Events

Climate Strike Teach-Ins

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Information English | Información Español | Informação Português | Informations Françaises | Impormasyon Filipino

ENGLISH – This September 20th, 2019 archivists around the world alongside young people and adults across the US and world held strikes for climate action. Throughout this day archivists also held Teach Ins focused on various topics of archival practices and the archivist’s relationship to climate change. These Teach Ins provided insights and serve as a launching point for future actions against climate change. By joining international efforts to raise awareness of climate change, archivists joined the global community to tell leaders across the world that we too demand climate action. Archivists along with others in the library, museum, and information community joined together to contribute to this multigenerational multidisciplinary climate movement. Read below about how this year’s strike paved the way for learning about how archives and archivists impact climate change and helped set the stage for a new era of just and equitable climate action.

The September 20, 2019 Global Climate Strike represents the beginning of a long series of conversations demanding quick and just climate actions. Consider joining the movement by reviewing the created modules or suggested readings available for download here.

Teaching Modules: http://bit.ly/2lUocZ6

Zotero Library: http://bit.ly/Archives4ClimateActionRead

SEPT. 20 EVENTBRITE PAGE (http://bit.ly/2ktyQGg) set up to show solidarity with archivists from around the world and communicated details the nearest Teach In in the area. Teach Ins were held in various locations. Page also includes individual event pages for each Teach In action.

SEPT. 20 VIRTUAL TWITTER TEACH IN
An ALL DAY Twitter Teach In that invited participants to talk archives, archivists, and climate change using the hashtag #Archivists4ClimateAction. Participants use this hashtag to talk in various languages, suggested articles, or posed and responded to questions related to the issue of Climate Change and archives.

As part of this online Teach In, participating archivists also briefly discussed the following article: “Dying Well In the Anthropocene: On the End of Archivists” by Samantha R. Winn


IN PERSON TEACH IN (these were the confirmed locations as of 9/19/19)

  • Austin, TX, U.S.A. 
    • Location: University of Texas Student Union Courtyard from 9 am to 12 pm
    • Event Link: http://bit.ly/2lWFncw
  • Melbourne, Australia
    • Location: Clyde Hotel (385 Cardigan St, Carlton) from 4 pm – 6 pm

This is a Project ARCC and Archivists Against History Repeating Itself sponsored action. Part of the Global Climate Strike 2019.

Share this page: bit.ly/archivistclimatestrike19

Download promotional materials (flyers/infosheets in multiple languages): http://bit.ly/2kAVU61

Preservation Week includes Climate Change

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As part of Preservation Week programming, the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc. (A.R.T.) and the Archives and Public History Program at New York University are co-sponsoring an event  to discuss how archival repositories can be pro-active in the fight against climate change, collections useful to climate change research, and successful sustainability efforts/resiliency measures.

The event “I’m Not A Scientist”: The Role and Responsibility of Archivists Towards Climate Change takes place on Friday, April 29, 2016 from 6 to 8pm at New York University’s Kimmel Center, Room 912. If you’re in NYC this Friday, register for the event to join the conversation.

For more information, visit the event page.

Hope to see you there!

CFP – Libraries and Archives in the Anthropocene: A Colloquium

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Call for Proposals

Libraries and Archives in the Anthropocene: A Colloquium
May 13-14, 2017
New York University
Website: http://litwinbooks.com/laac2017colloq.php

As stewards of a culture’s collective knowledge, libraries and archives are facing the realities of cataclysmic environmental change with a dawning awareness of its unique implications for their missions and activities. Some professionals in these fields are focusing new energies on the need for environmentally sustainable practices in their institutions. Some are prioritizing the role of libraries and archives in supporting climate change communication and influencing government policy and public awareness. Others foresee an inevitable unraveling of systems and ponder the role of libraries and archives in a world much different from the one we take for granted. Climate disruption, peak oil, toxic waste, deforestation, soil salinity and agricultural crisis, depletion of groundwater and other natural resources, loss of biodiversity, mass migration, sea level rise, and extreme weather events are all problems that indirectly threaten to overwhelm civilization’s knowledge infrastructures, and present information institutions with unprecedented challenges.

