Major Paper

Outside Agents: Co-Appraisal and the Capacity for Multiplicities in the Participatory Archive

A full-text PDF of the paper is available here.

In this paper, I outline the foundations of the participatory approach to appraisal and address the potential breakthroughs and challenges that may face such models in the future. Acknowledging the contingency upon which “participation” in the archives can be consented to or coerced, my focus lies on the pluralistic landscape of archival repositories in the United States, particularly in universities and large cultural institutions concerned with education. It is through the discussion of the participatory model’s concrete barriers and speculative dimensions that I argue for its implementation, through a diversity of methods and with varying scopes particular to each institution. In focus here is transparent, open-source documentation, participatory collecting drives, and cross-institutional projects and partnerships, among other strategies. Key to the participatory framework, and why it is a desirable strategy, is not only the distribution of resources in creating and preserving historical memory, and therefore agency, but also as a means of recognizing the alternative forms of archival agencies already active within the archival repertoires of underrepresented communities.

Core Paper

“Capacity to Save”:Preservation and Ownership of Archival Memory in the Near-Future Caribbean

A full-text PDF of the paper is available here.

This paper seeks to outline the complicated ownership issues that exist in Caribbean collections as a result of colonial history and its present formations. As climate change creates ruptures in the archival record, by the reinstatement of neocolonial control or by disaster’s effects, it is crucial to view these ruptures as part and parcel of same project, the accumulation and extraction of the Earth’s resources in order to support the unequal balance of globalized capitalism. I argue that the issue of custody and community ownership of records in the postcolonial context is more crucial than appeals to conservation, which can be used to conceal and further neocolonial control and displacement of community memory.

Elective Paper

Beyond Description: Revealing Institutional Values and Labor in Administrative Records

A full-text PDF of the paper is available here.

In this essay, I explore the ways in which the archive constructs institutional identity. I compare and contrast the archival workflows and labor practices employed in the Beyond Baroque archive, a literary nonprofit, and the University of California, Los Angeles’ University Archives. I situate my experience within contemporary debates around efficient and ethical processing practices, particularly around the widespread set of practices called “More Product, Less Process.” In analyzing the ways in which institutional identity is instantiated through archival description and processing, and the various labor models engaged for such instantiation, I address the issues of institutional memory loss and provide examples of potential recuperative archival interventions, both performed and speculative.

Methods Paper

Growing, Sustainably: Community Garden Initiatives in Libraries

A full-text PDF of the paper is available here.

Executive Summary

This paper seeks to address the institutional relationships between libraries and community gardens, with the purpose of building on community efforts to create spaces where sustainable gardening practices can be shared, promoted, and practiced in the public setting. Th is paper attempts to share the work being done by librarians in transforming facilities to incorporate garden spaces, and connecting library users to community gardening organizations, and programs. In synthesizing the various benefits and challenges experienced by libraries implementing community garden initiatives, the goal of this paper is to present sustainable guidelines and practices for future institutions. In addition, this paper attempts to define key areas where libraries can intervene in tying environmental information literacy to the project of building sites of community production and sustenance.