has been assigned a seminal status in archival studies “for the main part… is not about archives at all, but is rather a sustained contemplation of a work of history, of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable (1991),” itself a sustained contemplation of Moses and Monotheism—which (according to Steedman) Yerushalmi examines through Freud’s description of the work as a “‘historical novel,’ or a kind of historical story,” undertaken “in order to understand the period of baroque anti-semitism through which he was living.” ((Steedman, 3.))\r\n\r\nDizzy yet? Let’s undertake a more careful reading of this splatter pattern of intra-references—or, to stick with the archaeological metaphor, let’s call them groups of potsherds buried in the 1990s layer of the “archival turn.” Digging down to reassemble them reveals a set of interests with special implications for archival practice.\r\n\r\nThe most prominent group of sherds to note are the fragments of disciplinarity: the inter-, multi- or perhaps simply anti-disciplinarity of the texts, authors and audiences caught up in these three archival addresses. Kaplan, an American scholar of French literature, calls the post-theory exchange between literature and history a “cross-pollination of desire between historians and literary critics” undertaken “with the curiosity and energetic passion of collectors.” ((Kaplan, 107-108.)) Steedman, a British historian, performs this cross-pollinating process without comment: her epigraph to Dust is from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, one chapter treats George Eliot’s Middlemarch in depth… in fact, almost every chapter depends on a literary text. ((Another chapter invokes Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1848 novel Mary Barton, a third is anchored by W. H. Auden’s poem “Homage to Clio,” and a fourth finds its most eloquent examples in Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend.)) Derrida, a French philosopher, produced a work that has been exceptionally mobile across disciplines, forms, languages and professional domains. He gave his initial talk to an audience drawing on three different kinds of institutions; Mal d’Archive was published in book form in both French and English, but also made an intermediate appearance as an essay in the journal diacritics. All of these texts, it seems, respond to the provocations of the archive—to the materials and circumstances of discovery—rather than to the disciplinary distinctions that arguably divide the archive from itself.\r\n\r\nArchive Fever has become a founding document even though, as Steedman notes in the very beginning of her book, many in Derrida’s audience “knew the ‘archival turn’ to be [already] well underway” at the time of his talk. ((Steedman, 2.)) As it happens—and this is the second group of sherds I see—these three essays have in common an investment in or a problem with origins, especially with the failure of origins. Derrida, for example, defines archive fever as a kind of Freudian death drive—a drive to fix and preserve which at the same time “works to destroy the archive: on the condition of effacing but also with a view to effacing its own ‘proper’ traces… [it] is above all anarchivic, one could say, or archiviolithic… the archive always works, and a priori, against itself.” ((Derrida, 14.)) If the archival impulse is driven to destroy its own work, then the question of origins ultimately point to the larger question of disorder. The disorder of origins makes frequent appearances in the essay but one example will make the point—in the “Preamble” where he recounts how he titled the talk that he had not yet written and was to give at the Freud Museum. The “Preamble” starts with his reflections on the word “impression,” which has several simultaneous registers of meaning for him. One of these is the “scriptural or typographic” register: that of the graphic impression that marks a substrate. In English, “impression” is phonetically related to “repression” and “suppression,” key words in the Freudian vocabulary, translated respectively from the German Verdrängung and Unterdrückung. English, that is, retains the rhyming relationship of the two German terms, and “impression” in this company comes to have a vaguely Freudian meaning as well. But in French, Verdrängung is “refoulement,” which means something more like expulsion, a driving away. The Freudian sense of the French word “répression” has been reserved for Unterdrückung. So English “repression” defines a phenomenon that must be distinguished from the French “répression.” These translational shifts “directly concern the structures of archivization,” Derrida says, “because they touch on the topic differences and thus on the location of the substrates of traces\" (Derrida, 23). In other words, how do you classify concepts whose meanings shift across languages? Where do you store them in a disciplinary grammar—or in an archive? How do these asymmetrical linguistic structures shape the establishment and extension of a new science? For Derrida, the difference between “repression” and “répression” is “enough to disrupt the tranquil landscape of all historical knowledge, of all historiography, and even of all self-consistent ‘scholarship’” ((Derrida, 23.))\r\n\r\nOrigin failure appears both as deliberate performance and as unintentional oversight in these essays. Derrida stages his own inability to get past “go”; with an introductory section, and subsequent sections sub-titled “Exergue,” “Preamble,” “Foreword,” his essay functions, Steedman notes, like a “primer offering instruction in the principle of deferral.” ((A short notice called “Priere d’inserer,” published only in the French book version, carried the bulk of an argument for which there was no room in the lecture. Steedman, 7.)) For all her insight into Derrida’s titling adventures, however, Steedman’s title is marked by its own origin aporia. While her first chapter is devoted to Archive Fever—a “let’s begin at the beginning” homage to the seminal text—her book’s title, Dust, seems more indebted to the last sentence of Kaplan’s essay, published five years before Derrida’s: “Usually there is no mother lode, no original manuscript to be retrieved—the gold is all in the dust.” ((Kaplan, 116.)) Kaplan, however, is never mentioned. ((Kaplan also begins her essay with a brief consideration of the “arche,” the Greek and Latin term for the public records office, which is a major starting point for Derrida. Is he borrowing from her, or is she borrowing from him, given that this sort of etymological investigation was an established signature of Deconstruction?))\r\n\r\nKaplan, for her part, unravels her own archive story. She gives us a kind of “whodunit”—her search for the ephemeral sources of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s anti-semitic pamphlet Bagatelles pour un massacre (1937). She uses this account to exemplify her effort to “move through the archival process and recover some of the stories that get deleted in the final scholarly form.” ((Kaplan, 104. For this reason, perhaps, Kaplan never reveals what she ultimately discovers in her successful search for Celine’s sources. In fact, it’s not entirely clear whether her pre-emptive and truncated treatment of her archive story is deliberate or not. Is this treatment meant to indirectly support her official claim about “results”? Or does the presence of the archive story suggest that telling it is an impulse she can’t quite control? Thanks, Lauren Coats, for helping tease this problem out.)) These beginnings are preemptively struck out, however, by what seems to be her main claim: “the passion of the archives must finally be used to eradicate all personal stories in the interests of the dry archival report, fit for a public.” ((Kaplan, 103.)) Only in the “para-text”—a preface, for example—can the archive story appear without “interrupt[ing] or complicat[ing] the narrative so much that no results could ever be understood or perceived.” ((Kaplan, 104.)) Despite this unequivocal assertion, the personal “whodunit” prevails in her essay, especially in the final section set in the Centre du documentation juive contemporain (CDJC). It is this library, where Kaplan solves the mystery of Céline’s sources, that “doubles as a detective’s office.”\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_423\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"333\"]<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-5-cdjc-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-423\"><img class=\"size-medium wp-image-423\" title=\"fig 5 cdjc\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-5-cdjc1-333x250.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a> Website for the Centre de documentation juive contemporain.[/caption]\r\n\r\nWhile Kaplan’s research mystery resolves neatly, the truth about archives is that they are full of gaps, mistakes and excesses: in the words of one of the CDJC librarians, “‘ici on trouve tout’—there’s some of everything here”—but not, one could add, all of anything. ((Kaplan, 115.)) Kaplan’s essay ends by nullifying both her detective story success and her “dry archival report,” by recognizing the disorder on which both of these narratives are unsteadily perched: “The archive is constituted by these errors, these pieces out of place, which are then reintegrated into a story of some kind.” ((Kaplan, 115.)) “A story of some kind”? So much for “results.”\r\n\r\nKaplan sets us up to perceive one final potsherd pattern common to these three essays. If origin-less disorder is the order of the archive, it is a disorder that is generated out of human loss—a disorder that joins the body and the material world. The archive is always predicated on historical violence of some sort, whatever is censored, erased, excluded, trumped up, used up, misplaced, conquered, killed. Moreover, the archival categories that mark both the visible victories and hidden defeats do not stay within their walls; the archive is both a repository of existing schemas and a means of perpetuating them in the world beyond. While we might usually think of this disciplinary activity as a pact between the archive and its political authors, Steedman makes it clear that the dilemmas of order shape the archival body in many ways. For example, she takes literally the provocation of Derrida’s title Archive Fever to investigate the illness that researchers contract on the penultimate day of their trip to the archive: prompted by the anxiety of the task that remains unfinished, they end their research with night-sweats and head-aches. But what seems like a strangely specific malady is transformed by Steedman into a far-reaching social symptom: by relating the researcher’s “archive fever” to the terrible diseases suffered by tanners, skinners and other workers in the trades associated with paper and leather, Steedman expands our sense of who is in the archive—the bodies whose specialized labors populate our libraries with books, the many kinds of expertise the archive consumes.\r\n\r\nFor Derrida, the relation between the material archive and its human architects focuses on one kind of “graphic mark,” a particular “private inscription”: circumcision as the archival signature that is also the signature of patrimoine, with Freud’s relationship to his father as his main example. ((Derrida, 19.)) It is perhaps not a coincidence that the body in question in both Kaplan’s and Derrida’s archive is Jewish, for that is a body that has come to symbolize the destructive power of classificatory regimes. Despite her contention that the private passions motivating research must be kept secret, Kaplan is fascinated by the “missing person stories” at the CDJC: by the “quantity of people who are there for personal reasons,” the survivors of occupation or deportation or camps, or their descendants, quietly looking up their lost ones or noisily dropping off their memoirs. ((Kaplan, 113.)) This disorganized crowd of dead and living bodies tries to meet up with an equally disorganized crowd of materials—individual letters, trial transcripts, pamphlets, newspapers, first-person accounts, books, photographs, lists. The monumental task of match-making, the librarians’ work, is never complete. More papers are always generated or declassified or discovered, different human questions and needs emerge. The tidy choreography of the research fantasy, where the detective always finds her man, is not so much in evidence; what we have instead is corpora in excess of existing categories.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\nKaplan, Derrida and Steedman open up the archival body. They show us how paper meets the press of flesh; they make us feel just how intimate it is. [note number=\'26\']This interest in the corporeal dimensions and effects of order, its human and non-human components, has in common with their other gestures—an experimental attitude towards conventional disciplinarity and attention to the priority of disorder—the circumstances of the academic humanities in the 1990s. Since the archival turn came out of the ascent of cultural studies and allied intrigues in the 1970s and ‘80s, the circles in the Venn diagram of these ventures will necessarily overlap. We could also say that the archive took off when it did precisely because it made a clever new container for these preoccupations, thick in the humanities atmosphere at the time, where they were distilled and united. [/note] But for all their revelations about the limits of discipline and the multiplicities of disorder in the archive, these texts do not disclose the specific methods of engagement that led to their existence. While Kaplan offers up her own archival victory and outlines several other such stories, she still insists on their marginalization. [note number=\'27\']“Were the story of how you got the story really to be told inside the book, it would interrupt or complicate the narrative so much that no results could be understood or even perceived. Every story of success in the archives is emotionally charged, for only the most extreme emotions can drive people to the drudgery, to the discomfort, of sitting and sifting through dog-eared documents, manuscripts, microfilms. To reveal those emotions would not only gum up the narrative, it would threaten its credibility, by showing on what thin strands of coincidence, accident, or on what unfair forms of friendship, ownership, geographical proximity, the discoveries were based” (Kaplan, 104).[/note] If these texts are not concerned with actual practices in the archive or changes in its methodologies, what do they tell us?\r\n\r\nFirst, they suggest one reason for the perpetuation of myths about the archive. While Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman are eager to show how archival materials do not conform to disciplinary distinctions—an enthusiasm related to other disruptive tendencies in late twentieth-century humanist scholarship –they seem less cognizant of a related phenomenon: the archive does not obey strict professional divisions, either. In Kaplan’s library-as-detective’s-office metaphor, the scholar is the detective, but does the “Eureka” moment belong only to the scholar who pieces together a narrative? What about the people who prepared those pieces? The archivist is still missing in action. Likewise, these essays do not dwell on missing boxes, illegible papers, neglected citations. There are no descriptions of archival slogging, no admissions that some materials failed to be relevant. And of course, there are no prescriptions for a different order. It is not the main aim of Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman to effect an evolution of practice; archival turnistas are not interested in disorder in order to re-order. But it is worth remembering that it is not in their professional interest as scholars to make their practices more transparent.\r\n\r\nSecondly, along the same lines, these texts inform us of the duplicity of speculative practices that reveal but cannot live out the instability of their archival mandates. Kaplan, Derrida and Steedman are put into the position of saying, “Yes, the archive is biased, idiosyncratic and treacherous—but the observations I draw from it are flawless.” [note number=\'28\']Derrida, unlike Kaplan and Steedman, makes no claims to work inside an actual archive, unless we consider Yerushalmi’s book as a kind of archive. But the fact that the essay was written self-consciously for presentation at the Freud Museum suggests that it was made out of an archive indirectly—in its construction, if not in its contents. [/note]\r\n\r\nFinally, these texts suggest why archival studies that attempt to be explicit about the messy nature of the archive have become instead “archive studies.” In more recent works like Refiguring the Archive (2002), Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions and the Writing of History (2005) and Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2009), the archive appears as a subject in its own right. Although the archival scenarios that are put into play in each of these books incorporate different disciplines—art, history, anthropology, literature, post-colonial studies—they have essentially created a new discipline. “Archive studies” is something we might, in the taxonomy of disciplines, see as the love-child of cultural studies, history and archival methodology. Moreover, this new discipline has in common with other humanities disciplines a complete blindness about its professional investments; it does not register much awareness of the professional investments of librarians, archivists, curators and “non-specialists,” or invite insights from those perspectives. Perhaps this is inevitably what happens when academics must give legitimacy to something new, which in turn reflects the pressures of scholarly communication: a topic must be delineated in conventional terms in order to merit publication. [note number=\'29\']Perhaps this is also the moment to ask why we—I—have been using the term “archive” all along, with its statist resonances, rather than the term “collection,” which has institutional but also personal resonances. Does “archive” bring us closer to recognizably “serious scholarship”?[/note] But it is also true that in these more recent books, which openly investigate the archive’s power-politics, the disorderly drift of the archive and its hybrid corporeality have mostly been bent towards a particular narrative about the archive as an agent of history rather than as a set of ongoing practices. It is as if the historical archive has been assembled in ways that reflect and reiterate power relations, but the contemporary archive has not; it is as if the researcher’s own research travails remain a transparent layer over the body of work that it constructs. [note number=\'30\']Of course, this is precisely what Derrida meant about the “death drive” of the archival impulse. Archive Stories is something of an exception; researchers speak openly here about themselves as researchers. It is interesting, however, that this book—like Steedman’s—doesn’t cite Kaplan’s essay as a precursor text despite the clear titular link.[/note]\r\n\r\nPerhaps it would also be fair to note that, if archival studies are now being formulated as an interdisciplinary discipline called “archive studies,” this might be just another stage in the turn. It might be that what comes next reconfigures the premise of disciplinarity and the promise of disorder, with a different approach to the human/non-human interactions that the archive documents and realizes: a more diffuse and multi-vocal set of practices in place of a new field. One way to imagine this approach would be to fully embrace Kaplan’s idea of the archive story as an account of what one hoped for, looked for and found, what one did and did not do, in the archive—an account loosed from the quarantine she advocates. Some very basic genre precedents for the archive story do exist; the bibliographic essay and the methodology statement, for example, have played an important role in many disciplines in the past and still do in some. Instead of a para-textual nod towards that archive story (in Kaplan’s sense), why not create a parallel text written collaboratively by the researcher(s) and the librarian(s), or by one person acting in both professional capacities, that runs alongside the official “results”? Or in a set of expanded notes that address not just the “what” and “where” but the “how” and “why” of sources, which are lifted from their small-type, bottom-of-page basement up into the light? Or—to add yet another layer—parallel texts that also offer room for exchange with other researchers, archivists and even interested “non specialists,” like collectors, bibliophiles and fans?\r\n\r\nIf it is hasn’t been clear already that I have scrupulously avoided so far the other kind of archive, the digital archive, it will be now. What I am imagining would be far too complicated to produce or consult in print, but would not be at all difficult to organize as a digital object—as an archive in its own right. By avoiding the digital archive up to this point, I have also finessed the fact that our current archival research methods are completely reliant on the digital archive, along with the development of online research tools and electronic instruments of data discovery and organization. Those conditions probably bear the most responsibility for making the archive visible as something that warranted a “turn” in the first place. Even Derrida refers in each version of Archive Fever to the computer on which he is currently composing, predicting that email will not only totally transform the archive as he knows it, but will make his own essay obsolete.\r\n\r\nIn short, we already have in place both the theory and the media that will make it possible to enact a radical new archival practice. We have in place what we need to integrate the archive story into the archive itself, while making it visible as a new form of “results.”\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>II. The library doubles as a librarian’s office.</strong>\r\n\r\nI could end here, with a triumphant firing of the starter pistol and a rousing cheer. But that would be a bit disingenuous, given that the starter pistol for both the archival turn and the academic use of the internet actually went off decades ago. So the question remains, what stands in the way of the practical enactment of the archival turn’s speculative insights? I’d like to engage this question by following Kaplan’s example (but not her main claim): through some archive story-telling about the George Peabody Library. These three vignettes, identified as “typical” through conversations with my colleague Paul Espinosa, illustrate the intractable formations that present-day archival encounters come up against.\r\n\r\n<strong>1. The Perils of Description.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>A group of Russian speakers visits the Peabody Library. The dozen men and women sit down around the screen that Paul has set up. He narrates a brief slide-show about the Peabody’s history, then leads them to a table where a dozen books from the collection have been laid out in cradles. He tells them about each book: what it is, why it is interesting. Each phrase of his presentation is painstakingly translated by the group’s leader into Russian.</blockquote>\r\nWhen academic and community groups visit the Peabody, my colleagues and I draw upon a standard tour-guide’s repertoire to describe it. We explain that George Peabody was a tradesman cum financier cum philanthropist who decided in 1857 that Baltimore needed a cultural institution to support the arts and learning. We talk about the evolution of the Peabody Institute, the four-part athenaeum that resulted, with its art gallery, lecture series, conservatory and free, public, non-circulating library. We discuss the model of philanthropy that George Peabody initiated and its wide-ranging influence. We point out the signal features of the awe-inspiring architecture of the current library, built to accommodate a rapidly growing collection in 1878. But when it comes to the library itself, as a collection, it is hard to know what to say. How to accurately translate the library’s holdings into a succinct and memorable statement that conveys an appropriate level of detail to different audiences? While it poses specific challenges, the Peabody also exemplifies more general problems of collection description.\r\n\r\nWe do not lack evidence for the evolving contents of the Peabody. We have the two-volume printed list of “desiderata” drawn up by the Peabody’s first librarian, John G. Morris. [note number=\'31\']Alphabetical Catalogue of Books to be Purchased for the Library of the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, Vols. 1 and 2 (Baltimore: John D. Toy, 1861, 1863).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'6\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-6-alpha-index-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-395\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-395\" title=\"fig 6 alpha index\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-6-alpha-index1-336x484.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"484\" /></a>Alphabetical index from Alphabetical Catalouge (“desiderata”).[/note] We have the collections register for several decades’-worth of acquisitions, recording bibliographic information and accession numbers that can still be found on the inside front end papers of many of the books in the collection. We have the librarians’ annual reports to the library trustees. [note number=\'32\']The Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore: The Founder’s Letters and the Papers Relating to its Dedication and History, Up to the 1st January, 1868 (Baltimore: William K. Boyle, 1868); and subsequent Annual Reports, 1869, etc.[/note] We have the library’s first printed catalogue, an unsurpassed achievement when first published in 1883, which listed 100,000 volumes by author and title. [note number=\'33\']Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, Vols. 1-5 (Baltimore: Isaac Friedenwald, 1883; reprinted Boston: G. K. Hall, [1961?]; also on googlebooks), and Second Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, Including the Additions Made Since 1882, Vols. 1-8 (Baltimore: Deutsch Lithographic and Printing, 1896; reprinted Boston: G. K. Hall, 1961).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'7\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-7-print-cat/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-396\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-396\" title=\"fig 7 print cat\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-7-print-cat-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Reprinted volumes of the Catalogue of the Library of the Peabody Institute (1883).[/note] We have the cards from the Dewey decimal system card catalogue, which replaced the printed catalogue in the 1910s. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'8\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-8-card-cat/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-397\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-397\" title=\"fig 8 card cat\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-8-card-cat.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"448\" /></a>One of two card catalogues in the Peabody.[/note] Now, of course, the library’s collections are represented in an online catalogue that integrates them with other collections in the Hopkins library system.\r\n\r\nThese markers of the collection, however, fail to satisfy some contemporary research queries for reasons that are both practical and philosophical. The transfer of the printed index, organized by author, to the Dewey decimal system, organized by topic, represented a major epistemological shift that facilitated browsing by subject category. But of course, those categories are embedded in historically-bound notions about the subjects and structures of knowledge: Dewey was invented in the 1870s, and the 22 revisions it has undergone since then cannot overcome its essential organizational distortions. For example, the literature range—the 800s—offers only 10% of its categorical space to literatures in languages other than English, Germanic and Romance languages, Greek and Latin.