This colloquium will serve as a space to explore these challenges and establish directions for future efforts and investigations. We invite proposals from academics, librarians, archivists, activists, and others.

Some suggested topics and questions:

  • How can information institutions operate more sustainably?
  • How can information institutions better serve the needs of policy discussions and public awareness in the area of climate change and other threats to the environment?
  • How can information institutions support skillsets and technologies that are relevant following systemic unraveling?
  • What will information work look like without the infrastructures we take for granted?
  • How does information literacy instruction intersect with ecoliteracy?
  • How can information professionals support radical environmental activism?
  • What are the implications of climate change for disaster preparedness?
  • What role do information workers have in addressing issues of environmental justice?
  • What are the implications of climate change for preservation practices?
  • Should we question the wisdom of preserving access to the technological cultural legacy that has led to the crisis?
  • Is there a new responsibility to document, as a mode of bearing witness, the historical event of society’s confrontation with the systemic threat of climate change, peak oil, and other environmental problems?
  • Given the ideological foundations of libraries and archives in Enlightenment thought, and given that Enlightenment civilization may be leading to its own environmental endpoint, are these ideological foundations called into question? And with what consequences?

Formats:

Lightning talk (5 minutes)
Paper (20 minutes)
Proposals are due August 1, 2016.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by September 16, 2016.
Submit your proposal here: http://goo.gl/forms/rz7uN1mBNM

Planning committee:

  • Casey Davis is Project Manager at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting at WGBH and co-founder of ProjectARCC: Archivists Responding to Climate Change<https://projectarcc.org/>.
  • Madeleine Charney is Sustainability Studies Librarian at UMass Amherst and co-founder of the Sustainability Round Table of the American Library Association<http://www.ala.org/sustainrt/home>.
  • Rory Litwin is a former librarian and the founder of Litwin Books, LLC<http://litwinbooks.com/> (Colloquium sponsor)

Our Conversation to #SustainLIS with ALA SustainRT

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On Monday, October 19, 2015, ProjectARCC and ALA SustainRT co-hosted a tweet-up to discuss the actions we can take as archivists and librarians to reduce our professional carbon footprint, implement sustainable practices in our institutions to prepare for and mitigate the effects of climate change, and engage the public in environmental awareness and sustainability education. Each group posed three questions pertaining to these topics, totaling six distinct questions. Tweet-up participants offered great solutions, posed further questions and concerns, and shared resources.

The content of the tweet-up can be found in a curated Storify.

Stay tuned for more information on the joint ProjectARCC-SustainRT event we are planning for ALA Midwinter 2016 in Boston! Also, please tag #SustainLIS in your future tweets about anything pertaining to sustainability in LIS, including new research, trends, events, success stories, areas for improvement, thoughts, and actions.

— Carey MacDonald

New England Event: Join ProjectARCC at the Boston Rally for Jobs, Justice & Climate on 12/12

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rallyTo change everything, it takes everyone. Join ProjectARCC at the New England rally for Jobs, Justice and Climate taking place on Saturday, December 12 from 1-3pm starting at the Boston Common.

 

From November 29 through December 11, world leaders will meet in Paris to negotiate a new global climate treaty. This is the 21st attempt at establishing an international accord, and it’s our responsibility to demand that leaders agree on bold climate solutions. On December 12, people will come from across New England to rally for climate action to ensure a resilient future for current and future generations. As the profession responsible for the long-term preservation of our cultural heritage, archivists must act to ensure that the commitments made by our leaders will safeguard our collections and the communities we document.

If you’re interested in joining ProjectARCC at the rally, please fill out the form below, and we’ll get in touch with you soon with more details.

In solidarity,
The New England area members of ProjectARCC

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT: On the Brink: Archives, Climate Change, and the Future

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We are thrilled to announce our SCoSAA/ProjectARCC collaborative event: On The Brink: Archives, Climate Change, and the Future!

The  Simmons College Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists (SCoSAA) and ProjectARCC are hosting On the Brink: Archives, Climate Change, and the Future,  a panel discussion among archivists and energy policy, ethics and communications experts which will bring the topic of climate change to the forefront, as it will deeply impact the archival profession.

