Poster Session I: Poster Abstracts

Endangered Caribbean Cultural Heritage: A Study of Climate Change Management Strategies in Three Jamaican Institutions (Jessica C. Lewis and Bernadette Worrell-Johnson, The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica)

Climate change refers to the negative variation in the global atmospheric conditions caused by human activities. Small island developing states such as Jamaica have become increasingly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. This poster is being presented to deliver the findings of a documentary analysis into the current state of policies and approaches engaged for climate management and resource preservation and conservation at the National Library of Jamaica, Main Library of the University of the West Indies, Mona and the Jamaica Archives and Records Department. The collections of these entities comprise the vast majority of the rare book and manuscript collections on the island. The study also includes results of interviews conducted among librarians and archivists charged with the protection of these invaluable special collections. The objective of the study is to examine the state of readiness of these key institutions to deal with the impact of climate change. The study indicated that these institutions are at varying levels of readiness to deal with climate change. There are plans and policies which exist under the broad heading of disaster management and there is a need to strengthen these mechanisms to make these institutions climate change resilient.

Preserving Archival Collections while Preserving the Environment: How Severn Library Has Reduced the Carbon Footprint of SCUA (Elizabeth Caringola and Charlotte Johnson, University of Maryland, College Park)

In 2009, the University of Maryland, College Park purchased a former Washington Post printing plant. Of the total 324,000 square footage, the University Libraries was given 21,000 square feet for use as a high-density shelving facility. In 2016, Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) began moving collections from their stacks to the facility, called Severn Library. When Severn Library is at capacity, at least half of the Libraries’ space will be dedicated to storing materials from SCUA. Our poster will outline how storing collections at Severn Library has affected SCUA’s carbon footprint when compared with the energy consumption of onsite storage and a previously-used commercial offsite facility and how this change fits into wider campus goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2020 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. We will use data provided by Sustainable UMD’s energy dashboard and UMD Facilities Management to determine the energy consumption of each campus-owned facility, as well as taking other factors into consideration, such as gas mileage. After considering all the data, we will determine whether moving collections to Severn has reduced our unit’s energy consumption.

Activating Special Collections Resources for Climate Change Research (Lauren Williams and Elis Ing, McGill University)

Special collections contain a wealth of information that is vital for climate change research. From historical weather data hidden in archival collections and biological specimens pressed in books, to sketches by field naturalists of animals and their habitats, these materials serve as crucial historical records that modern climate scientists can use as evidence of environmental change.

But there are a number of impediments that complicate the use of special collections by modern scientists: At a time when most are concerned with only the most up-to-date data, it is no easy feat to make science students and faculty aware of the existence and utility of special collections resources. Special collections are often more associated with humanities disciplines, and staffed by librarians with humanities backgrounds; as such, it becomes a challenge to communicate the scientific relevance of their materials, when they lack the language and opportunity to liaise with science departments.

As a result, a pressing question emerges: How can special collections libraries overcome these challenges to engage with and support climate change research? Using McGill University as a case study, this poster will propose a number of responses to this question. As two early-career special collections librarians, we suspect that many of our colleagues currently find themselves in a similar situation – eager to mobilize their collections, but unsure about how to begin, or how to proceed in a systematic, replicable way.

We would therefore like to share some initiatives that we are putting into place over the coming academic year, including: Embedding special collections librarians and resources in undergraduate science instruction; the large-scale inventory, documentation, and strategic digitization of our relevant collections; special events and other outreach activities; and the re-evaluation of subject headings in order to optimize the discoverability of historical materials in science subject searches.

Silencing Sam: Starting Conversations about Institutional Racism in the First-Year Writing Classroom (Cait Kennedy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

In the fall of 2018, a group of student and community activists toppled Silent Sam, a Confederate monument that was constructed on UNC’s campus in 1913 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Wilson Special Collections Library has a wide range of archival materials documenting the history of this monument and its relationship with the UNC campus community — from the construction of the monument in 1913 to a series of campus debates and protests in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1990s calling for its removal. The goal of this instructional project was to create a curriculum for the First-Year Writing Program where undergraduate students could use primary source research as a way to grapple with and write about the historical context of Silent Sam and its impact on the UNC campus community.

