A More Complete Record: The Case for Archival Partnerships The Radcliffe Workshop on Technology & Archival Processing Notes

Friday, April 13 Knafel Center, Radcliffe Institute | Public

9:00-9:15 Opening Remarks

. Jane Kamensky, Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and Professor of History, Harvard University

9:15-10:30 The Past and Present in the Future | Keynote Conversation

. Brewster Kahle, Founder of the Internet Archive . Jill Lepore, David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History, Harvard University

SUMMARY In this session Jill Lepore discussed a particular African-American woman artist whose records are not online, and the difficulties of tracing her life without her materials available. Brewster Kahle discussed the Internet Archive and how it can be part of the solution for providing access online.

TAKEAWAY Historians really need material to be available online: it is very hard to find if it is only in print. And the Internet Archive might be one cost-effective way to digitize material and make the material findable. There’s no need for institutions which are small or cost-conscious to reinvent the wheel, they can collaborate with a nonprofit like IA.

NOTES: INTRODUCTORY STATEMENTS

 Jill Lepore began the conversation by talking about Joe Gould and his association with and possibly criminal acts towards artist Augusta Savage, framing the story around the importance of preserving and providing better access to archival records of underrepresented groups.

 Gould is easy to trace in the archives. He wrote to everyone and his letters and journals appear everywhere in archival collections: NYU, HUA, NYPL, etc.  In contrast, the African American sculptor, August Savage, who Gould was obsessed with and may have terrorized, is not easily found in the archives: there are two small boxes at the Schomburg center and a redacted FBI file. There's more material at Fisk University, but it is not easily findable via online research tools.  Brewster Kahle provided a response to this by discussing the importance of digitizing as many collections as possible, and the Internet Archive can provide a platform for this work. His claim was essentially that copyright owners don’t get upset if you digitize material you don't own copyright to, if you don’t plan to sell it or make money from it.  Kahle discussed the Internet Archive digitizing the Timothy Leary materials that NYPL deaccessioned and putting them online, as well as the Marion Stokes materials and Ted Nelson junk mail cartons.  He also talked about web archiving, which is the Internet Archive's biggest project, and the political ads project. He wants to do cheaper digital forensics and discussed the importance of collecting materials from donors who are still living.

NOTES: CONVERSATION

 Lepore asked whether there are ways out of the problems universities have with legal and administrative structures. Kahle believes this is personality driven—that there’s always a reason for someone to say no. The Internet Archive [IA], however, “never breaks confidences and doesn’t get into secrets.”  Kahle cites the IA’s collection of John Perry Barlow’s email as an example of his practice of taking one step at a time to “try something,” and “don’t lead with no.” He says, “the reason I [am] sitting here is because I was bold.”  Kahle also spoke about grant cycles, which he feels are a waste of time and just lead to more work.  Lepore asked a question about undocumented immigrants [and other groups underrepresented in traditional archives]—how are they storing their papers? Obviously, they are storing them online and in the cloud, which creates a difficult problem—how do we handle those?  Kahle had no answer to this question but offered his general strategy: “We go after things that people are obsessed with getting done.” The goal of the IA is to create tools to make things easy for people to share. If you want to give things away online, this is a way to make things easier and cheaper. However, he acknowledges the IA is very spotty in these areas.  Lepore asked, “how would we work with, say, the Schomburg Center if we found all of the material for Augusta Savage?” Kahle responded that this could involve lots of tools, cheap hardware, etc. He said that a lot of the IA’s job is “therapy,” “talking about the heirs,” and whether it is better or worse off to be online. He said they “try to help people see it is better if their people are online.”  Lepore asked what the objections are to using the IA? She asked about the issue of “credit—“ who owns the collections?  Kahle said that this used to be a much bigger problem than it is now. People now understand the cloud. We must unify collections across collections—meaning parts of archives which are in different places, and create lending structures for copyrighted material.

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 Kahle also discussed how the Allen Country Public Library let them digitize all of their microfilm, so they have a lot of government records. The IA “builds a bed” that other people can build services off of. Sharing in bulk is something that is very important. Institutional repositories are expensive to maintain and are too fragmented. They should be digitized and at scale. He said that “sometimes you lose,” but if it helps make things more available and open, we ultimately win. He urged the need for contemporaneous archiving at scale now—we cannot wait until people die. The IA collects things that are “public—“ they don’t collect email or private Facebook groups.  There was a question about the fact that people do not know what they want to see if it is not public.  There was another question from Petrina Jackson: “How are you addressing outreach to different communities? It seems like only white people know you.”  The answer from Kahle is that they are not. They do not have an outreach department.  There was a comment from Cecily Marcus that some African-American institutions do use the IA, and she mentioned the Payne Theological Seminary.

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