Cell-phone hacks, internet monitoring, face-recognition cameras, predictive policing and biometric surveillance. Once the stuff of dystopian science fiction, these technological tools are increasingly used to violate human rights and supress dissent in countries around the world.
American investigative journalist Megha Rajagopalan was forced to leave China last year after probing state surveillance of ethnic Uighur Muslims of the Xinjiang region, with many sent to “political education camps”....
For three years now, Asmaa Azaizeh has run a popular Arabic-language book festival in Haifa, a mixed city that has become a vibrant culinary and cultural capital for Palestinian citizens of Israel. But as this year’s festival opens on Friday, it is being held without hundreds of titles Ms. Azaizeh wanted to showcase. Israeli border officials barred them from being imported from Jordan, under an 80-year-old law that predates the existence of the state of Israel.
Arabic translations of...
Otrxs Fronterxs - Stories of migration, racism and (up) rooting - is the new exhibition organized by the Museum of Memory and Human Rights and the University Academy of Christian Humanism, in collaboration with the National Museum of Fine Arts.
The sample is presented as a critical and less conventional mapping on the migrant reality, emphasizing those darker and less fortunate areas of human reality that the migration experience brings.
The exhibition takes place in different areas inside...
This is an investigation produced by the Sudanese Archive in collaboration with the Berkeley Human Rights Investigation Lab. It uses open-source tools and techniques to verify evidence gathered from videos, images, and/or reports published online. The focus of this report is about violence against protesters in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman on June 30, 2019.
Protests in Sudan have continued for months as people fight for a civilian-led government. They have claimed the lives of hundreds....
The National Native American Boarding School (NABS) Healing Coalition will discuss their initiative to identify and collect nationally dispersed Native American boarding school records and to implement digital access to these vital records. As part of a broader effort to provide access to and information about those affected by Native American boarding schools, the NABS digital archive brings together digital surrogates of historical documents held by individuals and institutions across the...
September saw not one, but two new additions to the Human Rights Archives Section blog.
Inclusive Processing of Indigenous Collections at SAA/COSA 2019Carli Lowe relates best practices for processing Indigenous collections in ways that are both culturally competent and engage the communities that created the materials.
Bringing Archives to the Communities They Serve: Three Takes from the Association of Canadian Archivists conferenceBlog editor Hilary Barlow covers 3 presentations about actively...
In 1998, ’25 Lives: Out and Proud’ was planned to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. The project, co-curated by Bruce Jones, CLGA president Edward Tompkins and vice-president Robin Brownlie, was originally conceived as ‘9 Lives: Canadian Lesbians and Gays and the Building of Our Community’, and grew to honour 25 members of LGBTQ communities. The initial inductees were chosen by a CLGA committee using three criteria: contribution to the growth of diverse out...
The Secret Service has just released nearly 150 heavily-redacted pages concerning a Chinese delegation’s visit to President Trump’s winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, in April 2017. The release is a belated response to a Freedom of Information Act appeal submitted by the National Security Archive, together with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), as part of a lawsuit to open the White House visitor logs...
For the Jewish villagers of Kippenheim, no challenge was as urgent or formidable as escaping Nazi Germany, often by acquiring American visas. In his book, The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught in Between, Michael Dobbs painstakingly documents how several members of this small community struggled to find refuge and what obstacles stood in their way.
Deported to unoccupied France in October 1940, the refugees continued their visa quest, even as the Nazis planned further...
With their rarefied spaces and lofty missions, museums and other cultural institutions have not been known as tinderboxes of labor activism. But the fight against income inequality has taken hold in their world, with curators, handlers and designers publicly pressuring executives to raise their wages, and in some cases forming unions.
The workers said they had been inspired by recent union drives at media companies and among graduate students, and their efforts even echo the #MeToo movement in...
When officials in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, refused to make black history part of the mandatory school curriculum, Sadie Roberts-Joseph created a museum dedicated to African-American heritage, friends say.
Today, the Baton Rouge African-American Museum occupies a four-room building under Interstate 10. It was first named for educator Odell S. Williams, whose paintings of black inventors adorn the museum's walls. A bus outside tells the story of the Baton Rouge bus boycott during the Civil Rights...
Substantial concern is being raised about recent action by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) regarding the presentation of two sets of records on their website.
A collection of speeches and testimonies made by agency leaders was removed in 2017; the record of detainee deaths while in ICE custody remains on the website but is no longer updated. Both types of record are considered permanent by the National Archives and Records Administration and are part of records...
Time to Act: Rohingya Voices features images by internationally renowned photojournalist Kevin Frayer that compassionately portray the desperate and ongoing plight of a people struggling to survive violent persecution and dehumanization. Huge, projected black-and-white photographs are layered in the Museum’s Level 6 Expressions gallery, interspersed with animated design elements that suggest the displacement, movement and continual relocation of a stateless people.
