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What ProjectARCC Did on Its Summer Vacation

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By Genna Duplisea and Jess Farrell

At the beginning of August, the two of us participated in the Re-Imagining Organizational Operations Toward Sustainability (ROOTS) Summit organized by the American Library Association’s Sustainability Roundtable (SustainRT).  The summit featured a keynote by Dr. Sarah Jacquette Ray, chair of the Environmental Studies Department at Cal Poly Humboldt. We presented an overview of ProjectARCC’s work and discussed climate change action with mission-aligned groups in the library and information science field from all over the world. Many more of these groups exist than we knew about before, and the summit offered opportunities to make connections for future collaborations with some of these other groups.

After the summit, SustainRT made several resources available:

ProjectARCC also held an in-person “climate yap session” at the Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting in Anaheim at the end of August. This informal gathering brought together some long-time members with new voices. We discussed possible projects for the future, including interest in starting a climate writing group and submitting an information brief to the Society of American Archivists on the environmental impacts of AI. Back in 2016, ProjectARCC submitted an information brief on archives and the environment that SAA Council approved and published as a statement.

SAA hosted a zine table, and attendees snapped up Amy Wickner’s “Organizing Climate Action as Archival Workers” very quickly!

A group of zines fanned out on a table with a black tablecloth
“Organizing Climate Action as Archival Workers” zines fanned out on the zine table at SAA 2025.

The dark half of the year offers an opportunity to rest and restore ourselves. As we move into this time in the northern hemisphere, we will be thinking about and discussing what ideas from this summer we can enact in the coming year. You can join our conversations – and start new ones! – on our listserv.

Archival Adaptation to Climate Change

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We’re proud to announce that ProjectARCC member and Protect Committee Chair Eira Tansey recently published an open-access article in the journal Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy (SSPP). The article is titled Archival adaptation to climate change, and can be accessed online for free.

The latest issue for Winter 2015 includes another article featuring sustainability in libraries. Managing Editor of SSPP wrote in an introduction to these two articles that “[m]any LIS professionals understand that they have the unique advantage of addressing sustainability issues both from the physicality of the library and intellectually as information and knowledge managers. Climate change, a factual mediator of sustainability, can pose a major threat to both objectives.”

The article was written for a general non-archivist audience about how climate change will intersect with American archives, with a particular focus on the dangers posed to short and long-term continuity of operations. The article ends with a call for a broader research agenda on several issues.

 

Congratulations, Eira, and thank you for continuing the research in our field. Share with your friends, scholars, students, and researchers to keep the conversation moving.

— Dana Gerber-Margie, blog coordinator

ProjectARCC challenges archives to #preserveclimate during COP21

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From November 30 to December 11, world leaders and scientists will meet in Paris in the hopes of negotiating an international accord to reduce carbon emissions and respond to the imminent threats of climate change. As we move closer to this United National Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) in the coming week, I believe that we are on the precipice of changing the conversation about climate change. Archivists can play a role in elevating the conversation and increasing climate literacy by using our collections to improve public awareness of climate change through exhibits and social media. We’re making commitments now a future for our planet. As the guardians of cultural heritage, let’s not only work to ensure the preservation of our collections from the impacts of climate change, but let’s take that responsibility further by providing better access and discoverability to our collections that could be used to educate our communities on the urgency for action on climate change.

ProjectARCC would like to challenge archives to use the hashtag #PreserveClimate during COP21, which is taking place from November 30 – December 11, and promote your collections that are relevant to the conversation about climate change.

In addition, we ask that you help us identify archival collections related to climate change by filling out this survey: https://projectarcc.org/elevate/survey-elevate/.

Once we have compiled this survey, we will use the information to create a database and visualizations that identify these collections and where they exist, which can be used as a resource for scholars, researchers, scientists, journalists, and the general public. 

We encourage you to take the challenge and #preserveclimate during COP21. If you’re wondering what types of materials are relevant to the issue of climate change, here are a few suggestions:

  • materials documenting natural disasters
  • dated historic photographs of landscapes and agriculture
  • records of climate change or environmental activist groups
  • scientific data sets for climate change research
  • government records about local, regional, or national response to climate change
  • manuscript collections documenting how people feel or felt about climate change
  • papers of climate scientists
  • recorded lectures, interviews, and debates about climate change

— Casey Davis