A researcher of visual history, Sela uncovers records of Palestinian existence and culture hidden in Israeli archives.Rona Sela, a researcher of visual history and a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, first began studying the history and culture of Zionist and Israeli photography more than 20 years ago.
Read more here.
A new Freedom Trail marker honors those who helped break down the doors of segregation in Jackson.
Nine African-American students from Tougaloo College held a "read-in" at the old Jackson Municipal Library on March 27, 1961.
When the all-white library staff told them to leave, they stayed, and when the police did the same, they didn't move.
Read more here, and read a June 2017 American Libraries story about the Tougaloo 9 and library desegregation here.
The Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva has created the new blog CROSS-files! This blog aims at promoting the contents of the rich audiovisual archives, library collections, general archives and what the ICRC calls the “Agency Archives”. This great collection of books, sound recordings, films, videos and photos illustrate and document the activities of the ICRC from the end of the 19th century up to the present day.
These archives and library have been...
In the Holocaust era, countless ordinary people acted in ways that aided the persecution and murder of Jews and other targeted groups within Nazi Germany and across Europe. The Museum’s current special exhibition, Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration & Complicity in the Holocaust, examines one vexing question: what prompted average people to commit extraordinary crimes in support of the Nazi cause? The seminal research of Dr. Christopher Browning, the author of Ordinary Men, and Dr. Wendy...
Writer/activist/educator/poet Walidah Imarisha delivered the opening keynote address at The Liberated Archive: A Forum for Envisioning and Implementing a Community-Based Approach to Archives at ARCHIVES 2017 in Portland, OR. Imarisha discussed the role of a community archives in telling community stories—and making sure that all stories are told.
Listen to her keynote in its entirety here, and read a full transcript here.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently asked the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), which instructs federal agencies on how to maintain records, to approve its timetable for retaining or destroying records related to its detention operations. This may seem like a run-of-the-mill government request for record-keeping efficiency. It isn’t. An entire paper trail for a system rife with human rights and constitutional abuses is at stake.
ICE has asked for permission to begin...
We were lucky enough to have not one, but two writers contribute SAA 2017 coverage to the HRA Section blog. Both posts covered sessions in the Liberated Archives Forum. Jeremy Brett covered the #ArchivesForBlackLives session, which featured the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia Movement.
Jennifer Eltringham covered the Dismantling Barriers and Indigenous Sovereignty session. While conversations in this session were to be anonymous, Jennifer deftly summarized the discussion while...
Power Point slides from the PLASC meeting at SAA17 are available here.
Per the Human Rights Archives Section Rules: “The section shall be led by two co-chairs, one web liaison/newsletter editor, and at most four steering committee members. A co-chair shall be elected annually for a staggered two-year term. The web liaison/newsletter editor shall be elected for a two-year term. The steering committee members shall be elected annually for a one-year term. All officers and steering committee members may serve for an unlimited number of consecutive terms.”
Co-Chairs...
Following the 2017 Preservation Section Business Meeting in Portland, OR, we have begun to compile Handling Guidelines from reading rooms around the country. We hope these will serve as a helpful resource for those institutions looking to write new handling policies, revise existing policies, or create new handouts and guides for their patrons. Check out the new resources at: https://www2.archivists.org/groups/preservation-section/resource-library-handling-guidelines-for-the-reading-room
The 2017 MARS meeting at the annual SAA convention focused quite a bit on the future of the Section and several potential future projects were brought up by presenters and from the floor.
First, the Military Archival Collection Directory now has a rudimentary start on the SAA MARS' microsite: https://www2.archivists.org/groups/military-archives-section/mars-launches-directory-of-military-archival-collections. With time, MARS will grow this list into a dynamic tool for broad use. This project...
Research Libraries SectionCandidates for 2017 election
Vice-Chair/Chair-elect:
Vakil Smallen
Biography: Vakil is the National Education Association Archivist at George Washington University, responsible for processing describing and promoting collections, and providing reference assistance. He primarily works with GW Libraries’ unique collections related to education, including the records of the National Education Association. Additionally, he was part of a project to explore the potential for...
The 2017 MARS officer candidates' biographies and statements are in the attached PDF.
