#15 - Archivists, Historians, and Librarians, oh my!

 Hello! Sorry for the skipped weeks, turns out moving from one coast to another is pretty difficult and stressful in normal times, but especially during a pandemic! I have planned this post, then we'll be back to our normally scheduled programming about the Ryves Holt House next week.

Two articles from Perspectives on History, a online news site for the American Historical Association, popped across my screen a few weeks ago. The first is called 'Reconciling Professional Rifts: Can Historians and Archivists Understand One Another Better?' and the second is 'Please Stop Calling Things Archives: An Archivist's Plea.' They are written by Beth DeBold and B.M. Watson, respectively. DeBold is an assistant curator at a library and a master's student in history, and Watson is a PhD student in a School of Information. Both of them quote the lovely Michelle Caswell, follow her on Twitter, who I was fortunate enough to listen to at a recent Society of California Archivist's Conference, using her ideas about the division/delineation in the archival field. Both DeBold and Watson describe issues in the field when historians fail to utilize and/or acknowledge the work of archivists properly. According to both authors, these issues cause the work of archivists to remain the dark, and this causes a misunderstanding about the role of archives and archivists in historical discourse. 

This is something I struggled with in my previous job as a Supervisory Archivist of Still Film Collections. The company I worked for was a for-profit archiving and media services company, but I was one of the very first people they had ever hired with any sort of background in formal archival work (including cataloging, collection arranging, metadata, etc). They were a film preservation company first and foremost, and one of the best in the business. But the company was at its heart a Motion Picture Film company, their experts were film lab techs, motion film inspectors, film editors, and movie nerds/historians. I believe I was the first hire with a Masters Degree, although several have since followed me. I spent most of my tenure there absorbing all their knowledge about film as a medium and an art form, I learned how to handle nitrate film (Inglourious Basterds, eat your heart out!) and how to inspect still and motion film. But I constantly had to explain that calling someone an archivist does not an archivist make. I (and my few unicorns) had special training in theory and standards of practice that my colleagues did not. The work we mostly did would more accurately been described as cataloging, preservation, conservation, etc, but not archiving. The nature of our projects was mostly to process, inspect, and digitize assets for clients, we were not necessarily responsible for describing or arranging the collections. Overtime, we (myself and the higher ups), decided that there was a place for 'Archivists' at the company, mostly to manage and supervise the still collections and special projects, both of which tended to need actual archival guidance. We needed archivists to advise the clients and design the projects, but catalogers and inspectors to process the collections; only together could we succeed.

So, reading those two articles from Perspectives on History rang true for me, but in a way I don't think the authors were intending. I see the roles of archivists, historians, curators, and catalogers to be distinct, both in skill set and in theoretical knowledge. I also see museums, libraries, and archives to be distinct, from media in their collections to the use of the assets. But, I think the true dissonance that DeBold and Watson are getting at is a dissolution of boundaries. The differences are starting to fade, but in ways that may not be acknowledged or described, so things start to feel unstable and insecure. Arranging a personal collection of letters in an archive, museum, and library are actually quite similar at the base level. Each institution wants to be able to know in a database what the letters are - how many there are, what their condition is, any relevant information of historical importance, etc. Is arranging/describing a collection of military uniforms all that different from those letters? Not really. They'll have different preservation needs, sure, but they still need to cataloged. 

I have pondered for years if these lines between fields really need to be drawn so starkly. Skills may differ on an extremely specific level (do not try to handle nitrate without training), the use of the assets may differ by institution type, but transparency could surely help. If a historian knew more about what an archivist does, if a librarian and a curator can collaborate to combine text and object, then surely better discourse can be accomplished, right? I've worked in all these roles, in these different institutions, and I can tell you the best work is done when everyone at the table has different skills and perspectives, but most importantly, if they have all walked a few days in each others shoes. If I need help tracking down a specific person for a research project, I want an archivist to go through their papers, a librarian to help me track down secondary sources, a museum curator to find their clothes, and a historian to help me understand the historical context of all the stuff. I also know which film preservation company I want to inspect and digitize their film collection! But if I don't get the people involved to talk to each other, how can I draw connections? 

This is really what I do in my research projects - I gather different people, or I wear different hats to explore history. The Scale Armour Project involved a fabrics expert and a laboratory expert as well as a trio of archaeologists, the Ryves Holt House Project has caused me to be a historian, an architect, an archivist, and a photographer. When I started with my Film Company, I did not know how to handle film, but I could extrapolate the basics based on my experience in a archives and museums where I worked with paper, books, clothing, stone tools, fire arms, etc. I could also tailor project procedures based on how the client wanted to use their collection by blending my experience managing museum collections and arranging archival material. Jack of all trades, but a master of none.