\r\n\r\nIn the case of the Peabody, the Dewey arrangements overlay even older systems of knowledge hierarchy. Should we continue to offer, for example, a description of the Peabody’s “voyages and travels” books? This category represents a Renaissance schematic that was still in service in the mid-nineteenth century; while actual “voyages and travels” were extended by colonial ventures, the category was eventually disbanded. Dewey combined it with geography to make a sub-category of “history.” In keeping active the old-fashioned phrase “voyages and travels,” we are participating in a centuries-long project of euphemism about the material aims and actual activities of colonialism; we are privileging an early phase of the Peabody’s evolution over later phases; we may even be confusing modern researchers. And yet, as one of the topics in Morris’s “desiderata,” a considerable portion of the Peabody’s collection was acquired with the aim of fleshing out that descriptor. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'9\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-9-index-detail/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-398\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-398\" title=\"fig 9 index detail\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-9-index-detail-336x274.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"274\" /></a>Detail of subject index from Alphabetical Catalouge No. 2 (“desiderata”).[/note]\r\n\r\nYet another classificatory dilemma is expressed by George Peabody’s original statement of the library’s purpose: that it “be furnished in every department of knowledge, with the most approved literature… It should consist on the best works on every subject… to satisfy the researches of students who may be engaged in the pursuit of knowledge not ordinarily attainable in the private libraries of the country.” [note number=\'34\']“Letters from George Peabody, Esq.: Baltimore, February 12th, 1857,” in Founder’s Letters, 7.[/note] The Peabody was founded as a cultural institution for the people of Baltimore, but from the first, this democratic ambition was in conflict with the intellectual aspirations of the first librarians and their desire to facilitate civic “self-improvement.” Morris (a doctor of divinity), his successor Nathaniel Holmes Morison (a schoolmaster and poet), and Morison’s assistant and successor Philip Uhler (who had trained as an entomologist) were all devoted to the nineteenth-century idea of the scholar-librarian. Morison wrote in one annual report that “Education always proceeds from the above downward, from the best to the common minds, from the leaders of the people to the people themselves. Furnish... the foundations of intelligence and thought, and they will... stimulate and improve the whole community.\" [note number=\'35\']Qtd. in Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, “PIB Ref. Library. 8-Morison\'s Philosophy of Excellence,” in George Peabody (1795-1869): A-Z Handbook of the Massachusetts-Born Merchant in the South, London-Based Banker, and Philanthropist\'s Life, Influence, and Related People, Places, Events, and Institutions. . 11 Mar. 2011.[/note] When the Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1876 in close proximity to the Peabody—in large part to take advantage of the library—the tendency of the librarians to address scholarly needs and “approved literature” over popular desires was given additional momentum. In keeping with these ideas, the Peabody’s librarians kept careful track of their readers’ choices, noting with special caution the numbers of novels that were requested. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'10\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-10-annual-report-detail/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-399\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-399\" title=\"fig 10 annual report detail\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-10-annual-report-detail-336x452.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"452\" /></a>Detail from First Annual Report showing chart of books read, with special mention of fiction.[/note] This schism at the heart of the library’s collecting paradigm was not unique to the Peabody; the question of reading matter—should it offer leisure for the masses or the means of social uplift?—was central to the public library movement of the second half of the nineteenth century. [note number=\'36\']See, for example, Alexis McCrossen, “’One Cathedral More’ or ‘Mere Lounging Places for Bummers’? The Cultural Politics of Leisure and the Public Library in Gilded Age America,” Libraries &amp; Culture 41.2 (2006): 169-188; Paul Sturges, “The Public Library and Reading by the Masses: Historical Perspectives on the USA and Britain 1850-1900,” ; Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, Upon the Objects to be Attained by the Establishment of a Public Library, 12 Dec. 2010.[/note]\r\n\r\nFinally, the Peabody’s “desiderata” acquisitions and librarians’ selections were supplemented by book donations from local elites—bibliophiles with extensive private collections that included incunabula, classical authors in Renaissance editions, expensive illustrated atlases. At the same time, book donations came in from more plebian sources. The Peabody’s growth overlapped with the decline of the local social libraries, and it eventually absorbed some of the books from the Library Company of Baltimore, Robinson’s Circulating Library and several small professional and mechanics’ libraries. And I haven’t even touched on the Peabody’s twentieth-century fate.\r\n\r\nThe variety of philanthropic impulses, resource streams and classification philosophies that have fed the Peabody over the 150 years of its existence has led to a collection that does not so much map the nineteenth-century mind as signal its odd amalgam of popular and scholarly investments. The Peabody’s collection effectively evades succinct description—at least, any kind of description that pretends to be coherent, that is not perforated by its stakes in local history, library history, book history. But more importantly, it suggests the degree to which accident and opportunity and prejudice and wealth and the changing winds of cataloguing rules shape any archive. Description, which should be the most fundamental tool of communication between librarians and researchers, turns out to be utterly elusive. Yet we do not know what to replace them with, these inadequate descriptions, these exercises in stilted and partial translation.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>2. The Researcher’s Progress.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>I am preparing for my class about women and nineteenth-century print culture, which meets in the Peabody; we have reached the part of the syllabus where we look at gift books and annuals. I want students to examine several examples of these literary miscellanies, offering some illustration of their variety, and I have a list of such items that I have used in the past. But since I also want to show the students new acquisitions, I need to refresh my list. I will start with “gift book” as a keyword in the online catalogue.</blockquote>\r\nIn place of perfect and commensurate description—not possible—what we have are cataloguing systems that indexically represent collections through data and metadata that are, as I have already suggested, historically marked and inevitably inconsistent. In the case of the Peabody, these records are further compromised: Dewey cards developed from a nineteenth-century print index do not offer Library of Congress subject terms or detailed tables of contents; they also frequently lack other kinds of information. [note number=\'37\']Many of the electronic records for Peabody books have been copy-cataloged, that is, developed from records for identical books in other libraries. But these records might also be incomplete or inconsistent, given that many are quite old. The expense of original cataloging prevents our staff from creating full, new records for every item in the Peabody’s collection of over 300,000 titles.[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'11\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-11-ddc-cards/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-400\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-400\" title=\"fig 11 ddc cards\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-11-ddc-cards-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Dewey cards for “gift books.”[/note] My search for “gift book” will turn up bequests—the term “gift book” is often attached to these donations—and it will miss many of the nineteenth-century gift books and annuals in our collection whose records lack subject classifications, or whose subject classifications reference the book’s contents, not its format. For example, the 1848 Rough and Ready Annual: or, Military Souvenir published by Appleton’s has been assigned the subject “Mexican War, 1846-1848—Anecdotes.” [note number=\'38\']Rough and Ready Annual (New York: D. Appleton; Philadelphia: G.S. Appleton, 1848).[/note]\r\n\r\nThe problem of finding is perhaps only a sub-set of the problem of description, but I want to give it special attention because it introduces another variable: the physical space of the object. My search for gift books in the Peabody also entails the privilege of retrieving the books from the stacks. There are two search processes, the intellectual and the physical, that I must navigate. The intellectual search in this case requires a variety of keyword/date range combinations, and ultimately, recourse to my prepared bibliography—a holdover from pre-catalogue research methods. Now the second search begins.\r\n\r\nThe Rough and Ready Annual is at 973.62 A5121, in the “general history of North America; United States” category. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'12\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-12-rr/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-401\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-401\" title=\"fig 12 r&amp;r\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-12-rr-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The Rough and Ready Annual in the stacks.[/note] This call number range is on the second floor, west side. Other items on my list are in very different parts of the library. Orange Blossoms: A Gift Book for All Who Have Worn, Are Wearing, Or are Likely to Wear Them, edited by the temperance writer T. S. Arthur and published in London, has been given the call number 813 A7910 duodecimo—fourth floor east, in the “American literature in English, fiction” section. [note number=\'39\']Orange Blossoms: A Gift Book for All Who Have Worn, Are Wearing, Or are Likely to Wear Them (London: Knight &amp; Co., [1857]). This title does not appear in at least one Arthur bibliography; see Donald A Koch, \"Timothy Shay Arthur,\" Antebellum Writers in New York and the South, ed. Joel Myerson (Detroit: Gale Research, 1979), from Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Feb. 2011. To check on this, I need Mitchell Sharpe Jr.’s A Bibliography of the Published Books of Timothy Shay Arthur (Atlanta: Emory University, 1954), a typewritten quarto at 012 A791S, but it seems to be missing.[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'13\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-13-orange/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-402\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-402\" title=\"fig 13 orange\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-13-orange-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Orange Blossoms in the stacks.[/note] Arthur shows up again as co-editor of The Baltimore Book: A Christmas and New-Year\'s Present, which has received more extensive description as it contains the first printing of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Siope.” [note number=\'40\']The Baltimore Book: A Christmas and New-Year\'s Present (Baltimore: Bayly and Burns, [1838]).[/note] We have two copies of this very genteel little gift book, one at 808.83 B2175 (rhetoric &amp; collections of literature), and one at 810.8 C297 (American literature in English). The New Casket: A Gift Book for All Seasons is in the rare book room at the south end of the third floor. [note number=\'41\']The New Casket: A Gift Book for All Seasons (London: The Religious Tract Society, ca. 1850).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'14\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-14-rbr/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-403\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-403\" title=\"fig 14 rbr\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-14-rbr-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The rare book room.[/note] In this case, the book’s rarity has to do with a lovely fore-edge painting. It has been assigned to 820.8 N42017 (general books about literature). On the other end of the “rare” continuum is The Family Circle and Parlor Annual, volume 5 in a series, which is shelved up on the sixth floor with the periodicals at 051 F198 (serials in American English). [note number=\'42\']The Family Circle and Parlor Annual (New York: Comstock, 1847).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'15\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-15-parlor/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-404\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-404\" title=\"fig 15 parlor\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-15-parlor-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>The Parlor Annual in the stacks.[/note]\r\n\r\nI’ll fill out call slips for each book, stick the slips into red flags, and put the flags in an order that will help me chart a logical course through the stacks. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'16\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-16-slips/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-405\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-405\" title=\"fig 16 slips\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-16-slips-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Call slips and flags.[/note] It’s easiest to start on the sixth floor and work one’s way down, picking up books along the way. Usually I find other interesting items as I go, so I carry a batch of blank call slips and extra flags. (On this occasion, for example, I find The New American Reader: Containing Choice Pieces, in Prose and Verse; published in 1813 and inscribed by its owner in 1817, it pre-dates by several years the official beginning of the gift book phenomenon. It might be more of a “literary almanac.” [note number=\'43\']The New American Reader: Containing Choice Pieces, in Prose and Verse (Philadelphia: David Hogan, 1813).[/note] [note type=\'figure\' number=\'17\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-17-new-reader/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-406\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-406\" title=\"fig 17 new reader\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-17-new-reader-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Inscription in The New American Reader.[/note]) Usually I am also unable to locate at least one of the books I have set out to find. Most likely the book has been misshelved, so I’ll check the quartos and folios, which are shelved separately; then I’ll check the rare book room’s octavo, duodecimo and quarto shelving areas. It used to astonish me that books were still shelved by format in the Peabody, but it does save space. At the same time, this shelving system—along with the multiple distinct areas within the library where books may reside, eg the rare book room, the reference section, the genealogy books, the Limited Editions Club, and several discrete named collections—means that retrieving a few books can take quite a long time, as I traipse up and down the six floors of the library, thread through stacks, open secured doors with multiple keys, turn lights on and off, and maneuver a book truck in and out of a tiny service elevator built in the 1920s. By the end of the journey, the library and I will have exchanged dust; I’ll take on a few streaks of red rot, and the library will have taken in particles from my body as well.\r\n\r\nWhile the Peabody is unique, these conditions are not in the end very unusual. In terms of the intellectual search, the absence of “gift book” from many of the catalogue records is no less egregious than the absence of other information—the names of all the contributors; the subjects of the illustrations. The metadata is potentially infinite. The “gift book” only exists as a category because of scholars who teased out this cultural phenomenon; it would be very difficult to define its absolute borders. In terms of the physical search, the Peabody might be messier than, say, a rare book library that has assigned current LC call numbers to all its contents and houses them in compact shelving, but it exemplifies the general on-the-ground situation. As I wind my way through the Peabody stacks, I remember how much more difficult it is to gather research materials from several different institutions.\r\n\r\nThe fact is, for scholars who rely on archives, research is something you do only after you have already undertaken a rigorous search. It is the search that provides you with the foundational sense of your subject. But the search is rarely acknowledged or accredited; even the foot-soldier craft of bibliography, the link between “librarianship” and “scholarship,” has largely lost its scholarly status.\r\n\r\n<!--nextpage-->\r\n\r\n<strong>3. An Architecture of Disctinction.</strong>\r\n<blockquote>A non-affiliate researcher contacts the Peabody about our H. L. Mencken collections. Since she will bring a couple of graduate students with her, I set up a group work space in one of the library alcoves where the three of them can share materials and talk without disturbing other readers. I pull the requested volumes with the help of some students and set the cart up within easy reach of the alcove. When the researchers arrive, I show them the Mencken collections on the ground floor. Then I lead them to their group work space and leave them, returning to the glassed-in office behind the reading room, the vantage point that allows me to monitor the otherwise empty reading room.</blockquote>\r\nIn “The Silence of the Library: Environment, Situational Norm, and Social Behavior,” a team of Dutch sociologists investigates the library as a space that is strongly marked by situational norms—“knowledge-based beliefs about how to behave in particular situations that are shaped by social influence.” [note number=\'44\']Henk Aarts and Ap Dijksterhuis, “The Silence of the Library: Environment, Situational Norm, and Social Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84.1 (2003), 19.[/note] Their research leads them to argue, however, that such norms do not require direct social influences to be triggered; in fact, “the situation can activate mental representations of normative behaviors automatically. And once activated, these representations provide the knowledge necessary for guiding one’s own situationally appropriate behavior.” [note number=\'45\']Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 19.[/note] Physical environments do not necessarily prompt these behaviors; rather, the behavior “depend[s] on whether the environment is of immediate behavioral relevance.” [note number=\'46\']Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 20.[/note] Talking in a quiet voice in the library, a normative behavior, is only activated for those who plan to visit the library.\r\n\r\nTen years ago, when the research for this article was conducted, the “silence of the library” was still a widespread norm. While the situation is now often reversed—in our main campus library, we must designate specific quiet areas because otherwise a sociable undergraduate din would take over—the norm of silence does continue to preside at the Peabody. Because it is off campus, the Peabody is often attractively under-populated compared to the crowded main library; it is mostly used by advanced researchers and those who seek a quiet place to study. The large central open area catches and amplifies even the smallest noises. The shelf-lined alcoves on either side of this central area offer the appearance of privacy, but in fact are little echo chambers. Visitors immediately detect these acoustics, and—except for the periodic tour groups—most spend their time in the Peabody in silence. But it is not just the physics of sound that shape behaviors here, as the Dutch researchers show; the social expectations of the space prefigure those behaviors.\r\n\r\nIn setting up a group work space for the Mencken researchers, I have quite deliberately contravened the usual norm of silence. Clearly, I am not inviting them to shout, and by putting them in an alcove in back, I have taken measures to protect any quiet-seeking visitors who might arrive. But in accordance with new ideas about the use of library space, my colleagues and I have decided that we must accommodate group study even if it might occasionally disrupt the silence desired by others. As it happens, the Mencken researchers’ conversation is eventually interrupted by a tour group, and the two activities play out side by side.\r\n\r\nI must admit that at moments I have mixed feelings about the tour groups and even the study cohorts. While my pedagogical instincts tend towards cheerful hub-bub, there is a part of me that is still in awe of the sanctuary-like atmosphere of the Peabody. John Morris called the library a “cathedral of books,” and clearly that’s what architect Edmund G. Lind had in mind. The central area with its grand skylight and the alcoves on its sides is like a nave bordered with chapels. Lind didn’t need a psychological study of environment-based situational norms to tell him that he might activate different behaviors within his building. The great central space inspires reverence—your eye is drawn to the skylight the way it would be drawn to the rose windows of Chartres, and on its way up catches row upon solemn row of books stowed behind gilded railings, a testament to the accumulated wisdom of the ages. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'18\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-18-skylight/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-407\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-407\" title=\"fig 18 skylight\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-18-skylight.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"448\" /></a>The skylight in the George Peabody Library.[/note] But step into an alcove, especially on the ground floor where each is filled with an immense wooden table, and you instantly feel something else, something no less grand but more human. The alcoves are study-sized, and once you sit down at one of those dark, gleaming, broad tables, it is like you are the master of your own private library. [note type=\'figure\' number=\'19\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-19-alcove/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-408\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-408\" title=\"fig 19 alcove\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-19-alcove-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Alcove in the George Peabody Library.[/note]\r\n\r\nIronically, the Peabody’s architecture was out-dated by the time it was completed. With the professionalization of librarianship and the evolution of library science in the late nineteenth century, librarians like William Frederick Poole advocated for a functional rather than decorative design of interior library space. [note number=\'47\']See William Frederick Poole, Remarks on Library Construction (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, 1884).[/note] Moreover, the actual use of space in the Peabody in the late nineteenth century was at odds with its symbolic appeal. The main library was known as the “stack room”; readers were seated in a comparatively plain reading room on the other side of the main doors. In this arrangement, the librarians reigned inside the gorgeous “cathedral of books,” but the building’s potential to civilize the masses was lost.\r\n\r\nNow, of course, we do not send readers outside. Inside the “stack room,” we explicitly call visitors’ attention to its beauty to explain the connections between the library’s architecture and its collections—how both speak eloquently of Victorian values. At the same time, we who staff the library have relegated ourselves to its periphery. We work in the glassed-in room at one end that serves as a monitoring point and occasional classroom; the official “librarian’s office” in one corner—its luxurious proportions suggesting something like a sacristy and something like a robber baron’s lair—is now shared work-space stuffed with several desks and laden book trucks. There is another monitoring station near the main doors. I often do my work at the photography station, in the back of one of the alcoves [note type=\'figure\' number=\'20\']<a href=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/2011/04/archeology-of-archival-practice/fig-20-station/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-409\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-409\" title=\"fig 20 station\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://archivejournal.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/fig-20-station-336x252.jpg\" width=\"333\" height=\"250\" /></a>Photography station in the George Peabody Library.[/note]. It offers some privacy but is close enough to the central reading tables to be accessible to readers.\r\n\r\nThe space of the Peabody initiates other situational behaviors besides the norm of silence, and our work-station arrangements testify to this. The spatial re-centralizing of readers and marginalization of staff is not merely practical; it is a reflection of the modern office of librarianship. We are there to be of service, in a para-textual position. Consequently, our work should be out of sight; it should be separate from and secondary to the work that readers do. Our locations call upon us, in other words, to support the scholar’s effort to hide the “seams of [her] findings” by hiding the ways we contribute to that work—by the ways we sometimes do that work.\r\n\r\nI think about these complications as I escort the Mencken researchers to their table and walk back to the glassed-in office, where there is nothing pressing for me to do. I’d rather spend more time talking with them. I’d like to learn about their research and introduce them to some underappreciated parts of the collection. I’d like to share with them what I learned curating an exhibition of Mencken-related magazines and writing about one of those magazines. But I don’t want to get in their way; it’s likely that they are ready to get on with work that they don’t see as connected to mine. The professional norms of the archive are strong, and although I know how to talk about my research in many contexts—in presentations, interviews, hotel elevators—I haven’t figured out how to mix my scholarly role with the curatorial role I am supposed to play here, in the Peabody. In the end, I say nothing. Professional segregation is another kind of silence in the library.