Monthly Archives: July 2016

Washington!  A complicated but fascinating place to work or observe from inside. This past week, before the current heat wave reached DC, I walked in the city at twilight on Monday and Thursday.

As I passed the Museum side of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), I saw a handful of people (tourists or locals?) sitting and standing on the steps.  Just as the people you see under the banners on the Portico in my photo walked back down the steps, I made my way up.

At the top, I stood alone on the quiet Portico and looked out at Constitution Avenue.

A railing along the top provides safety protection but there are no barriers to walking on the steps or up to the Portico after hours.   (“Releasing what we can, protecting what we must.”)

Even during the day, when the National Archives’ Museum is open, access to the building no longer is through the “Big Doors” at the top of the steps as it was when I joined NARA’s staff.  Instead, all visitors find easier and more equitable access than in the past through ground level entrances on either side of the steps.

You need to know how to get in.  And why access is what it is.  Why changes occur.  And the various perspectives that surround it.   This is true for most archives and records matters.  Additional elements affect some issues in Washington.

This past week I read two thoughtful interviews with archival leaders in the Society of American Archivist (SAA) Issues and Advocacy Roundtable series on Great Advocates. The first was with Larry Hackman, who has served as New York State Archivist and as NARA director of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum.

The second was with Randall Jimerson of Western Washington University.  Although I didn’t participate, in 2009 I was glad to see my favorite archives blogger, Kate Theimer, put together a reading group for Jimerson’s Archives Power.

Some of the advice in Hackman’s and Jimerson’s Q&As applies to internal advocacy but is worth considering for external outreach, as well.  Solution-oriented advocacy works best if you consider how others see things and the environment in which they operate.  I’ve long pointed in various forums to the need to take the human angle into account.

Hackman (editor of Many Happy Returns: Advocacy and the Development of Archives) observed,

“In general, successful advocacy requires access to key decision makers; it requires understanding their world and their views on the particular situation at hand; and it requires advocacy by individuals and groups that are significant to the decision makers who can make a difference.”

Rand Jimerson also pointed to the importance of situational awareness:

“One key to effective advocacy is identifying the important decision-makers in your organization. Find out their priorities, interests, and goals, and try to show how the archival program can contribute to the good of the institutions. Each person may have a different perspective, and it is important to identify and respond to their concerns.

Another thing to remember is that advocacy is a continual process, not a one-time ‘event’ or activity. It needs to be built into everything an archivist does. Since few people know much about archives, this will be an educational process. Learn how to communicate the benefits of archives for your institution, rather than focusing first on the needs of the archives. If those who control funding (resource allocators)  recognize the contributions that the archives makes or could make, they will be more likely to provide the necessary funds than if you simply complain about your lack of resources. How can you make their jobs easier or more effective?”

I thought of Ashley Stevens’s good take on balancing planning and flexibility in outreach as I read Hackman’s realistic advice:

“Advocacy ought generally to be carried out within a broad framework of plans and priorities looking well into the future and beyond any single agenda item. When a particular objective is not achieved, one then can readily turn to other agenda items that cry out for action. Avoid getting stuck on a single objective. Often it is practical to advocate the removal of internal policy and procedural barriers that stand in the way of broader progress.”

If you work in the library, archives, and records related professions, you see a wide range of voices in advocacy by stakeholders, professional associations, individuals.  Whether strategic or impromptu, you can learn a lot from those different voices.

Last year, I used an example of partisan framing of records issues in a post about humanization, dehumanization.  More recently, in a post to the Archives & Archivists Listserv, I looked at the importance of distinguishing news commentary by records literate and records illiterate writers.

On the individual level, where impromptu actions occur most often, you see how various librarians, archivists, records professionals see the world, interact with each other, appraise what is out there on the web.

Some draw with fine lines.  Others use thick markers to draw word images such as “all [own-group] want [positive characterization of outcome]; all [other group] just want [negative characterization].”  That’s a paraphrase of an assessment I once saw on Social Media.

How people engage tells us how they see themselves and others.  Hackman and Jimerson use fine brushstrokes.  Placing human beings (others, partners) at the center with yourself is wise.  This is advocacy at its most solution-oriented.  A welcome break from the partisan sloganeering (professional, functional, or political) that sometimes affects engagement online.

I especially like Hackman’s acknowledgement that you may not achieve all of your advocacy objectives.  Self-awareness helps you understand the impact of your own actions.  Willingness to consider feedback can make a big difference here.   And situational awareness places other elements in context.

As Larry suggests, you should keep other agenda items in mind.  This fits with good advice on planning and flexibility offered by Ashley Stevens (pictured below).

I’d like to see more attention paid generally in books about management and change management to the value of being open to adaptation.  This especially is the case in Washington where elements outside managerial control can affect agency and departmental missions and operations.

