Society of California Archivists Annual Meeting (2014)
Archives and the Public
Society of California Archivists – 2014 Annual General
Meeting
Palm Springs, CA – May 8-10, 2014
Plenary Address: Alan Hess, Form Follows Pleasure:
Modern Architecture and the Palm Springs School
Hess’ remarks about Palm Springs architecture reflect the
recent interest in how these architects response to the climate, nature,
technology, and culture of the Southern California desert. There is a huge
preservation effort taking place in Palm Springs, they are leading the nation
in this type of work. Palm Springs School is a set of ideas and theories that
unite Palm Springs architects. Examples of these ideas include the sun screens
over windows, building at the base of a mountain to provide shade, lifting
houses up to provide livable shade underneath, and suburban layouts to increase
green space. The location near Hollywood and the persistent sunshine helped
create a culture of pleasure where resorts were abundantly developed and many
homes had swimming pools and other recreational features. The Palm Spring
School also included Googie Architecture which captured the energy of the
futuristic technology and made it available for everyone in the style of space
age restaurants and gas stations. Some famous Palm Springs architects include
Frank Lloyd Wright Jr. (Oasis Hotel), Paul R. Williams (Lucy & Desi House
and Town & Country Building), Newberg, Wexler, and Fray.
Session 1: The Access Tightrope: Balancing Access with
Privacy
This session started with Mallory Furnier from the Autry National Center who discussed her work on the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans
collection, followed by her experiences with the David Dortort collection. Roy
Rogers and Dale Evans were stars of radio and television during the 1940’s and
1950’s and developed quite a fan following. Their archives include letters and
photographs from children with terminal illnesses which present access
questions related to HIPPA, rights of children, and third party donors. Mallory
and her staff evaluated these concerns pragmatically and determined that the
collection was a low privacy risk, and that they would continue to track
researchers, who use the collection, place a 72 year restriction on any
publications, censor names, addresses, and treatment plans. For the materials donated by the family of
David Dortort, the creator of Bonanza,
the archivist received a warning from the family that some of the materials were
sensitive. After reviewing the collection and discovering intimate revelations
from fans, Mallory agreed with the donor’s assessment and because the records
were as recent as 2002, deemed the collection a high privacy risk. The
sensitive materials in the Dortort collection have a 50 year publication
restriction which is noted in the catalog record, and the actual materials are
flagged so that staff will remember when items are pulled for a researcher.
The second presenter from the Autry National Center was
Charlie Holland, a senior archival assistant, working exclusively on her late
friend, Theo Westenberger’s photograph collection. The Westenberger archive
includes close to 10,000 photographic prints along with thousands of negatives,
transparencies, contact sheets, and studio materials. All of Charlie’s concerns
revolve around very legitimate apprehensions about the digitization, uploading,
social media and licensing uses of the collection. These concerns are
exacerbated with these materials because many of the images feature
celebrities, whose lawyers will fight for unauthorized uses of their likeness;
or other less famous models or children who (or guardians who) never signed
release forms for the use of their likeness. Charlie shared several resources
with the audience that she uses to help mitigate the risk of sharing images
unlawfully. She has worked with the Autry to develop a risk assessment policy
which requires archivists to ask questions about the image, such as: Is the
subject shown in a false light or maliciously? From the image, can the person’s
identity be determined? Are these people in a naturally occurring crowd? The
Getty Institute has model release forms that archivists can use retroactively
to protect themselves from future litigation. Charlie has thoroughly read the
terms of use agreements for various social media platforms including Facebook,
Instagram, and art.com; all of which indemnify the agency from any persecution
if images from their sites are stolen and misappropriated by the social media
platform. They are not a safe place for images that are protected under
copyright and commercially valuable, such as the work of Theo Westenberger.
The third presenter was Michael Oliveira from ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California. His
talk focused on balancing the needs for access as described in the Freedom of
Information Act, and privacy in terms of third party donors. The presentation
was full of anecdotal stories from patrons and donors, with an extended
discussion of the accession of various photographic collections; the Miles R.Everitt Collection, full of African American subjects and the William Rhoads Collection which features nudes of hitchhikers from the Pacific Coast Highway.
In conclusion, Oliveira encouraged the audience to ask donors about any privacy
concerns before accessioning new collections. He also cited information from
the Harvard Institutional Review Board forms to help archivists determine if
incoming materials are appropriate for our repositories.
