“Take the Trouble to Compile a Whole New World:” The Role of Event-Based Participatory Projects in Institutional Archives

In 1970, Howard Zinn gave an address to the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and called upon the archival profession to discard pretensions of neutrality and “take the trouble to compile a whole new world of documentary material, about the lives, desires, needs, of ordinary people” (Zinn 1977, 25). This marked a turning point and highlighted the movement to push the archival profession away from protecting the status quo and towards an endeavor for a more democratic and pluralized archival record in which the records of ordinary people are as valued as those of powerful groups and individuals. This dissertation, which is at the data collection and analysis stage, is largely an exploration of one type of such effort: participatory archive collection day events. This study examines how ordinary people and their communities connect to archival records and to archival institutions. The communities represented in these archives are varied and their members are often referred to as “ordinary people” in the literature on movements to pluralize archival records. Through a combination of primary source data analysis and ethnographic field data collection and analysis, this project will investigate the ties between archival institutions, communities, records, and memory in participatory archive initiatives. Using Bastian’s (2003) community of records framework, I aim to examine how communities of ordinary people in archival institutions use event-based mediated participatory archive projects to create meaning, memory, and relationships based on personal and community records

A Study of the Intellectual Structure of Community Archives

Community archives have gained renewed attention as an emerging archival movement. The goal of this study is to map the intellectual structure of community-centric archival research during the 2000-2017 period. To identify and visualize the relationships between topics within the subject areas, we analyzed the co-occurrence index and network structures of keywords derived from titles, abstracts, and author-provided keywords in peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings in the field of community archives

Defining data ethics in library and information science

In the library and information sciences (LIS), data ethics is an area of increasing focus. The purpose of this study is to answer these questions and comprehensively define data ethics in the LIS fields based on the diverse body of literature on the topic. Through an integrative literature review, we found four overarching themes in LIS literature on data ethics: privacy, research ethics, ethical ecosystems, and control. Additionally, these four themes gave us an opportunity to create a comprehensive definition of data ethics in the library and information science fields

Privacy and Access in the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Records

Archival collections that include records about victims and survivors of child abuse present unique challenges regarding privacy, access, and representation. With a long tenure of collecting on the history of social welfare, University Archives and Special Collections (UASC) in the Joseph P. Healey Library at the University of Massachusetts Boston had to address these challenges before processing and making available the historic inactive records of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC). UASC and the MSPCC took steps to ensure that the MSPCC collection would be accessible to the survivors represented in the records and to their descendants, while also providing appropriate access to the collection for the wider public. To protect the privacy of any former MSPCC clients who may still be living, the MSPCC and UASC collaborated to establish a set of policies that can be adapted by archives working with similar collections

Connecting Communities with Libraries, Archives, and Historians through Oral Histories

Grant narrative for the grant, "Connecting Communities with Libraries, Archives, and Historians Through Oral Histories." The University of North Texas (UNT) Department of Information Science, partnering with the UNT Oral History Program, will host a series of forums to identify best practices and strategies to respond to challenges around building, implementing, preserving, and accessing community oral history projects. The project team will convene librarians, archivists, oral history practitioners, public historians, community-based memory workers, and others working in oral history to identify good practices, share challenges and lessons learned, and prepare an actionable roadmap for building, implementing, preserving, and sustaining community oral history projects

Big Data in the Big D

Presentation for the 2017 International Conference on Knowledge Management. This presentation describes the use of text mining and visualization to identify collective memory themes in knowledge management literature

Big Data in the Big D

Presented at the 2017 International Conference on Knowledge Management. This presentation introduces the panel session on Big Data, Ethics and Public Engagement, and introduces crowd-sourcing efforts to preserve big data

Privacy and Access in the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Records

Archival collections that include records about victims and survivors of child abuse present unique challenges regarding privacy, access, and representation. With a long tenure of collecting on the history of social welfare, University Archives and Special Collections (UASC) in the Joseph P. Healey Library at the University of Massachusetts Boston had to address these challenges before processing and making available the historic inactive records of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC). UASC and the MSPCC took steps to ensure that the MSPCC collection would be accessible to the survivors represented in the records and to their descendants, while also providing appropriate access to the collection for the wider public. To protect the privacy of any former MSPCC clients who may still be living, the MSPCC and UASC collaborated to establish a set of policies that can be adapted by archives working with similar collections

Connecting Communities with Libraries, Archives, and Historians Through Oral Histories

Data management plan for the grant, "Connecting Communities with Libraries, Archives, and Historians Through Oral Histories." The University of North Texas (UNT) Department of Information Science, partnering with the UNT Oral History Program, will host a series of forums to identify best practices and strategies to respond to challenges around building, implementing, preserving, and accessing community oral history projects. The project team will convene librarians, archivists, oral history practitioners, public historians, community-based memory workers, and others working in oral history to identify good practices, share challenges and lessons learned, and prepare an actionable roadmap for building, implementing, preserving, and sustaining community oral history projects