Hidden depths: Illuminating the extent of invisible systems, born-digital, and collections management work

Born-digital's increasing presence in archives necessitates fundamental changes to adequately support, manage, and make this material discoverable. However, work remains siloed in these areas, and is often misunderstood or invisible. Collaboration to sustain this work is challenging due to misconceptions about the labor it entails, questions surrounding who should lead or do the work, entrenched power dynamics, and (infra)structural barriers, among other things. Additionally, pressure to operationalize and provide metrics for this work has inspired conversation about reimaging current best practices for born-digital care. This session will speak to the collective, holistic care for born-digital and technologically-mediated archival work across roles and levels of responsibility, and the various challenges associated with responsible stewardship.

This session will highlight two community-driven cross-institutional efforts led by archival workers as illustrative examples of how archivists can advocate for stronger holistic stewardship and collaboration across institutions. This session’s aim is to help digital archival workers deepen their collaborators’ understanding of the challenges inherent to this work by making visible the labor related to born-digital and technologically-mediated archival work.

In a 90 minute session, speakers will present two 10 minute papers on community-driven projects that address these issues, including 1) collective work on updating the University of California Guidelines for Efficient Archival Processing, and 2) Lighting the Way, an IMLS-funded project facilitating national discussions on archival discovery and delivery. The rest of the session will be devoted to participatory surveying exercises intended to give attendees an opportunity to reflect affectively on both the (in)visibility of their work and skillsets, and how to develop collaborations to support their work.