A state archivist retires

I've never met Guy Rocha, the Nevada State Archivist, but colleagues who have say that he is everything a state archivist should be: accessible, generous, dedicated, a fine friend and mentor, and an outspoken champion of archives and history.

Rocha, who is 57, is retiring in a few weeks. We've known for some time that the Boomers are starting to reach retirement age and that their departure from the workforce will have a profound impact upon our work lives and our society at large. As Vicki Walch et al pointed out in the A*CENSUS analysis that appeared in the Fall-Winter 2006 American Archivist, the cohort of Generation X archivists is much smaller than that of their Baby Boom predecessors and their Millennial successors.

Although Walch et all, who note that many Millennials will likely assume unprecedented amounts of responsibility during the early years of their careers, they really didn't identify any specific responsibilities that the Generation X cohort will have to take up. However, reading their report led me to start thinking about Generation X's role in the profession, and news of Rocha's retirement led me to return to the subject.

I fall squarely within the Generation X cohort, and it seems to me that we Gen X'ers have a big role to play in meeting one of the challenges articulated by Walch and Co.: ensuring the transfer of knowledge from the departing Baby Boomers to the incoming Millennials (and, of course, making our own contributions to said knowledge). We're in our thirties and forties now, and we're moving into supervisory/managerial positions while there are still plenty of Boomer mentors around. Some of our older Millennial colleagues will likely share our good fortune, but many of the younger ones won't. Archivists who are part of the Generation X are going to be doing some pretty heavy lifting in the coming years.

However, the current climate may present us with some particular challenges. The reason that Rocha, who clearly loves his job, gives for deciding to retire at this time is more than a little frightening:

. . . Rocha plans to retire before the state's budget crunch forces him to preside over cuts that might gut the agency he has been dedicated to for 28 years.

As Rocha prepares to depart, he warns that the state's financial crisis and proposed budget cuts of as much as 34 percent over the two-year fiscal period starting July 1 would devastate his agency and other state departments and leave the public without many vital programs and facilities.

"I know I could stay longer, but is it worth it?" he asked. "I don't want to see 28 years of work essentially undone in the next biennium. We could barely keep the doors open under the worst-case scenario."

. . . . "I care for this state deeply," he said. "I find it disturbing this state that has essentially been my life is, in my opinion, on the brink of disaster. You can't cut 34 percent or more without devastating state government."

Nevada isn't the only state that's facing extreme budget shortfalls, and I really hope that the current bad times are short-lived. However, if we're in for a decade of economic hardship or stagnation, a lot of accumulated professional knowledge is likely to be lost. Older archivists will retire, younger ones will not be hired to take their place, and the Gen X'ers and older Millennials will be left to keep going as best they can. Fiscal crises can at times give rise to creativity and innovation, but once an organization starts losing substantial amounts of bone and muscle, people start feeling overwhelmed and demoralized.

The current economic crisis also threatens to impede our progress toward solving another challenge that will weigh heavily upon the Generation X and Millennial cohorts: the management and preservation of electronic records. Again, Rocha's comments are sobering:

Rocha fears legislators in the coming session will cut state spending so severely that it might take decades for his and other agencies to recover.

The state archives, he said, sorely need funds and a method to manage digital and electronic records -- information found in computer databases.

"Where are Nevada's digital archives?" he asks. "We don't have one, and we don't have plans for one. The future of information is digital, and people are just erasing the stuff. We keep 19th-century books, but what happens to the databases of the 21st century?"

I really hope that my fears are boundless and that we see a V-shaped recovery very, very soon. However, perhaps we should start girding ourselves for an L-shaped recovery. Thoughts, anyone?

"Futuristic computer system"?

According to the New York Times, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has "has put into effect an emergency plan to handle electronic records from the Bush White House." NARA had originally planned to transfer large quantities of digital images and e-mail messages into the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) on January 20.

Archives officials who disclosed the emergency plan said it would mean that the agency would initially take over parts of the White House storage system, freezing the contents on Jan. 20. Only later, after further study, will archivists try to move the records into the futuristic computer system they have devised as a repository for digital data.

Surely the article's authors could have come up with something better than "futuristic computer system," which leads one to suspect that they didn't do their homework.

Their subsequent use of quotation marks gives added weight to this suspicion:

The archives invoked its emergency plan to deal with problems in transferring two types of electronic files: a huge collection of digital photographs and the “records management system,” which provides an index to most of the textual records generated by Mr. Bush and his staff members in the last eight years.