The event will be held at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts on Wednesday, November 11 at 5:30pm in the Kotzen Meeting Room. Register to attend on our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/on-the-brink-archives-climate-change-and-the-future-tickets-18737615713

While the meeting is capped at 50 attendees, we will have unlimited capability to livestream the event, which you can attend through  GoToWebinar via think link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7581571748555811330 and the Webinar ID: 120-664-547.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact SCoSAA Co-Chairs Betts Coup and Kristen Weischedel at scosaa@simmons.edu.

About ProjectARCC:

Founded on Earth Day in 2015, ProjectARCC is a task force of archivists striving to motivate the archival community to affect climate change. We believe that archivists, those responsible for the preservation of history for future generations, should be as passionate and concerned about preserving a habitable and safe planet for future generations.  To learn more about ProjectARCC, visit our website athttps://projectarcc.org/.

About our speakers:

Casey Davis

Casey E. Davis is an audiovisual archivist and project manager who by day is Project Manager for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting at WGBH. Alarmed about current and impending impacts of climate change on the archival profession, Casey, along with other archivists across the United States formed ProjectARCC, a task force of archivists striving to motivate the archival profession to affect climate change. Casey also serves as archivist for DearTomorrow, a campaign to collect and preserve letters from parents to their loved ones about climate change. She is the Co-Chair for the New England Archivists Roundtable for Early Professionals and Students and serves on the NEA Membership Committee.

Lisa Pearson

Lisa Pearson is the Head of the Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library and Archives. She oversees all of the operations of the library and archives, as well as creating displays of archival materials for the library and exhibits in the Visitor Center. In addition she manages new library book acquisitions. Earlier in her time at the Arboretum she was the project cataloger for the digitization of several of their historical photograph collections. This has given her an in-depth knowledge of their holdings. Prior to coming to the Arboretum, she was employed for many years as a librarian in the insurance industry, first on the property/casualty side and later in the life/health and financial services realm. Outside of work she is an artist working in metal, leather, and textiles, who gathers her inspiration from Medieval and Renaissance art.

Trisha Shrum

Trisha is a PhD candidate in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School specializing in behavioral science and environmental economics. In her work on how moral frames and time preference affect support for climate change policy, she developed the fundamental concept that underlies DearTomorrow. She credits her own daughter, Eleanor, and Christiana Figueres for the critical inspiration. Prior to coming to the Kennedy School, she earned a Masters of Environmental Science at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Science and a B.S. in Biology from the University of Kansas. Trisha has been studying and analyzing climate change policy for nearly a decade.

Lucas Stanczyk

Lucas Stanczyk is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Affiliated Faculty of Philosophy at MIT. He completed his PhD at Harvard in 2012. Lucas’s primary research interests are in political philosophy and the history of political thought. He is completing a book manuscript on the economic duties of citizenship and has started research for a second book on contemporary inequality. At MIT, he teaches classes in political philosophy, the history of political thought, and the ethics of public policy.

ProjectARCC Attends #SAA15!

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The Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists rolls into Cleveland, Ohio this week. Thousands of archivists will come together for tours of all kinds, a huge expo of archival products and services, meetings with colleagues, networking events, workshops, and educational sessions. ProjectARCC will also be there in full force! To keep your time green and obtain new insight into why archivists should be concerned about climate change, we’ve created this little guide for you.

Want to add something? Contact Dana Gerber-Margie, outreach coordinator, to add more events and tips.

