Archivists in conversation with archivists, discussing their work and passions. Hosted by husband an
Operating as usual
Go Agnes, go!!! ☀️
Born in Budapest in 1921, Keleti was the Hungarian National Champion in gymnastics by age 16. But in 1941, she was expelled from her gymnastics club due... 38 comments on LinkedIn
Here's something akin to an extra video episode of An Archivist's Tale:
Geof Huth and archivist Karen Jamison Trivette discussing Geof's book "The Anarchivist: History, Memory, and Archives," published by AC Books, in which we also discuss archives and Geof's personal "para-archival" projects.
Author Geof Huth and archivist Karen Jamison Trivette discuss The Anarchivist: History, Memory, and Archives, published by AC Books.Karen Jamison Trivette, i...
Folks, new podcast episode is up, on the third anniversary of An Archivist’s Tale. We're looking for guests willing to sit down for remote podcasts, so feel free to send us ideas.
Episode 123: It Had to Be Remote (Karen Trivette and Geof Huth)
Karen Trivette and Geof Huth, hosts of the podcast, return to discuss their archival lives during the pandemic and their plans for the podcast's future and even the one archival trip they have planned for this year.
Episode 122: The Myth of Self-Reliance (Natalie Baur)
The Video Version of the Episode
Natalie Baur, Archivist-at-Large, tells us her story of encountering the profession, which transported her to Miami, then Ecuador, and then to Mexico, where ...
Episode 112: The Myth of Self-Reliance (Natalie Baur)
Natalie Baur, Archivist-at-Large, tells us her story of encountering the profession, which transported her to Miami, then Ecuador, and then to Mexico, where her story has become one of an archivist for hire continuing to work in a global pandemic.
Episode 121: Max Meyer: Recollections of a Foreign-Born Citizen (Lourdes Font)
Karen Jamison Trivette and guest host Alex Joseph interview fashion scholar Lourdes Font, professor of history of art at the Fashion Institute of Technology. They discuss the life and work of Max Meyer, a principal at Abraham Beller and Company, a New York City-based women's cloak and suit manufactu...
Episode 120: 2X2: Accounts Payable at a Masonry Company: Why Are They Letting Me Touch This Stuff? (Molly Tighe and Matt Strauss )
Molly Tighe and Matt Strauss tells us their stories of moving from a masonry company and Japan into archives, how they met, and how they keep their archives thriving and relevant in the middle of a worldwide pandemic.
The Archival Enterprise (to David B. Gracy II)
After a long absence, An Archivist's Tale presents a poem to David B. Gracy II, one of our guests. Geof Huth of AAT wrote and read this poem.
Episode 119: Let's Get One of Those Archivist People (Anne-Flore Laloë)
Anne-Flore Laloë, Archivist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, tells us how a masters of English and one in geology led her to archives, what it is like to work with helpful molecular biologists, how she, as a lone archivist, manages an organization with facilities in multiple countries...
Rosemary Pleva Flynn, the Chair of the Society of American Archivists' Dictionary Working Group, talks about the origins of this just-released Dictionary of Archives Terminology, an online-only dictionary for archivists, explains how entries are created, and details the rich features of the dictionary. Find DAT at dictionary.archivists.org.
Rosemary Pleva Flynn, the Chair of the Society of American Archivists' Dictionary Working Group, talks about the origins of this just-released Dictionary of Archives Terminology, an online-only dictionary for archivists, explains how entries are created, and details the rich features of the dictiona...
Episode 118: Healing Deep Wounds: Enlightening People about the Past and the Present (Saad Eskander)
Saad Eskander, former National Archivist of Iraq, speaking to us from Iraqi Kurdistan, tells an inspiring story about his work running his nation's archives and his struggle to repatriate national records taken by the US government and even journalists, and he explains how archives can show us a way...
Episode 117: The Box Has Meaning (Karen Trivette and Geof Huth)
Karen and Geof, hosts of the podcast, return alone together to discuss how their work has changed and how it has remained the same during the coronavirus pandemic. They discuss what they learned about their operations and how they might change when they return to work.
Episode 115: Advocacy on a Bone-Deep Level (Tamar Zeffren)
Tamar Zeffren, Archival Collections Manager at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, tells us how archives kept her from becoming a lawyer, explains how she worked odd archives jobs when beginning her career during the Great Recession, and explains how her archives team continues their w...
The purpose of archives is knowledge. We may enjoy their beauty, but the reason we keep these fragments of the dismembered past is to protect and to extend knowledge. A human body may release its knowledge in death, but with archives we can revive it in the future.
The goal of our archives project, now five years in, is a strange one for an archivist. Our plan is to transfer most records to another repository and focus the work at this location on a small body of records, because we don’t have the facility necessary for its care.
The courts touch everyone in some way, as a defendant, a plaintiff, a judge or juror, so these records document men, women, the rich, the poor, and all races—even the Indians and blacks who fought for freedom in 1712, failed, and died, as recorded in this minute book.