“I had gone with the hope of...
Set to open on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the exhibition examines the role of nightlife venues, parties, and other late-night establishments across the United States in serving as catalysts for LGBTQ protest and activism, while simultaneously facilitating the demand and need for liberated space.
Organized thematically into four sections--Police Raids and Resistance, Contemporary Activism, Los Angeles Nightlife, and Contemporary Art Meditations--the exhibition seeks to...
The National Security Archive joins our international and Guatemalan colleagues in calling for the protection of the Historical Archive of the National Police (AHPN) of Guatemala, which faces new threats to its independence and to public access to its holdings.
In a press conference on Monday, May 27, Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart signaled his intent to assert his agency’s control of the AHPN including the prospect of new restrictions on access to the archived police records and possible...
In a statement handed out during the protest, the organizers explain that "The Central Intelligence Agency stands in direct opposition to our core values.... That is why today, we join those librarians who came before us as we stand up to oppose CIA recruitment at the ALA Annual Conference....The CIA has participated for decades in the violent overthrow of governments while propping up dictators all over the world."
Read more here. Common Dreams also published an article about this protest.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary. That position has repeatedly and unambiguously been made clear in the Museum’s official statement on the matter – a statement that is reiterated and reaffirmed now.
Read the rest of the statement here. Note: members of the American Jewish community and some Holocaust historians have expressed differing opinions from the...
The Public Libraries Archives Special Collections Section steering committee is pleased to share the slides of the lightning talks featured during our section meeting which took place August 3 during the SAA Annual Meeting. Our speakers highlighted fantastic community-focused projects by and with public library archives and special collections.
Google Slides: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iA2E3N3Kyq8dB98pJKbu9SZvUim4SlnV
Full presenter list and titles:
Lisa Warwick, DC Public Library...
The Metadata and Digital Object Section (MDOS) is holding a special election to fill the following vacancies on the Steering Committee:
Steering Committee Co-Chair, Two-year commitment. Serves the first year as Junior Co-Chair and the following year as Senior Co-Chair with the option for a third year of service as a Member of the Steering Committee. The MDOS Steering Committee Co-Chair assists in the operation of the Section, serves as acting chair in the absence of a Co-Chair, and...
2019-2020 AHS Elections
Vice-Chair/Chair-elect candidates
Sebastian Modrow
Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts
Special Collections Research Center
Syracuse University Libraries
In my day-to-day life I am the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (Syracuse, NY). I hold a German Master’s equivalent (Exam of the State) in Latin and History (University of Greifswald, Germany), a Doctor of Philosophy in Ancient History (...
A former project (circa 2019) Zotero bibliography can be found here.
If you have questions about the bibliography, please contact Katharina Hering or one of the IAAS steering committee members.
Dear IAAS members:
It is my great pleasure to officially announce the 2019-2020 International Archival Affairs Section Steering Committee. Many congratulations to Margarita Vargas-Betancourt (the incoming Junior co-Chair) and to Brad Bauer (the new steering committee member at-large). Tewodros (Teddy) Abebe has rotated in as our new Senior co-Chair.
Here is the updated steering committee roster:
* Tewodros Abebe, Senior Co-Chair (Senior Archivist, Howard University)
* Margarita Vargas-...
The Archival History Section is pleased to award the 2019 Article Award to Heather Wolfe and Peter Stallybrass’s “The Material Culture of Record-Keeping in Early Modem England,” which was printed in Archives and Information in the Early Modern World, edited by Kate Peters, Alexandra Walsham, and Liesbeth Corens. Judges praised the piece for filling an important gap in the archival literature both topically and temporally, for its interdisciplinary approach, for its keen reading of material...
Regional Archival Associations Consortium (RAAC)
Annual Meeting Minutes
August 4, 2019
12:00 – 1:15 p.m.
JW Marriott Austin, Room Grand Salon 7 (level 4)
Introductions
Mary Rubin and Philip Skroska introduced themselves as the co-chairs.
Incoming and Outgoing Steering Committee
Phillip Skroska - Advocacy (continuing)
Whitney Miller - Disaster Planning and Recovery (came on in April, replaced Liz Francis)
Michael Law - Education (came on in January, replaced Vin Novaro)
Karen Trivette -...
Electronic Records Steering Committee
The ERS Steering Committee is excited to announce our new officers for the 2019-2023 term! They are:
Vice Chair/Chair ElectAnnalise Berdini, she/her, Digital Archivist (Princeton University)
Steering CommitteeAndrea Belair, Archives and Special Collections Librarian (Union College)Elizabeth Carron, she/her, Archivist for Records Management, Bentley Historical Library (University of Michigan)
Continuing their service on the ERS Steering Committee in the...
