“A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.” But it turns out that conversations about records, archives, and institutional change can be challenging. Among the participants there are so many different values, experiences, needs (stated and unstated), and at times (I’m reflecting my Fedland career in Washington), hidden agendas.
As I sat with some people in Fedland recently, I tried to explain the pull of the archival mission. As others have done (@archivesnext), I pointed to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the transcendent sense of serving a higher purpose. Of what it means to work with the content of materials that record history in various forms. Evidence, data, information which can lead to knowledge. I drew on my acculturation, which comes from my employment by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
As with librarianship, that the archival profession centers on preserving and sharing knowledge can make the sense of purpose seem transcendent. You’re vested in what is inside what sits on the shelf: in books, in records center and manuscript and electronic boxes.
Knowledge, information. You want first to get it on the shelf, then off the shelf–to make it available. You know you may face some adversity but the sense of purpose keeps you going. Well, that, and maybe a hope of winning the The Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced With Adversity. Yes, the American Library Association, has made that happen! Perhaps because I work in Washington, which can be grim at times, I smiled at the sense of whimsy in the creation of the award.
A sense of purpose comes through in many ways, including the tones with which people talk about their work. Or why they want to become an archivist or librarian rather than a records manager or information technologist. And there is so much going on, if you listen out for who isn’t speaking and why. Or what they can’t articulate but signal in other ways.
So much depends on whether we give others the space, the sense of safety or just plain quiet, to talk to us. That depends on whether we want to listen, really listen. Or feel a need to control a narrative by grabbing the microphone and yapping about “me” as a person and representative of a profession or of an organizational function.
Sometimes, standing in the wings and listening to the voices of “the other” is better. As a librarian tweeted about #libtechgender, there are times when one group’s storytelling silences others. I’ve seen that happen in the virtual world and IRL. In Fedland. Including at NARA. Even now. And I’ve inadvertently done it to others! That someone’s storytelling leads others to stop talking doesn’t mean they aren’t listening, noticing your words. And everything said to an external audience has the potential to be heard by an internal audience, as well.
I’ve seen some tone deafness over the last couple of weeks. On Listservs. In Fedland. At NARA. What made me go “whoa” about NARA involves issues for which the causes and solutions seem so complicated, I’m just quarantining them for now. I’ve done that a time or two at Nixonara.
Then as now, the reasons for hitting the pause button on an issue don’t involve the Big Dude, aka AOTUS David S. Ferriero, whom I know and in whom I have great trust. (Truly a good guy.) I’ve even taken brief blogging breaks from time to time to step back and think through what I’m hearing or seeing from NARA. I did that two years ago in “DSL Line back, I’m not.” Although I didn’t spell it out, what I observed in February 2012 was an important clue in an evolving situation I came to understand better a year later in February 2013.
The Listserv issues, yeah, I can share some thoughts on those. Or start to do so. The topics and underlying issues deserve more than one post so this one just sets the scene.
I’ll start by talking about who spoke up and who didn’t. Thresholds matter. Always.
In reading a thread on employment and labor issues on Archives & Archivists Listserv, I listened out for words from peers but didn’t hear them. “I hadn’t thought about that.” “What solutions do you think might work?” The seeming lack of empathy and respect for students in libraries and information science and new professionals saddened me. There were some thoughtful observations. But much of the thread played out as “here’s how it worked for me” and “why did you or didn’t you this or that.”
Several people I enjoy chatting with on Twitter tweeted their reactions to the thread on A&A. Peter K., a List administrator for Recmgmt-L who also subscribes to the Archives & Archivists Listserv, gave his take on the List. He posted a message saying,
“well from Twitter they see the listserv as a ‘bullying’ environment. How are they going to survive in the real world?. that said if you don’t like the direction something is taken then engage it, challenge it, but don’t sit back and complain.”
Brad H. and I bantered about the posting on Twitter (Star Trek! The Borg! Assimilation!) But that masked my questions, of course. “‘They’ see?” I asked myself. Why not “some?” I tweeted to Brad the pic of me in the captain’s chair in a Smithsonian display in 1992. But my point wasn’t about control and command, it was the opposite. Why not acknowledge that there was diversity of opinion in the Twitter discussion of the Listserv? Truth be told, it was a jump the shark moment for me in the discussion of archival employment and labor issues.
The discussion on Archives & Archivists included Peter K. pointing to records management as an alternative to becoming an archivist or librarian. It is, indeed. And you can make a good living that way. But you may find yourself further away from the archival sense of purpose than you anticipated.
Whether the academic discipline of history is understood or if knowledge or intellectualism are valued–don’t take for granted that they will be!–depends on the culture of a records manager’s organization. As in all employment situations, but especially ones involving records, you also may face difficult ethical quandaries and integrity tests. Things can go well. Or they can go very badly.
Some of us expressed regret on Twitter yesterday that A&A had not worked out as a “community square.” Several of us talked on Wednesday about why we hung on as subscribers as long as we did. And why we turned eventually to Social Media instead. I appreciate that Twitter was a safe space for some of us to say that we weren’t all comfortable with the hashtag #thatdarnlist. Hold that thought, I’ll circle back to it.
I first saw the Charters of Freedom when I was in elementary school in Washington, DC. For many of us (I was a total history nerd!), the wide eyed joy in discovering as kids the connection between history and records and books never went away. It lives on in us. So, too, the sense of fun and whimsy! The 279 event photos that the National Archives uploaded to Flickr this week show children at a recent NARA Sleepover learning about history and talking to famed authors Brad Meltzer and Cokie Roberts and AOTUS David S. Ferriero.
The appreciation for history starts in many of us as children. As we grow up, for some of us it evolves in to a desire to serve others by preserving and sharing the materials that record history.
Some of the children who came to the Sleepover last weekend may grow up to be archivists or historians. Some may even be employees of the National Archives one day. Others may help preserve and share knowledge as successors to the Citizen Archivists who now work in the NARA research rooms, describing, transcribing, and scanning records. The photos show the research team of historian Jonathan Webb Deiss, who is pictured with archives professional Anne Musella and me at a reception at NARA in 2012.
Some children who came to the Rotunda Sleepover may follow in the footsteps of many other researchers who study records online or at the National Archives. Perhaps they even may find “research rapture,” as the Big Dude eloquently described it in a post at his AOTUS blog last year.
David also has written beautifully in “Celebrating Passion and Accomplishment” about a related subject: what motivates the employees of the National Archives. The passage Ferriero quoted from The Goldfinch conveys the transcendence many of us feel during our archival careers so very well:
“And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.”
AFGE Council 260 officials pointed to a similar vibe when they wrote in a letter to Ferriero last fall, “NARA’s employees believe that they are part of something bigger than themselves, and view their labor, at times tedious and repetitive, to be part of the foundation of our democracy.”
The same could be said of many Citizen Archivists, I believe.
Serving a higher purpose is what unites those who work inside the National Archives to “make access happen” and the citizens who help us.
Citizen engagement and civic literacy depend on the dedicated work that NARA employees do in records appraisal, retention scheduling, accessioning, processing, equity holder coordination, disclosure review in Fedland.
And we Feds depend on citizens to study the records and write history books. To help us scan and transcribe records. To share and add value to the holdings which we work so hard to bring in to NARA and make available.
Feelings, emotion, intellect, reason. All are in the mix. And to sort through some of the impasses I saw on the Web this past week, on Listservs, in Social Media, and at and within NARA, shouldn’t we create safe spaces where we can acknowledge that?