I don't expect that reporters will acquire detailed knowledge of archival theory or the principles of records management, and blogging has made me increasingly appreciative of the time pressures and other limitations that they face. However, a little background information about the ERA project would have improved this article immeasurably and done a real service to the Times' readership.

The article is far better at highlighting the concerns of various government watchdog groups and explaining the challenges associated with assuming custody of an unprecedentedly large body of electronic records (NARA estimates it will receive 100 TB of data) and working with an administration that has not always managed its records properly and is not being particularly cooperative.

I'm hoping that as this saga continues, journalists start picking up on some of the basics of electronic records management and digital preservation. However, I'm not holding my breath . . . .

Bush e-mails

According to the Washington Post, the transfer of Bush administration e-mail messages to the National Archives might, for a variety of reasons, go less smoothly than desired:

Federal law requires outgoing White House officials to provide the Archives copies of their records, a cache estimated at more than 300 million messages and 25,000 boxes of documents depicting some of the most sensitive policymaking of the past eight years.

But archivists are uncertain whether the transfer will include all the electronic messages sent and received by the officials, because the administration began trying only in recent months to recover from White House backup tapes hundreds of thousands of e-mails that were reported missing from readily accessible files in 2005.

The risks that the transfer may be incomplete are also pointed up by a continuing legal battle between a coalition of historians and nonprofit groups over access to Vice President Cheney's records. The coalition is contesting the administration's assertion in federal court this month that he "alone may determine what constitutes vice presidential records or personal records" and "how his records will be created, maintained, managed, and disposed," without outside challenge or judicial review.

As the Post points out, previous administrations have also experienced technical difficulties or simply didn't want to transfer some electronic records to the National Archives. However, as Robert Blanton of the National Security Archive is quoted as saying, the quantity of electronic records created by the Bush Administration is much larger than that created by past administrations; as a result, both the cost of and the amount of time needed to recover improperly stored electronic records are going to be higher than they were in the past.

Another complicating factor: some White House aides improperly used Republican National Committee e-mail accounts to conduct official business. All such e-mail messages are subject to federal records laws, even if they were created and sent using non-governmental e-mail accounts. Administration officials are apparently negotiating with the RNC to secure copies of messages that meet the legal definition of a presidential record, but at present it doesn't seem that there is any definite timeframe for doing so.

The article notes that transfers of paper records from the White House to Dallas, where the George W. Bush Presidential Library will be located, and to NARA's Electronic Records Archives (identified in the story as "a remote Navy research center in the mountains of West Virginia") have already begun

At the Navy base, all the electronic data are supposed to be "ingested" by a new electronic system meant to allow such efficient cataloguing, indexing and searching that millions of documents can eventually be provided to researchers and citizens online.

"Ingested": I wasn't expecting to find Open Archival Information System terminology in a newspaper article. Maybe all of the attention being devoted to the Electronic Records Archives and the controversies surrounding presidential electronic records will gradually popularize the term.

The article goes on to explain some of the development and budget problems that the Electronic Records Archives project has experienced, and it includes a snippet of information about its e-mail searching capability:

The system, which has been under development for a decade by Lockheed Martin and other contractors at a cost of $67.5 million, will rely on software created after the collapse of Enron, when that company's creditors demanded new tools for quickly sorting its e-mail trove to find damaging information.

I wish the National Archives folks all the best as they take in truly mammoth quantities of electronic records, and I'll be interested in seeing what happens in the coming weeks, months, and years.

SAA and its roundtables

Earlier this week, Russell over at Records Junkie put up a couple of posts concerning SAA roundtables and archival identity. I've been meaning to respond to these posts, but until now haven't really had the time needed to allow my own thoughts to take shape. I'm still trying to get everything to meld, so what follows might be a bit rough in spots . . . .

Russell's first post concerns, in part, the ways in which specific types of "identity" -- race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation -- act as an organizing principle for some roundtables. (FWIW, I happen to think all roundtables, sections, and SAA itself are all "identity" organizations -- joining SAA is a declaration of one's professional identity, and joining a section or roundtable is a way of declaring one's specific professional concerns and allegiances as well) It also highlights the lack of roundtables addressing other aspects of identity, most notably religion.

I understand Russell's point and will return to it in a bit, but I feel compelled to point out that the main goal of the "identity" roundtables is not to enable people who identify as X, Y, or Z to socialize/network for a couple of hours but to carry out some sort of professional activity. For example, the Lesbian and Gay Archives Roundtable (LAGAR), which I currently co-chair, works to promote the preservation and use of archival records documenting the lives and work of LGBT people and organizations. It also serves as a liaison between the archival profession and the many small, often volunteer-run LGBT archives established before the big research repositories began collecting LGBT materials. We've produced -- and periodically update -- a guide to LGBT records in North American repositories, and we're also in the final stages of creating a manual for small LGBT archives outlining the basics of identifying, preserving, describing, and providing access to LGBT records of enduring value. If LAGAR weren't doing this sort of documentary and outreach/educational work, I don't think that I would be nearly as committed to it.

