From "the Archive" to Archival Studies with Agnes Czeblakow

During her presentation yesterday, Agnes Czeblakow, Rare Books Librarian at UTSA, was making a point and put up a slide that read "The Archive is not the archives." She then noted, almost in passing, that it's the title of an article by Michelle Caswell. The full title is: “’The Archive’ Is Not an Archives: On Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies.”

Caswell discusses the problem of humanities scholars inadequately viewing and drawing from Archival Studies as a fully-fledged field. The article is generous but necessary critique of how humanities scholars routinely overlook and erase archival labor, even as we regularly discuss and revel in "the archive." 

If I had been distracted for just a second during Czeblakow's presentation, I might have missed out on becoming aware of Caswell's important article. So glad I was paying attention.

I've been writing about a few UTSA librarians and archivists  every summer for nine years. As a testament to the fact that I'm sometimes a slow learner, I now -- finally -- realize that our program has been under-utilizing our time with Tara Schmidt and Czeblakow, and previously with Juli McLoone. Each year, they've generously responded to questions about our summer projects. Greatly appreciated.

However, we could really take advantage of the opportunities to learn more from a Schmidt and a Czeblakow, which is to say from librarians and archivists, by posing far more questions about their work and activities, which includes decision-making, problem-solving, acquisitions, budgets, interactions with large numbers of students, faculty, and staff in different fields, and keeping up with debates within their fields. After all, as Caswell notes, "behind every act of archival practice is at least a century-old theoretical conversation."

For the last few years at the end of the presentations with the Fellows, I'll ask Schmidt and Czeblakow about whether there are any hotly debated topics going on in their respective fields -- libraries and archives -- at the moment. There's never any hesitation, as they quickly begin mentioning issues that everyone's talking about. Why not start there?

Why not begin, sometimes at least, not with the topics that students and humanities faculty are researching? Instead, why not begin with what librarians and archivists are dealing with at the moment? Why not ask them about what they see as major shifts taking place at their institutions and in their fields? We could move from the archive to archival studies.

Related: 
• AALCI 2018
• Visiting the John Peace Library