The decades-long history of the two-spirit movement here in Manitoba and throughout North America is now being saved and preserved at the University of Winnipeg Archives. The collection — mostly donated by long-time Winnipeg two-spirit activist Albert McLeod — will be on display at the archive's launch Monday, kicking off the school's Pride Week celebrations. Believed to be the most comprehensive collection of two-spirit materials in Canada, Mcleod says the archives will be used by researchers...
In August 2017 an exhibit titled A Campus Divided: Progressives, Anti-Communists, Racism, and Antisemitism at the University of Minnesota, 1930-1942 opened in Elmer L. Andersen Library, the home of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Minnesota. The exhibit was a culmination of years of original research pulling from archival materials to tell the story of racism and surveillance of students on campus during the interwar years.
My involvement, as Archivist for the Upper...
The National Security Archive, along with 15 other media organizations, filed a “friend of the court” brief on April 29 in the lawsuit Barr v. Redacted challenging the FBI’s authority to issue national security letters (NSLs) without any judicial oversight and under indefinite gag orders. The letters demand business records from a wide array of organizations for national security investigations, and their accompanying gag orders prohibit the recipient from speaking with anyone about the NSL,...
Esther F. arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau in August 1944 — a period when the camp’s crematoriums were operating at full capacity. Esther, a physician, was held for five days before being transported to Guben, a labor camp in Germany where she was assigned to care for Jewish factory workers.
At Guben, a sub-camp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in eastern Germany (present-day Poland), a female Nazi officer instructed Esther to produce a list of medical supplies she needed. Mentally and...
At last month’s “Vision & Justice” convening hosted by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, luminaries from Harvard and beyond came together to consider the most pressing problems at the juncture of justice, arts, and race. In particular, the conference description characterized the “foundational right of representation in a democracy” as “the right to be recognized justly.”So it was peculiar that neither the event nor the subsequent publicationreferenced the ongoing struggle of...
In the latest on our blog, Eira Tansey relates how historians put today's politics in historical context. Eira, Digital Archivist/Records Manager at the University of Cincinnati Libraries, reflected on her experience as an archivist attending the Organization of American Historians Conference. Her piece touches on issues of racial justice, labor and surveillance. Read the post here.
If you'd be interested in writing for the Human Rights Archives Section blog, email hilary.h.barlow@gmail.com...
The SAA Public Library Archives and Special Collections Section seeks candidates to serve in leadership positions for June 2019 elections! Getting involved in PLASC leadership is a great way to engage in professional development and public service.
Time commitment is approximately 5 hours/month, including attendance at a virtual monthly meeting. Annual meeting attendance is NOT required. Over the last 2 years PLASC has been engaged in reinvigorating the section and developing outreach...
Since the section's bylaws were changed to standing rules per the member affinity group transition approved by Council in August 2016, the Preservation Section's standing rules have been in need of an update. This update reflects the current operations of the section's steering committee as it has evolved over the last five years. These changes mostly address the section's online presence, update outdated modes of communication prescribed in the standing rules, and clarify some confusing...
The Encoded Archival Standards Section is seeking candidates for three positions: one co-chair and two Steering Committee members. The successful candidates will serve a two-year term (August 2019-August 2021). Nominees must be current members of the Society of American Archivists to be considered.
Please feel free to email current co-chairs Lora Woodford at lora.woodford@lyrasis.org or Dallas Pillen at djpillen@umich.edu with any questions regarding the nominations/election process or the...
The Web Archiving Section is excited to accept nominations for the following Steering Committee positions for the 2019-2020 year! If you or someone you know would like to run for a position on the the Web Archiving Section Steering Committee please fill out this form by May 31, 2019:
Candidate Name
Job Title and Institution
Headshot (high resolution, optional)
Bio and Candidate Statement (1-2 paragraphs)
Title of Steering Committee position being sought
Please keep in mind that membership...
Dear Section Members,
As was announced earlier this year, the Collection Management Tools Section Steering Committee is proposing significant changes to the mission, goals, and name of this section. The overall vision is to move from a narrow focus on collection management tools to a broader focus on all aspects of collection management of archival materials. Major changes include:
Changing the section name from Collection Management Tools Section to Collection Management Section
An increased...
Hello, everyone!
The P & C Steering Committee is proposing updates to the Standing Rules to officially create a Past Chair position and add a fourth Steering Committee member.