\r\n\r\nWe cannot change the archaeological record beneath our feet, but we can rearrange the fossils we dig up to create new narratives. We can tell different kinds of archive stories, including the story of what research in the archive was and is. Is it too idealistic to expect that dissolving the entrenched fantasies about archival research will make room for new methods? Is it naïve to imagine a space that, in putting into practice the archival turn’s preliminary insights about disciplinary and disorder, can support experimentation, facilitate connection across professions and disciplines, and enable new discoveries?','Disciplinarity and Disorder','','inherit','open','open','','2199-revision-25','','','2013-06-04 01:52:22','2013-06-04 01:52:22','',2199,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/2199-revision-25/',0,'revision','',0),(4758,3,'2013-06-15 23:51:02','2013-06-15 23:51:02','Librarians have long been critical collaborators with their faculty in higher-education classroom settings, teaching research-education principles and providing one-on-one help with students to locate and evaluate sources for research projects. Until recently, most of these student projects have been research papers of varying lengths; each writing experience is a solo project that leads students to monkish behavior in solitary library carrels and dorm rooms. Today\'s students have new opportunities to apply critical thinking and research skills in transformative digital and collaborative projects. At Harvard, for example, students in an African and African American Studies course recently created digital stories about music, language, and digital media in former Portuguese colonies. ((Carla D. Martin, “Wikipedia, Storify, and Zeega in the Classroom,” <i>Storify</i>, n.d., <a href=\"http://storify.com/carladmartin/storify-the-classroom\">http://storify.com/carladmartin/storify-the-classroom</a>. This provides an overview of the work students undertook at Harvard University in Carla D. Martin’s fall 2012 course, African and African American Studies 114x: From Cesaria Evora to Dama do Bling: Language, Music, and Digital Media in the Former Portuguese Colonies. Martin reported that she met with librarians before the semester to discuss copyright issues and best practices for working with students on multimedia projects. The librarians also put Martin in touch with faculty who undertook similar projects.)) This type of venture requires a different level of support from and collaboration with librarians who work in classroom settings. The digital landscape demands new roles for teaching librarians and archivists as they shepherd and coordinate a range of projects, working with students and faculty from initial visions to implementation questions to final products.\r\n\r\nAs many courses begin to incorporate digital components, faculty must use course time to cover content <i>and</i> deal with the learning curve involved in utilizing new and unfamiliar digital tools. Faculty often do not have the time or capacity, for example, to teach students how to use blogging platforms or digital storytelling platforms. Teaching librarians and archivists are natural collaborators to facilitate digital learning in classrooms. Especially on liberal arts college campuses, it is increasingly common for teaching librarians to count among their responsibilities the teaching of digital tools and use of instructional technology. Librarians can provide one-stop support for faculty and students in classes with digital research and project components. ((Barbara A. Rockenbach, “Archives, Undergraduates, and Inquiry-Based Learning: Case Studies from Yale University Library,” <i>American Archivist</i> 74, no. 1 (2011): 297.)) Teaching librarians and archivists focus on process: how to use software, how to deploy archival sources, how to understand the finer points of copyright, and how to support and preserve projects and their accompanying data for the long term. We can leave the content to faculty; though we may be subject experts, one of our unsung strengths lies in project management, in the shepherding of student research from amorphous ideas to concrete sets of questions. We can collaborate with faculty to implement project guidelines that meet students’ learning goals and that can support digital projects on various platforms, including curated exhibits that engage a range of critical thinking skills.\r\n\r\n<b>Skills for Teaching Librarians &amp; Archivists in the Digital Age</b>\r\n\r\nTeaching librarians and archivists are no longer simply bibliographers or collections experts. Now they are research and technology sherpas, guiding faculty and students towards meaningful learning experiences and successful projects. The digital age requires us to have a new suite of skills that prepares us to support digital scholarship in classrooms or to communicate effectively with teams of technologists and information professionals—instructional technologists, reference archivists, GIS specialists, and visual resources librarians—on a range of projects. Teaching librarians and archivists may also be:\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li><b>Digital Humanists</b> who use the “methods of contemporary humanities in studying digital objects.” ((Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “The Humanities, Done Digitally,” <i>The Chronicle of Higher Education</i>, May 8, 2011, sec. The Digital Campus 2011, <a href=\"http://chronicle.com/article/The-Humanities-Done-Digitally/127382/\">http://chronicle.com/article/The-Humanities-Done-Digitally/127382/</a>.)) Projects like Around DH in 80 days provide an opportunity for seasoned DH practitioners and newbies alike to engage with the Digital Humanities in a global context. ((“Around DH in 80 Days,” <i>Global Outlook::Digital Humanities</i>, February 4, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/around-dh-in-80-days/\">http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/around-dh-in-80-days/</a>. This project grew out of an information-sharing project that Digital Scholarship Coordinator Alex Gill undertook in the Columbia University Libraries to showcase new digital humanities work around the world.)) Other recent examples of successful Digital Humanities projects include Jen Rajchel’s senior thesis on Marianne Moore’s Bryn Mawr poetry, Harvard\'s efforts to reimagine teaching, and the work of Emory University faculty, technologists, and librarians to build interactive maps to track lynchings in Georgia. ((Jen Rajchel, “Introduction,” <i>Mooring Gaps: Marianne Moore’s Bryn Mawr Poetry</i>, n.d., <a href=\"http://mooreandpoetry.blogs.brynmawr.edu/\">http://mooreandpoetry.blogs.brynmawr.edu</a>. Rajchel reported that the director of library collections, the head of special collections, and the curator for rare books and manuscripts supported the project in terms of exploring collections, learning to use microfilm, and navigating copyright. “Lynchings in Georgia (1875-1930),” n.d., <a href=\"http://web.library.emory.edu/disc/projects/lynchings-georgia-1875-1930\">http://web.library.emory.edu/disc/projects/lynchings-georgia-1875-1930</a>. “Projects | metaLAB (at) Harvard,” n.d., <a href=\"http://metalab.harvard.edu/projects/\">http://metalab.harvard.edu/projects/</a>.))</li>\r\n	<li><b>Trend spotters</b> who scan the horizon for emerging tools and technologies, evaluate them, and introduce them in projects and undergraduate classrooms. Should libraries buy 3-D printers? How can libraries support MOOCs? Communities of practice like <a href=\"https://sites.google.com/a/edu-isis.org/isis/\">ISIS</a> and THATCamp help support the continuous professional development of librarians and information technologists through online seminars and drop-in sessions, where they can discuss emerging trends and best practices.</li>\r\n	<li><b>Adjudicators </b>who understand comprehensively the copyrights of moving and still images and other archival materials in print and digital form. Using resources like the <i><a href=\"http://policynotes.arl.org/\">Association of Research Libraries’ Policy Notes blog</a></i> and Nancy Sims’ <a href=\"http://blog.lib.umn.edu/copyrightlibn/\">excellent copyright guide blog</a>, teaching librarians and archivists knowledgeable in this area can help faculty and students navigate the murky and shifting copyright landscape. These adjudicators can support exciting research and projects that blend old formats with new media.</li>\r\n	<li><b>Project Managers </b>who coordinate larger-scale projects and facilitate collaborative projects among groups of students in undergraduate settings. Exciting initiatives like the winter and summer Digital Humanities Institutes bring faculty, librarians, students, and museum professionals together to tackle project development and management through their curriculums. Project management encompasses far more than ensuring that timelines are met and workload evenly distributed among team members. Project management requires leadership and vision to empower teams and to deploy new tools for new goals.</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nWhile teaching librarians and archivists are uniquely positioned to help integrate student learning objectives with project outcomes and to create new opportunities for curriculum engagement, they are also facing a moment of creative destruction of some of the more traditional elements of librarianship. Embracing instructional work in the digital age means rethinking how teaching librarians and archivists spend their valuable time. For example, many teaching librarians are also selectors for library materials, so they could probably have more time for integrative teaching and digital project management if vendor-approval plans and patron-driven acquisitions automated collection-development work. While some might bemoan this as a loss of some of the “artisan” qualities of librarianship, it is an opportunity to reimagine public-facing positions to meet the needs of the rapidly changing higher-education landscape. As libraries move away from being simply content collectors to content creators, librarians and archivists must also make sometimes scary but necessary transitions. ((Brian Matthews, <i>“Think Like a Startup: </i><i>a white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism,” </i>April 2012, <a href=\"http://hdl.handle.net/10919/18649\">http://hdl.handle.net/10919/18649</a>.))\r\n\r\nTogether, faculty and librarians can collaborate to make meaningful assignments and learning experiences for undergraduate students within a new digital framework.  Such partnerships ensure that students\' first forays into this area are successful, but can also help more advanced practitioners on more complicated projects. No student or faculty member can complete successful digital projects on their own; such projects require a village of librarians, archivists, technologists, faculty, and students to build, implement, and sustain them.','Teaching Librarians & Project Management: New Expectations for the Digital Age','','inherit','open','open','','4689-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 23:51:02','2013-06-15 23:51:02','',4689,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4689-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4560,1,'2013-06-05 20:25:20','2013-06-05 20:25:20','How have you worked with undergraduates in archives and/or special collections?','Undergraduates in the Archives - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4256-autosave','','','2013-06-05 20:25:20','2013-06-05 20:25:20','',4256,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4256-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4561,1,'2013-06-05 20:26:27','2013-06-05 20:26:27','I have only recently begun experimenting with using archival materials in the classroom, so I am still learning how to achieve the best results. Initially, I began by limiting student involvement to two or three weeks of the semester. I found that, practically, the students did much better when they worked in groups, in part because of the potential for some students to be more engaged than others, and in part because the students enjoyed being part of a team. Penn, of course, is home to the Wharton School of Business, and I often have a few Wharton students in class. These students helpfully pointed out that many Wharton classes assign students to a team in order to better prepare them for the private sector. This also allows the students to divide up the work according to each individual’s skill set. I have found the team-oriented approach—with all of the teams working together as one larger group devoted to producing a quality product for Native American clients—to work very well in the highly professionalized culture of Penn. However, this culture is double edged, for it also makes it difficult to attract pre-professional students to courses on Native American studies, which is not a program or a department at Penn.\n\nAs I became more comfortable and was able to prepare more quickly for the semester, I found that I could make more materials available to the students. I try to balance the students’ exposure to the originals by providing them with digital surrogates and by visiting the Penn Museum and the APS. This can be challenging because the APS is not set up for student visits; it is only because of my position as Director of Native American projects that I am able to arrange for a classroom to view original documents. The Penn Museum, on the other hand, actively encourages professors to bring their classes and provides access to the storage facilities. This planning paid off when, to my surprise, the students asked to have more time to work on their projects. Last semester, one student suggested that the entire semester should be devoted to creating the exhibits for the class project. When we talked about this together, the students expressed that they felt their work with archival materials would be more meaningful if they learned more about their historical and cultural background. The best students had done this research on their own, but I realized that the early part of the course could be structured to teach the students a great deal more about the cultural context of the archival materials, which would result in them understanding the materials better and doing a better job designing the exhibits. So this spring I am devoting an entire semester of a graduate seminar to researching archival materials and creating a digital exhibit based on student research. The APS recently acquired more than 500 hours of audio recordings related to Ojibwe culture in northern Canada (the acquisition was an outcome of the Pimachiowin Aki collaboration). The first five weeks of the class will be devoted to teaching the students the religious background necessary to understand the Ojibwe ceremonies being discussed; the ethics of working with religious materials in terms of what can or cannot be placed on the web; and basic archival skills so that the students can create a database and tags to make this new material more accessible to scholars and the Ojibwe communities where the material originated. All of the students’ work will be donated to those communities and the database will be housed at the APS.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Powell 5','I have only recently begun experimenting with using archival materials in the classroom, so I am still learning how to achieve the best results. Initially, I began by limiting student involvement to two or three weeks of the semester. I found that, practically, the students did much better when they worked in groups, in part because of the potential for some students to be more engaged than others, and in part because the students enjoyed being part of a team.','inherit','open','open','','1589-autosave','','','2013-06-05 20:26:27','2013-06-05 20:26:27','',1589,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1589-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4562,1,'2013-06-10 00:52:43','2013-06-10 00:52:43','','Archives Remixed - Editor','','publish','closed','closed','','acf_archives-remixed-editor','','','2013-06-27 03:59:50','2013-06-27 03:59:50','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?post_type=acf&#038;p=4562',0,'acf','',0),(4563,1,'2013-05-15 03:01:49','2013-05-15 03:01:49','“So, how do we bring students to our table?” That was the question a special collections librarian asked in 1999. <sup><a id=\"ref1\" href=\"#fn1\">[1]</a></sup> Now, in 2012, the question is no longer <em>how</em>: “Teaching with primary source materials is unquestionably ‘hot’ in higher education [as] authentic rare books, manuscripts, or archival documents\" appear in many undergraduate classrooms. <sup><a id=\"ref2\" href=\"#fn2\">[2]</a></sup>\r\n\r\nThe table is full; the effort to bring undergraduates into special collections and archives has been enormously successful. What matters now is how to turn these encounters to account. What happens in the archival laboratory, a place where students are actively involved in research, stewardship, publication, and exhibits? How do librarians, curators, archivists, instructors, and technology specialists collaborate to get such projects off the ground? How do we make use of these encounters to develop research and interpretive skills, showcase students’ findings, and learn from their discoveries? What do students report that they have gained through their archival experiences?\r\n\r\nIn this issue of “Archives, Remixed,” we present six case studies illustrating inventive solutions to these dilemmas of success. The parameters and formats of these projects demonstrate the diversity of ways to teach with primary source materials: not all of the projects take place in a classroom context (although some do); not all the student work is authored singly (although some is). Some projects involve one institution, while others involve partnerships with local organizations or other universities or colleges; some projects are more analog, others more digital; and some end when the student’s work is complete, while others continue. The projects all have historical claims, but the array of objects under consideration—architectural drawings, photographs, ancient statuary, newspaper clippings, rare books, personal mementos—speaks to many disciplines. The academic institutions where these projects originate, from a community college to liberal arts colleges to a research university, vary as much as the projects themselves.\r\n\r\nEach case study focuses on the work students produce in these archival encounters. On each case-study page, you will find a sample of student work accompanied by a project description; commentary on the project by the student(s); commentary from the teachers, librarians, and/or technologists who structured the projects and guided students through them; as well as links to related or additional resources.\r\n\r\nWe invite you to explore, to comment, and to use these case studies as fodder for your own research and teaching projects.\r\n<div class=\"footnote\"><sup id=\"fn1\">[1]</sup>Allen, Susan M. “Rare Books and the College Library: Current Practices in Marrying Undergraduates to Special Collections.” Rare Books &amp; Manuscripts Librarianship 13.2 (Spring 1999): 110-19.</div>\r\n<div class=\"footnote\"><sup id=\"fn1\">[2]</sup> Bahde, Anne. “Taking the Show on the Road: Special Collections Instruction in the Campus Classroom.” RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, &amp; Cultural Heritage 12.2 (Fall 2011): 75.</div>','Student Project Case Studies','What happens in the archival laboratory, a place where students are actively involved in research, stewardship, publication, and exhibits? These six case studies answer this question by showcasing student work that emerges from hands-on archival work, including course papers, robots, digitized images, documentary film, and more.  Each case study features the student work, accompanied and contextualized by a project description; commentary on the project by the student(s); and commentary from the teachers, librarians, and/or technologists who worked with the students.','inherit','open','open','','1711-revision-9','','','2013-05-15 03:01:49','2013-05-15 03:01:49','',1711,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1711-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(4564,1,'2013-05-22 03:28:29','2013-05-22 03:28:29','Matthew Saunders worked on the image below. His work on it is now part of the Southeast Tennessee Digital Archive (SETDA). You can find the whole archive <a href=\"http://www.clevelandstatecc.edu/setda/\" target=\"_blank\">here</a>, and the items Saunders contributed <a href=\"http://csccdigital.cdmhost.com/cdm/singleitem/collection/p4024coll8/id/216\" target=\"_blank\">here</a>.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_1368\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"232\"]<img class=\"wp-image-1368 \" title=\"cscc_student work_sample material\" alt=\"Image of James A. Bible (c. 1860) from the Ramsey Family Papers (MS 81).\" src=\"http://stage.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/cscc_student-work_sample-material.jpg\" width=\"232\" height=\"384\" /> Image of James A. Bible (c. 1860) from the Ramsey Family Papers (MS 81). Used by permission of Cleveland Public Library.[/caption]','History Lab: Combining Service Learning, Research Methods, and Digital Archives','This case study features the work of a student who took History Lab, an introductory history and service-learning course at Cleveland State Community College (CSCC). He researched individual items from a local cultural heritage organization that were then digitized, described, and published online in the <a href=\"http://www.clevelandstatecc.edu/setda/\" target=\"_blank\">Southeast Tennessee Digital Archive</a> (SETDA). ','inherit','open','open','','1018-revision-11','','','2013-05-22 03:28:29','2013-05-22 03:28:29','',1018,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1018-revision-11/',0,'revision','',0),(4567,3,'2013-06-15 03:00:34','2013-06-15 03:00:34','','Manuscript from \"Archives de Jeremie\"','Manuscript from \"Archives de Jeremie.\"  University of Florida Digital Collections.  http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00098977/00001.','inherit','open','open','','l_an_dix_sept_cent_quatre_vingt_treise_page_01','','','2013-06-15 03:00:34','2013-06-15 03:00:34','',2045,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/l_an_dix_sept_cent_quatre_vingt_treise_Page_01.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(4568,3,'2013-06-15 03:02:32','2013-06-15 03:02:32','Archival research is an important source for coursework and teaching, as professors and instructors are increasingly incorporating work with primary documents into undergraduate courses. Because access to primary resources is often restricted by research room hours, and can be further limited because of preservation concerns if materials are extremely fragile or if collections are not fully inventoried, this kind of research takes time. Despite this, many student researchers leave archives with a great deal more information than they will be able to explore in their written scholarship. Students’ research goals also inform their actual practice, although, due to the many pleasures and challenges of working with primary documents, even the best intentions often change dramatically when working through a collection of materials. Whatever the situation, undergraduates working with primary documents need to be aware of a number of general recommendations, in addition to any particular archive’s specific rules.\r\n\r\nThough the individual archive or library is the best first source of information for working with specific collections, the following resources provide general information about working effectively with archival materials that may be of use to students and/or their teachers.\r\n<h1>Resources for Working with Primary Source Documents</h1>\r\n<h3></h3>\r\n<h3>Comprehensive</h3>\r\nSchmidt, Laura. “Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research.” <em>Society of American Archivists</em>. 2011. <a href=\"http://www2.archivists.org/usingarchives\">http://www2.archivists.org/usingarchives</a>. An excellent primer for using archives, with considerations such as: “What Are Archives and How do They Differ from Libraries?”; “Requesting Materials Remotely”; “Planning to Visit an Archive”; and “Notes on Copyright, Restrictions, and Unprocessed Collections.”\r\n<h3>Handling Documents</h3>\r\nNational Archives (UK). “Handling Documents.” <em>The National Archives.</em> 2011. <a href=\"http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/visit/document-handling.htm\">http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/visit/document-handling.htm</a>. A basic overview for handling documents, including best practices and an explanation of common types of documents and handling needs.\r\n\r\nNational Park Service. “Handling Archival Documents and Manuscripts.” <em>Conserve O Gram </em>19, no. 17 (Sept. 1996). <a href=\"http://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/19-17.pdf\">http://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/19-17.pdf</a>. A brief guide focused on handling archival documents and manuscripts organized into a series of do’s and don’ts, including setting up the research area, moving materials, and dealing with problems (brittle, damaged, attached, and contaminated materials).\r\n<h3>Working in Archives</h3>\r\nArchives of American Art. “Frequently Asked Questions.” <em>Archives of American Art: Ask Us.</em> 2011. <a href=\"http://www.aaa.si.edu/askus/faq\">http://www.aaa.si.edu/askus/faq</a>: A general FAQ addressing basic questions and providing policy information, such as the need for researchers to schedule appointments, a useful reminder no matter which archive you plan to use.\r\n\r\nNew York University Libraries. “Using Archives and Manuscripts.” <em>New York</em><em> University</em><em> Libraries: Research Guides.</em> 2011. <a href=\"http://nyu.libguides.com/content.php?pid=38517\">http://nyu.libguides.com/content.php?pid=38517</a>. Intended for researchers using NYU collections, this guide also provides general relevant information, including definitions, recommendations on handling materials, and best practices for archival research.\r\n<h3>Teaching</h3>\r\nThe National Archives Experience (US). “Tool Box.”<em> The National Archives Experience: Educators and Students. </em>2011. <a href=\"http://www.archives.gov/nae/education/tool-box.html\">http://www.archives.gov/nae/education/tool-box.html</a>. The “Tool Box” includes many basic documents explaining the benefits of teaching with primary sources, basics for teaching with primary documents, and links to teaching workshops and collaborative opportunities (<a href=\"http://www.archives.gov/nae/education/collaboration.html\">http://www.archives.gov/nae/education/collaboration.html</a>)\r\n\r\nNational Archives of Australia. <em>Vrroom: Virtual Reading Room</em>. 2011. <a href=\"http://vrroom.naa.gov.au/\">http://vrroom.naa.gov.au/</a>. With a tagline of “easy access to archival records for teachers and students,” <em>Vrroom</em> is designed as a full virtual reading room, allowing users to search and browse archival collections, as well as providing support for teaching and research.\r\n<h3>Working with Technology in Archives</h3>\r\nBateman, Kirklin, Sheila Brennan, Douglas Mudd, and Paula Petrik. “Taking a Byte Out of the Archives: Making Technology Work for You.” <em>Perspectives Online </em>43, no. 1: (Jan. 2005)\r\n<a href=\"http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2005/0501/0501arc1.cfm\">http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2005/0501/0501arc1.cfm</a>. A useful overview of working with technology in archives, as well as maintaining electronic documents and notes from archival research. Published in 2005, the guide is somewhat dated (it does not include Zotero, for example, which rolled out in 2006).','How to Work with Primary Source Documents','','inherit','open','open','','2045-autosave','','','2013-06-15 03:02:32','2013-06-15 03:02:32','',2045,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/2045-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4570,3,'2013-06-15 03:35:08','2013-06-15 03:35:08','','Phillis_Wheatley_frontispiece_bynum_library of congress','Frontispiece engraving of poet Phillis Wheatley from her book, <em>Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral</em>, 1773. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress. ','inherit','open','open','','phillis_wheatley_frontispiece_bynum_library-of-congress','','','2013-06-15 03:35:08','2013-06-15 03:35:08','',4513,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Phillis_Wheatley_frontispiece_bynum_library-of-congress.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(4571,3,'2013-05-29 23:58:59','2013-05-29 23:58:59','<div>\r\n\r\nThis summer, I found myself in an archive. I went to the American Antiquarian Society to participate in its 2012 Summer Seminar in the History of the Book, “Early African American Cultures of Print,” led by Jordan Stein and Lara Langer Cohen. I sat and broke bread with a group of scholars that came together to speak of history and the stories it tells or refuses to tell. We later went in search of stories—to be remembered, recovered, pieced together and then told by us. By way of our discussions on the meaning of print, ownership (bodies and copyright) and the book, I learned manners of thinking that questioned the very meaning of authorship and examined the varied ways of authenticity, racial or otherwise. Our collective discussions tested the rigid boundaries of African American identity and print culture(s) and offered instead a radically inclusive view of the intersection of printmaking, storytelling, and race.