In 2016, while I was serving as New England Archivists’ Inclusion and Diversity Coordinator, we conducted a survey on contingent employment in the archives/library field. I was asked to present the findings of this survey at NEA’s annual business meeting. Because of some time constraints, we ended up deferring the presentation from spring 2017 to spring 2018. I will be presenting a ten minute snapshot of finding at the business meeting held on Saturday, March 23, 2018 in New Haven, Connecticut during the New England Archivists/Archives Roundtable of Metropolitan New York Spring 2018 Joint Meeting (22-24 March 2018).

Because the presentation will be a brief ten minutes, I am making the slides available here for anyone who wishes to review them at their leisure.

You may also download a PDF of the presentation slides here.

The full data set (stripped of identifying information) will eventually be made available for researchers in some to-be-determined format through New England Archivists. I will update links when that transpires! In the meantime, I am happy to discuss these findings with anyone who has a further interest in this area. Contact me here or @feministlib!

UPDATE ONE: 2018-03-26.
At the request of a couple of folks who wanted the survey questions for possible reuse in their own region, I have made two Google Documents available:

Appendix 1: Survey Questions (Doc.)
Appendix 2: Semi-Structured Interview Questions (Doc.)

UPDATE TWO: 2018-08-18
I have finally completed cleaning up the footnotes on the final report (January 2017). Here is the report in PDF (via Google Documents), a folder of anonymized interview transcripts:

NEA Contingent Employment Study Final Report 2018-08 (PDF)
Anonymized transcripts of the qualitative interviews (PDF)

UPDATE THREE: 2018-TBD

Anonymized survey responses may be found here (Google Sheets) [Link to come]

This piece was written as a farewell when I stepped down from my three-year term as New England Archivists’ Inclusion and Diversity Coordinator. It first appeared in the October 2017 issue of  NEA News (44:4). As I have been following the #DERAIL2018 conversation on Twitter this weekend, it seemed like this reflection on the possibilities and problematics of institutional diversity work in the archives world might have broader applicability. So I’m reposting it here. 

I accepted the position of New England Archivists’ first Inclusion and Diversity Coordinator in November 2014 with some trepidation. With our recently-adopted Inclusion and Diversity Statement in hand, the leadership was ready to take action. But what would effective short-term and long-term action look like? Would I have support from the organization to institute change? How would I adequately assess and address the needs of New England’s archivists for a more just and inclusive professional environment? These were some of my initial reservations as a relatively young and newly-involved member of NEA, yet I felt it was important to work on these issues and was committed to charting out a path that future Coordinators might find useful to follow.

Over the past three years, I have been grateful to my fellow archivists within NEA for enthusiastically welcoming my proposals and bringing their own concerns forward that we might address them together. Thanks to the members who brought me ideas and requests, we have made structural changes to our Spring Meeting to ensure people of all genders feel welcome, that nursing parents have space to feed their children, people with a wide variety of dietary needs are fed, and that specific accommodations for participants with disabilities are advertised and provided. These changes have been institutionalized as part of the Spring Meeting planning guide. We are also in the second year of our three-year pilot program to encourage session proposals on social justice themes with the Inclusion and Diversity Travel and Session Award that funds travel expenses for the winning panel participants.

Thank you, also, to the membership for your overwhelming support for adopting our code of conduct that is the policy instrument backing up our stated commitment to building and maintaining an environment where members and guests are free from harassment. While this anti-harassment policy was not developed in response to any specific incident of exclusionary hostility, it does establish a framework through which we can handle any such incidents as they arise. Even more importantly, in my opinion, the code of conduct establishes a common expectation for all members and guest participants in NEA events that we respect the full humanity of one another, honor each others’ complex life experiences, and strive to learn how our multiple identities inform our perspectives both personally and professionally.

These are steps in the right direction, but we still have a long journey ahead to address the structural inequalities baked into our profession. Continue reading →

On January 15th, archivists Jeremy Brett, Katharina Hering, Hanna and myself, released A Statement to the Archival Community regarding the election of Donald Trump. The statement reads, in part:

We are a diverse group of archivists who are deeply concerned with the current state of American politics based on the election of Donald Trump and the subsequent legitimization of his advisers’ and surrogates’ damaging views and policies.

The Core Values and Code of Ethics established by the Society of American Archivists note that “underlying all the professional activities of archivists is their responsibility to a variety of groups in society and to the public good… the archival record is part of the cultural heritage of all members of society.” The Core Values also note that, by “documenting institutional functions, activities and decision-making, archivists provide an important means of ensuring accountability.” As professionals committed to these values and as custodians of society’s historical records, we have a responsibility to ensure that what we do, and how we do it, benefits society as a whole, while holding public officials and agencies accountable. Therefore it is incumbent upon us to speak out when the public good is jeopardized by political action. […]

• We will not be intimidated, but will continue to provide equitable access to information.

• We will not be prejudiced, but will continue to serve all our communities to the fullest extent of our abilities.

• We will remain committed to protecting the fundamental right of people to know what their government is doing and why.

• We will not act out of fear of elements of the incoming administration, but will continue to preserve the documentary record that holds our leaders accountable to law and justice.

[…] We pledge to remain vigilant in this moment of rapid change, seeking opportunities to put our skills and resources as archivists and information specialists to work as part of the resistance.

To date, the Statement has been signed by 515 colleagues in addition to the four original authors. Our website is currently a bit bare bones, but has links to resources for further action and we are in discussion about how to hold one another accountable and provide a platform for archivist activists to “put our skills and resources to work as part of the resistance.”

Wherever you are, and whatever your skills and resources, I hope you too will join the struggle in your own communities.

On Wednesday, I saw on Twitter that the #teamharpy defendants, nina de jesus and Lisa Rabey, have published apologies and retractions for their accusations against Joe Murphy.

Today, Lisa Rabey confirmed that these statements were part of an out-of-court settlement that has ended the lawsuit.

Last September, I wrote a blog post in support of #teamharpy. In that post, I argued:

The charges of sexual harassment aside, Joe Murphy has subsequently demonstrated that he is a man who is willing to bring a lawsuit against two professionally-vulnerable women with limited financial resources who spoke up about behavior they (and many others) see as a systemic social problem.

I re-read this post in light of de jesus and Rabey’s retractions and I stand by my position (made formal by co-signing this open letter) that the situation was not one that should have resulted in an international lawsuit. I am glad that lawsuit is at an end.

I hope that all involved can now move on toward a better chapter in their lives, both personally and professionally. I wish them healing and peace.

I also hope we, as a professional community, can take steps to improve our handling of harassment so as to minimize the dependence on unreliable whisper networks for safety and reduce the chance that people will feel it necessary to sue — or look over their shoulders in fear of being sued.

We are collectively responsible for taking constructive next steps and looking toward a more just and inclusive future.