PROPOSAL TYPE
Roundtable
SEEKING
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
- Seeking Specific Expertise
- Seeking Additional Presenters
RELATED TOPICS
- Advocacy
- Consulting
- Public Engagement
ABSTRACT
This proposal seeks to identify the increased decline in access to record holdings and then explore ways that researchers can halt and reverse this decline.
DESCRIPTION
With changes due to COVID, financial stresses, and politics, access to documents once available to historical researchers are on a constant decline. For instance, the National Archives are limiting access by moving to an appointment only, FOIA online is removing almost a decade of material from its website, while state and local governments have greatly reduced their hours due to budget constraints. With increased restrictions, I would like to see a roundtable or another platform discuss what historical researchers are doing and can do to slow and/or reverse this decline to access to records.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Jeff Stover, FTI Consulting, [email protected].
ALL FEEDBACK AND OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY JULY 7, 2023. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
This is an interesting topic, and I would encourage you to connect the concern about access with the labor issues affecting archive workers. Good luck!
Jeff,
I appreciate the feeling of urgency you convey on the issue. I am wondering if you recall the fight in WA State to keep the Archives in Seattle. If you don’t, the story goes that the archive was to be sold. It was a fight that continued across two administrations and was finally halted in 2021. I believe tribal advocates and non-tribal historians who took that on might be able to bring a vital perspective.
This is a very important question for both public historians and archivists to discuss together.
Collaboration between both groups is important to increase understanding of needs and reduce barriers to access. I find this question especially pertinent as I run a small university archives and face challenges like you mention, but have also not seen the number of researchers back in the archives since the pandemic. I am curious to know how I could adapt the archives effort to better meet researcher needs.
As a disabled independent historian who continues to face barriers accessing materials, I think this is important to address. There have been several National Archives employees on NCPH panels, but I don’t think this issue has been discussed. Instead of a roundtable, perhaps a structured conversation or a working group with archivists, researchers, to show how such decisions impacts users would be great. And perhaps also a History@Work blog post on this topic?