Tips for Reducing Your Carbon Footprint at the Conference

  • Offset your carbon footprint from your flight by purchasing carbon credits
  • If your home will be empty, turn your water heater to low/vacation settings, turn off your thermostat, turn off or maybe unplug lights and electronics, lower your refrigerator coldness
  • Walk, bike trails, use your hotel’s van, or take public transportation across town
  • If you drive: rent a car that has a high MPG, accelerate slowly, maintain a steady speed, and go into stops smoothly (and think about carpooling!)
  • Turn off your lights and unplug electronics when leaving your hotel room
  • Ask for extra blankets if you get cold at night, instead of using the heater
  • Minimize air conditioner use, especially when not in the hotel room. If you want to keep the room cool while you’re gone, close your drapes to keep the room dark.
  • Turn off the water while brushing your teeth
  • Flush your toilet less (it may sound gross but it helps reduce gallons of water! “If it’s yellow, let it mellow.”)
  • Bring a thermos or tumbler for your coffee or tea instead of using paper/plastic cups
  • Avoid styrofoam
  • Bring your own reusable water bottle instead of buying plastic ones
  • Use the conference app instead of a print program
  • Use the recycling bins. If you don’t see any at the conference hotel, save your recyclables until you find one
  • Don’t ask for a change of sheets during your hotel stay
  • Don’t ask for new towels if they’ve only been used once
  • Unplug your cell phone charger when not in use
  • Eat less meat
  • Eat locally and seasonally
  • Talk to SAA and anyone who will listen about making next year’s event more sustainable!

ProjectARCC Events

Wednesday, August 19th at 3:00pm
Eira Tansey will be doing a brief presentation on ProjectARCC at the Human Rights Archives Roundtable

Thursday, August 20th at 5:15pm
ProjectARCC Happy Hour at Lola Bistro (2058 East 4th Street)

Friday, August 21st at 4:30pm
Casey Davis doing a brief presentation on ProjectARCC at the Issues and Advocacy Roundtable

Friday, August 21st and Saturday, August 22nd
Vote for a ProjectARCC Pop-Up proposal!

Thursday, August 20th and Friday, August 21st
The Preservation Section is hosting a Silent Auction to benefit National Disaster Recovery Fund for Archives.

Relevant Sessions

Thursday, August 20 • 12:15pm – 1:30pm
Forum: Archival and Special Collections Facilities: Guidelines for Archivists, Librarians, Architects, and Engineers
The Standards Committee’s Technical Subcommittee on Archival Facilities Guidelines hosts an open meeting for colleagues to learn more about the facility guidelines and offer comments and suggestions. While the revisions are still in development, an early draft of the proposed revised guidelines will be available for review here. Contact Michele Pacifico or Tom Wilsted with questions.

Thursday, August 20 • 12:15pm – 1:30pm
Join us for a presentation and discussion of the Guidelines for Reappraisal and Deaccessioning. Members of the Standards Committee’s Technical Subcommittee on Guidelines for Reappraisal and Deaccessioning present an overview of this important SAA standard, which undergoes review starting this year. Q&A and comment period to follow.

Thursday, August 20 • 1:45pm – 2:45pm
As we digitize audiovisual collections for preservation, the questions arise: How long do I keep the original? Do obsolescence and decay override the urge/need to retain it? What do we make of the toll on resources, storage, facilities, etc., that results from storage of duplicate content or unrecoverable materials? The panelists address varying opinions based on institution size, digital infrastructure, and collection types to spark critical discussion of this growing challenge.

Friday, August 21 • 10:00am – 11:15am
Archivists, librarians, and community historians know that local residents often distrust repositories. This creates hidden collections—and hidden histories—in the community, especially from groups that are more socially remote from institutions with archives.  As professionals, we have a responsibility to challenge the notion of the “repository as archives” and serve the community better by decentralizing appraisal and custody, coordinating resource deployment, and collaborating in providing description and access.

Friday, August 21 • 10:00am – 11:15am
Is there a place for archives in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education?  A panel of archivists and special collections librarians tackle this question and offer four examples of creative and instructive approaches in archival outreach to STEM students and educators.  The panelists share their experiences in K-12, university, and museum settings, and encourage a conversation among archivists, special collections librarians, and educators who are actively working to better serve STEM communities.

Saturday, August 22 • 8:30am – 9:45am
Research data management has become one of the principal concerns of research libraries. To date, however, few archivists have been actively involved in this sphere. Attendees of this session, which features three institutions with archivists at the forefront, learn about the imperative to manage and preserve research data and the central role that archivists should play as repositories are designed and implemented.

