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...
Hello RAO Members!
Are you looking to shape the future direction and activities of the Reference, Access, and Outreach Section? Put yourself forward for an elected RAO position!
The RAO Nominations and Elections Committee is seeking nominations to fill vacancies on the RAO Steering Committee; we invite you to volunteer yourself or someone you know as a candidate! We value a variety of ideas and perspectives in RAO, and we encourage candidates from diverse backgrounds, institutions,...
Join us on Wednesday, April 24th 2019 from 1:00 - 3:20 PM EDT for #PresTC19, a Preservation Week Twitter Conference hosted by the Society of American Archivists Preservation Section. This free and inclusive conference on Twitter will present a series of lightning talks that we hope will be of interest to librarians, archivists, and anyone who may care about preserving cultural heritage.
Each speaker will have 10 minutes to present their talk, and then take questions from you, the audience. Of...
The Webinar was hosted by Rachael Woody of Rachael Cristine Consulting LLC. Rachael discussed how she set up her business, reviewed business and financial logistics, revealed how to select an appropriate consulting rate, and offered her tips and tricks for successfully entering the consulting world.
Rachael presented for about 45 minutes and then answer questions from the audience. If you have a question you’d like to ask Rachael, connect directly at 503-922-3402, consulting@rachaelcristine.com...
ml4arc - Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Natural Language Processing Applications in Archives
Friday, July 26, 2019 - 9:00am Wilson Library, Pleasants Family Assembly Room
The RATOM Project will host “ml4arc - Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Natural Language Processing Applications in Archives” July 26, 2019, from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. at Wilson Library, Pleasants Room on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill. The event will focus on applications of machine learning, deep learning, and natural...
Welcome Whitney Miller & Michael Law!
Whitney Miller is beginning as our Disaster Chair, taking over from Liz Francis. Whitney is RAAC’s Michigan Archival Association representative and works at Michigan State University in Archives and Historical Collections. Her research interests include Southern History, particularly South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida as well as New York City history, in particular architecture and transit history.
Michael Law began earlier this year as our...
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 April newsletter, please send you submission by April 23, 2019.
Renowned Nigerian art curator Okwui Enwezor has died at age 55 after a battle with cancer. Enwezor was the director of the Haus der Kunst museum in Munich, Germany, until last year. He was also an art critic, educator, editor and writer. He worked to put African art and artists center stage, as well as women artists. In 1994, he founded Nka, a magazine for contemporary African art. His exhibit “The Short Century,” celebrating African art and independence movements, was hailed as a landmark...
The Nelson Mandela Foundation partnered with the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI) today in launching the exhibition Insurgent Citizens: Reflections on Protest in Democratic South Africa at the Foundation’s Centre of Memory. Keynote speaker for the event was former Public Protector Advocate Thuli Madonsela.
The exhibition is designed to provoke discussion on South Africa’s constitutionally protected right to protest, the limits to that right, and appropriate ways of participating in...
In March 2019, The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives changed its name. Today, we are known as The ArQuives, a name we believe more accurately reflects the diversity of our communities, the people and communities that are already represented in our collection. We spent 6-months reaching out to our stakeholders and recognized the growing number of underrepresented people; most notably trans, queer, bisexual, and 2-spirited folks. Read the rest of this post here and read about the new ArQuives...
The Immigration History Research Center Archives (IHRCA) offers Grant-in-Aid Awards to support a visit in order to conduct research in our collections. Awards are available through co-sponsorship from the Immigration History Research Center and the IHRCA through the ethnic and general funds. This award is open to scholars of all levels, including independent scholars, and supports a research visit of 5 days or more. Typically, awards are for $1,000, and four awards are given each year. The...
As the French President Emmanuel Macron tours East Africa, he is certain to get a cordial welcome. If everything goes to plan, it will be all smiles and few uncomfortable questions. However, this should not be the case. Macron has called for an international conference on the return of African art and artefacts looted during colonialism. But art and artefacts are not the only things that should be returned.
The colonial archive, the thousands of official records and documents that trace the...
On the 43rd anniversary of the military coup in Argentina, the Argentine government of Mauricio Macri has announced that the Trump Administration will provide “the largest delivery of declassified documents, in size and file quality, to another nation”—formerly secret U.S. records relating to human rights abuses committed during under the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. The official transfer of the records is planned for mid-April during a visit by Argentina’s minister of justice...
First Look Media announced Wednesday that it was shutting down access to whistleblower Edward Snowden’s massive trove of leaked National Security Agency documents.Over the past several years, The Intercept, which is owned by First Look Media, has maintained a research team to handle the large number of documents provided by Snowden to Intercept journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald.But in an email to staff Wednesday evening, First Look CEO Michael Bloom said that as other major news...
If you are attending any of the above conferences in April, 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...
Anna Smith, Special Collections Librarian at Charleston Library Society, digs into both the logistics and ethics of making a digital database from asylum records. Her post features a presentation at the Society of North Carolina Archivists on UNC-Chapel Hill's Community Histories Workshop.
Read the post in its entirety here.
The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect (AFC), in partnership with the Holocaust & Genocide Studies program at Stockton University, New Jersey, will launch its pilot Peer Guide Training Program through the exhibit “Anne Frank: A History for Today” at three high schools in Atlantic and Cape May counties this spring, following a public exhibition February 9-22 at Stockton University.Anne Frank wrote, “Even if people are still very young, they shouldn’t be prevented from saying what they...
Five historical volumes covering the period 1863-1975 are available online in PDF format. They provide an overview of the ICRC operational and legal activities and therefore provide an ideal springboard for more in-depth research in the ICRC archives.Read more here.
Some of the most populous states passed laws between 1985 and 1995, covering nearly one-third of the US population, requiring the teaching of the Holocaust in public schools. In each case, the law specified that knowledge about the Holocaust ought to be connected to human rights issues. Prejudice and discrimination must be identified with genocide, leading to an emphasis on “the personal responsibility that each citizen bears to fight racism and hatred whenever and wherever it happens” (New...
African Americans and the disABILITY Experience is presented by the Museum of disABILITY History and a group of colleagues working in disability services at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Predominantly Black Colleges and Universities (PBCUs), and the Taishoff Center at Syracuse University.
This consortium is identifying ways to provide culturally responsive disability services and classroom instruction to Black and African American college students with disabilities...
I am pleased to announce that the C&U Section Steering Committee recently voted for the theme of campus and campus-related histories, as this year’s Section focus. We will center on social justice-related work, such as inclusive and evolving historical narratives, contested commemorations, town-gown relations, and privilege within the archival record. I welcome your feedback on key questions we might pose, outputs that would be helpful to you in your jobs, or programmatic ideas for working...
