INST 785 Section 0101 Documentation, Collection, and INST 785 Appraisal of Records Spring 2020

Course Syllabus – INST 785 Section 0101 Documentation, Collection, and INST 785 Appraisal of Records Spring 2020

Course Description Dr. Eric Hung he / him / his Appraisal is considered to be the archivist’s “first responsibility.” The [email protected] responsibility is “first” because appraisal comes first in the sequence of archival functions and thus influences all subsequent archival activities, and it is “first” in importance because appraisal determines what tiny sliver of Class Meetings: the total human documentary production will actually become “archives” Tuesdays, 6:00-8:45pm and thus a part of society’s history and collective memory. The archivist is HBK 0105 thereby actively shaping the future’s history of our own times. Office Hours The topic of appraisal remains one of considerable controversy in archives. ELMS Chat Office Hours: The archival literature includes debates over the definitions and indicators Mondays, 2:00-3:00pm, of long-term value, the purpose of appraisal, who intervenes in appraisal or by appointment. If you decisions, when in the information life cycle do they intervene, and which want to meet in-person, I methods work for which types of records and which types of organizations. am generally on campus The literature is replete with tensions between the theory and practice of on Tuesdays. appraisal and between questions of universalism versus specificity (by type of record, media, type of organization, time period, country, etc.). Syllabus Policy One of the problems with the literature on appraisal is that there are few This syllabus is a guide for methods for rigorously evaluating the feasibility or effectiveness of different the course and is subject appraisal methodologies. As a consequence, we place—in this course— to change with advance considerable emphasis on the outcomes of different theories and methods notice. of appraisal and on implementation of appraisal recommendations and decisions. We will also look at appraisal and selection as particular types of Course information problems, namely: how do archivists make decisions about Communication what to keep in an environment of great uncertainty about supply (what Time-sensitive else is out there) and demand (especially future demand)? Finally, • announcements will prevailing appraisal models were developed with organizational records and be posted on ELMS institutional practices of collecting in mind. Thus, we also place some and e- mailed to the emphasis on approaches that cater to community, personal, and literary class via ELMS. archives. • To contact me, Throughout the semester, we will keep examining the following please email via themes/questions: ELMS. I will reply to • The evolution of appraisal theories and ideas: what elements change e-mails usually within and what elements stay constant? 24 hours on • How do different institutions develop and implement their appraisal weekdays and within strategies? 48 hours on • What strategies can we use to appraise non-institutional records? weekends. If I have • What roles do ethics and social justice play in archival appraisal? not replied within The primary class format is discussion, both in small groups and as a class. that time frame, There will also be short lectures and demonstrations. please send me a reminder.

Learning Outcomes Students who successfully complete this course will be able to: 1. Explain the methodologies and tools that archivists apply to develop archival collections and select records for inclusion in archives. 2. Communicate how different organizational, temporal, and technological environments affect appraisal and selection of archives. 3. Make sound appraisal recommendations through research and organizational analyses, and to present them to different stakeholders. 4. Document and implement appraisal decisions. 5. Explain practical, legal, and ethical issues associated with appraisal and acquisition of archival materials.

Course Materials All other required reading and viewing materials are available through ELMS.

Campus Policies It is our shared responsibility to know and abide by the University of Maryland’s policies that relate to all courses, which include topics like: • Academic integrity (e.g., cheating, fabrication, facilitating academic honesty, plagiarism) • Student and instructor conduct • Accessibility and accommodations • Grades and appeals Please visit https://gradschool.umd.edu/course-related-policies for the Graduate School’s full list of campus-wide policies and follow up with me if you have questions.

Citations and Formatting Please use APA or Chicago-style for citations. Papers should be double-spaced with 1-inch margins. You do not need to purchase a special font, but please use a font and font size that is known for accessibility, such as Arial, Helvetica, Lucida Sans, Tahoma, and Verdana. This syllabus uses Tahoma (https://www.boia.org/blog/best-fonts-to-use-for-website-accessibility).