Saturday, August 22 • 8:30am – 9:45am
Advocacy is a driving force in the minds of archivists—an engine to move the archival enterprise forward—but advocacy is defined and used in different ways and must be performed differently in the varied environments in which archives exist. The speakers explore what advocacy means in the government, educational, and business worlds and demonstrate how the meaning and means of advocacy change depending on the circumstances that different archives and archives associations face.

Saturday, August 22 • 10:00am – 11:00am
Primary resources often reveal information related to collections in museums, but lack of expertise and archival staff often relegate the archives to a second tier. This session, organized by the newly formed Natural Science Archives Association, includes archivists and a museum collection manager who discuss how archives are as essential for the study of natural science as the specimen collections themselves. This broad discussion emphasizes surveying, cataloging, digitizing, and transcribing field books and illustrating how, using data standards for records (EAD) and for their associated entities (e.g., the names of the persons and expeditions, EAC-CPF), it is possible to link publications, specimens, and archives within and across libraries, archives, and museums as a model for archives across all subject areas.

Thanks to member Frances Harrell for mining the huge SAA15 schedule for relevant sessions.

Our First Conversation to #preserveclimate

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On July 8 at 1pm EDT, ProjectARCC successfully hosted its first tweet up on climate change. From all around the twitterverse, archivists and like minded members came to talk about climate change on a personal and professional level. Using six questions to guide the conversation, we talked about what motivates us, the questions we have regarding climate change, and how we are taking action in our personal and professional spheres.

See the hour’s discussion in a curated Storify.

ProjectARCC has a four-fold mission to affect climate change.

  • Archivists can educate themselves on disaster preparedness of preservation risks posed by climate change and protecting their collections.
  • Archivists can advocate for reducing our professional carbon footprint.
  • Archivists can elevate our collections to improve public awareness of climate change.
  • Archivists can actively work to ensure long term preservation of the climate change movement.

If you would like to learn more about ProjectARCC or get involved with one of our committees please visit our website or send us an email at info.projectarcc@gmail.com.

Join ProjectARCC in a live tweet-up July 8 at 1pm ET!

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Almost 10 years ago, the Society of American Archivists met in New Orleans just weeks before Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failure caused massive human and environmental loss to the Gulf Coast. In the aftermath of Katrina, many of the archives around Louisiana and Mississippi suffered enormous losses to their holdings. Since then, many archives and cultural heritage sites have either been directly affected by, or had close calls due to increased severe weather, rising sea levels, and wildfire risks. These environmental risks are almost certainly likely to increase according to 97% of climate scientists.

For some time, scientists have been the primary voices sounding the alarm over the widespread impacts of climate change. In 2014, 242 lead authors and 436 contributing authors published the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report, confirming that climate change is happening and is due to human influence, and that we will see irreversible, catastrophic effects within our lifetime if we do not reduce and eliminate carbon emissions by the middle of the 21st century.

As the world moves to the next rounds of climate talks in Paris at the end of 2015, new voices are entering the policy discussion. Two weeks ago, Pope Francis issued a moral call to action on climate change in his nearly 200 page papal encyclical. This reflects the increasing shift of the climate change conversation from a scientific and economic policy discussion, to that of a worldwide movement towards action motivated not just by scientific and economic factors, but by concern for international human rights and social justice.

As archivists, what is our role in the movement to fight climate change? How is climate change affecting our profession, and how can we act as agents for action within our communities? What actions will have an impact?

On July 8, 2015 at 1pm ET, ProjectARCC is hosting a live tweet-up to discuss the above questions with fellow archivists. We invite you to participate by using #preserveclimate and by following @projectARCC. And you don’t have to be an expert on climate change to attend and contribute! We welcome all archivists who are concerned about the impact of climate change on our profession and who are seeking ways to impact its effects and improve public awareness. In advance of the tweet-up, please feel free to send us questions or issues you’d like to discuss to info.projectarcc@gmail.com.

ABOUT PROJECT_ARCC:
********************
On Earth Day in 2015, a group of alarmed archivists founded ProjectARCC, a task force with a mission to motivate the archival community to affect climate change. We believe that as those responsible for the preservation of history for future generations, we should be as passionate and concerned about preserving a safe and habitable planet for ours and future generations.