Hacking is the basis of archival labor. We reduce the opacity of records to make them knowable, by creating systems to show the meaning of data on every side of a parchment writ and by simplifying the dating of records carrying only regal or year of independence dates.
Usually, the most frightening part of archives is evidence of the ignorance of our predecessors, who repaired documents by taping or silking them, who could not understand hot and dry or humid and hot climates would destroy records, who stored parchments on the floor.
Episode 114: History is the Story of People (Greg Hunter)
Greg Hunter, Professor at the Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University, tells the stories of his career, stories of almost always starting from scratch and creating archival improvements for the United Negro College Fund, ITT, the Academy of Certified Archivists, th...
We have little related to fashion in the early court records of New York, but my wife, Karen Trivette (), runs special collections at the Fashion Institute of Technology and she brought home a cache of fashion sketches to scan during the pandemic.
My workspace now is my dining room table, since I’ve worked in my office only one day in the last 47. From here, I manage staff around the state, update finding aids, figure out how to reduce my budget by millions, define archives terms, and proofread my upcoming book.
My workspace now is my dining room table, since I’ve worked in my office only one day in the last 47. From here, I manage staff around the state, update finding aids, figure out how to reduce my budget by millions, define archives terms, and proofread my upcoming book.
The smallest whole record I recall finding is a writ of error written onto a slender piece of unfolded parchment sent by the Supreme Court of Judicature to the Court of Common Pleas—but smaller still are thousands of tiny fragments of documents that have fallen away.
History is always missing, it is always inexact and incomplete. We create narratives of the past out of fragments of records only partially reliable even if totally authentic. The richness of the past has fallen away, leaving us with but a few bricks to remember it by.
People believe archives are forever, truth rather than mere evidence, boring, places holding the information desire, places they are forbidden to enter, ancient, riddled with weird and annoying people, unfriendly—yet they only sometimes represent these states of being.
Among the unusual records found in our archives are a few record volumes that someone shot through with a pellet gun. Evidence on the scene pointed to the crime being committed in the archives itself, though we don’t assume any archivists were involved in the attack.
Archivists tend to see archives as founts of knowledge, but knowledge accrues in the mind, not the record, which merely records and awaits transmogrification into knowledge stored in a brain. A body of records is a keeper mysteries because we never know what it holds.
Episode 113: My Work is My Hobby (Pat Franks)
Pat Franks, Professor, and Program Coordinator of the Masters of Archives and Records Administration program at San Jose State University, tells us how a grant opportunity from the New York State Archives led her to records and information management and eventually into a rich career of teaching and...
Life varies, so days of work vary, but if I am working with our oldest archives—left too long undisturbed—my life is about dirt and dust, requiring me to wear masks, gloves, and aprons, because my form of processing is arrangement, description, and cleaning.
The building holding the archives I most often work with is a beautiful Beaux Arts structure built to be a hall of records, and which it remains to some degree, three different archives being squeezed into its ancient contours and clumsy but sturdy old storage units.
Don’t use iron-gall ink, don’t leave documents exposed to the sun, don’t store records in hot and dry environments, don’t leave parchments near the radiator, don’t let rodents eat the wheat paste affixing seals to writs, don’t fold case papers, and do not not dust.
Few archives are about everything, and ours fit this rule, so we have nothing related to sports, though we do conduct plenty of sportslike physical activity when we move boxes, or climb to the tops of shelves, or stack boxes as high as we can until we run out of room.
Environment protects records or leads to their degradation. While dealing with poorly kept archives, I have discovered the aporia that undermines our archival practice is how alluringly beautiful deteriorated records can be and how the beauty of destruction haunts us.
Although the goal of my archives work—years in the making—is to give the records away, to donate them to repositories better prepared to care for archives, we give away records while reaching out to the media, so we can build a base of users anxious to use the records.
Objects may be records or parts of a one, as with many civil case files of the New York County Supreme Court, which often include exhibits of various kinds, often of fabric, such as this small purse folded into case papers and holding a document that is folded into it.
Archives are people, the people who work within them, those who created them, those who lived through the events recorded within them, those who arrive within them to search for enough information to make knowledge, and those who pass through them without realizing it.
Episode 112: We Have the Power to Change Ourselves for the Good (Cliff Hight)
Cliff Hight, Head of Special Collections and the University Archivist at Kansas State University, sits down to discuss his life as an archivist, how his archives was prepared for working at home for covid-19 because of another disaster they had experienced, and shows how his career and ours have int...
Our archives are about drink when about public drunkenness or the sale of liquor to the enslaved of New York, but our most interesting (yet unarchival) find was the remains of a larder stored deep in the bowels of ancient storage equipment and abandoned decades ago.
The only secret in our archives is the information we have lost: the records accidentally destroyed or misplaced, the parchment left near a radiator turning the record dark brown and wrinkled, the minute books rotted away at their corners, leaving angel wings of text.
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Here is the dancing, a little bit of it.
A snippet of the video that opened Technical and Field Related Problems of Traditional and Electronic Archiving in Radenci, Slovenia.
Zimbabwean singing on a wire recording as George Blood explains conversion processes.