Class Structure and Professionalism Students are expected to contribute productively to weekly discussions, debates, and exercises. Your ability to contribute to these activities depends on your advance preparation. This includes: (1) completing all reading assignments and assignments on time, and (2) thinking through the discussion questions listed in the weekly overviews.

Community Standards As a graduate course, the materials we discuss will be challenging. Many also involve deeply held beliefs, moral-ethical issues, and current hot-button issues. To ensure that every student can learn, the class environment needs to be welcoming and harassment-free. Your classmates

may have different perspectives on issues than you, but they still deserve your respect. For this course, I am adapting tenets from the “Norms for Courageous Conversations” developed by Diversity Best Practices (a division of Working Mother Media): • Stay engaged and listen for understanding • Take risks and speak your truth • Become comfortable with intellectual discomfort • Expect and accept non-closure I will discuss these tenets in greater detail in the first lecture.

Assignments and Grades Your final grade will be based on the following components: • Appraisal Exercise (form) Feb. 18 15% • Collection/Appraisal Policy Analysis (video presentation) Mar. 10 15% • Case Study Paper (2,000-word paper) Mar. 31 15% • Personal papers presentation (in-class presentation) April 5% • ICD Recordings Database (DB contribution & reflection) Apr. 21 15% • Web Archiving Project (website, reflection & presentation) May 12 15% • Class Participation Weekly 20%

A+ 97+% B+ 87-89.9% C+ 77-79.9% D+ 67-69.9% F <59.9% A 94-96.9% B 84-86.9% C 74-76.9% D 64-66.9% A- 90-93.9% B- 80-83.9% C- 70-73.9% D- 60-63.9%

Missed Deadlines If you will not be able to meet an assignment deadline, contact the instructor before the due date to explain why you will need to submit the assignment late and what your plan is; these will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Unless prior permission has been granted, late work is accepted only if there is a medical or family emergency. This policy is in place to ensure all students have their work returned to them in a timely fashion.

Accommodations Students with disabilities should inform me of their needs at the beginning of the semester. Please also contact the Disability Support Services (301-314-7682 or http://www.counseling.umd.edu/DSS/). DSS will make arrangements with you and me to determine and implement appropriate academic accommodations. Inclusion is one of the iSchool’s core values, and I have attempted to make all materials and assignments accessible to people with varying abilities. However, if there is something else I can do to make the class more accessible please schedule a time to come talk to me. This will benefit not only yourself but also my future students.

Help is Available You are expected to take personal responsibility for you own learning. This includes acknowledging when your performance does not match your goals and doing something about

it. Everyone can benefit from some expert guidance on time management, reading, and writing, so I encourage you to consider visiting http://ter.ps/learn to schedule an appointment with an academic coach. Sharpen your communication skills (and improve your grade) by visiting http://ter.ps/writing and schedule an appointment with the campus Writing Center. Finally, if you just need someone to talk to, visit http://www.counseling.umd.edu. These services are a part of your tuition, so please use them. Everyone needs help… all you have to do is ask for it.

Names/Pronouns and Self Identifications The University of Maryland recognizes the importance of a diverse student body, and we are committed to fostering equitable classroom environments. In your introduction video, I invite you to tell us how you want to be referred to both in terms of your name and your pronouns (he/him, she/her, they/them, etc.). The pronouns someone indicates are not necessarily indicative of their gender identity. Visit https://trans.umd.edu to learn more. Additionally, it is your choice to disclose or not to disclose how you identify in terms of your gender, race, class, sexuality, religion, and dis/ability, among all aspects of your identity. I will do my best to address and refer to all students according to their wishes, and I will do my best to not presume an identity. I ask you to do the same for all of your fellow Terps.