I realize that the balance between socializing/networking and the sort of professional activity outlined above varies from roundtable to roundtable, and I'm inclined to allow newer roundtables a little time to find their footing; LAGAR celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, so we've had time to gel as a group and to get some work done. I also think that roundtables can contribute to SAA and the profession in any number of ways ways. For example, the Women Archivists Roundtable doesn't produce any guides to collections, but it does, among other things, coordinate the Navigator Program -- which is a substantial service to SAA.

Getting back to Russell's point about the lack of roundtables focusing upon religion, I suspect that the chief cause of this state of affairs is the existence of the Archivists of Religious Collections Section (ARCS). A lot of SAA members who work with such collections or who are otherwise interested in identifying, preserving, describing, or providing access to records documenting the role of religion in the lives of individuals or the history of religious institutions are most likely ARCS members. However, if other SAA members want to establish roundtables focusing on specific faiths or denominations and can articulate the distinctive contributions such roundtables would make to the organization or the profession, I would be more than happy to welcome them into the ranks.

Russell's second post concerns Council's recent decision to establish a 50-member minimum for roundtable membership and to abolish roundtables that fail to meet this minimum. Russell supports Council's decision, and rightly notes that it costs money to furnish meeting space for the roundtables. He also questions how effective a very small roundtable can be, and he has a point. However, I think there should be a place within SAA for roundtables that have less than 50 members provided that they actively meet the responsibilities outlined in the Council Handbook. Moreover, the 50-member limit threatens to obliterate the Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives Roundtable, which is less than a year old and serves a community traditionally underrepresented in SAA. How would dissolving this roundtable square with SAA's commitment to increasing diversity within the profession? It also looms over the Security Roundtable, which typically attracts archivists who are suddenly confronted by security issues. Do we want to abolish an organization that helps colleagues dealing with unexpected and often profoundly stressful professional challenges?

As far as the feasibility of allocating meeting space to very small groups is concerned, people can and often do attend meetings of roundtables to which they don't belong because they're curious about the group or interested in the meeting program. I check out various roundtables on occasion, and I know plenty of other SAA members who do the same. I also don't think that size is necessarily related to quality. Some of the best meetings -- and sessions -- I've ever attended have attracted a relatively small number of people, and I've sat through large meetings that just weren't worth my time. If SAA is concerned about the cost of meeting space, perhaps it should encourage roundtables to find alternate meeting space if feasible. For example, LAGAR met at the Gerber/Hart Library in 2007 and at the GLBT Historical Society in 2008, thus freeing up meeting space for other roundtables; however, we might need to meet at the conference hotel in 2009.

I suppose that what I find most troubling about the new roundtable membership requirement is that it suggests that SAA's recent membership increase -- a good thing -- might not be managed in ways that facilitate integration of new members into the organization or cultivate future leaders. Roundtables and sections are both charged with enabling new members actively to participate in SAA, but many section meetings are so big and thus so regimented that they can't do so effectively. I've been around for a while and am involved in a couple of multi-state grant projects, so I see lots of familiar faces when I walk into Electronic Records Section or Government Records Section meetings. However, if I were new to SAA, I would have little opportunity to get to know other members of these sections. Just about all of the time allotted for the ERS and GRS meetings is, by necessity, devoted to formal business meetings and programs, and the meetings attract so many people that we don't even have time to go around the room and introduce ourselves at the start of the meeting.

Roundtables, on the other hand, are generally small enough and informal enough to bring new members into the fold. For example, LAGAR meetings typically attract 30-40 people, and we always enable people to chat informally for 10-15 minutes before the meeting starts. The co-chairs and steering committee members consciously seek out first-time attendees and make them feel welcome, and I always make it a point to stop and ask how things are going when I see these new faces in the exhibit hall or session rooms in the days that follow. I want new SAA members to feel that their presence has been noted and appreciated, not simply lost in the crowd.

Roundtables also enable newer members to take on their first official leadership roles within SAA. Serving as a roundtable chair, co-chair, or steering commitee member is good practice for taking on similar roles within a section, and I know several former roundtable chairs who ultimately did so; others have become members of task forces or other SAA bodies. If SAA starts making it more difficult for roundtables to exist, it might ultimately decimate future leadership cohorts -- which isn't good for the organization or the profession at large.