As I look for links to use in my own advocacy about archives and records issues, I sometimes see information asymmetry.   Some barriers are more challenging to cross than others.  And at times, silos unintentionally obscure depictions of valid progress in areas I follow.

Even tech issues sometimes are painted with a broad brush, with good guys and implied bad guys, as here in an otherwise good account of U.S. Digital Service tech “hackers” in Fedland. As I discussed in a post about the “social quilt,” reliance on jargon and buzzwords can affect outreach, as well.

AOTUS David S. Ferriero showed adaptation in leadership when he told listeners at a conference in Washington last year about the value of both creative and traditional staff at the National Archives.   David was candid about the need to move out of professional silos.  I especially liked the forthright way he discussed misalignment in some library and information school recruiting and curricula and present and future workforce needs.

Beyond our professional roles, we have opportunities online to show who we are.  I’ve often written here that one of my favorite photos of David Ferriero is of me talking to him in 2011 and realizing I had made an error.  And laughing at myself.  My blog’s readers often see me say that I know, like, admire, and respect David greatly.  That he, too, can laugh at himself is just one part of that.

How many officials in Washington share what can go awry?  Not many!  But David did just that when he tried to cross Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the National Archives last September. Pope Francis’s motorcade was due to pass by shortly and he and some NARA staff came out minutes before to see it.

Ferriero only got a few feet into the street when he started to cross.  (I wasn’t there but asked David about it when I saw him at a NARA event shortly afterwards).  Agency head or no agency head, a police officer yelled at him almost immediately not to breach the motorcade security zone and to get back on the curb.

If you look closely at the photo, you see David laughing along with staff and guards.  NARA even posted the image on Flickr!

You want to be the one people feel free to laugh along with in those situations!  And to be comfortable sharing accounts of such occasions online.

And you don’t want to forget how you started out and who helped you along the way.  Times change, technology brings new challenges, but some issues are timeless.  Taking care of frontline and backroom staff is a major part of making the customer experience better.

Of all the archives and library topics I’ve written about here, the series I wrote in 2014 about Ferriero’s insightful 1982 article, “Burnout at the Reference Desk,” drew the most reactions off-blog.  I’ve shared copies of David’s article with many library and archives professionals since I wrote about it.

I often link to David’s blog posts here.  And to posts and tweets by other archivists or librarians or records managers.  Effective advocacy depends on understanding those you’re trying to reach but also the impact others have on key issues, as well.  You can find allies but also identify obstacles.

You can spot online who are Open Leaders.  It shows in how they listen to others.  You see how people react to setbacks.  Whether they admit that they could have done something differently.   Or if something other than their choices and decisions repeatedly gets the blame.

How they frame subjects, especially complex ones where not all the elements are in view.  Do they use a didactic tone–“here’s the situation, no arguments.”  Or a “help me out, tell me what I am missing” approach.

You can also learn whether people recognize silences and their possible meaning.  Do they jump uninvited into others’ Notifications on Twitter?   Complaints on Twitter show not everyone welcomes such jumps but why they occur isn’t always clear.  It can be trolling.  But it might reflect a desire for participation, instead. Follow-up exchanges sometimes bring greater clarity on intent as do engagement patterns over time.

You also learn about a person’s perceptions of communities other than their own.  Do they parachute into them?  (A  decade ago, I learned the hard way from doing this on one Listserv that it doesn’t always work well).  Or take the time to watch and learn, as Jarrett Drake did when he used a double dutch jump rope analogy.  Being able to jump rope in professional space is a gift, as I wrote last December.

You see whether potential allies depict themselves as the heroes of their Social Media narratives.  Or whether they let others shine there, instead. And how Super Heroes and Villains or depictions of real human beings trying to meet challenges populate their tweets and retweets.

All of this helps you understand what pitches may work in different settings and which may not.  Even if you don’t directly engage with all whom you follow on Twitter, you learn about their impact–as voters, as citizens, as members of professional associations, as partners or opponents–on stakeholders whom you want to reach.

Washington is a super complicated place. The most productive conversations I have with archivists and records managers occur over lunch or dinner or in random encounters in hallways or on the street.   Some, such as Richard Pearce-Moses, pictured last year in Washington, I first met online.  I’ve missed his voice on the Archives & Archivists Listserv since he retired!

Thoughtful discussions of complex challenges feel like breaths of fresh air to me. I especially enjoy the meetings of the Public Interest Declassification Board that I attend at NARA.  I also followed with interest via livestream the recent meeting at NARA of the second Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee.  Some voices still are missing on records issues.  I’d like to see more historians and other scholars focus on the records life cycle and access.  This requires information professionals thinking beyond business units and reaching out to researchers on issues that will affect their work.

We need to be aware of various forces that affect our professional lives.  To say thanks to those whose work and advice we appreciate.  To recharge by stopping to take in the view and savor what works well for us.  But also to remember, that won’t be the same for everyone. Yes, it’s highly individual!