Additional Student Resources For more information on UMD’s Student Services, see http://www.studentaffairs.umd.edu/student-life. If you or someone you know feels unsafe, the university has resources (see list below). Read more about hate-based crimes here: https://ocrsm.umd.edu/files/Hate_Bias_FAQs_final.pdf

Name Phone Website

University Counseling Center 301-314-7651 http://www.counseling.umd.edu University Health Center and Mental Health 301-314-8180 http://www.health.umd.edu/ Services University of http://thestamp.umd.edu/memorial_chapel/cha Maryland plains Chaplains Office of Civil Rights and 301-405-1142 http://www.ocrsm.umd.edu Sexual Misconduct

Course Schedule Unit One: Course Introduction and the Earliest Appraisal Theories Jan. 28 (Week 1): What is appraisal? What power should archivists hold? Reading: Alessandro Portelli (1991). The Death of Luigi Trastulli: Memory and the Event. In The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories (pp. 1-26). Albany: State University of New York Press. Optional: Frank Boles (1994). “Just a Bunch of Bigots”: A Case Study in the Acquisition of Controversial Material. Archival Issues, 19(1), 53-65. Feb. 4 (Week 2): The original debate—Jenkinson vs. Schellenberg Readings: Terry Cook (2011). “We Are What We Keep; We Keep What We Are”: Archival Appraisal Past, Present and Future. Journal of the Society of Archivists, 32(2), 173- 189. Hillary Jenkinson (1922, rev. 1937). Introduction and Modern Archives from A Manual of Archive Administration (pp. 1-16 and 136-155). Oxford: Clarendon Press. T.R. Schellenberg (1956). The Appraisal of Modern Public Records. Bulletins of the National Archives, 8. Reto Tschan (2002). A comparison of Jenkinson and Schellenberg on appraisal. The American Archivist, 65(2), 176–195. Assign: Appraisal Exercise Feb. 11 (Week 3): Critiques of Jenkinson and Schellenberg Readings: Paige Hohmann (2016). On Impartiality and Interrelatedness: Reactions to Jenkinsonian Appraisal in the Twentieth Century. American Archivist, 79(1), 14-25. Richard J. Cox (2002). The End of Collecting: Towards a New Purpose for Archival Appraisal. Archival Science, 2, 287–309. Kate Cumming and Anne Picot (2014). Reinventing Appraisal. Archives and Manuscripts, 42(2), 133-145. Verne Harris (2007). Postmodernism and Archival Appraisal: Seven Theses. In Archives and Justice: A South African Perspective (pp. 101-106). Chicago: Society of American Archivists. Feb. 18 (Week 4): Collection/appraisal policies and donor relations Readings: Various collection/appraisal policies linked on ELMS Cynthia K. Sauer (2001). Doing the Best We Can? The Use of Collection Development Policies and Cooperative Collecting Activities at Manuscript Repositories. The American Archivist, 64, 308-349. Timothy L. Ericson (1991-92). At the “Rim of Creative Dissatisfaction”: Archivists and Acquisition Development. Archivaria, 33, 66-77. Aaron D. Purcell (2015). Donor Preparedness and the Archival Program. In Donors and Archives: A Guidebook for Successful Programs (pp. 3-23). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Due: Appraisal Exercise