Session 4: Technology and Archives: Exchange Forum –
Programmer and Archivist Collaboration
This was an interesting session because it brought the
perspective of computer programmers to an archives conference. Although most of
the information was too technical for my experience at small community
archives, I felt that there was a substantial amount of information that would
serve me well as my career progressed. The first set of speakers was Kim
Klausner and Sven Maier from University of California at San Francisco.
Klausner and Mair work with the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library where they
provide a resource portal to 14 million documents related to the tobacco
industry. They use SLR, Blacklight, Grails, and HTML 5 to build their own
software to search and display content from various sites. They faced challenges
with communication gaps between the archivists and the team of programmers. The
team wound up using a wiki, and Redmine (a project management tool) to improve communication
between the two camps.
The second pair of presenters was Cristela Garcia-Spitz and
Matt Critchlow from the University of California at San Diego Library. Their
presentation focused on the basic strategy that the library team was using to
complete multiple digitization projects. They employ a team approach,
and plug their steps in Confluence (JIRA environment), a proprietary project
management tool. The teams are composed of a collections group, a reformatting
group, a metadata policy group, a digital library products group, and steering
committees. The project leaders would use several techniques to engage their
teams in the work, for example they might define sustainable chunks of work and
use “sprints” or two week sessions to work on that chunk exclusively in order
to finish the project or host a DigiCamp where every stakeholder is invited to
a session to discuss a common issue. The presenters explained that a three step
process with assigned role players could be tracked with three columns of
post-it notes if the formalized software was not available.
Session 8: What the Hell Is It and What Do I Do With
it? Cataloging Challenging Collections
This session started with Natalie Russell from the
Huntington Library, discussing the recent publication of the Octavia E. Butler
(1933-2006) Papers finding aid. Ms. Butler was an accomplished African American
female science fiction writer; she lived in Altadena, California and bequeathed
her collection to the Huntington upon her death. Natalie has been working on
these materials for the past three years, resulting in a 500 page finding aid,
3 pages of cataloger’s notes, and 250 upright Hollinger boxes as well as
countless flat file boxes, index card boxes, specialty sleeves kept in binders.
As a result of the researcher demand for access to these materials (40 people
on a waiting list) the Huntington processing staff decided to process the
collection at the item level. The presentation became exhausting as Natalie
shared photograph after photograph of notebooks, business cards, floppy disks, news
clippings, binders of correspondence, photographs from a complicated writer’s
mind. I think that Natalie’s effort to read all of Octavia’s writings and
biographical information helped her to make sound decisions with cross
referencing and cataloging the collection items. This is a good example of how
Octavia Butler’s impressive career and the seemingly boundless resources of the
Huntington Library converged to enable the collection to be processed this way;
the sheer cost of archival supplies and the allocation of staff time make this
project out of the range of most archives.
Rand Boyd from Chapman University discussed his
challenges with the Huell Howser California Gold Archive. The collection
includes 5,000 digi-beta tapes, 1,800 books, 50 boxes of program research
files, and 7 boxes of personal papers, the furniture from Mr. Howser’s home and
office, as well as a memorabilia collection. The archivist ran into challenges
on account of the multiple formats of the collection materials and because of
the complicated celebrity status of Huell Howser. The program tapes were in
antiquated formats and not properly labeled which forced the archival team to
watch each tape in order to match raw footage with air footage and shelf the
tapes accordingly. While Huell Howser was alive, he presided over the archive
with his signature micro-management style, but when he died unexpectedly in
2013; Rand wanted to respect Howser’s personal preference toward privacy in
regard to his personal life. When AAA agreed to fund a permanent exhibit
dedicated to Huell Howser, Rand’s work with Howser’s personal papers allowed
them to include photographs and a rare glimpse into the early career of Huell
Howser.
Charlotte Thai from Stanford University gave an interesting
presentation about her work with the Stephen M. Cabrinety collection. Due to grants from
the National Software Reference Library (NSRL) and the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST), Charlotte is archiving pieces of hardware and
software (many of them unopened) to document the history of micro-computing.