Candidate Biographies and Statements
***Voting is NOW open! Members will receive an email from SAA with voting instructions. Voting is open until Friday, August 25th.****
Vice Chair/Chair-Elect
Ricardo L. Punzalan
Assistant Professor of Archives & Digital CurationCollege of Information StudiesUniversity of Maryland, College Park
Bio: Ricardo L. Punzalan is assistant professor of archives and digital curation at the College of Information Studies, affiliate faculty in the Department of...
In order to facilitate greater communications between archivists whose institutions hold collections related to the military and its impact on society, the Military Archives Section is compiling a Directory of Military Archival Collections. This directory is open in any institution, large or small, military or government, academic, public or private which holds military related archival materials. Even if this is not the primary focus of your instituation, all archives holding such materials...
Here, below, is a listing of the candidates elected to serve the open positions. Thank you to all candidates and for all who voted:
Vice Chair/Chair Elect: Greg McCoy (Procter & Gamble)
Vice Editor: Meredith Torre (Atlanta Housing Authority)
Secretary: Michele McKinnon Fricke (Capital Group)
Member at Large: Lauren Gaylord (Pixar Animation Studios)
Education Chair: Jennifer Johnson (Cargill, Inc.)
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 August newsletter, please send you submission by August 24, 2017.
Last year, the National Archives (NARA) acquired a large number of historically valuable National Security Agency records. But they remain inaccessible to researchers, at least for the time being.
David Langbart of NARA described the situation at a closed meeting of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee late last year. According to recently published minutes of that meeting:
“The [NSA] records consist of approximately 19,000 folders without any real arrangement. These records...
The Schomburg Center’s “Black Power” exhibition traces ten years of the Black Panther movement, looking at the topics, issues, misunderstandings, and people that shaped a global movement.Curated by Dr. Sylviane A. Diouf, this exhibition invites guests to take a closer look at the movement that guided the black consciousness between 1966 and 1976. “Black Power” is part of the Schomburg Center’s “Black Power 50” - a yearlong review and introspective look into the Black Power Movement’s 50th...
Founded in 2003, StoryCorps has grown from operating a single StoryBooth recording studio in New York to managing outposts in Chicago, San Francisco, and Atlanta, with a mobile booth and digital app to collect stories from individuals around the country. The nonprofit was inspired in large part by the work of Studs Terkel, who documented histories of common Americans and advocated for labor unions from the 1960s through the ’90s.
And yet, when a group of employees told management of their...
The 2017 campaign began on February 21 with the third annual One Book, Many Communities Lecture in London, England. Featured speakers included Professor Gilbert Achcar of the University of London’s Centre for Palestine Studies and Khaled Ziada, head of the Palestine Film Foundation.In spring 2017, groups throughout North America, the Middle East and Europe hosted discussion events in libraries, coffee shops, theaters and homes about Ghassan Kanafani’s novella “Returning to Haifa.” Most of the...
On July 13, 2017, Liu Xiaobo, China’s only Nobel Peace Prize winner and its most famous political prisoner died from complications due to liver cancer. He was detained in December 2008 for his participation with “Charter 08”, a manifesto that called for political reform and an end to one-party rule. In June 2017, eight years after his imprisonment, he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. The government of China rejected his request for permission to receive medical attention abroad, for...
This symposium featured authors from the Pushing the Margins: Women of Color and Intersectionality in LIS book to discuss thematic issues that pertain to intersectionality, feminist theory, race and ethnicity, and libraries. Participants broke out into smaller groups to have critical discussions based on the themes presented.
Listen to the keynote by Fobazi M. Ettarh here.
In the wake of the US presidential inauguration, millions of people took to the streets for the Women’s March on Washington, DC, and in other cities around the world on January 21, 2017. The Newcomb Archives and Vorhoff Library Special Collections, part of Newcomb College Institute (NCI) of Tulane University in New Orleans, joined archivists across the country to preserve the legacy of those marches.
As other New Orleans repositories were also collecting ephemera from the local and DC...
Welcome new members of the IAAS Steering Committee!
Junior Co-Chair Katharina Hering (National Equal Justice Library)
Member-at-large Mark Edwin Peterson (Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum)