Unit Two: Appraisal Theories from the 1960s to the 1980s Feb. 25 (Week 5): Documentation strategies Readings: Helen Samuels (1991-92). Improving Our Disposition: Documentation Strategies. Archivaria, 33, 125-140. Doris J. Malkmus (2008). Documentation Strategy: Mastodon or Retro-Success? American Archivist, 71(2), 384-409. Cathy Williams (2012). On The Record: Towards a Documentation Strategy. Journal of the Society of Archivists, 33(1), 23-40. Jennifer Shaw (2016). Documenting Genomics: Applying Archival Theory to Preserving the Records of the Human Genome Project. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 55, 61-69. Assign: Collection/Appraisal Policy Analysis & ICD Recordings Database Mar. 3 (Week 6): Macro appraisal and functional analysis Readings: Terry Cook (2004). Macro-appraisal and Functional Analysis: Documenting Governance Rather than Government. Journal of the Society of Archivists, 25(1), 5- 18. John Roberts (2001). One Size Fits All? The Portability of Macro-Appraisal by a Comparative Analysis of Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand. Archivaria, 52, 47- 68. Helen Samuels (1992). Rationale for the Functional Approach and Institutional Documentation Plan from Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities (pp. 1-18 and 253-268). Metuchen, NJ: Society of American Archivists & Scarecrow Press. Marcus C. Robyns & Jason Woolan (2011). Institutional Functional Analysis at Northern Michigan University: A New Process of Appraisal and Arrangement of Archival Records,” American Archivist, 74(1), 241-256. Mar. 10 (Week 7): Sampling, the black box, and the Minnesota method Readings: Terry Cook (1991). “Many Are Called But Few Are Chosen”: Appraisal Guidelines for Sampling and Selecting Case Files. Archivaria, 32, 25-50. Frank Boles and Julia Marks Young (1985). Exploring the Black Box: The Appraisal of University Administrative Records. American Archivist, 48(1), 121-140. Mark A. Greene & Todd J. Daniels-Howell, “Documentation with ‘An Attitude’: A Pragmatist’s Guide to the Selection and Acquisition of Modern Business Records,” in The Records of American Business, ed. James M. O’Toole (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 1997), 161-229. Ross Harvey and Dave Thompson (2010). Automating the Appraisal of Digital Materials. Library Hi Tech, 28(2), 313-322. Due: Collection/Appraisal Policy Analysis Assign: Case Study Paper Mar. 17 (Week 8): Spring break

Unit Three: Appraisal in the Era of Postmodernism Mar. 24 (Week 9): The call to diversify collections; personal papers Readings: Howard Zinn (1977). Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest. MidWestern Archivist, 2(2), 14–26. Catherine Hobbs (2001). The Character of Personal Archives: Reflections on the Value of Records of Individuals. Archivaria, 52, 126-135. Geoff Wexler & Linda Long (2009). Lifetimes and Legacies: Mortality, Immortality, and the Needs of Aging and Dying Donors. American Archivist, 72(2), 478-493. Geoffrey Yeo (2009). Custodial History, Provenance, and the Description of Personal Records. Libraries & the Cultural Record, 44(1), 50-64. Assign: Personal Papers Presentation Mar. 31 (Week 10): Indigenous archives (Guest: Kendra Greendeer, U. of Wisconsin-Madison) Readings: Ellen Cushman (2013). Wampum, Sequoyan, and Story: Decolonizing the Digital Archive. College English, 76(2), 115-135. Marisa Duarte and Miranda Belarde-Lewis (2015). Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies. Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, 53, 677-702. Alison Krebs (2012). Native America’s 21st Century Right to Know. Archival Science, 12, 173-190. Ashley Glassburn Falzetti (2015). Archival Absence: The Burden of History. Settler Colonial Studies, 5(2), 128-144. Optional: Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang. Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor. Decolonization, 1(1). Retrieved from: http://www.decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/18630. Due: Case Study Paper Apr. 7 (Week 11): Web archiving Readings: Julien Masanes (20015). Web Archiving Methods and Approaches: A Comparative Study. Library Trends, 54(1), 72-90. Tarleton Gillespie (2014). The Relevance of Algorithms. In T. Gillespie, P.J. Boczkowski and K.A. Foot (Eds.), Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society (pp. 167-193). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Emily Maemura, Nicholas Worby, Ian Milligan & Christoph Becker (2018). If These Crawls Could Talk: Studying and Documenting Web Archives Provenance. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 69(10), 1223-1233. Sylvie Rollason-Cass & Scott Reed (2015). Living Movements, Living Archives: Selecting and Archiving Web Content During Times of Social Unrest. New Review of Information Networking, 20(1-2), 241-247. In-Class: Personal Papers Presentations, Session #1 Assign: Web Archiving Project