\r\n\r\nOne afternoon, I had a conversion experience. What follows remembers me on the threshing floor (or maybe, the AAS seminar room). While standing on this floor, I took up a conversation with the object (or the archival holy spirit of 18<sup>th</sup> century poet and former slave, Phillis Wheatley) that helped make me anew.\r\n\r\nTo the first edition of Phillis Wheatley’s <em>Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral</em> (1773):\r\n\r\nPhillis, I have a confession. I don’t like archives. They creep me out. I’m scared of the stories living in the bound tomes that await the curious because there’s something terrifying about the very fact of what’s past. If it’s past, it was at some point real. If it’s still here, is it the past or simply passing on—to us? I fear that history really does live (just watch reruns of <em>The Ghost Whisperer</em>). And, the stories speak despite the varied ways in which we seek to silence them—whether in the space of our memories or in boxes at our institutions. Stories find storytellers even as we bury them in the lies. Despite my fears, something happened as I looked over the extant stuff of your life (handwritten poems to the Earl of Dartmouth and the students at Cambridge, the first edition of your poems, an almanac with your likeness reprinted).\r\n\r\nI touched the past. My fingers touched the materiality of what’s right here, passed on to me by a team of archivists in climate-controlled rooms. “This is real,” I heard myself say, “Phillis, you are real.”\r\n\r\nThe old pages didn’t give me the creeps. Instead, each asked me into something beyond the spooky ephemeral quality of the past. “It’s supposed to be passed, dead, not here, right?” I held the paper (albeit through a plastic sheath) that you touched and saw the penmanship that you must have practiced. I sat with the drafted poems that did not make it into the first edition sitting to next me. I wanted more not less stuff. I didn’t want to stare at a digitized version. I wanted to sit right there. I didn’t want to run away from the story in front of me.\r\n\r\nYes, I had a conversion experience. I can hear the song now, “Was once a hater of the archive but now I’m found in it.” Admittedly, I wasn’t struck to the ground like my buddy, the itinerant minister and chaplain to the African Lodge No. 459, John Marrant and countless other Christian converts, but I did come upon a “saving change.” I said yes to it and the archive. I embarked upon a week of treasure-troving through a past that I was once taught did not exist.\r\n\r\nI can see the concerned faces of those who’ve said, “18th century African American literature, huh? Who could you possibly work on, … Zora Neale Hurston?” I laughed then as I do now. But my laughs are for me. I giggle at the fears that kept me away from the material quality of the past I study. And look forward to another time when I can frolic among the stories waiting for us to see and to hear them. So with eyes that can see and ears that can I hear, I journey on. Thank you.\r\n\r\nGeared up for the archive,\r\n\r\nTara Bynum\r\n\r\n</div>','On the Threshing Floor; Or, Just Another Day at the Archive','','inherit','open','open','','4513-revision-4','','','2013-05-29 23:58:59','2013-05-29 23:58:59','',4513,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4513-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4572,3,'2013-06-15 20:46:36','2013-06-15 20:46:36','As research and teaching produce ever-increasing amounts of data in analog and digital forms, what we do with that data is a question that librarians, archivists, scholars, teachers, and students must address. The four contributors discuss what “data curation” is and might become. We invite you to read through the responses by author or by question.','The Practice of Data Curation','','publish','open','open','','data-curation-curating-the-digital-curating-the-analog','','','2013-07-10 19:41:17','2013-07-10 19:41:17','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4572',0,'post','',0),(4574,3,'2013-06-15 20:36:54','2013-06-15 20:36:54','','Gretchen Gueguen','','publish','closed','closed','','cap-gretchen-gueguen','','','2013-07-08 16:31:36','2013-07-08 16:31:36','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?post_type=guest-author&#038;p=4574',0,'guest-author','',0),(4789,3,'2013-06-22 04:52:43','2013-06-22 04:52:43','','gueguen_webphoto3','','inherit','open','open','','gueguen_webphoto3','','','2013-06-22 04:52:43','2013-06-22 04:52:43','',4574,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/gueguen_webphoto3.gif',0,'attachment','image/gif',0),(4573,3,'2013-06-15 20:26:54','2013-06-15 20:26:54','As research and teaching, in analog or digital forms, produce ever-increasing amounts of data, what we do with that data is an issue that librarians, archivists, scholars, teachers, and students must address. In this issue\'s \"360,\" four contributors discuss what \"data curation\" looks like fra new .  They each answer a seires of four questions to report on what the practice of data curation looks like for them, what pressures it faces, w--, hands-on work with archives has been incorporated into undergraduate education.  They each answer a series of five questions to report on what they have done, what worked or not, and what value bringing archives into the classroom, or the classroom into the archive, has.  We invite you to read through the responses by author or by question.','Data Curation: Curating the Digital, Curating the Analog','','inherit','open','open','','4572-revision','','','2013-06-15 20:26:54','2013-06-15 20:26:54','',4572,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4572-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4577,3,'2013-06-15 20:39:16','2013-06-15 20:39:16','','Inna Kouper','','publish','closed','closed','','cap-inna-kouper','','','2013-07-08 16:32:03','2013-07-08 16:32:03','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?post_type=guest-author&#038;p=4577',0,'guest-author','',0),(4578,3,'2013-06-15 20:38:48','2013-06-15 20:38:48','','kouper_webphoto','','inherit','open','open','','kouper_webphoto','','','2013-06-15 20:38:48','2013-06-15 20:38:48','',4577,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/kouper_webphoto.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(4579,3,'2013-06-15 20:41:19','2013-06-15 20:41:19','','Sam Meister','','publish','closed','closed','','cap-sam-meister','','','2013-07-08 16:41:20','2013-07-08 16:41:20','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?post_type=guest-author&#038;p=4579',0,'guest-author','',0),(4580,3,'2013-06-15 20:41:10','2013-06-15 20:41:10','','meister_webphoto','','inherit','open','open','','meister_webphoto','','','2013-06-15 20:41:10','2013-06-15 20:41:10','',4579,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/meister_webphoto.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(4581,3,'2013-06-15 20:45:11','2013-06-15 20:45:11','','Trevor Muñoz','','publish','closed','closed','','cap-trevor-munoz','','','2013-07-08 16:44:39','2013-07-08 16:44:39','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?post_type=guest-author&#038;p=4581',0,'guest-author','',0),(4586,3,'2013-06-15 20:58:33','2013-06-15 20:58:33','','munoz_webphoto copy','','inherit','open','open','','munoz_webphoto-copy','','','2013-06-15 20:58:33','2013-06-15 20:58:33','',4581,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/munoz_webphoto-copy.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(4583,3,'2013-06-15 20:46:27','2013-06-15 20:46:27','As research and teaching, in analog or digital forms, produce ever-increasing amounts of data, what we do with that data is an issue that librarians, archivists, scholars, teachers, and students must address. In this issue\'s \"360,\" four contributors discuss what \"data curation\" is and will be.  We invite you to read through the responses by author or by question.','Data Curation: Curating the Digital, Curating the Analog','','inherit','open','open','','4572-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 20:46:27','2013-06-15 20:46:27','',4572,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4572-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4999,3,'2013-07-06 23:29:37','2013-07-06 23:29:37','As research and teaching produce ever-increasing amounts of data in analog and digital forms, what we do with that data is a question that librarians, archivists, scholars, teachers, and students must address. In this issue’s “360,” four contributors discuss what “data curation” is and might become.','Data Curation: Curating the Digital, Curating the Analog','','inherit','open','open','','4572-revision-4','','','2013-07-06 23:29:37','2013-07-06 23:29:37','',4572,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4572-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(4589,3,'2013-06-15 21:03:17','2013-06-15 21:03:17','Archival work <em>is</em> my curriculum. Integrating it into the broader university curriculum has been a long-term project. The year I started at Wesleyan, I began an intensive, perhaps even aggressive, approach to bringing classes into Special Collections &amp; Archives (SC&amp;A). The first step was to find a close connection between our holdings and Wesleyan’s curriculum. To do this, I studied the course catalog carefully and matched holdings to what was being taught. I wrote detailed letters to each faculty member whose course seemed to connect well to our holdings. Although I used the same basic form for each letter, I tailored each one with a specific list of items I would show to the class if they would come in for a visit. (At the time, a letter still had more impact than an email message.) In the first year alone, this effort resulted in twenty-four class sessions for nineteen different courses and a total of 276 students. As the program has grown, certain trends have emerged. Perhaps not surprisingly, the largest number of requests for class sessions comes from the American Studies, English, and History departments. Faculty in African American Studies; Astronomy; Classical Studies; Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Music; Romance Languages and Literatures; Science in Society; and Studio Art are regular participants as well. We have also hosted classes in atomic theory, computer science, dance, German, government, and sociology. By now, I have worked with upwards of one hundred different faculty members (including visitors and non-tenure-track faculty) to bring classes to SC&amp;A. This often includes helping them to design assignments that reinforce or build on the visit to SC&amp;A, while enhancing the pedagogical goals of the course and promoting the use of our collections. At this point, the program needs very little advertising to sustain itself, although I do still send reminders to some faculty to schedule a class visit, and I encourage new faculty to consider the possibility when our holdings are a good match for their courses.','Undergraduates in the Archives - Taraba 5','Archival work <em>is</em> my curriculum. Integrating it into the broader university curriculum has been a long-term project. The year I started at Wesleyan, I began an intensive, perhaps even aggressive, approach to bringing classes into Special Collections &amp; Archives (SC&amp;A). The first step was to find a close connection between our holdings and Wesleyan’s curriculum. To do this, I studied the course catalog carefully and matched holdings to what was being taught.','inherit','open','open','','1571-autosave','','','2013-06-15 21:03:17','2013-06-15 21:03:17','',1571,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/1571-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(4590,3,'2013-06-15 21:10:10','2013-06-15 21:10:10','I am the Digital Archivist for the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. We collect materials in many areas, but primarily we are concerned with humanities and social sciences (broadly speaking). This means that I work with everything from 20-year-old floppy disks that might contain the work of a contemporary novelist, to hard drives of architectural design files created over the last 20 years, to the electronic “papers” of a modern local organization saved to Google Docs. The materials I work with generally have no unifying characteristics; they represent a wide variety of ages, types, formats, carrier media, and data size.\r\n\r\nData curation, to me, means ensuring that data is safely transferred from its original context (such as a disk, a hard drive, or an email account) into the archive. Since much of the material I get was created in the past and lives on obsolescent software or hardware, sometimes just figuring out how to read the disk is a challenge. With any type of material, I need to capture metadata about it, such as its size, data type, and other important details. Knowing these details at the beginning means that in the future I can verify that it has not corrupted. I also document the chain of custody and any preservation actions taken, which could potentially have an impact on future use. If I am lucky, I get the opportunity to work with donors who still have access to their data. In those cases I can gather information from them about their computer use: How do they organize files? How much do they use social media? Do they create things in electronic form, or do they use a combination of paper and electronic files to do their work? Knowing the answers to these questions helps me piece together the context of their collection so that it can be understood in the future.','Gueguen - Question1','I am the Digital Archivist for the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. We collect materials in many areas, but primarily we are concerned with humanities and social sciences (broadly speaking). This means that I work with everything from 20-year-old floppy disks that might contain the work of a contemporary novelist, to hard drives of architectural design files ...','publish','open','open','','gueguen-question1','','','2013-07-09 01:57:53','2013-07-09 01:57:53','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4590',0,'post','',0),(4591,3,'2013-06-15 21:10:07','2013-06-15 21:10:07','I am the Digital Archivist for the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. We collect materials in many areas, but primarily we are concerned with humanities and social sciences (broadly speaking). This means that I work with everything from 20-year-old floppy disks that might contain the work of a contemporary novelist, to hard drives of architectural design files created over the last 20 years, to the electronic “papers” of a modern local organization saved to Google Docs. The materials I work with generally have no unifying characteristics; they represent a wide variety of ages, types, formats, carrier media, and data size.\n\nData curation, to me, means ensuring that data is safely transferred from its original context (such as a disk, a hard drive, or an email account) into the archive. Since much of the material I get was created in the past and lives on obsolescent software or hardware, sometimes just figuring out how to read the disk is a challenge. With any type of material, I need to capture metadata about it, such as its size, data type, and other important details. Knowing these details at the beginning means that in the future I can verify that it has not corrupted. I also document the chain of custody and any preservation actions taken, which could potentially have an impact on future use. If I am lucky, I get the opportunity to work with donors who still have access to their data. In those cases I can gather information from them about their computer use: How do they organize files? How much do they use social media? Do they create things in electronic form, or do they use a combination of paper and electronic files to do their work? Knowing the answers to these questions helps me piece together the context of their collection so that it can be understood in the future.','Gueguen - Question1','','inherit','open','open','','4590-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:10:07','2013-06-15 21:10:07','',4590,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4590-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4592,3,'2013-06-15 21:11:28','2013-06-15 21:11:28','I think that the answer is different if you look at pressures and needs separately. From my perspective in a research university, the sciences, social sciences, and humanities have similar needs, but to differing degrees. All three need to create infrastructure and standardization to make the data they are currently producing accessible in the future. If you look at the continuum of long-term use, the sciences have a much shorter lifespan for usable data, while the humanities have the longest (with the social sciences in between). On the other hand, the sciences are probably producing the greatest amount of data, while the humanities generate the smallest amount (again, social sciences fall somewhere in between). Because the humanities have a longer-term approach to research, additional issues of obsolescence come into play, like when a scholar is studying gaming in the 1980s or literature written on computers in the 1990s. In addition, the science data of today could become the historical data of tomorrow, so all of this data exists in a continuum, from my perspective.\r\n\r\nPressures, on the other hand, tend to be somewhat similar. Scholarly communication is undergoing a transformation in many respects. The traditional activities behind the creation of academic knowledge (research, writing, peer review, publishing) are being challenged by the open access movement and the emergence of big data. In addition, both science and humanities granting agencies are beginning to require data management plans. These pressures add up to changes in how data is created and managed. In the past, a scholar might have published a paper with the results of a study done using a large data set. Others could read the results, and perhaps do another study of a similar set in the future. All of this happened within the domain of academic publishing. Now, that scholar may have instead published his or her research paper in an open access journal that is only published on the web. The agency that funded that work may also expect the researcher to ensure the preservation and availability of the original dataset. This creates new information needs for both the scholar who needs help storing and providing access to his or her data, as well as the researcher who wants to find and use that data.\r\n\r\nIn this changing environment, the academic library can be a great ally to the community in helping ensure that the products of scholarship are secured for the future. More and more libraries, including UVa’s, are developing data consulting programs to help researchers develop data management plans, along with repositories to store data and provide access. The library needs to take these bold steps forward and let their academic colleagues know that we have the experience and ability to help with these monumental challenges.','Gueguen - Question 2','I think that the answer is different if you look at pressures and needs separately. From my perspective in a research university, the sciences, social sciences, and humanities have similar needs, but to differing degrees. All three need to create infrastructure and standardization to make the data they are currently producing accessible in the future. ','publish','open','open','','gueguen-question-2','','','2013-06-22 04:15:13','2013-06-22 04:15:13','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4592',0,'post','',0),(4593,3,'2013-06-15 21:11:19','2013-06-15 21:11:19','I think that the answer is different if you look at pressures and needs separately. From my perspective in a research university, the sciences, social sciences, and humanities have similar needs, but to differing degrees. All three need to create infrastructure and standardization to make the data they are currently producing accessible in the future. If you look at the continuum of long-term use, the sciences have a much shorter lifespan for usable data, while the humanities have the longest (with the social sciences in between). On the other hand, the sciences are probably producing the greatest amount of data, while the humanities generate the smallest amount (again, social sciences fall somewhere in between). Because the humanities have a longer-term approach to research, additional issues of obsolescence come into play, like when a scholar is studying gaming in the 1980s or literature written on computers in the 1990s. In addition, the science data of today could become the historical data of tomorrow, so all of this data exists in a continuum, from my perspective.\n\nPressures, on the other hand, tend to be somewhat similar. Scholarly communication is undergoing a transformation in many respects. The traditional activities behind the creation of academic knowledge (research, writing, peer review, publishing) are being challenged by the open access movement and the emergence of big data. In addition, both science and humanities granting agencies are beginning to require data management plans. These pressures add up to changes in how data is created and managed. In the past, a scholar might have published a paper with the results of a study done using a large data set. Others could read the results, and perhaps do another study of a similar set in the future. All of this happened within the domain of academic publishing. Now, that scholar may have instead published his or her research paper in an open access journal that is only published on the web. The agency that funded that work may also expect the researcher to ensure the preservation and availability of the original dataset. This creates new information needs for both the scholar who needs help storing and providing access to his or her data, as well as the researcher who wants to find and use that data.\n\nIn this changing environment, the academic library can be a great ally to the community in helping ensure that the products of scholarship are secured for the future. More and more libraries, including UVa’s, are developing data consulting programs to help researchers develop data management plans, along with repositories to store data and provide access. The library needs to take these bold steps forward and let their academic colleagues know that we have the experience and ability to help with these monumental challenges.','Gueguen - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4592-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:11:19','2013-06-15 21:11:19','',4592,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4592-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4594,3,'2013-06-15 21:12:40','2013-06-15 21:12:40','Data curation is important to anyone who uses data or will be affected by the use of data, so everyone, really! The difficult part is to make the concept accessible and to convey the importance to those not working in a data curation setting. In academic circles the idea that a researcher’s valuable contribution to the field could be unreadable in as little as ten years makes an impression. Many of the activities that curators can use to ensure the preservation of data are not controversial, such as storing data in standard formats and creating preservation metadata. Another way that data curators try to minimize risk is by putting data into open repositories. Having the data accessible and usable ensures that it is not forgotten and continues to be migrated to accessible formats. (In addition, creating copies and storing them in multiple networks builds in redundancy that can provide an extra safeguard.) But there is some understandable resistance to making data open access. When researchers hear stories about data security risks or plagiarism, they can become concerned about participating in things like open archives.\r\n\r\nSimilarly, in the special collections and archives community I work in, donors are sometimes reluctant to allow open access to the electronic material in their collections. In many cases we can come up with compromises that are acceptable to all parties, but it usually involves a lot of discussion and calming of fears. In other cases, we have data that was gathered at some point in the past and does not have commercial value. But since we cannot find the creator in order to obtain permission (because he or she left the materials with the library many years ago and has since moved or even passed away), we must restrict access. In this scenario we need to adopt a risk-management approach, balancing the likelihood of copyright infringement with the value of access, and to state clearly that we will remove content from accessible spaces if copyright is proven. For these reasons it is important to us, as data curators, to make sure that everyone is aware of the impact of our copyright laws and curation activities. We must also attempt to clarify the rights the donor would like to retain when material is donated.','Gueguen - Question 3','Data curation is important to anyone who uses data or will be affected by the use of data, so everyone, really! The difficult part is to make the concept accessible and to convey the importance to those not working in a data curation setting. In academic circles the idea that a researcher’s valuable contribution to the field could be unreadable in as little as ten years makes an impression. Many of the activities that curators can use to ensure the preservation of data are not controversial, such as storing data in standard formats and creating preservation metadata. ','publish','open','open','','gueguen-question-3','','','2013-06-22 04:16:02','2013-06-22 04:16:02','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4594',0,'post','',0),(4595,3,'2013-06-15 21:12:36','2013-06-15 21:12:36','Data curation is important to anyone who uses data or will be affected by the use of data, so everyone, really! The difficult part is to make the concept accessible and to convey the importance to those not working in a data curation setting. In academic circles the idea that a researcher’s valuable contribution to the field could be unreadable in as little as ten years makes an impression. Many of the activities that curators can use to ensure the preservation of data are not controversial, such as storing data in standard formats and creating preservation metadata. Another way that data curators try to minimize risk is by putting data into open repositories. Having the data accessible and usable ensures that it is not forgotten and continues to be migrated to accessible formats. (In addition, creating copies and storing them in multiple networks builds in redundancy that can provide an extra safeguard.) But there is some understandable resistance to making data open access. When researchers hear stories about data security risks or plagiarism, they can become concerned about participating in things like open archives.\n\nSimilarly, in the special collections and archives community I work in, donors are sometimes reluctant to allow open access to the electronic material in their collections. In many cases we can come up with compromises that are acceptable to all parties, but it usually involves a lot of discussion and calming of fears. In other cases, we have data that was gathered at some point in the past and does not have commercial value. But since we cannot find the creator in order to obtain permission (because he or she left the materials with the library many years ago and has since moved or even passed away), we must restrict access. In this scenario we need to adopt a risk-management approach, balancing the likelihood of copyright infringement with the value of access, and to state clearly that we will remove content from accessible spaces if copyright is proven. For these reasons it is important to us, as data curators, to make sure that everyone is aware of the impact of our copyright laws and curation activities. We must also attempt to clarify the rights the donor would like to retain when material is donated.','Gueguen - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4594-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:12:36','2013-06-15 21:12:36','',4594,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4594-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4596,3,'2013-06-15 21:13:32','2013-06-15 21:13:32','I can clearly remember the first time I realized the essential paradox in the kind of work I do with older data. A researcher working on a biography asked me if I could recover the data from 99 5.25” and 3.5” floppy disks created between the mid-1980s and early-1990s. I spent dozens of hours imaging the disks, exporting the contents, extracting metadata, and weeding out the file slack and deleted data. Altogether I spent a month working on the project. In the end, the amount of data on those 99 disks could be zipped up and emailed. It was less than 10 MB.