The majority of other sections also have Past Chair positions and P & C has informally done this as well for many years. The Past Chair can serve a valuable role by providing continuity and institutional memory, and traditionally within the P & C leadership works closely with interns and spearheads special...
Please send any nominations by Friday, May 31st! Self-nominations are encouraged!
Are you seeking an opportunity to expand your network and get further involved in the oral history community? If so, consider running for an open position on the Steering Committee.
Benefits of providing your time and expertise to the Steering Committee include:
Networking with engaged colleagues.
Cultivating leadership skills in a real world setting.
Driving trends in the field.
Gaining service credit...
The Students and New Archives Professionals (SNAP) Section is seeking nominations for a Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, Secretary, and three At-Large positions.
Serving in a leadership role on the Section is a wonderful way to become more involved with SNAP and SAA and get to know other archivists. Our proposed SNAP bylaws require that to ensure adequate student representation in SNAP leadership, at least two candidates on the slate must be students at the time of the election.
In order to hold a...
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 May newsletter, please send you submission by May 24, 2019.
On International Roma Day, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum welcomes efforts in Congress and in US embassies around the world to recognize the genocide against Europe’s Roma at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, to honor the Romani community and culture, and express concern about continuing violence directed against Romani populations.
In light of the history of the persecution of Roma, which culminated during the Holocaust when at least 250,000 Roma were targeted and...
In the early 1920s, the director of the Bristol Museum in Britain received a package containing two human skulls. The donation came from Alfred Hutchins. He had left England seeking brighter horizons and by the late 1800s was living in Southern California. There he became an amateur archaeologist, excavating Native American graves on the Channel Islands. He offered the museum this collection, apparently in honor of his son, who perished during the First World War.Last week in a ceremony,...
Who has the right to own photos of slaves? We speak with Tamara Lanier, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Papa Renty, the enslaved man whose image was captured in a 19th century photograph currently owned by Harvard University. She is suing the school, accusing it of unfairly profiting from the images. We also speak with her attorney, Benjamin Crump.
Watch the interview here.
After years of failed attempts, the front-facing staff at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum have finally announced their decision to unionize. In a vote held Monday, April 15, the workers voted in favor of joining Local 2110 UAW (United Auto Workers) by a 96% margin.The new union members include employees in the education, retail, and visitor services departments. The workers report low wages, scarce benefits, and unstable working conditions. These inadequate conditions, the organizers say,...
Documenting the Now is accepting applications from US-based social justice activist organizations that would like to benefit from a free community-based digital archives workshop in their city or town in 2020. The workshops will focus on helping activists to develop the skills and to use available tools to collect, preserve, and share their web, social media and other types of digital content in their own digital archive.
Our hope is that activist communities, in creating their own archives...
We are delighted to announce that the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s late photo archivist, Lucia Raadschelders, is to be honoured posthumously by the Presidency for her role in South Africa’s freedom struggle.
Raadschelders passed away on 19 November 2018 after a long battle with cancer. The Presidency will honour her with the Order of the Companions of OR Tambo in Silver.
Elinor Sisulu, who nominated Dutch national Raadschelders, said that she had “devoted most of her life to the struggle for...
In a 1995 interview with Linton Weeks of the Washington Post, the Howard University librarian, collector and self-described “bibliomaniac” Dorothy Porter reflected on the focus of her 43-year career: “The only rewarding thing for me is to bring to light information that no one knows. What’s the point of rehashing the same old thing?”
For Porter, this mission involved not only collecting and preserving a wide range of materials related to the global black experience, but also addressing how...
If you are attending any of the above conferences in May, the HRA Section Blog could use your help! It's not as hard as it sounds, and it's a great way to add a publication to your resume. The post can be a simple summary of the issues discussed at a certain session, or you can get a little opinionated and say what you thought was most productive about the session or not as productive. Here are two examples of sessions covered in the past year. If you're interested in covering a session at...
We're excited to reach out and ask for nominations for next year’s BAS Steering Committee. Self-nominations are encouraged!
We have 5 positions (listed below) available and you can read more about their respective duties in Section IV of the Governance page of the BAS website. Better yet, please reach out to any of the current Steering Committee Members (you can see their current position here and grab their contact info here) to learn more.
Steering Committee Positions:
Vice Chair (3 year...