Apr. 14 (Week 12): Democratizing appraisal; Social justice archives Readings: Kit Hughes (2014). Appraisal as Cartography: Cultural Studies in the Archives. The American Archivist, 77(1), 270-296. Hea Lim Rhee (2016). Utilizing User Studies in Archival Appraisal Practice: Feasibility, Value, and Benefits. Archival Science, 17(2), 151-173. Marika Cifor (2016). Affecting Relations: Introducing Affect Theory to Archival Discourse. Archival Science, 16(1), 7-31. Isto Huvila (2015). The Unbearable Lightness of Participating? Revisiting the Discourses of “Participation” in Archival Literature. Journal of Documentation, 71(2), 358-386. In-Class: Personal Papers Presentations, Session #2 Apr. 21 (Week 13): Social justice archives (con’d); literary/zine archives Readings: John Erde (2014). Constructing Archives of the Occupy Movement. Archives and Records: The Journal of the Archives and Records Association, 35(2), 77-92. Ricardo L. Punzalan & Michelle Caswell (2016). Critical Directions for Archival Approaches to Social Justice. The Library Quarterly, 86(1), 25-42. Philip N. Cronenwett (1984). Appraisal of Literary Manuscripts. In Nancy E. Pease (Ed.), Archival Choices: Managing the Historical Record in an Age of Abundance (pp. 105-116). Lexington: D.C. Heath. Siobhan Senier (2014). Decolonizing the Archive: Digitizing Native Literature with Students and Tribal Communities. Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 1(3). Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/resilience.1.3.006. Due: ICD Recordings Database In-Class: Personal Papers Presentations, Session #3 Apr. 28 (Week 14): Community archives and post-custodialism Readings: Andrew Flinn, Mary Stevens & Elizabeth Shepherd (2009). Whose Memories, Whose Archives? Independent Community Archives, Autonomy and the Mainstream. Archival Science, 9, 71-86. Jimmy Zavala, Alda Allina Migoni, Michelle Caswell, Noah Geraci & Marika Cifor (2017). “A Process Where We’re All at the Table”: Community Archives Challenging Dominant Modes of Archival Practice.” Archives & Manuscripts, 45(3), 202-215. Mario H. Ramirez (2015). Being Assumed Not to Be: A Critique of Whiteness as an Archival Imperative. The American Archivist, 78(2), 339-356. Caroline Daniels, Heather Fox, Sarah-Jane Poindexter & Elizabeth Reilly (2015). Saving All the Freaks on the Life Raft: Blending Documentation Strategy with Community Engagement to Build a Local Music Archives. The American Archivist, 78(1), 238-261. In-Class: Personal Papers Presentations, Session #4

May 5 (Week 15): TBA (finalizing plans on guest speaker) Readings: Susan Steinwell (1986). Appraisal and the FBI Files Case: For Whom Do Archivists Retain Records?” American Archivist, 49(2), 52-63. Elena S. Danielson (2015). The Ethics of Acquisition. In The Ethical Archivist (pp. 47- 85). Chicago: Society of American Archivists. Additional readings to be announced. May 12 (Week 16): Reappraisal and deaccessioning; presentations of web archiving projects Readings: Elena S. Danielson (2015). The Ethics of Disposal. In The Ethical Archivist (pp. 87- 119). Chicago: Society of American Archivists. James Gerencser (2015). Reappraisal and Deaccessioning: Building for the Future by Removing Some of the Past. In Kate Theimer (Ed.), Appraisal and Acquisition: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections (pp. 151-165). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Laura Uglean Jackson & D. Claudia Thompson (2010). But You Promised: A Case Study of Deaccessioning at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. American Archivist, 73, 669–685. Due: Web Archiving Project In-Class: Web Archiving Project Presentations