As an act of organizational accountability and in response to Treaties Recognition Week, the Librarians' and Archivists' Association of the University of Waterloo wishes to express its support for the organizers behind 1492 Land Back Lane.
The members of LAAUW live and work on the Haldimand Tract, land promised to the Six Nations in 1784 for allying with the British during the American Revolution. It includes six miles on each side of the Grand River. The relationship with the Haldimand Tract...
The Biden administration faces two simultaneous challenges on the records preservation front: fixing a broken Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) system, and closing the loopholes to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) so they can’t be abused again.
Both of these challenges can be met, but it will take a combination of Day One and sustained action on the part of both the Biden administration and Congress to do so. (Some of the following recommendations, along with many others, are discussed in...
Isha Khan, President and CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), today released a framework plan to create a safe, respectful and healthy workplace. The document has been posted on the CMHR website.
“Creating lasting change requires a deep commitment to challenging our systems and the way we work,” said Khan, who began her role as CMHR leader on August 17. “We are approaching this thoughtfully and have been working hard to gather input from employees and the community. Our approach...
It is early June, and there are beautiful things happening, inspiring things happening. There are also imperfect, perhaps severely limited gestures being made by people whom I trust genuinely do care. There are ups (the surge of attention to abolition, the statues of refined predators toppled into the rivers) and there are downs (the deadly violence of police “wellness” activities from which the public attention to uprising provides no apparent reprieve) and it’s disorienting.
I am called upon...
Museum Archivists, the latest issue of the newsletter is available, the summer 2020 issue!
The Museum Archives Section's Standards and Best Practices Working Group held its annual symposium at the SAA Annual Meeting in Austin on August 3rd, 2019. The symposium formalized the “Updates from the Floor” portion of the Section meeting and focused on projects currently underway or recently completed in museum archives. The symposium provided a forum for sharing pilots, in-progress projects, and recently completed projects, initiatives, and activities at our repositories with our colleagues...
We have gathered small pieces, that would otherwise be posted on our blog, together in a single, short, PDF document. It includes definitions of terms and quotations, Items that were requested in the past by non-members of the Security Section.
Please enjoy it and let us know what you think.
Protect to Preserve: Information, Observations, and Things to Ponder
Contents:
Secure Your Stuff Section Research Volunteer, Jeff Lundgren, asks “how do we secure our stuff when it comes to “cyber”, and...
The Technical Subcommittee for Encoded Archival Standards (TS-EAS) is responsible for the ongoing maintenance of EAD and EAC-CPF as well as the development of future companion standards, such as Encoded Archival Context for Functions. We are seeking self-nominations from the international community to join TS-EAS. Anyone outside of the United States who has experience working with or implementing archival encoding standards is encouraged to apply as an international member.Next year, the...
Something important to you missing from this newsletter? Send a submission my way and let me know what you would like to see.
Please submit newsletter items about archives and human rights (writ broadly) to hilary.h.barlow@gmail.com. These can be recent publications, upcoming events or exhibitions, opportunities and scholarships, or something else entirely as long as it connects to archives and human rights. For the October newsletter, please send your submission by November 23, 2020.
Happy...
Anderson-Rajkumar’s story was the last oral history interview I conducted. It was recorded through Skype in April 2020 at the beginning of a pandemic.
As Rev. Evangeline spoke, I was reminded about the central purpose behind this oral history collection. I started with the belief that communities cannot heal from historic, intergenerational trauma without knowing their history. I hoped to catalyze collective healing and liberation through story. I also wanted to emphasize that caste doesn’t...
In April 2020, a group of Palestinian NGOs from Shufat refugee camp joined in a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court. The petition demanded that the Israeli Ministry of Health open COVID-19 testing centres for Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem, including those living in the densely-populated Shufat camp. Media coverage largely discussed the petition’s ultimate success in the context of Israel’s pandemic policies for Palestinians. Yet the latter’s decision to contest the government in...
Three books have been published in recent months which address themes of fundamental importance to the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Each of them, in very different ways, explores the nexuses of archive-discourse, public-private and violence-peacemaking. All three of the books have benefitted from engagement with the Foundation and its archival resources.
Jacob Dlamini’s The Terrorist Album uses a particular apartheid-era security police record as a prism for reading apartheid security archives...
For most of his life, all the information Igor Kulakov had about his paternal great-grandparents was their picture, their names and the fact that they had been murdered during the Holocaust.
The assumption in his family had always been that Sheindle and Mordechai Sova were shot at Babyn Yar (often spelled “Babi Yar”), a ravine on Kyiv’s outskirts where German troops massacred at least 33,000 Jews in September 1941, in one of the largest massacres of the Holocaust.