\r\n\r\nAs time goes on, the amount of data we work with gets larger and larger. On the other hand, the older the data are the more time and effort it usually takes to make them accessible. The only way our work will scale to that challenge is if we practice good data curation techniques now; that means using technical and preservation metadata, adhering to standards, and checking for data fixity on a routine basis.','Gueguen - Question 4','I can clearly remember the first time I realized the essential paradox in the kind of work I do with older data. A researcher working on a biography asked me if I could recover the data from 99 5.25” and 3.5” floppy disks created between the mid-1980s and early-1990s. I spent dozens of hours imaging the disks, exporting the contents, extracting metadata, and weeding out the file slack and deleted data.','publish','open','open','','gueguen-question-4','','','2013-06-22 04:16:47','2013-06-22 04:16:47','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4596',0,'post','',0),(4597,3,'2013-06-15 21:12:58','2013-06-15 21:12:58','','Gueguen - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4596-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:12:58','2013-06-15 21:12:58','',4596,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4596-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4598,3,'2013-06-15 21:14:41','2013-06-15 21:14:41','I would say that all of those factors are affecting data curation, and each is interrelated. The technology needs to be developed and available first so that infrastructure can be built on it. Libraries and archives have made a lot of progress in this area, especially in the realm of repository development. At UVa we were involved in the earliest stages of developing the Fedora digital repository, and we continue to develop this powerful tool. Fedora, and the offshoot, Hydra, provide the capacity to store digital objects of any kind. The repository can then interact with all kinds of tools that do things with those objects—index and search metadata, stream video, and display the pages of a book in order. The proliferation of data formats, operating systems, software, and media has been truly staggering in the last thirty years. Developing technology solutions like Fedora that will last and be interoperable is a huge task, but I think we are beginning to take on those challenges.\r\n\r\nWith technology in place, infrastructure—by which I mean a framework of standardization, organizational support, planning, and shared responsibilities—must follow in order to allow for successful adoption. If there is no infrastructure for using and supporting a certain technology, it can sometimes die out. For example UVa’s Fedora repository, is being developed using standard metadata schemes. Because these standards are widely used, the organization can trust that the digital object described with them will be understandable in the future. The organization can then feel confident investing staff resources in creating these objects and later will be able to share them with other repositories using similar standards. This sharing then increases the likelihood these objects will endure. Overall, the entire infrastructure supports the goals of long-term preservation. On the other hand, another example might be the adoption of a software tool that creates data in proprietary formats. If the infrastructure does not support that format (for example, other software cannot read it, or staff do not know how to use it), it will not be sustainable. Either the data in those formats will become obsolete and unrecoverable, or the infrastructure will have to adapt to support it.\r\n\r\nMany organizations, especially in the cultural heritage sector, lack this infrastructure, in part because they lack the staffing to develop and maintain it. Trends in higher education have seen library budgets plummet, and leaner staffing models are part of the fallout. These remaining staff members, in turn, are not always trained to keep up with cutting-edge developments in technology and standards. It makes sense that when your staff is busy on the reference desk, instructing classes, engaging in collection development, and meeting with faculty, learning an entirely new skill set will not get top priority. Libraries like UVa hire a staff with diverse talents and then find ways to help those employees work together. Digital Curators often tend to be “connectors” or “translators” helping bridge the divide between traditional data, archival practice, and modern technological tools. In turn, they help those on either side of the divide understand each other and work together better. Eventually, even the more traditional jobs begin to include more work with technology. Over time, this kind of savvy staffing translates into overall changes in the profession.','Gueguen - Question 5','I would say that all of those factors are affecting data curation, and each is interrelated. The technology needs to be developed and available first so that infrastructure can be built on it. Libraries and archives have made a lot of progress in this area, especially in the realm of repository development. ','publish','open','open','','gueguen-question-5','','','2013-06-22 04:17:34','2013-06-22 04:17:34','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4598',0,'post','',0),(4599,3,'2013-06-15 21:13:48','2013-06-15 21:13:48','','Gueguen - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4598-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:13:48','2013-06-15 21:13:48','',4598,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4598-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4601,3,'2013-06-15 21:21:36','2013-06-15 21:21:36','Three factors shape my perspective on data curation: my research interest in the changes in knowledge production over time and across domains; the goals of my CLIR/DLF postdoctoral fellowship; and the mission and activities of the research center where I work, the <a href=\"http://d2i.indiana.edu\">Data to Insight Center</a> (D2I) at Indiana University Bloomington.\r\n\r\nAs a data curation fellow at D2I, I help develop tools and best practices for data management, sharing, and preservation; I conduct research in the areas of data analytics and stewardship as well as digital humanities and digital libraries; and I advance data curation as both an important component of science and as a professional activity.\r\n\r\nMy primary involvement is with the <a href=\"http://sead-data.net\">Sustainable Environment, Actionable Data</a> (SEAD) project. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded SEAD to create national and global data research infrastructure via the program “Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partners (DataNet).” SEAD is a collaboration between the University of Michigan, Indiana University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that works to develop a digital environment that will support data curation and management workflows in sustainability science. D2I is developing Virtual Archive, a solution that provides federated deposit and access capabilities across multiple institutional repositories. A researcher or data curator can use Virtual Archive to automatically deposit data in one of the partner repositories or to search across those repositories and find the data that they need.\r\n\r\nFor SEAD Virtual Archive, I co-lead architectural, policy, and user-engagement activities and solutions. For example, I use my metadata and information organization expertise to improve the Virtual Archive data model and interface to support the dual needs of researchers and data curators. Currently, we are working on identifying layers of semantic information, such as the relationships between different data types within a dataset or the possible uses of data, which can help to describe heterogeneous or multi-variable datasets in sustainability science. I also use my expertise in social theory and the sociology of knowledge to identify barriers in data sharing and find suitable approaches to data sharing and preservation in relevant SEAD disciplines, such as ecology or hydrology.\r\n\r\nI am also involved in the <a href=\"http://d2i.indiana.edu/hathitrust-research-center\">HathiTrust Research Center</a> (HTRC) project. This project develops cyberinfrastructure to support the digital humanities in their work with massive amounts of texts derived from the HathiTrust Digital Library. My role in this project is primarily concerned with engagement and community development. If we want this project to succeed, it is crucial to let the community know about this environment and its capabilities, gather feedback so that we can continue improving it, and perhaps learn together about innovative research opportunities in text computations.\r\n\r\nEngagement and outreach are crucial for my data curation work. Many efforts to facilitate data sharing and preservation exist, yet it is still a relatively new component of scholarship and research. I work to help articulate the value of sharing and preserving data to research communities and to create opportunities to do so. We often talk about how important it is to ground our data tools in actual use cases, so I spend a significant amount of time thinking about how to connect to researchers and their data practices, how to find “data champions,” and how to create a framework to engage researchers in data exchanges. The latter is the focus of my efforts as an active member of the new global initiative called <a href=\"http://rd-alliance.org\">Research Data Alliance (</a>RDA), within which I, along with others, formed an engagement interest group. We had a successful planning meeting during the RDA plenary in March, and about 26 data practitioners and scientists attended. We shared many interesting ideas, such as creating a library of best practices and solutions. Our group is still in the early stages of development and we invite all who are interested to join. (The RDA-Engage forum thread can found <a href=\"http://forum.rd-alliance.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;t=26\">here</a>; to subscribe to the RDA-Engage mailing list visit <a href=\"http://lists.lists.rd-alliance.org/mailman/listinfo/rda-cwg-engage\">here.</a>)\r\n<div></div>','Kouper - Question 1','Three factors shape my perspective on data curation: my research interest in the changes in knowledge production over time and across domains; the goals of my CLIR/DLF postdoctoral fellowship; and the mission and activities of the research center where I work, the Data to Insight Center (D2I) at Indiana University Bloomington.','publish','open','open','','kouper-question-1','','','2013-06-22 04:19:13','2013-06-22 04:19:13','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4601',0,'post','',0),(4602,3,'2013-06-15 21:20:49','2013-06-15 21:20:49','Three factors shape my perspective on data curation: my research interest in the changes in knowledge production over time and across domains; the goals of my CLIR/DLF postdoctoral fellowship; and the mission and activities of the research center where I work, the <a href=\"http://d2i.indiana.edu\">Data to Insight Center</a> (D2I) at Indiana University Bloomington.\n\nAs a data curation fellow at D2I, I help develop tools and best practices for data management, sharing, and preservation; I conduct research in the areas of data analytics and stewardship as well as digital humanities and digital libraries; and I advance data curation as both an important component of science and as a professional activity.\n\nMy primary involvement is with the <a href=\"http://sead-data.net\">Sustainable Environment, Actionable Data</a> (SEAD) project. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded SEAD to create national and global data research infrastructure via the program “Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partners (DataNet).” SEAD is a collaboration between the University of Michigan, Indiana University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that works to develop a digital environment that will support data curation and management workflows in sustainability science. D2I is developing Virtual Archive, a solution that provides federated deposit and access capabilities across multiple institutional repositories. A researcher or data curator can use Virtual Archive to automatically deposit data in one of the partner repositories or to search across those repositories and find the data that they need.\n\nFor SEAD Virtual Archive, I co-lead architectural, policy, and user-engagement activities and solutions. For example, I use my metadata and information organization expertise to improve the Virtual Archive data model and interface to support the dual needs of researchers and data curators. Currently, we are working on identifying layers of semantic information, such as the relationships between different data types within a dataset or the possible uses of data, which can help to describe heterogeneous or multi-variable datasets in sustainability science. I also use my expertise in social theory and the sociology of knowledge to identify barriers in data sharing and find suitable approaches to data sharing and preservation in relevant SEAD disciplines, such as ecology or hydrology.\n\nI am also involved in the <a href=\"http://d2i.indiana.edu/hathitrust-research-center\">HathiTrust Research Center</a> (HTRC) project. This project develops cyberinfrastructure to support the digital humanities in their work with massive amounts of texts derived from the HathiTrust Digital Library. My role in this project is primarily concerned with engagement and community development. If we want this project to succeed, it is crucial to let the community know about this environment and its capabilities, gather feedback so that we can continue improving it, and perhaps learn together about innovative research opportunities in text computations.\n\nEngagement and outreach are crucial for my data curation work. Many efforts to facilitate data sharing and preservation exist, yet it is still a relatively new component of scholarship and research. I work to help articulate the value of sharing and preserving data to research communities and to create opportunities to do so. We often talk about how important it is to ground our data tools in actual use cases, so I spend a significant amount of time thinking about how to connect to researchers and their data practices, how to find “data champions,” and how to create a framework to engage researchers in data exchanges. The latter is the focus of my efforts as an active member of the new global initiative called Research Data Alliance (RDA) (http://rd-alliance.org), within which I, along with others, formed an engagement interest group. We had a successful planning meeting during the RDA plenary in March, and about 26 data practitioners and scientists attended. We shared many interesting ideas, such as creating a library of best practices and solutions. Our group is still in the early stages of development and we invite all who are interested to join ((RDA-Engage forum thread can found here; to subscribe to the RDA-Engage mailing list visit http://lists.lists.rd-alliance.org/mailman/listinfo/rda-cwg-engage)).\n<div><br clear=\"all\" />\n</div>','Kouper - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4601-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:20:49','2013-06-15 21:20:49','',4601,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4601-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4603,3,'2013-06-15 21:24:41','2013-06-15 21:24:41','From a data curation perspective, the distinctions between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are getting more and more blurred. Many of our projects at D2I aim to facilitate cross-disciplinarity and problem-based research. If someone is working on solving problems of food insecurity or flood management, they would benefit from using heterogeneous data gathered from satellites, sensors, interviews, surveys, and published documents. They could also benefit from a digital environment where they can combine methods, such as statistical analysis, data mining, and visualizations.\r\n\r\nObviously, data curation can be domain specific; for example, descriptions of geosciences data would be different from descriptions of sociological surveys. At the same time, it seems more useful to talk about the pressures on and need for curating various types of data, such as images; spatial, temporal, and textual data; audio and video; databases; heterogeneous datasets; and so on. Identifying differences and similarities in the curation of various types of data would allow us to create more integrated environments for sharing and analyzing data across disciplines, fields, and institutions.\r\n\r\nIn addition to data types, pressures and needs relating to data curation cluster around the size of datasets, data sensitivity, and researchers’ awareness of the need for data stewardship.\r\n\r\n<b>Size of data.</b> There are many discussions around so-called big data versus small or long-tail data. In the business world, big data are often defined along the dimensions of three Vs: volume, velocity, and variety. ((Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” <i>Gartner Blog Network</i>, February 6, 2001, <a href=\"Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” Gartner Blog Network, February 6, 2001, http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf.\">http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf</a>.)) Big data are the data that are so large, quickly accumulating, and complex that they require different approaches in storage, analysis, and curation, whether dealing with a massive amount of texts in a digital humanities database or high-resolution images in astronomy. Long-tail data have their own challenges. They may be easy to store on one computer, but because they are often collected for individual studies, they may be very heterogeneous in variables and observation points they cover. In data curation, it is hard to figure out how to integrate such data into a single environment. As Katherine Akers pointed out in her recent essay, small data are messy, but they are important; once they are meaningfully preserved and integrated, they can contribute as much if not more to our knowledge as big data. ((Katherine Akers, “Looking Out for the Little Guy: Small Data Curation,” <i>Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i>, February/March 2013, <a href=\"http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html\">http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html</a>.))\r\n\r\n<b>Data sensitivity.</b> This is related to the idea of open access to the products of scholarly activities. Proponents argue that open access is beneficial for the advancement of knowledge as well as for the existence of an informed and educated citizenry. Should the ideals and policies of open access be applied to data? Access to data might be more complicated than access to published materials, because knowledge about human subjects or certain areas of the planet can be harmful when widely shared. When thinking about data curation, it is important to develop a framework to address multiple levels of data sensitivity and promote research and education without causing more problems than solutions.\r\n\r\n<b>Researchers’ awareness.</b> Research communities vary by their awareness and acceptance of the need to share and curate data. For example, in some disciplines such as climatology or astronomy, the frameworks for data exchanges are much more developed. Climate models rely on the three-dimensional grid that represents and calculates atmospheric, oceanic, and chemical information from around the world. ((NOAA\'s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, “Modeling Climate,” last modified March 7, 2011, <a href=\"http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html\">http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html</a>.)) No one—be it a person, a team, or an institution—can collect such data on his or her own. That is why climate-modeling efforts are coordinated on the local, national, and international levels and climate data are stored and documented quite well.\r\n\r\nIn other disciplines, data efforts are still much more localized. At D2I, we have been working with social-ecological data, particularly in one database that contains information from around the world and spans almost two decades. It is a single database and researchers add information using a standardized instrument. Nevertheless, the variation within this database is immense because researchers collect data for their individual projects and adapt the instrument accordingly. When other researchers consult this database to retrieve data for their individual projects, they do not know what is available to them based on their requirements. And we as data curators and tool developers do not necessarily know how to facilitate their queries and make the database better to navigate and share. Hopefully, as more and more researchers become aware of the importance of sharing their data, we will be able to engage them and create integrated solutions for various communities.','Kouper - Question 2','From a data curation perspective, the distinctions between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are getting more and more blurred. Many of our projects at D2I aim to facilitate cross-disciplinarily and problem-based research. If someone is working on solving problems of food insecurity or flood management, they would benefit from using heterogeneous data gathered from satellites, sensors, interviews, surveys, and published documents. They could also benefit from a digital environment where they can combine methods, such as statistical analysis, data mining, and visualizations.','publish','open','open','','kouper-question-2','','','2013-07-06 23:14:20','2013-07-06 23:14:20','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4603',0,'post','',0),(4605,3,'2013-06-15 21:25:38','2013-06-15 21:25:38','This question can apply to two groups: those who are involved in data collection, analysis, or storage, but who do not see curation as one of their primary activities (researchers, students, or librarians); or those who benefit from data availability, but who use it primarily to make decisions in their non-data-oriented work (administrators, policy makers, or the larger public).\r\n\r\nThe former group works with data at the earlier stages of the data life cycle. Curation is important for them because of the changes in the system and the relative value of epistemic products. We curate, or take care of, epistemic products and objects, such as publications or material samples, because they are valuable to the research community over time. Data are a crucial component of reproducible and trustworthy research, and when they are reused in other research they minimize the cost of data collection. Therefore, it is important to curate data at the earlier stages of the research life cycle if we want rigor and accountability in research. In this sense, data curation is just another component of the collective enterprise called science that builds upon prior work and constructs knowledge by testing, proving, and falsifying hypotheses and theories.\r\n\r\nHaving said that, I think that we still have a long way to go to recognize the collective value of research data. In many areas of inquiry, data are still rather private, intended for internal use not public communication. Patterns of private use are usually different from those of public use. We may pile up books and magazines in our bedroom, but we would probably put some thought into arranging them in the living room and probably make sure they fit with the overall décor. If we keep thinking about data as something for private use and try to curate them afterwards, we will always end up with “piles” that require a lot of effort to organize and incorporate into the overall ecology of research products. Such data will always be difficult to discover and use. That is why we need to find ways to make data open for public use and discussion; mandates from funding agencies are not sufficient in this regard.\r\n\r\nFor the latter group of decision makers and the public, the argument for data curation is similar to the argument about the importance of science: Having well-preserved data that are easy to discover and work with helps us join efforts and better explain and understand the world, which ultimately improves our lives and our future.','Kouper - Question 3','This question can apply to two groups: those who are involved in data collection, analysis, or storage, but who do not see curation as one of their primary activities (researchers, students, or librarians); or those who benefit from data availability, but who use it primarily to make decisions in their non-data-oriented work (administrators, policy makers, or the larger public).','publish','open','open','','kouper-question-3','','','2013-06-22 04:21:16','2013-06-22 04:21:16','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4605',0,'post','',0),(4606,3,'2013-06-15 21:25:00','2013-06-15 21:25:00','','Kouper - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4605-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:25:00','2013-06-15 21:25:00','',4605,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4605-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4604,3,'2013-06-15 21:23:51','2013-06-15 21:23:51','From a data curation perspective, the distinctions between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are getting more and more blurred. Many of our projects at D2I aim to facilitate cross-disciplinarily and problem-based research. If someone is working on solving problems of food insecurity or flood management, they would benefit from using heterogeneous data gathered from satellites, sensors, interviews, surveys, and published documents. They could also benefit from a digital environment where they can combine methods, such as statistical analysis, data mining, and visualizations.\n\nObviously, data curation can be domain specific; for example, descriptions of geosciences data would be different from descriptions of sociological surveys. At the same time, it seems more useful to talk about the pressures on and need for curating various types of data, such as images; spatial, temporal, and textual data; audio and video; databases; heterogeneous datasets; and so on. Identifying differences and similarities in the curation of various types of data would allow us to create more integrated environments for sharing and analyzing data across disciplines, fields, and institutions.\n\nIn addition to data types, pressures and needs relating to data curation cluster around the size of datasets, data sensitivity, and researchers’ awareness of the need for data stewardship.\n\n<b>Size of data.</b> There are many discussions around so-called big data versus small or long-tail data. In the business world, big data are often defined along the dimensions of three Vs: volume, velocity, and variety ((Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” <i>Gartner Blog Network</i>, February 6, 2001, <a href=\"Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” Gartner Blog Network, February 6, 2001, http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf.\">http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf</a>.)). Big data are the data that are so large, quickly accumulating, and complex that they require different approaches in storage, analysis, and curation, whether dealing with a massive amount of texts in a digital humanities database or high-resolution images in astronomy. Long-tail data have their own challenges. They may be easy to store on one computer, but because they are often collected for individual studies, they may be very heterogeneous in variables and observation points they cover. In data curation, it is hard to figure out how to integrate such data into a single environment. As Katherine Akers pointed out in her recent essay, small data are messy, but they are important; once they are meaningfully preserved and integrated, they can contribute as much if not more to our knowledge as big data ((Katherine Akers, “Looking Out for the Little Guy: Small Data Curation,” <i>Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i>, February/March 2013, http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html.)).