The online curriculum module compiles a series of primary source materials related to the history of Silent Sam, which students use as a springboard for research about a particular historical moment on UNC’s campus. The primary sources are organized into four time periods. First, materials from the early 1900s reveal the historical context in which Silent Sam was created and the variety of UNC stakeholders who actively supported its construction. Next documents from the 1960s and 1970s explore student and community protests in response to incidents of racial violence on and off campus, as well as the Black Student Movement’s 1968 call for the removal of the monument. Artifacts from the 1990s document continued student activist efforts to remove the statue, as well as organizing around environmental racism, food justice, and other topics. Finally, contemporary materials (2011 – present) connect this history of activism to students’ removal of the statue.

My poster will discuss the process of curating materials and developing lessons that facilitate undergraduate student research and writing about Silent Sam and the lasting legacy of white supremacy on UNC’s campus. Additionally, I will discuss the challenges of building digital instructional materials that incorporate primary source materials and active learning techniques. Finally, I will include feedback from my interviews with instructors who have used the online curriculum modules and incorporated primary source research about the history of Silent Sam into their first-year writing classrooms.

After the Low-Hanging Fruit Has Been Plucked: Archives in the Era of Costly Sustainability (Mark Wolfe, University at Albany)

While the specter of environmental catastrophe knocks at the doors of archival repositories, a different threat lurks within the profession itself, specifically in how archivists approach decision-making. This poster highlights Joseph Tainter’s research into the decision-making habits of institutions, and how his insights may benefit our understanding of sustainability within the archival profession. Tainter’s framework suggests that decision makers engage in problem-solving that tends to result in increasingly more complex organizations, composed of more moving parts that require increasingly costly management. When confronted with problems in the past, the archival profession “plucked” the easy to reach solutions first. As the easy problems are solved, the profession was left with problems that required costly and time-consuming, hard to reach, solutions.

The evolution of organizational complexity is often imperceptible. A straightforward and inexpensive solution for today’s archival problem may set the stage for a surprising and costly problem to solve in the future. For example, a once agile and affordable metadata standard may evolve into a brittle and costly one. Drawing on examples from natural ecosystems, the poster discusses the conditions for unsustainability in the archival profession. For example, what are the costly effects of our complex digital infrastructure (descriptive standards, preservation systems, and archival education)? As new problems arise, such as ones within our profession or just as importantly those from without (carbon taxes and climate change upheaval), may the profession’s indebtedness to complexity render it unable to bounce back from shocks to the profession?

An Analysis of Archival References in Peer Reviewed History Journals (Kris Bronstad, University of Tennessee)

We can measure use of archives at an institutional level by gathering statistics on how many times certain collections are accessed. But constructing a larger, inter-institutional snapshot of archival use proves more difficult. Is it possible to view archival use from this higher vantage point? Can larger trends and patterns of archival use be observed? Is it worth the effort? This poster describes a study examining the evidence of archival use provided by the researchers themselves: It analyses citations of archival material in 314 articles from 13 top history journals published in 2012, examining how often archives are cited as opposed to other kinds of sources, and what kinds of repositories are most often used.

Through the study we find that 56.3% of the articles analyzed referenced at least one archival collection, and that 15% (or 3678 out of 24,239) of citations overall were to archives. The study also reveals that government records were cited more frequently than materials from other types of repositories. Only five archival citations were to digital collections.

By providing a snapshot of international, inter-institutional use of archives, the study can provide a benchmark by which future use can be measured and patterns and trends in academic use can be recognized. It can also provide a starting point to identify what tools may have led researchers to use materials from certain repositories, and thus potentially replicate successful methods of outreach and discovery.

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