Noting that SAA has publicized the meetings of unofficial groups such as the Progressive Archivists in its meeting programs, Russell advocates that, in addition to sections and roundtables, SAA establish official interest groups (e.g., Conservative Archivists, Catholic Archivists) that would receive a small amount of Web space but no official meeting space. I think that this is a good idea -- but I would personally prefer that the groups have at least some relationship to professional issues. One of the more tongue-in-cheek examples that Russell gives is Archivists Who Are Parents. If the main goal of Archivists Who Are Parents is to enable members to discuss the challenges of and brainstorm strategies for balancing work, involvement in professional associations, and parenting, great. If its chief aim is to allow archivists to exchange information about the best diapers, dealing with the terrible twos/teens, etc., it should, in my view, remain unofficial.

Official interest groups would certainly help to draw new members into the life of SAA and allow archivists who share common interests but do not wish to undertake formal projects to discuss issues of common concern. Moreover, such groups might help to reduce some of the fiscal burden associated with finding meeting space: Russell notes that some of the smaller roundtables might prefer to reconstitute themselves as interest groups, and I suspect that he might be right (of course, some interest groups may ultimately decide to become roundtables, so resource demands might remain unchanged).

I would strongly oppose any effort to convert all roundtables, which have formal reporting requirements and other responsibilities, to interest groups. Again, it's a matter of developing leadership: the experience of completing and filing convener statements and annual reports, complying with SAA's records management policy and transferring records to the SAA Archives as appropriate, putting together annual meeting programs and running roundtable business meetings, and carrying out roundtable-specific projects is good preparation for other leadership roles. Interest groups, even officially sanctioned ones, won't be as closely attuned to SAA's inner workings, and their conveners won't have the same level of experience as roundtable chairs/co-chairs. It's in SAA's long-term interest to cultivate as many potential leaders as possible, and eliminating or starving roundtables will almost certainly reduce the candidate pool or make the learning curve for new section and task force leaders even steeper than it is at present.

I've gone on long enough, upstate New York is enjoying a brief lull between snowstorms, and I have some errands to run. However, before I sign off, a couple of disclaimers:

• Russell, we've never actually met, and I apologize if you find my use of your given name overly familiar; this "brave new world of digital intimacy" is a bit much at times.
• My statements are mine alone and do not necessarily represent those of LAGAR's other co-chair, the LAGAR Steering Committee, or the LAGAR membership.

Mariners' Museum archivist sentenced to four years in prison

Yesterday, the former archivist at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia, was sentenced to four years in prison for stealing records and selling them online:

Lester F. Weber, of Newport News, sold at least 3,500 documents — from collections he was supposed to oversee — on eBay under his wife's name. The items included everything from brochures and boarding passes for old ships to a lawsuit against the company that owned the Titanic.

Weber made $172,357 on the fraudulent sales between 2002 and 2006, according to court filings. But the museum estimates the worth of the stolen items at more than $500,000.

Noting that Weber had violated the public trust and that his crimes had taken place over a long period of time, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith gave him a 48-month sentence instead of the 33-41 month sentence recommended in the federal sentencing guidelines.

Weber's wife, Lori E. Childs, was sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment for filing a false tax return.

I'm glad that the Judge Smith is among the growing number of jurists who recognize that the theft of records is not a trivial offense, and I hope that Weber's former colleagues are actively supporting one another as they come to grips with the personal and professional ramifications of his deeds. My colleagues and I know exactly how they feel.

Milk

Wednesday evening, I finally got to see Milk, the new biographical motion picture about Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay Americans to hold elected office. The film has all of the usual flaws of biopics. The compression of a human life into 90-120 minutes leaves little time to explore nuances of character or depict how the film's subject negotiated the humdrum routine that makes up so much of life, and Milk is no exception. The film also removes, reorders, and blends together events and even people in service of its overarching narrative. Moreover, viewers come to biopics knowing how the story will end -- and for Harvey Milk, the story ended tragically and far too soon.

However, Milk's strengths far outweigh its weaknesses. Director Gus Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black treat Harvey Milk not as a two-dimensional hero but as a kind, savvy, funny, exuberant, and flawed human being, and Sean Penn's probably going to get a well-deserved Academy Award nomination. The supporting cast amply complements his nuanced performance, even if their characters feel a bit flattened at times.

The film also highlights Milk's gift for the theater and give-and-take of politics. The many Americans who have no living memory of Harvey Milk -- the younger members of Generation X and all of the Millennials -- and who think of him only as a gay martyr if they think of him at all might be surprised to learn that he was such a shrewd and inventive politician.