\n\n<b>Data sensitivity.</b> This is related to the idea of open access to the products of scholarly activities. Proponents argue that open access is beneficial for the advancement of knowledge as well as for the existence of an informed and educated citizenry. Should the ideals and policies of open access be applied to data? Access to data might be more complicated than access to published materials, because knowledge about human subjects or certain areas of the planet can be harmful when widely shared. When thinking about data curation, it is important to develop a framework to address multiple levels of data sensitivity and promote research and education without causing more problems than solutions.\n\n<b>Researchers’ awareness.</b> Research communities vary by their awareness and acceptance of the need to share and curate data. For example, in some disciplines such as climatology or astronomy, the frameworks for data exchanges are much more developed. Climate models rely on the three-dimensional grid that represents and calculates atmospheric, oceanic, and chemical information from around the world.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn3\">[iii]</a> No one—be it a person, a team, or an institution—can collect such data on his or her own. That is why climate-modeling efforts are coordinated on the local, national, and international levels and climate data are stored and documented quite well.\n\nIn other disciplines, data efforts are still much more localized. At D2I, we have been working with social-ecological data, particularly in one database that contains information from around the world and spans almost two decades. It is a single database and researchers add information using a standardized instrument. Nevertheless, the variation within this database is immense because researchers collect data for their individual projects and adapt the instrument accordingly. When other researchers consult this database to retrieve data for their individual projects, they do not know what is available to them based on their requirements. And we as data curators and tool developers do not necessarily know how to facilitate their queries and make the database better to navigate and share. Hopefully, as more and more researchers become aware of the importance of sharing their data, we will be able to engage them and create integrated solutions for various communities.\n<div><br clear=\"all\" />\n\n<hr align=\"left\" size=\"1\" width=\"33%\" />\n\n<div>\n\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref2\">[ii]</a> Katherine Akers, “Looking Out for the Little Guy: Small Data Curation,” <i>Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i>, February/March 2013, http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html.\n\n</div>\n<div>\n\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref3\">[iii]</a> NOAA\'s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, “Modeling Climate,” last modified March 7, 2011, http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html.\n\n</div>\n</div>','Kouper - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4603-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:23:51','2013-06-15 21:23:51','',4603,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4603-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4607,3,'2013-06-15 21:27:00','2013-06-15 21:27:00','I find all aspects of my work enlightening: working in large and small collaborations, interacting with diverse groups of people, building tools to address the needs of different communities, engaging with researchers, and trying to understand the similarities and differences in data practices across epistemic cultures.\r\n\r\nI value the diversity of opportunities that my work gives me. At the same time, it is hard to act on different opportunities and go outside of academic circles. So far I have been working mostly with researchers, other data curators, and managers at research institutions. I am looking forward to engaging more with the second group of data users that I mentioned above—those who benefit from data availability but do not necessarily collect or disseminate data. I am interested in such projects as citizen science or participatory data stewardship, but I recently realized that such projects may take more planning, time, energy, and so on.\r\n\r\nI had only a few preliminary encounters with non-academic data users, but as I try to get more information about possible ways of engagement, it is very interesting to see how channels and modes of communication as well as perspectives on data may differ. For example, I recently had a conversation with an executive director of the <a href=\"http://www.esipfed.org/\">Federation of Earth Science Information Partners</a> (ESIP) about the importance of sharing earth science data with users such as police offices, disaster management forces, and so on. She had a great idea of organizing an event within the ESIP annual meeting, where such users would come and work together on a shared set of data, using scenarios or something else. Possible outcomes could be a framework, a set of requirements, or even infrastructure modules that would help to use earth science data in non-research contexts. As we discussed this possible project, I realized that most of the existing recommendations of how to engage users in data stewardship are for working with researchers and addressing their needs. We need to address the needs of other user groups so that they become agents in data stewardship as well. One interesting example of that sort of project is a recent data management guide for citizen scientists. ((DataONE Public Participation in Scientific Research Working Group, “Data Management Guide for Citizen Scientists,” February, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf\">http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf</a>.))','Kouper - Question 4','I find all aspects of my work enlightening: working in large and small collaborations, interacting with diverse groups of people, building tools to address the needs of different communities, engaging with researchers, and trying to understand the similarities and differences in data practices across epistemic cultures.','publish','open','open','','kouper-question-4','','','2013-06-22 04:22:46','2013-06-22 04:22:46','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4607',0,'post','',0),(4608,3,'2013-06-15 21:26:46','2013-06-15 21:26:46','I find all aspects of my work enlightening: working in large and small collaborations, interacting with diverse groups of people, building tools to address the needs of different communities, engaging with researchers, and trying to understand the similarities and differences in data practices across epistemic cultures.\n\nI value the diversity of opportunities that my work gives me. At the same time, it is hard to act on different opportunities and go outside of academic circles. So far I have been working mostly with researchers, other data curators, and managers at research institutions. I am looking forward to engaging more with the second group of data users that I mentioned above—those who benefit from data availability but do not necessarily collect or disseminate data. I am interested in such projects as citizen science or participatory data stewardship, but I recently realized that such projects may take more planning, time, energy, and so on.\n\nI had only a few preliminary encounters with non-academic data users, but as I try to get more information about possible ways of engagement, it is very interesting to see how channels and modes of communication as well as perspectives on data may differ. For example, I recently had a conversation with an executive director of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners ESIP (http://www.esipfed.org/) about the importance of sharing earth science data with users such as police offices, disaster management forces, and so on. She had a great idea of organizing an event within the ESIP annual meeting, where such users would come and work together on a shared set of data, using scenarios or something else. Possible outcomes could be a framework, a set of requirements, or even infrastructure modules that would help to use earth science data in non-research contexts. As we discussed this possible project, I realized that most of the existing recommendations of how to engage users in data stewardship are for working with researchers and addressing their needs. We need to address the needs of other user groups so that they become agents in data stewardship as well. One interesting example of that sort of project is a recent data management guide for citizen scientists ((DataONE Public Participation in Scientific Research Working Group, “Data Management Guide for Citizen Scientists,” February, 2013, http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf.)).','Kouper - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4607-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:26:46','2013-06-15 21:26:46','',4607,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4607-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4609,3,'2013-06-15 21:29:25','2013-06-15 21:29:25','I think the biggest issue is us, people. We are capable of building sophisticated tools and infrastructures, but because data curation is a collective enterprise and a long-term dynamic system, we constantly need to negotiate our goals, needs, values, and attitudes. There are many social, political, and historical reasons for data curation to fail or succeed. We need to be aware of that.\r\n\r\nMy view on the biggest issue facing data curation is aligned with insights from the history and sociology of science. Many publications have expressed this view, but Edwards, Jackson, Bowker, and Knobel’s report on challenges regarding infrastructures is probably most relevant to the issue of data stewardship. ((Paul N. Edwards, Steven J Jackson, Geoffrey C Bowker, and Cory P Knobel, “Report of a Workshop on ‘History &amp; Theory of Infrastructure : Lessons for New Scientific Cyberinfrastructures’ January 2007,” <i>Design</i> 20 (January 2007): 1-50, <a href=\"http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/49353\">http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/49353</a>.)) It is also more useful and interesting to consider not just data, but a broader range of products, or what Bechhover et al. call “research objects,” such as publications, data, code and algorithms, workflows, and so on. ((Sean Bechhofer, David De Roure, Matthew Gamble, Carole Goble, and Iain Buchan, “Research Objects: Towards Exchange and Reuse of Digital Knowledge,” <i>Nature Proceedings</i> (2010), <a href=\"http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268555/\">http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268555/</a>.))\r\n\r\nAs a complex system, research-object curation involves tensions, such as those between immediate and long-term goals of development, between global and local implementations, and between planned versus emergent changes in the system. To negotiate these, the system needs actors in different roles, including technical experts, managers, and “champions” who stimulate interest and promote adoption. During systemic growth, users and user communities can become critical to success or failure.\r\n\r\nData curation is embedded in social and institutional practices and norms, none of which change more slowly than communication and data-processing technologies. These discontinuities may be part of the reason why culture of sharing and making data public has not been widely adopted, and they may also become obstacles in creating such a culture in the future. As people, practices, and norms play a formative role in data curation, it is important to remember that there are always “winners” and “losers.” Some people initiate and adopt innovation and change, while others resist it and find it hard to fit in. To quote Edwards et al., “It is also possible that a tech-centered approach to the challenge of data sharing inclines us toward failure from the beginning, because it leaves untouched underlying questions of incentives, organization, and culture that have in fact <i>always </i>structured the nature and viability of distributed scientific work.\" ((Edwards et al, “Report of a Workshop,” 32.))\r\n\r\nPaths to solutions that Edwards et al. hint at include historical and sociological awareness; the consolidation of local systems and tools; the development of bridges and gateways, as well as boundary workers who can act as “bridge-builders” and “translators”; and more flexibility and collaboration. The question that data curators need to ask themselves is, “Are we playing a role in any of these?”','Kouper - Question 5','I think the biggest issue is us, people. We are capable of building sophisticated tools and infrastructures, but because data curation is a collective enterprise and a long-term dynamic system, we constantly need to negotiate our goals, needs, values, and attitudes. There are many social, political, and historical reasons for data curation to fail or succeed.','publish','open','open','','kouper-question-5','','','2013-06-22 04:24:10','2013-06-22 04:24:10','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4609',0,'post','',0),(4611,3,'2013-06-15 21:27:00','2013-06-15 21:27:00','I find all aspects of my work enlightening: working in large and small collaborations, interacting with diverse groups of people, building tools to address the needs of different communities, engaging with researchers, and trying to understand the similarities and differences in data practices across epistemic cultures.\r\n\r\nI value the diversity of opportunities that my work gives me. At the same time, it is hard to act on different opportunities and go outside of academic circles. So far I have been working mostly with researchers, other data curators, and managers at research institutions. I am looking forward to engaging more with the second group of data users that I mentioned above—those who benefit from data availability but do not necessarily collect or disseminate data. I am interested in such projects as citizen science or participatory data stewardship, but I recently realized that such projects may take more planning, time, energy, and so on.\r\n\r\nI had only a few preliminary encounters with non-academic data users, but as I try to get more information about possible ways of engagement, it is very interesting to see how channels and modes of communication as well as perspectives on data may differ. For example, I recently had a conversation with an executive director of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners ESIP (http://www.esipfed.org/) about the importance of sharing earth science data with users such as police offices, disaster management forces, and so on. She had a great idea of organizing an event within the ESIP annual meeting, where such users would come and work together on a shared set of data, using scenarios or something else. Possible outcomes could be a framework, a set of requirements, or even infrastructure modules that would help to use earth science data in non-research contexts. As we discussed this possible project, I realized that most of the existing recommendations of how to engage users in data stewardship are for working with researchers and addressing their needs. We need to address the needs of other user groups so that they become agents in data stewardship as well. One interesting example of that sort of project is a recent data management guide for citizen scientists ((DataONE Public Participation in Scientific Research Working Group, “Data Management Guide for Citizen Scientists,” February, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf\">http://www.dataone.org/sites/all/documents/DataONE-PPSR-DataManagementGuide.pdf</a>.)).','Kouper - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4607-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:27:00','2013-06-15 21:27:00','',4607,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4607-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4610,3,'2013-06-15 21:29:08','2013-06-15 21:29:08','I think the biggest issue is us, people. We are capable of building sophisticated tools and infrastructures, but because data curation is a collective enterprise and a long-term dynamic system, we constantly need to negotiate our goals, needs, values, and attitudes. There are many social, political, and historical reasons for data curation to fail or succeed. We need to be aware of that.\n\nMy view on the biggest issue facing data curation is aligned with insights from the history and sociology of science. Many publications have expressed this view, but Edwards, Jackson, Bowker, and Knobel’s report on challenges regarding infrastructures is probably most relevant to the issue of data stewardship ((Paul N. Edwards, Steven J Jackson, Geoffrey C Bowker, and Cory P Knobel, “Report of a Workshop on ‘History &amp; Theory of Infrastructure : Lessons for New Scientific Cyberinfrastructures’ January 2007,” <i>Design</i> 20 (January 2007): 1-50, <a href=\"http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/49353\">http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/49353</a>.)). It is also more useful and interesting to consider not just data, but a broader range of products, or what Bechhover et al. call “research objects,” such as publications, data, code and algorithms, workflows, and so on ((Sean Bechhofer, David De Roure, Matthew Gamble, Carole Goble, and Iain Buchan, “Research Objects: Towards Exchange and Reuse of Digital Knowledge,” <i>Nature Proceedings</i> (2010), <a href=\"http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268555/\">http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268555/</a>.)).\n\nAs a complex system, research-object curation involves tensions, such as those between immediate and long-term goals of development, between global and local implementations, and between planned versus emergent changes in the system. To negotiate these, the system needs actors in different roles, including technical experts, managers, and “champions” who stimulate interest and promote adoption. During systemic growth, users and user communities can become critical to success or failure.\n\nData curation is embedded in social and institutional practices and norms, none of which change more slowly than communication and data-processing technologies. These discontinuities may be part of the reason why culture of sharing and making data public has not been widely adopted, and they may also become obstacles in creating such a culture in the future. As people, practices, and norms play a formative role in data curation, it is important to remember that there are always “winners” and “losers.” Some people initiate and adopt innovation and change, while others resist it and find it hard to fit in. To quote Edwards et al., “It is also possible that a tech-centered approach to the challenge of data sharing inclines us toward failure from the beginning, because it leaves untouched underlying questions of incentives, organization, and culture that have in fact <i>always </i>structured the nature and viability of distributed scientific work\" ((Edwards et al, “Report of a Workshop,” 32.)).\n\nPaths to solutions that Edwards et al. hint at include historical and sociological awareness; the consolidation of local systems and tools; the development of bridges and gateways, as well as boundary workers who can act as “bridge-builders” and “translators”; and more flexibility and collaboration. The question that data curators need to ask themselves is, “Are we playing a role in any of these?”\n<div><br clear=\"all\" />\n\n<hr align=\"left\" size=\"1\" width=\"33%\" />\n\n<div>\n\n&nbsp;\n\n</div>\n<div>\n\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref2\">[ii]</a>\n\n</div>\n<div>\n\n<a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref3\">[iii]</a> Edwards et al, “Report of a Workshop,” 32.\n\n</div>\n</div>','Kouper - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4609-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:29:08','2013-06-15 21:29:08','',4609,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4609-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4612,3,'2013-06-15 21:25:38','2013-06-15 21:25:38','This question can apply to two groups: those who are involved in data collection, analysis, or storage, but who do not see curation as one of their primary activities (researchers, students, or librarians); or those who benefit from data availability, but who use it primarily to make decisions in their non-data-oriented work (administrators, policy makers, or the larger public).\r\n\r\nThe former group works with data at the earlier stages of the data life cycle. Curation is important for them because of the changes in the system and the relative value of epistemic products. We curate, or take care of, epistemic products and objects, such as publications or material samples, because they are valuable to the research community over time. Data are a crucial component of reproducible and trustworthy research, and when they are reused in other research they minimize the cost of data collection. Therefore, it is important to curate data at the earlier stages of the research life cycle if we want rigor and accountability in research. In this sense, data curation is just another component of the collective enterprise called science that builds upon prior work and constructs knowledge by testing, proving, and falsifying hypotheses and theories.\r\n\r\nHaving said that, I think that we still have a long way to go to recognize the collective value of research data. In many areas of inquiry, data are still rather private, intended for internal use not public communication. Patterns of private use are usually different from those of public use. We may pile up books and magazines in our bedroom, but we would probably put some thought into arranging them in the living room and probably make sure they fit with the overall décor. If we keep thinking about data as something for private use and try to curate them afterwards, we will always end up with “piles” that require a lot of effort to organize and incorporate into the overall ecology of research products. Such data will always be difficult to discover and use. That is why we need to find ways to make data open for public use and discussion; mandates from funding agencies are not sufficient in this regard.\r\n\r\nFor the latter group of decision makers and the public, the argument for data curation is similar to the argument about the importance of science: Having well-preserved data that are easy to discover and work with helps us join efforts and better explain and understand the world, which ultimately improves our lives and our future.','Kouper - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4605-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:25:38','2013-06-15 21:25:38','',4605,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4605-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4613,3,'2013-06-15 21:24:41','2013-06-15 21:24:41','From a data curation perspective, the distinctions between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are getting more and more blurred. Many of our projects at D2I aim to facilitate cross-disciplinarily and problem-based research. If someone is working on solving problems of food insecurity or flood management, they would benefit from using heterogeneous data gathered from satellites, sensors, interviews, surveys, and published documents. They could also benefit from a digital environment where they can combine methods, such as statistical analysis, data mining, and visualizations.\r\n\r\nObviously, data curation can be domain specific; for example, descriptions of geosciences data would be different from descriptions of sociological surveys. At the same time, it seems more useful to talk about the pressures on and need for curating various types of data, such as images; spatial, temporal, and textual data; audio and video; databases; heterogeneous datasets; and so on. Identifying differences and similarities in the curation of various types of data would allow us to create more integrated environments for sharing and analyzing data across disciplines, fields, and institutions.\r\n\r\nIn addition to data types, pressures and needs relating to data curation cluster around the size of datasets, data sensitivity, and researchers’ awareness of the need for data stewardship.\r\n\r\n<b>Size of data.</b> There are many discussions around so-called big data versus small or long-tail data. In the business world, big data are often defined along the dimensions of three Vs: volume, velocity, and variety ((Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” <i>Gartner Blog Network</i>, February 6, 2001, <a href=\"Doug Laney, “3D Data Management: Controlling Volume, Velocity and Variety,” Gartner Blog Network, February 6, 2001, http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf.\">http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf</a>.)). Big data are the data that are so large, quickly accumulating, and complex that they require different approaches in storage, analysis, and curation, whether dealing with a massive amount of texts in a digital humanities database or high-resolution images in astronomy. Long-tail data have their own challenges. They may be easy to store on one computer, but because they are often collected for individual studies, they may be very heterogeneous in variables and observation points they cover. In data curation, it is hard to figure out how to integrate such data into a single environment. As Katherine Akers pointed out in her recent essay, small data are messy, but they are important; once they are meaningfully preserved and integrated, they can contribute as much if not more to our knowledge as big data ((Katherine Akers, “Looking Out for the Little Guy: Small Data Curation,” <i>Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology</i>, February/March 2013, <a href=\"http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html\">http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-13/FebMar13_RDAP_Akers.html</a>.)).\r\n\r\n<b>Data sensitivity.</b> This is related to the idea of open access to the products of scholarly activities. Proponents argue that open access is beneficial for the advancement of knowledge as well as for the existence of an informed and educated citizenry. Should the ideals and policies of open access be applied to data? Access to data might be more complicated than access to published materials, because knowledge about human subjects or certain areas of the planet can be harmful when widely shared. When thinking about data curation, it is important to develop a framework to address multiple levels of data sensitivity and promote research and education without causing more problems than solutions.\r\n\r\n<b>Researchers’ awareness.</b> Research communities vary by their awareness and acceptance of the need to share and curate data. For example, in some disciplines such as climatology or astronomy, the frameworks for data exchanges are much more developed. Climate models rely on the three-dimensional grid that represents and calculates atmospheric, oceanic, and chemical information from around the world ((NOAA\'s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, “Modeling Climate,” last modified March 7, 2011, <a href=\"http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html\">http://www.research.noaa.gov/climate/t_modeling.html</a>.)). No one—be it a person, a team, or an institution—can collect such data on his or her own. That is why climate-modeling efforts are coordinated on the local, national, and international levels and climate data are stored and documented quite well.