archives 
-
SOURCE: Associated Press
1/16/2021
Will Trump’s Mishandling of Records Leave a Hole in History?
Historians and potential prosecutors are concerned about the White House's noncompliance with the Presidential Records Act, but the truth is that the act is toothless.
-
SOURCE: WDET
12/31/2020
Michigan State University Launches Online Database Chronicling North-Atlantic Slave Trade
Enslaved.org is a searchable database that contains millions of records representing enslaved Africans and their descendants.
-
SOURCE: The Hill
12/23/2020
Democracy, History and the Presidential Records Act
by James Grossman and Richard Immerman
It's time to update the Presidential Records Act to clarify the kinds of materials that must be preserved and create real penalties for destroying them.
-
SOURCE: Perspectives on History
12/15/2020
Working With Death: The Experience of Feeling in the Archive
by Ruth Lawlor
A researcher of sexual assault against women by American troops in World War II confronted the problem that the archive captures only a traumatic event and leaves the human being affected in the shadows.
-
SOURCE: Contingent
12/9/2020
How Spencer McBride Does History
History Phd Spencer McBride describes his work on the Joseph Smith Papers project, which poses unexpected challenges to learn about the world of the LDS founder.
-
SOURCE: Valley Public Radio
12/11/2020
UC Merced Acquires Photo Collection Documenting Farmworkers In The 1960s
Historian Mario Sifuentez discusses the photographs of Ernest Lowe and the activism of Central Valley farm workers.
-
SOURCE: Perspectives on History
12/3/2020
Narratives and Counternarratives: Building Digital History Projects in the Classroom
by Allison Robinson
A PhD candidate reflects on building a class around primary source research for digital history, finding it "encouraged students to experiment with unfamiliar methodologies and new sources, challenging their historical thinking."
-
SOURCE: The Conversation
12/1/2020
Reckoning With Slavery: What A Revolt’s Archives Tell Us About Who Owns The Past
by Marjoleine Kars
Researching the history of the 1763-1764 Berbice slave rebellion demonstrated that key records for understanding slavery in the Americas are held in archives in Europe and written in the language of colonial powers, making the history of enslaved people difficult to access for their present-day descendants.
-
SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
12/1/2020
The Struggle to Document COVID-19 for Future Generations
by Pamela Ballinger
Images of suffering have been powerful spurs to humanitarian action in history, but the process has the potential to reinforce messages of fault, blame, and separation. Assembling a visual archive of the age of COVID must avoid those traps to be useful in the future.
-
SOURCE: New York Times
11/30/2020
Smithsonian Archives of American Art Gathers an Oral History of 2020
The National Archives of American Art has been moving aggressively to document artists' responses to the concurrent social traumas of 2020, including the pandemic, police violence and protests, and a tumultuous election campaign.
-
SOURCE: The New Yorker
11/16/2020
Will Trump Burn the Evidence?
by Jill Lepore
Reckoning with the Trump adminstration's actions and assigning moral or criminal sanction to any misdeeds will probably be compromised by the destruction or failure to maintain presidential records.
-
SOURCE: Leominster (MA) Champion
11/16/2020
Fitchburg State Professor Named to Library of Congress Task Force
Fitchburg (MA) State University professor Katherine Rye Jewell has been named to a Library of Congress task force for the preservation of college and community radio.
-
SOURCE: Rest of World
10/26/2020
Control, Alter, Delete:Hong Kong Activists and Academics are Hurrying to Digitize Historical Records
Museums dedicated to the struggle for civil liberties in Hong Kong face a crisis to preserve records in the face of new public safety laws aimed at curbing criticism of the People's Republic of China.
-
SOURCE: New York Times
10/17/2020
The Women Behind the Million Man March
by Natalie Hopkinson
Community archives such as the District of Columbia’s are critical interventions into the omissions of history. This one, like others, makes clear that behind every great feat in the public record lies an untold story of the unsung foot soldiers, architects, analysts and fixers — and these are often women.
-
SOURCE: New York Times
10/8/2020
Library of Congress Acquires Archives of the National Woman’s Party
The preservation and archiving of the NWP's documents was complicated by the fact that its rival, the National American Woman Suffrage Association struck a deal with the Smithsonian forbidding the museum from including the NWP or Alice Paul in any exhibition on suffrage.
-
SOURCE: The Intercept
Homeland Security Wants to Erase its History of Misconduct
U.S. Customs and Border Protection wants to destroy thousands of complaint records it claims have no historical value.
-
9/27/2020
The Future of History in the Pandemic Age
by Michael Creswell
Historians need to consider and prepare for changes to the profession that will follow the COVID-19 pandemic.
-
SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor
9/22/2020
Alabama's State Archives Confronts Its Racist Past
In June, leaders formally acknowledged the department’s past role in perpetuating racism and so-called “lost cause” ideals.
-
SOURCE: Public Seminar
9/10/2020
Who Owns the Evidence of Slavery’s Violence?
by Thomas A. Foster
A lawsuit demands that Harvard University give custody of famous images of enslaved men and women--taken without consent by a biologist seeking to demonstrate white supremacy-- to the subjects' descendents. A Howard University historian agrees, putting the images in context of other intimate violations endured by enslaved persons.
-
SOURCE: The Conversation
9/1/2020
2020 is a Year for the History Books, But not Without Digital Archives
by Ian Milligan
A Canadian historian suggests that the national government commit to a massive effort to archive the entire .ca domain on a daily basis to enable future researchers to access the full volume of digital artifacts produced by Canadians.