Contemporary audiences will find the political struggles depicted in the film continue to resonate today. Harvey Milk was instrumental in defeating the Briggs Initiative, a 1978 ballot measure that would have prohibited gay men and lesbians and straight people supportive of gay rights from teaching or otherwise working in California's public schools, and viewers of this film cannot help but think of the recent passage of Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in California. One can't help but wonder what might have happened had Milk not been assassinated in 1978; one also wonders whether an early autumn release of Milk, which is doing well at the box office, might have been a rallying point for the anti-Proposition 8 forces.

Archivists should note that the film makes extensive use of archival footage, some of which is striking. The clips used at the opening of the film document raids on gay bars in the 1950s and 1960s. Well-dressed men are herded into paddywagons, trying as best they can to shield their faces from the camera, or handcuffed and escorted out of the premises. At one point, the camera lingers on one bespectacled man sitting on a barstool, hands over his face, trembling or perhaps weeping as the police and other patrons mill about the bar. Suddenly, he looks up, grabs his drink, and tosses the contents of the glass at the camera. Cut.

Other archival footage in the film depicts, among other things:

• A stricken Dianne Feinstein, then president of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, announcing to the public on the evening of 27 November 1978 that both Milk and Mayor George Moscone had been murdered within City Hall earlier that day; Feinstein discovered Milk's body in his office.
• Anita Bryant outlining her staunch opposition to gay rights.
• Street scenes of San Francisco's Castro neighborhood circa 1975.
• Aerial views of San Francisco circa 1975.

This archival film and television footage is skillfully blended with new footage shot by Van Sant and company. This blending serves to reinforce the film's claims to veracity, and archivists -- and film scholars -- may want to think more systematically and critically about the use of archival records to give fictional or fictionalized worlds the aura of authenticity.

Milk's end credits don't supply detailed information about the source of these clips (apart from acknowledging an immense debt to makers of the superb 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk), but it's apparent that the filmmakers looked high and low for footage that they could use. I was also pleased to note that the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender Historical Society and the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives were thanked in the credits.

SAA Government Affairs Working Group

In August of this year, SAA Council created a new Government Affairs Working Group and outlined its official charge:

"Government affairs" issues encompass areas of legislation and rule-making by federal and state government that have direct impact on archives and manuscript repositories, from the taxation of authors' works to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, from protection and preservation of Executive Office of the President email messages to declassification, from treatment of state and local executive office records as public to libel in oral histories. Government affairs issues are complex, and understanding, analyzing, and reacting appropriately to them requires a special expertise. They often demand a quick response, as, for example, when SAA is asked to join in litigation or respond to draft legislation.

The Working Group's purpose is to provide timely expertise and advice to the SAA Council. The Working Group responds to requests for assistance from the President (acting on behalf of the Council) or the Executive Director, tracks government affairs issues of concern (or potential concern) to archivists, and drafts for the Council approval responses or position statements as needed. Although the Working Group's purview is broad, its overarching priority is issues relating to the preservation of and access to government records. This priority takes precedence when there are competing issues demanding attention, and it should be pursued persistently when other issues do not demand immediate attention.

Specifically, the Government Affairs Working Group will:

• Develop an advocacy agenda for Council approval.
• Respond in a timely fashion to requests from the President (acting on behalf of Council) or the Executive Director for background information and recommendations on matters relating to government affairs.
• Track legislative and regulatory issues that could be of concern to archivists in order that the Society may respond in a knowledgeable manner.
• Prepare drafts, for Executive Committee or the Council's approval, of position papers, statements, and other documents relating to government affairs issues that may benefit archives and archivists.
• Contribute to the education of SAA members and staff in relation to government affairs issues.
• Bring to the Council's attention areas in which collaboration with other organizations may advance the Society's government affairs interests and, under Council direction or with its approval, cooperate with such organizations in furthering SAA's interests.

Earlier today, SAA included the group's member roster in its e-mail news update to members:

• Herbert Hartsook, South Carolina Political Collections, University of South Carolina
• Robert S. Martin, Texas Woman’s University [site down at time of posting] and former director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services
• Kathleen Roe, New York State Archives and chair of the Joint Task Force on the Partnership for the American Historical Record
• Robert Sink, Center for Jewish History, and SAA’s representative on the National Coalition for History Policy Board
• GladysAnn Wells, Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records

Council is absolutely correct in that politics and the law can profoundly affect our work and that we as a profession sometimes have to respond to emerging situations quickly and authoritatively. I'm looking forward to seeing this group in action.