\r\n\r\nIn other disciplines, data efforts are still much more localized. At D2I, we have been working with social-ecological data, particularly in one database that contains information from around the world and spans almost two decades. It is a single database and researchers add information using a standardized instrument. Nevertheless, the variation within this database is immense because researchers collect data for their individual projects and adapt the instrument accordingly. When other researchers consult this database to retrieve data for their individual projects, they do not know what is available to them based on their requirements. And we as data curators and tool developers do not necessarily know how to facilitate their queries and make the database better to navigate and share. Hopefully, as more and more researchers become aware of the importance of sharing their data, we will be able to engage them and create integrated solutions for various communities.','Kouper - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4603-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:24:41','2013-06-15 21:24:41','',4603,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4603-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4614,3,'2013-06-15 21:21:36','2013-06-15 21:21:36','Three factors shape my perspective on data curation: my research interest in the changes in knowledge production over time and across domains; the goals of my CLIR/DLF postdoctoral fellowship; and the mission and activities of the research center where I work, the <a href=\"http://d2i.indiana.edu\">Data to Insight Center</a> (D2I) at Indiana University Bloomington.\r\n\r\nAs a data curation fellow at D2I, I help develop tools and best practices for data management, sharing, and preservation; I conduct research in the areas of data analytics and stewardship as well as digital humanities and digital libraries; and I advance data curation as both an important component of science and as a professional activity.\r\n\r\nMy primary involvement is with the <a href=\"http://sead-data.net\">Sustainable Environment, Actionable Data</a> (SEAD) project. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded SEAD to create national and global data research infrastructure via the program “Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partners (DataNet).” SEAD is a collaboration between the University of Michigan, Indiana University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that works to develop a digital environment that will support data curation and management workflows in sustainability science. D2I is developing Virtual Archive, a solution that provides federated deposit and access capabilities across multiple institutional repositories. A researcher or data curator can use Virtual Archive to automatically deposit data in one of the partner repositories or to search across those repositories and find the data that they need.\r\n\r\nFor SEAD Virtual Archive, I co-lead architectural, policy, and user-engagement activities and solutions. For example, I use my metadata and information organization expertise to improve the Virtual Archive data model and interface to support the dual needs of researchers and data curators. Currently, we are working on identifying layers of semantic information, such as the relationships between different data types within a dataset or the possible uses of data, which can help to describe heterogeneous or multi-variable datasets in sustainability science. I also use my expertise in social theory and the sociology of knowledge to identify barriers in data sharing and find suitable approaches to data sharing and preservation in relevant SEAD disciplines, such as ecology or hydrology.\r\n\r\nI am also involved in the <a href=\"http://d2i.indiana.edu/hathitrust-research-center\">HathiTrust Research Center</a> (HTRC) project. This project develops cyberinfrastructure to support the digital humanities in their work with massive amounts of texts derived from the HathiTrust Digital Library. My role in this project is primarily concerned with engagement and community development. If we want this project to succeed, it is crucial to let the community know about this environment and its capabilities, gather feedback so that we can continue improving it, and perhaps learn together about innovative research opportunities in text computations.\r\n\r\nEngagement and outreach are crucial for my data curation work. Many efforts to facilitate data sharing and preservation exist, yet it is still a relatively new component of scholarship and research. I work to help articulate the value of sharing and preserving data to research communities and to create opportunities to do so. We often talk about how important it is to ground our data tools in actual use cases, so I spend a significant amount of time thinking about how to connect to researchers and their data practices, how to find “data champions,” and how to create a framework to engage researchers in data exchanges. The latter is the focus of my efforts as an active member of the new global initiative called Research Data Alliance (RDA) (http://rd-alliance.org), within which I, along with others, formed an engagement interest group. We had a successful planning meeting during the RDA plenary in March, and about 26 data practitioners and scientists attended. We shared many interesting ideas, such as creating a library of best practices and solutions. Our group is still in the early stages of development and we invite all who are interested to join ((RDA-Engage forum thread can found <a href=\"http://forum.rd-alliance.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;t=26\">here</a>; to subscribe to the RDA-Engage mailing list visit <a href=\"http://lists.lists.rd-alliance.org/mailman/listinfo/rda-cwg-engage\">here</a>)).\r\n<div><br clear=\"all\" />\r\n</div>','Kouper - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4601-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:21:36','2013-06-15 21:21:36','',4601,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4601-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4615,3,'2013-06-15 21:14:41','2013-06-15 21:14:41','I would say that all of those factors are affecting data curation, and each is interrelated. The technology needs to be developed and available first so that infrastructure can be built on it. Libraries and archives have made a lot of progress in this area, especially in the realm of repository development. At UVa we were involved in the earliest stages of developing the Fedora digital repository, and we continue to develop this powerful tool. Fedora, and the offshoot, Hydra, provide the capacity to store digital objects of any kind. The repository can then interact with all kinds of tools that do things with those objects—index and search metadata, stream video, and display the pages of a book in order. The proliferation of data formats, operating systems, software, and media has been truly staggering in the last thirty years. Developing technology solutions like Fedora that will last and be interoperable is a huge task, but I think we are beginning to take on those challenges.\r\n\r\nWith technology in place, infrastructure—by which I mean a framework of standardization, organizational support, planning, and shared responsibilities—must follow in order to allow for successful adoption. If there is no infrastructure for using and supporting a certain technology, it can sometimes die out. For example UVa’s Fedora repository, is being developed using standard metadata schemes. Because these standards are widely used, the organization can trust that the digital object described with them will be understandable in the future. The organization can then feel confident investing staff resources in creating these objects and later will be able to share them with other repositories using similar standards. This sharing then increases the likelihood these objects will endure. Overall, the entire infrastructure supports the goals of long-term preservation. On the other hand, another example might be the adoption of a software tool that creates data in proprietary formats. If the infrastructure does not support that format (for example, other software cannot read it, or staff do not know how to use it), it will not be sustainable. Either the data in those formats will become obsolete and unrecoverable, or the infrastructure will have to adapt to support it.\r\n\r\nMany organizations, especially in the cultural heritage sector, lack this infrastructure, in part because they lack the staffing to develop and maintain it. Trends in higher education have seen library budgets plummet, and leaner staffing models are part of the fallout. These remaining staff members, in turn, are not always trained to keep up with cutting-edge developments in technology and standards. It makes sense that when your staff is busy on the reference desk, instructing classes, engaging in collection development, and meeting with faculty, learning an entirely new skill set will not get top priority. Libraries like UVa hire a staff with diverse talents and then find ways to help those employees work together. Digital Curators often tend to be “connectors” or “translators” helping bridge the divide between traditional data, archival practice, and modern technological tools. In turn, they help those on either side of the divide understand each other and work together better. Eventually, even the more traditional jobs begin to include more work with technology. Over time, this kind of savvy staffing translates into overall changes in the profession.','Gueguen - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4598-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:14:41','2013-06-15 21:14:41','',4598,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4598-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4616,3,'2013-06-15 21:13:32','2013-06-15 21:13:32','I can clearly remember the first time I realized the essential paradox in the kind of work I do with older data. A researcher working on a biography asked me if I could recover the data from 99 5.25” and 3.5” floppy disks created between the mid-1980s and early-1990s. I spent dozens of hours imaging the disks, exporting the contents, extracting metadata, and weeding out the file slack and deleted data. Altogether I spent a month working on the project. In the end, the amount of data on those 99 disks could be zipped up and emailed. It was less than 10 MB.\r\n\r\nAs time goes on, the amount of data we work with gets larger and larger. On the other hand, the older the data are the more time and effort it usually takes to make them accessible. The only way our work will scale to that challenge is if we practice good data curation techniques now; that means using technical and preservation metadata, adhering to standards, and checking for data fixity on a routine basis.','Gueguen - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4596-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:13:32','2013-06-15 21:13:32','',4596,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4596-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4617,3,'2013-06-15 21:12:40','2013-06-15 21:12:40','Data curation is important to anyone who uses data or will be affected by the use of data, so everyone, really! The difficult part is to make the concept accessible and to convey the importance to those not working in a data curation setting. In academic circles the idea that a researcher’s valuable contribution to the field could be unreadable in as little as ten years makes an impression. Many of the activities that curators can use to ensure the preservation of data are not controversial, such as storing data in standard formats and creating preservation metadata. Another way that data curators try to minimize risk is by putting data into open repositories. Having the data accessible and usable ensures that it is not forgotten and continues to be migrated to accessible formats. (In addition, creating copies and storing them in multiple networks builds in redundancy that can provide an extra safeguard.) But there is some understandable resistance to making data open access. When researchers hear stories about data security risks or plagiarism, they can become concerned about participating in things like open archives.\r\n\r\nSimilarly, in the special collections and archives community I work in, donors are sometimes reluctant to allow open access to the electronic material in their collections. In many cases we can come up with compromises that are acceptable to all parties, but it usually involves a lot of discussion and calming of fears. In other cases, we have data that was gathered at some point in the past and does not have commercial value. But since we cannot find the creator in order to obtain permission (because he or she left the materials with the library many years ago and has since moved or even passed away), we must restrict access. In this scenario we need to adopt a risk-management approach, balancing the likelihood of copyright infringement with the value of access, and to state clearly that we will remove content from accessible spaces if copyright is proven. For these reasons it is important to us, as data curators, to make sure that everyone is aware of the impact of our copyright laws and curation activities. We must also attempt to clarify the rights the donor would like to retain when material is donated.','Gueguen - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4594-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:12:40','2013-06-15 21:12:40','',4594,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4594-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4618,3,'2013-06-15 21:11:28','2013-06-15 21:11:28','I think that the answer is different if you look at pressures and needs separately. From my perspective in a research university, the sciences, social sciences, and humanities have similar needs, but to differing degrees. All three need to create infrastructure and standardization to make the data they are currently producing accessible in the future. If you look at the continuum of long-term use, the sciences have a much shorter lifespan for usable data, while the humanities have the longest (with the social sciences in between). On the other hand, the sciences are probably producing the greatest amount of data, while the humanities generate the smallest amount (again, social sciences fall somewhere in between). Because the humanities have a longer-term approach to research, additional issues of obsolescence come into play, like when a scholar is studying gaming in the 1980s or literature written on computers in the 1990s. In addition, the science data of today could become the historical data of tomorrow, so all of this data exists in a continuum, from my perspective.\r\n\r\nPressures, on the other hand, tend to be somewhat similar. Scholarly communication is undergoing a transformation in many respects. The traditional activities behind the creation of academic knowledge (research, writing, peer review, publishing) are being challenged by the open access movement and the emergence of big data. In addition, both science and humanities granting agencies are beginning to require data management plans. These pressures add up to changes in how data is created and managed. In the past, a scholar might have published a paper with the results of a study done using a large data set. Others could read the results, and perhaps do another study of a similar set in the future. All of this happened within the domain of academic publishing. Now, that scholar may have instead published his or her research paper in an open access journal that is only published on the web. The agency that funded that work may also expect the researcher to ensure the preservation and availability of the original dataset. This creates new information needs for both the scholar who needs help storing and providing access to his or her data, as well as the researcher who wants to find and use that data.\r\n\r\nIn this changing environment, the academic library can be a great ally to the community in helping ensure that the products of scholarship are secured for the future. More and more libraries, including UVa’s, are developing data consulting programs to help researchers develop data management plans, along with repositories to store data and provide access. The library needs to take these bold steps forward and let their academic colleagues know that we have the experience and ability to help with these monumental challenges.','Gueguen - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4592-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:11:28','2013-06-15 21:11:28','',4592,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4592-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4619,3,'2013-06-15 21:30:46','2013-06-15 21:30:46','I think that the answer is different if you look at pressures and needs separately. From my perspective in a research university, the sciences, social sciences, and humanities have similar needs, but to differing degrees. All three need to create infrastructure and standardization to make the data they are currently producing accessible in the future. If you look at the continuum of long-term use, the sciences have a much shorter lifespan for usable data, while the humanities have the longest (with the social sciences in between). On the other hand, the sciences are probably producing the greatest amount of data, while the humanities generate the smallest amount (again, social sciences fall somewhere in between). Because the humanities have a longer-term approach to research, additional issues of obsolescence come into play, like when a scholar is studying gaming in the 1980s or literature written on computers in the 1990s. In addition, the science data of today could become the historical data of tomorrow, so all of this data exists in a continuum, from my perspective.\r\n\r\nPressures, on the other hand, tend to be somewhat similar. Scholarly communication is undergoing a transformation in many respects. The traditional activities behind the creation of academic knowledge (research, writing, peer review, publishing) are being challenged by the open access movement and the emergence of big data. In addition, both science and humanities granting agencies are beginning to require data management plans. These pressures add up to changes in how data is created and managed. In the past, a scholar might have published a paper with the results of a study done using a large data set. Others could read the results, and perhaps do another study of a similar set in the future. All of this happened within the domain of academic publishing. Now, that scholar may have instead published his or her research paper in an open access journal that is only published on the web. The agency that funded that work may also expect the researcher to ensure the preservation and availability of the original dataset. This creates new information needs for both the scholar who needs help storing and providing access to his or her data, as well as the researcher who wants to find and use that data.\r\n\r\nIn this changing environment, the academic library can be a great ally to the community in helping ensure that the products of scholarship are secured for the future. More and more libraries, including UVa’s, are developing data consulting programs to help researchers develop data management plans, along with repositories to store data and provide access. The library needs to take these bold steps forward and let their academic colleagues know that we have the experience and ability to help with these monumental challenges.','Gueguen - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4592-revision-3','','','2013-06-15 21:30:46','2013-06-15 21:30:46','',4592,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4592-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(4620,3,'2013-06-15 21:10:10','2013-06-15 21:10:10','I am the Digital Archivist for the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. We collect materials in many areas, but primarily we are concerned with humanities and social sciences (broadly speaking). This means that I work with everything from 20-year-old floppy disks that might contain the work of a contemporary novelist, to hard drives of architectural design files created over the last 20 years, to the electronic “papers” of a modern local organization saved to Google Docs. The materials I work with generally have no unifying characteristics; they represent a wide variety of ages, types, formats, carrier media, and data size.\r\n\r\nData curation, to me, means ensuring that data is safely transferred from its original context (such as a disk, a hard drive, or an email account) into the archive. Since much of the material I get was created in the past and lives on obsolescent software or hardware, sometimes just figuring out how to read the disk is a challenge. With any type of material, I need to capture metadata about it, such as its size, data type, and other important details. Knowing these details at the beginning means that in the future I can verify that it has not corrupted. I also document the chain of custody and any preservation actions taken, which could potentially have an impact on future use. If I am lucky, I get the opportunity to work with donors who still have access to their data. In those cases I can gather information from them about their computer use: How do they organize files? How much do they use social media? Do they create things in electronic form, or do they use a combination of paper and electronic files to do their work? Knowing the answers to these questions helps me piece together the context of their collection so that it can be understood in the future.','Gueguen - Question1','','inherit','open','open','','4590-revision-2','','','2013-06-15 21:10:10','2013-06-15 21:10:10','',4590,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4590-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(4621,3,'2013-06-15 21:33:24','2013-06-15 21:33:24','As Digital Archivist, my main responsibilities and most immediate priorities concern the management of born-digital materials acquired in archival collections. Over the past year, I have focused on building a foundation of policies, procedures, and workflows to guide the process of acquiring digital materials from donors and establishing initial administrative, physical, and intellectual control over these materials. I have drawn from the final report of the AIMS - Born Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship project, ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, accessed January 8, 2013, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf</a>.)) which has come up with a framework to assist current practitioners in designing and implementing policies and workflows to acquire, process, preserve, and provide access to born-digital materials. I have created local implementations of the methods and documents outlined in the AIMS report, including a donor survey instrument to collect important contextual information during the acquisition process. I have also implemented digital forensics hardware and software tools to help maintain the authenticity and integrity of digital materials when transferring them from the donor to the archives.\r\n\r\nAnother resource I have used to guide my work is the Digital Curation Centre’s Curation Lifecycle Model, which is a visual representation of a “high level overview of the stages required for successful curation and preservation of data from initial conceptualisation through the iterative curation cycle.\" ((“What is the Digital Curation Lifecycle Model,” Digital Curation Centre, accessed February 12, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/digital-curation-faqs/dcc-curation-lifecycle-model\">http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/digital-curation-faqs/dcc-curation-lifecycle-model</a>.)) In relation to actions within the Curation Lifecycle Model, most of my recent data curation activities fall within creating or receiving data, appraising and selecting data, ingesting data, and preserving data. The conceptual framework articulated in this model has informed my workflow design activities, where I have attempted to ensure that discrete actions are logically integrated into an overall comprehensive system for managing born-digital materials.\r\n\r\nWhile my main focus has been on the curation of born-digital materials within hybrid archival collections, this is a foundational element of a comprehensive program to guide the long-term preservation and access to all the digital content that the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library produces and acquires. As Digital Archivist in a medium-sized academic library, I am in an excellent position to lead a collaborative effort to develop and implement a sustainable digital preservation program. Having established policies, procedures, and workflows within the Archives and Special Collections department, in the coming months I will be shifting my data curation activities towards organization-wide tasks. These activities will include the development and implementation of a digital preservation policy framework and technological infrastructure to support ongoing preservation and access services.\r\n\r\nIn my particular organizational context, I am the champion for ensuring that preservation actions are integrated into the workflows of the multiple content streams that are currently part of Library services. This includes helping to revise our digitization workflows and policies to ensure that digital objects are created according to standards and best practices and incorporating the capture and management of metadata needed to ensure current and future access. In addition, I am participating in the development of a Library-managed institutional repository service, a new direction and new content stream for the Library. In a similar manner, my contribution to this project involves ensuring that the preservation and access needs of users are integrated into the design and functions of the hardware and software that underlies this new service.','Meister - Question 1','As Digital Archivist, my main responsibilities and most immediate priorities concern the management of born-digital materials acquired in archival collections. Over the past year, I have focused on building a foundation of policies, procedures, and workflows to guide the process of acquiring digital materials from donors and establishing initial administrative, physical, and intellectual control over these materials.','publish','open','open','','meister-question-1','','','2013-06-22 04:25:01','2013-06-22 04:25:01','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4621',0,'post','',0),(4622,3,'2013-06-15 21:33:08','2013-06-15 21:33:08','As Digital Archivist, my main responsibilities and most immediate priorities concern the management of born-digital materials acquired in archival collections. Over the past year, I have focused on building a foundation of policies, procedures, and workflows to guide the process of acquiring digital materials from donors and establishing initial administrative, physical, and intellectual control over these materials. I have drawn from the final report of the AIMS - Born Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship project, ((AIMS Work Group, “AIMS Born-Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship,” 2012, accessed January 8, 2013, <a href=\"http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf\">http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/aims/whitepaper/AIMS_final.pdf</a>.)) which has come up with a framework to assist current practitioners in designing and implementing policies and workflows to acquire, process, preserve, and provide access to born-digital materials. I have created local implementations of the methods and documents outlined in the AIMS report, including a donor survey instrument to collect important contextual information during the acquisition process. I have also implemented digital forensics hardware and software tools to help maintain the authenticity and integrity of digital materials when transferring them from the donor to the archives.\n\nAnother resource I have used to guide my work is the Digital Curation Centre’s Curation Lifecycle Model, which is a visual representation of a “high level overview of the stages required for successful curation and preservation of data from initial conceptualisation through the iterative curation cycle((“What is the Digital Curation Lifecycle Model,” Digital Curation Centre, accessed February 12, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/digital-curation-faqs/dcc-curation-lifecycle-model\">http://www.dcc.ac.uk/digital-curation/digital-curation-faqs/dcc-curation-lifecycle-model</a>.)).” In relation to actions within the Curation Lifecycle Model, most of my recent data curation activities fall within creating or receiving data, appraising and selecting data, ingesting data, and preserving data. The conceptual framework articulated in this model has informed my workflow design activities, where I have attempted to ensure that discrete actions are logically integrated into an overall comprehensive system for managing born-digital materials.