But in recent months, Kulakov...
Since the Vatican opened its post-1939 closed archives earlier this year, historians are gaining new insight into how one of the world’s most influential institutions, the Catholic Church, confronted—or failed to confront—the Nazi regime, particularly its persecution of Jews.
Holy Silence, a thought-provoking and timely new documentary, examines the role of Vatican and US leaders in shaping the Church's response to the rising Nazi threat and antisemitism spreading across Europe.
Join us for a...
Join us to celebrate the launch of Out North: An Archive of Queer Activism and Kinship in Canada. Recently published by Figure 1 Publishing in Vancouver, BC, this book tells a story of LGBTQ2+ collective life and action in Canada since the mid-twentieth century and emphasizes political and cultural movements across regional lines. Out North features artwork, photographs, journals, publications, and ephemera held at The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives (the largest independent LGBTQ2+ archive...
Algoma University’s Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre (SRSC) has been awarded the National Trust of Canada Ecclesiastical Insurance Cornerstone Resilient Places Award for their impressive work on the Shingwauk site.
The Ecclesiastical Insurance Cornerstone Awards bring national attention to exemplary projects and places that contribute to quality of life and sense of place, and illustrate the viability of heritage buildings and sites for traditional or new uses. The awards are presented in...
The Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was adopted in Geneva on July 27th 1929. It was later revised alongside the pre-dating Convention protecting the war wounded and remains in force today as the third of the four 1949 Geneva Conventions. In 1929, the adoption of this first multilateral treaty entirely dedicated to the protection of prisoners of war (POW) filled an important gap in the international legal framework and crystallized a major shift in the way prisoners of...
This report examines algorithmic technologies that are designed for use in criminal law enforcement systems. Algorithmic policing is an area of technological development that, in theory, is designed to enable law enforcement agencies to either automate surveillance or to draw inferences through the use of mass data processing in the hopes of predicting potential criminal activity. The latter type of technology and the policing methods built upon it are often referred to as predictive policing....
Now that the Republican and Democratic parties have officially confirmed President Donald J. Trump and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr as their respective presidential nominees, the Cyber Vault will take a closer look at what cybersecurity and digital policy might look like under either a Trump or Biden administration. Over the coming weeks, future postings will review documents that provide insights into how key areas of cybersecurity policy, such as critical infrastructure...
In August 1862, Minnesota erupted in unprecedented violence. The Dakota, a people that had been confined to two strips of land along the Minnesota River Valley through a series of treaties, began attacking white settlements in the region. Within days, New Ulm had been almost completely burned down and an American Army outpost had been besieged. Just as quickly as the fighting began, it was over; Lincoln, in the midst of leading the Union through the American Civil War, sent Federal troops into...
The Nelson Mandela Foundation’s Centre of Memory houses Nelson Mandela Archive that includes Madiba’s private papers, office papers and associated papers. The digitisation project aims at creating a virtual archive by documenting, enabling access and preservation, and promoting the utilisation of the writings and life and times of Nelson Mandela. Although analogue materials can survive for centuries if they are kept under proper conditions, it is important for them to be digitised so that they...
The Douglas County Library Board of Trustees voted 3-2 Tuesday to approve an investigation into the library’s director Amy Dodson and the staff of the library regarding their proposed support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
On July 22, the Douglas County Public Library Board of Trustees issued an agenda for their July 28th meeting which included a discussion item on a proposed addition to their Diversity Statement.
However, that meeting was cancelled after the library, the Douglas County...
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) welcomes today’s announcement of Manitoba human rights lawyer and advocate Isha Khan as its new president and chief executive officer.
CMHR Board Chair Pauline Rafferty said the appointment is a crucial and positive step towards rebuilding trust in the Museum’s commitment to human rights. The five‐year appointment, which commences on August 17, was announced today by the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Canadian Heritage.
Read more here....
A4BLiP stands in solidarity with Don’t Shoot and its disassociation from and opposition to Portland Wall of Moms (WOM). Don’t Shoot Portland has called out WOM, and specifically WOM leader Bev Barnum, for failing to protect vulnerable Black women protestors after marching, filing for 501c3 status without consulting newly installed Black leaders, and using the cover of Black leadership to further an agenda unrelated to Black Lives Matter.
As a primarily white group, A4BLiP largely seeks to...
We all would like to believe that we are aware of Cultural Diversity Competency (CDC), but what exactly does it stand for? Helen Wong Smith says it’s the ability to function with awareness, knowledge, and interpersonal skill when engaging people of different backgrounds, assumptions, beliefs, values, and behaviors. In this workshop you’ll be challenged to examine personal perceptions that might surprise you and, you’ll be introduced to strategies that will increase your ability to practice...