The processing workflow is complicated as Charlotte performs item level
cataloging for the Stanford Digital Library, and ships the items to NIST in
Maryland for them to be imaged, scanned, and included in the national database;
then NIST sends the items back to Palo Alto. On account of the project’s
reliance on the federal government and traveling by truck across the country,
phenomena like a dysfunctional government leading to shutdowns and extreme
weather patterns like last winter’s polar vortex have serious implications for
the Cabirnety project. Charlotte coordinates the logistics of this process and
has to deal with any unexpected cataloging challenges. For example, she has
come across software packages that have mold underneath the shrink wrap
(ultimately de-accessioned that item); breath mints in the collection which
were removed; and over 5000 file name extensions to account for in the catalog
record. Another unique problem for this collection is the absence of
information about the copyright owner of these video games and software
programs from the 1970’s and 1980’s; many of the owners are living but they are
difficult to track down.
Session 11: LA as Subject Considered
Jim Beardsley from the Archival Center of the Archdioceseof Los Angeles started the session off by providing a summary of the mission
and history of LA as Subject (LAAS). LAAS has between 280 and 300 members and
serves as a portal, directory, and resource on the history and culture of Los
Angeles. The group started in the 1990’s with major support from Robert
Marshall of California State University at Northridge. The group has grown
tremendously with the success of the annual Archives Bazaar, and meetings every
two months to discuss archives among the members. The next speaker, Claude
Zachary, the University archivist at University of Southern California (USC),
shared that after five years of being hosted by the Getty, LAAS moved over to
USC, where it currently resides. The LAAS website provides an online directory
(database) of member institutions, links to their websites and allows for
keyword and subject searches. LAAS also provides professional development
opportunities for local archivists and opportunities to network with one
another.
Ellen Jarosz, an archivist from California StateUniversity at Northridge (CSUN) was the next speaker and she spoke exclusively
about the brand new residency program for recent MLIS graduates. The program is
anchored by the Autry Center, USC, and CSUN and draws on their rich alliances
with members of LAAS. Each year three recent graduates will be assigned to an
anchor institution, and rotate through various smaller archive organizations to
develop and execute various projects. The residencies last for one year, and
the $440,000 grant from IMLS ensures that the program will be funded for at
least two cohorts. The residents will be given tasks and assessed based on SAA
professional standards with the goal of achieving permanent employment from one
of the associated institutions. The residency program was designed based on the
study of programs such as Circle of Learning, Mosaic programs, Catalyst Project, the Library of Congress Digital Stewardship and the HistoryMakers Fellowship Program.
Lastly, Ken Bicknell from the Los Angeles CountyMetropolitan Transportation Authority Library and Archive, a member of the LAAS
board discussed the diverse users and contributors to LAAS as well as upcoming
projects and initiatives that the group was throwing its weight behind. In
recent meetings, “TalkShop” sessions have included sustainable social media,
digital asset management, and HistoryPin. LAAS is also interested in Wikipedia
edit-a-thons, and in the process of planning for this year’s Archives Bazaar on
October 25, 2014. Bicknell also praised USC Digital Library for assisting
smaller members with content publication, Occidental College for starting the
Northeast Los Angeles History Project, and Nathan Masters for using LAAS
content for his weekly contributions to Los Angeles Magazine. In conclusion,
Bicknell said in reference to LAAS, “a rising tide lifts all boats”.
Arabian Nights in the American Desert: The Cultivation
of Middle Eastern Fantasies in California’s Coachella Valley
The lunch time speaker at SCA was, Sarah McCormackSeekatz, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of California at Riverside talked
about the historic, kitschy, and problematic nature of the Arabian-zation of
the Coachella Valley. Sarah was so clever as she passed out little packages of
varied dates and had the audience taste them throughout her talk to emphasize
different points. The Coachella Valley was full of native people until the late
1800’s when the railroad arrived. Based on the climate, the United States
Department of Agriculture sent people abroad to find new varieties of fruits
and vegetables. In other words there was a planned introduction of dates to the
desert. On account of their success and the nation’s new obsession with all
things from the Middle East, local towns were given exotic names like Mecca, and
they developed local attractions with Middle Eastern themes. Films like
Lawrence of Arabia, Thief of Baghdad, Queen of Sheba, and The Sheik also
contributed to the craze. The “orientalization” of high school mascots, movie
theaters, date festivals, architecture, camel races, and parades was full of
fallacies and highly problematic for people who came from the region. Sarah’s
use of archival images brought validity to otherwise absurd stories about
behavior that those communities thought was acceptable. Overall the talk was enlightening,
engaging, and informative.
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