\n\nWhile my main focus has been on the curation of born-digital materials within hybrid archival collections, this is a foundational element of a comprehensive program to guide the long-term preservation and access to all the digital content that the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library produces and acquires. As Digital Archivist in a medium-sized academic library, I am in an excellent position to lead a collaborative effort to develop and implement a sustainable digital preservation program. Having established policies, procedures, and workflows within the Archives and Special Collections department, in the coming months I will be shifting my data curation activities towards organization-wide tasks. These activities will include the development and implementation of a digital preservation policy framework and technological infrastructure to support ongoing preservation and access services.\n\nIn my particular organizational context, I am the champion for ensuring that preservation actions are integrated into the workflows of the multiple content streams that are currently part of Library services. This includes helping to revise our digitization workflows and policies to ensure that digital objects are created according to standards and best practices and incorporating the capture and management of metadata needed to ensure current and future access. In addition, I am participating in the development of a Library-managed institutional repository service, a new direction and new content stream for the Library. In a similar manner, my contribution to this project involves ensuring that the preservation and access needs of users are integrated into the design and functions of the hardware and software that underlies this new service.','Meister - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4621-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:33:08','2013-06-15 21:33:08','',4621,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4621-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4623,3,'2013-06-15 21:34:26','2013-06-15 21:34:26','In our university community context, the colleges and departments within the sciences often have established data management practices, including utilizing national discipline-specific data repositories to manage and share data. In contrast, those working in the social sciences and humanities often have limited resources to put towards data curation needs. For these disciplines in particular, the Library has an excellent opportunity to play an important role as a data curation and preservation service provider.\r\n\r\nMuch of my knowledge and understanding on the data curation needs of different disciplines within my specific institutional setting have come from my role in the development of a library-managed institutional repository service. During this development process my colleagues and I have worked to collect information on the faculty, student, and staff interest in, and specific needs related to, a potential institutional repository service. Through a survey of liaison librarians and a series of meetings with key administrative stakeholders from university colleges and schools, we have collected valuable information on current institutional needs, including specific data curation needs. While informal, this information has provided an initial sense of the needs of our particular university community.\r\n\r\nThe initial focus of our institutional repository service will likely be on increasing access to intellectual outputs, but there is strong potential to provide additional assistance and guidance during earlier stages of the research and creative process. Our information gathering highlighted that data curation needs may also be different across faculty, graduate, and undergraduate groups. For example, in our case, there is strong interest in an institutional repository service from a humanities unit, the School of Media Arts, as a platform for showcasing and increasing access to undergraduate student work. During initial conversations, faculty members from this department articulated a desire to maintain access to undergraduate work both for internal teaching needs and to give it more exposure to media-arts industry audiences. The library can help provide ongoing sustainable access by ensuring the long-term preservation of these materials through our institutional repository service. The next steps are to increase the participation of various groups and disciplines in the development of this institutional repository service to ensure that it meets their particular data curation needs.','Meister - Question 2','In our university community context, the colleges and departments within the sciences often have established data management practices, including utilizing national discipline-specific data repositories to manage and share data. In contrast, those working in the social sciences and humanities often have limited resources to put towards data curation needs.','publish','open','open','','meister-question-2','','','2013-06-22 04:25:49','2013-06-22 04:25:49','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4623',0,'post','',0),(4624,3,'2013-06-15 21:33:39','2013-06-15 21:33:39','','Meister - Question 2','','inherit','open','open','','4623-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:33:39','2013-06-15 21:33:39','',4623,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4623-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4625,3,'2013-06-15 21:35:52','2013-06-15 21:35:52','Data curation is important to non-data curators because they do not want to have to spend time thinking about data curation. Data creators and users want to focus on creating and using data, engaging in research, and producing knowledge. Data curation is a means to an end for most creators and users, and it functions best if it requires as little effort as possible on their part. While they may not be interested in the details, a data curation service can provide valuable benefits to non-data curators, including:\r\n<ul>\r\n	<li>Ensuring the authenticity and integrity of data</li>\r\n	<li>Assistance with grant funding for data management requirements</li>\r\n	<li>Increased access and distribution of data</li>\r\n	<li>Increased opportunities for new uses</li>\r\n	<li>Increased visibility of research through data citation</li>\r\n</ul>\r\nBeyond the sphere of the individual creator and researcher, data curation has important applications at the organization or institutional level. In a university context, many fundamental business functions rely on the creation of, management of, and access to data assets. The principles of data curation have a direct application at the organizational level, especially in relation to maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the data. As most university business functions are built into enterprise-level systems, data curators have an important role to play in providing guidance on the types of system functionality needed to provide both near-term and potentially long-term access to data assets. The terminology and approach of data curation may not be familiar to non-data curators, potentially necessitating an outreach and education strategy. A good communication strategy to educate and inform non-data curators includes a balance of the benefits of integrating the data curation perspective and the potential risks of not incorporating this approach into enterprise-level system development.','Meister - Question 3','Data curation is important to non-data curators because they do not want to have to spend time thinking about data curation. Data creators and users want to focus on creating and using data, engaging in research, and producing knowledge. Data curation is a means to an end for most creators and users, and it functions best if it requires as little effort as possible on their part.','publish','open','open','','meister-question-3','','','2013-06-22 04:26:44','2013-06-22 04:26:44','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4625',0,'post','',0),(4626,3,'2013-06-15 21:35:32','2013-06-15 21:35:32','Data curation is important to non-data curators because they do not want to have to spend time thinking about data curation. Data creators and users want to focus on creating and using data, engaging in research, and producing knowledge. Data curation is a means to an end for most creators and users, and it functions best if it requires as little effort as possible on their part. While they may not be interested in the details, a data curation service can provide valuable benefits to non-data curators, including:\n<ul>\n	<li>Ensuring the authenticity and integrity of data</li>\n	<li>Assistance with grant funding for data management requirements</li>\n	<li>Increased access and distribution of data</li>\n	<li>Increased opportunities for new uses</li>\n	<li>Increased visibility of research through data citation</li>\n</ul>\nBeyond the sphere of the individual creator and researcher, data curation has important applications at the organization or institutional level. In a university context, many fundamental business functions rely on the creation of, management of, and access to data assets. The principles of data curation have a direct application at the organizational level, especially in relation to maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the data. As most university business functions are built into enterprise-level systems, data curators have an important role to play in providing guidance on the types of system functionality needed to provide both near-term and potentially long-term access to data assets. The terminology and approach of data curation may not be familiar to non-data curators, potentially necessitating an outreach and education strategy. A good communication strategy to educate and inform non-data curators includes a balance of the benefits of integrating the data curation perspective and the potential risks of not incorporating this approach into enterprise-level system development.','Meister - Question 3','','inherit','open','open','','4625-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:35:32','2013-06-15 21:35:32','',4625,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4625-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4627,3,'2013-06-15 21:36:47','2013-06-15 21:36:47','To date, some of my most enlightening moments have been working with and learning from data creators, a process that I hope to expand in the future. A recent series of interactions with a creator who donated a collection of architectural drawings illustrates the types of valuable information that may be exchanged during such meetings. In this case, the Library had already acquired a set of paper drawings, and we were considering the acquisition of a set of AutoCAD drawing files from the same donor. Compared to the range of file formats within our existing collections, AutoCAD files represented a significantly new endeavor in relation to the inherent complexity of these digital objects and preservation concerns due to the proprietary nature of the file format itself.\r\n\r\nI met with the donor to collect additional information to assist in determining the feasibility of acquiring these materials. Conducting an in-person meeting with the donor provided an opportunity to field test our local donor survey instrument to obtain valuable contextual details about the materials, including the creation process, file management procedures, rights and intellectual property concerns, and access requirements. More a dialogue than an interview, the donor meeting also included discussion of, and valuable insight into, the potential access needs of future users of the materials. As an architect who both created and used AutoCAD files on a regular basis, the donor articulated the specific elements of the drawing files that would likely be important for future users, whether undergraduate students or architects seeking to understand the technical details of a building as part of a renovation project. Capturing the donor’s perspective on contextual details and access needs has proved to be highly valuable, informing both the feasibility assessment and preservation strategy for these specific materials. Through our collaboration with the donor, we have developed an initial preservation strategy of migrating the files to PDF/E, an emerging international standard. This strategy will mitigate the issue of the proprietary nature of the native AutoCAD format by converting these files to an open preservation format. Alongside this migration strategy we will also explore the feasibility of an emulation preservation strategy to provide access to the native AutoCAD files.\r\n\r\nThis example of a creator and archivist interaction demonstrates the value that both perspectives bring to the data curation process. Creators have a unique understanding of the research and creation process that results in new data, the type of descriptive information needed to understand that data, and the potential access needs related to and uses of that data. Archivists appreciate and understand the importance of capturing contextual information to ensure that data is made accessible in a form that is meaningful and understandable to both current and future users. The umbrella of data curation provides an excellent opportunity to re-frame and redefine the traditional roles of creator and archivist. Increased involvement and interactions between these entities closer to the point of creation have the potential to inform the design of tools and systems to ensure that valuable contextual information is captured throughout the data lifecycle.','Meister - Question 4','To date, some of my most enlightening moments have been working with and learning from data creators, a process that I hope to expand in the future. A recent series of interactions with a creator who donated a collection of architectural drawings illustrates the types of valuable information that may be exchanged during such meetings. In this case, the Library had already acquired a set of paper drawings, and we were considering the acquisition of a set of AutoCAD drawing files from the same donor. Compared to the range of file formats within our existing collections, AutoCAD files represented a significantly new endeavor in relation to the inherent complexity of these digital objects and preservation concerns due to the proprietary nature of the file format itself.','publish','open','open','','meister-question-4','','','2013-06-22 04:27:36','2013-06-22 04:27:36','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4627',0,'post','',0),(4628,3,'2013-06-15 21:36:03','2013-06-15 21:36:03','','Meister - Question 4','','inherit','open','open','','4627-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:36:03','2013-06-15 21:36:03','',4627,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4627-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4629,3,'2013-06-15 21:37:45','2013-06-15 21:37:45','From my perspective, these issues of technology, infrastructure, staffing, and training are all important issues that can directly impact data curation both within local institutional settings and more generally as a field, but I would argue that a larger cultural issue surrounds and affects all of these elements.\r\n\r\nThe skills and knowledge that data curation professionals need draw from and cut across multiple fields and disciplines. The holistic approach of data curation and its application in multiple industries and sectors challenges traditional boundaries that differentiate cultural heritage professionals. These are, in part, based on the identity of libraries, archives, and museums as institutions defined by the types of materials collected, as well as how those materials are accessed and used. Data curation as a profession represents recognition of the needs of twenty-first-century creators and users and articulates a shift away from traditional boundaries and professional identities. Many groups and individuals have encouraged this shift, but as with any kind of change, there is still hesitation to fully embrace data curation within and across cultural heritage professions.\r\n\r\nIn the United States context, the professional identity of the archivist is connected to a strong set of principles, theories, and practice. Many of the methods and concepts that make up core archival principles reflect the key skills and knowledge that data curation professionals need. Despite these similarities, the traditional notion that the archivist steps in once materials are transferred from the donor to the archives is still the norm. Even in our current moment of digital information ubiquity, this traditional understanding of the role and responsibilities of the archivist is pervasive both within and outside the profession. Data curation encompasses a broader view of the information continuum and illustrates the value of information professionals engaging with creators and users throughout this process. Data curation offers an opportunity to re-envision the role of the archivist as shifting towards a more active engagement as service provider, system designer, and/or data management consultant. To encourage this shift, the cultural heritage community needs to continue to support the development of new data curation skills and knowledge through training and professional development opportunities. In addition, we need to continue to articulate our value and relevance to our local institutions and society as a whole by moving beyond traditional boundaries and professional identities. Data curation, as a conceptual approach and new discipline, provides a framework to make increasingly blurry traditional boundaries even more permeable, a transformation that cultural heritage professionals should wholeheartedly embrace.','Meister - Question 5','From my perspective, these issues of technology, infrastructure, staffing, and training are all important issues that can directly impact data curation both within local institutional settings and more generally as a field, but I would argue that a larger cultural issue surrounds and affects all of these elements.','publish','open','open','','meister-question-5','','','2013-06-22 04:28:18','2013-06-22 04:28:18','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4629',0,'post','',0),(4630,3,'2013-06-15 21:37:00','2013-06-15 21:37:00','','Meister - Question 5','','inherit','open','open','','4629-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:37:00','2013-06-15 21:37:00','',4629,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4629-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(4631,3,'2013-06-15 21:42:03','2013-06-15 21:42:03','In my current position, data curation is part of the larger design problem of how to use digital tools and methodologies to accomplish innovative humanities research. I am a librarian trained in digital humanities and data curation now working in both an academic research library (University of Maryland Libraries) and in a leadership position at a successful digital humanities center (the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities). My job involves data curation as part of strategic planning, project development, teaching and training, and, most generally, producing public research that others can build upon, continue, and enrich. ((Mark Sample, “When Does Service Become Scholarship?” <i>SAMPLE REALITY</i>, February 8, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.samplereality.com/2013/02/08/when-does-service-become-scholarship/\">http://www.samplereality.com/2013/02/08/when-does-service-become-scholarship/</a>.)) As I have written elsewhere (with Allen Renear), data curation refers to “the challenge of maintaining digital information that is produced in the course of research in a manner that preserves its meaning and usefulness as a potential input for further research.” ((Trevor Muñoz and Allen Renear, “Issues in Humanities Data Curation,” June 15, 2011, <a href=\"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/30852\">https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/30852</a>.)) This can involve everything from just making the responsibilities for data management explicit in the form of a plan to more intensive work like creating documentation or normalizing “messy” data. In working on the kinds of diverse teams that get assembled to do digital humanities work, I try to be the one who is extra mindful of what is happening to the project data, just as I expect the software developers to be most aware of our technical architecture and the disciplinary specialist to be most aware of what intervention our project is trying to make in scholarly debates.\r\n\r\nI am convinced that as the materials and analytical practices of humanities research become increasingly digital, the theoretical knowledge and practical skills of information science, librarianship, and archival science—which come together in the research and practice of data curation—will become more vital to more humanists. At the level of strategic planning, data curation work is mostly awareness building; this involves introducing data curation into discussions as diverse as how we build all our websites, to how we imagine and staff new positions. At the level of project development, data curation takes a more concrete shape in the work we do. Much of the research I work on is generously supported by funders such as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Like funders of scientific research, the Office of Digital Humanities at the NEH requires that proposals for funding include data management plans. Some of my work involves writing these plans and developing practices for monitoring and following up on their content.\r\n\r\nFinally, data curation needs to become part of our shared understanding of what it means to do humanities research, especially with digital materials. This will mean adapting not only our methods and methods courses but also our standards for professional work, benchmarks for success, and the extra-professional socialization into a field that helps new researchers absorb these standards. Part of bringing these changes about involves teaching and training about the importance of data curation and how to do it. I try to contribute to this by finding opportunities to teach data curation to other librarians and humanists. At the first Digital Humanities Winter Institute, which I co-directed with Jennifer Guiliano, we introduced a course on “Data Curation for Digital Humanists” (which Dorothea Salo and I teach). Thanks again to the support of the NEH, Julia Flanders, Dorothea, and I will be offering similar short courses as part of a series of humanities data-curation workshops funded by a grant from the Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities.','Munoz - Question 1','In my current position, data curation is part of the larger design problem of how to use digital tools and methodologies to accomplish innovative humanities research. I am a librarian trained in digital humanities and data curation now working in both an academic research library (University of Maryland Libraries) and in a leadership position at a successful digital humanities center (the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities). My job involves data curation as part of strategic planning, project development, teaching and training, and, most generally, producing public research that others can build upon, continue, and enrich.','publish','open','open','','munoz-question-1','','\nhttp://www.samplereality.com/2013/02/08/when-does-service-become-scholarship/','2013-06-22 04:31:28','2013-06-22 04:31:28','',0,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/?p=4631',0,'post','',0),(4632,3,'2013-06-15 21:41:53','2013-06-15 21:41:53','In my current position, data curation is part of the larger design problem of how to use digital tools and methodologies to accomplish innovative humanities research. I am a librarian trained in digital humanities and data curation now working in both an academic research library (University of Maryland Libraries) and in a leadership position at a successful digital humanities center (the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities). My job involves data curation as part of strategic planning, project development, teaching and training, and, most generally, producing public research that others can build upon, continue, and enrich ((Mark Sample, “When Does Service Become Scholarship?” <i>SAMPLE REALITY</i>, February 8, 2013, <a href=\"http://www.samplereality.com/2013/02/08/when-does-service-become-scholarship/\">http://www.samplereality.com/2013/02/08/when-does-service-become-scholarship/</a>.)). As I have written elsewhere (with Allen Renear), data curation refers to “the challenge of maintaining digital information that is produced in the course of research in a manner that preserves its meaning and usefulness as a potential input for further research.” ((Trevor Muñoz and Allen Renear, “Issues in Humanities Data Curation,” June 15, 2011, <a href=\"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/30852\">https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/30852</a>.)) This can involve everything from just making the responsibilities for data management explicit in the form of a plan to more intensive work like creating documentation or normalizing “messy” data. In working on the kinds of diverse teams that get assembled to do digital humanities work, I try to be the one who is extra mindful of what is happening to the project data, just as I expect the software developers to be most aware of our technical architecture and the disciplinary specialist to be most aware of what intervention our project is trying to make in scholarly debates.\n\nI am convinced that as the materials and analytical practices of humanities research become increasingly digital, the theoretical knowledge and practical skills of information science, librarianship, and archival science—which come together in the research and practice of data curation—will become more vital to more humanists. At the level of strategic planning, data curation work is mostly awareness building; this involves introducing data curation into discussions as diverse as how we build all our websites, to how we imagine and staff new positions. At the level of project development, data curation takes a more concrete shape in the work we do. Much of the research I work on is generously supported by funders such as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Like funders of scientific research, the Office of Digital Humanities at the NEH requires that proposals for funding include data management plans. Some of my work involves writing these plans and developing practices for monitoring and following up on their content.\n\nFinally, data curation needs to become part of our shared understanding of what it means to do humanities research, especially with digital materials. This will mean adapting not only our methods and methods courses but also our standards for professional work, benchmarks for success, and the extra-professional socialization into a field that helps new researchers absorb these standards. Part of bringing these changes about involves teaching and training about the importance of data curation and how to do it. I try to contribute to this by finding opportunities to teach data curation to other librarians and humanists. At the first Digital Humanities Winter Institute, which I co-directed with Jennifer Guiliano, we introduced a course on “Data Curation for Digital Humanists” (which Dorothea Salo and I teach). Thanks again to the support of the NEH, Julia Flanders, Dorothea, and I will be offering similar short courses as part of a series of humanities data-curation workshops funded by a grant from the Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities.','Munoz - Question 1','','inherit','open','open','','4631-revision','','','2013-06-15 21:41:53','2013-06-15 21:41:53','',4631,'http://dev.archivejournal.net/issue//uncategorized/4631-revision/',0,'revision','',0);
