Practicing Principles of Social and Cultural Justice in a LIS Environment
Today, social and cultural justice is at the heart of librarianship and archival work, the fields acknowledging professional mandates through their respective code of ethics and the literature of their disciplines. Armed with the understanding that librarians and archivists significantly influence the structuring, preservation, and dissemination of information and cultural heritage materials, the American Library Association (ALA) maintains that librarianship is committed to guaranteeing the freedom of access to information to present and future generations.1 Additionally, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) insists that the diversity of humanity is respected and that archivists ensure archival holdings reflect society’s rich complexities.2 These professional callings are impactful and meaningful, providing profound aspirational goals for all information professionals. However, in many ways, these aspirational goals can be viewed as mitigating responses to past injustices perpetrated by information professionals, an unstated redressing of colonialism and racism that have historically privileged and barred access to information and cultural relevancy. An element to note about the guiding ethos of modern-day librarianship and archival work is that our professional codes and ethics provide a solid theoretical guide to direct professional practice, while leaving space for conversation around the messiness inherently present in the act of promoting social justice and mitigating past injustices. The question is, how does one determine their role in ensuring social and cultural justice is at the forefront of their professional practice?
In LS501, Information in Communities, I wrote a hot topic paper on the recent movement to remove racist legacies, literally etched in stone, from the facades of libraries and other public and educational spaces. The actions of a group of African American students at the University of South Carolina declaring a new namesake for the university’s library, not as a cry for help to redress racism but as a demand for change, is illustrative of the power naming holds within the cultural landscape and how it functions to privilege those with power. Since place names directly contribute to one’s sense of place within geography, history, and society by inscribing messages into everyday life and presenting a public power dynamic that influences personal perceptions of acceptance or marginalization, librarians and archivists must address this barrier to access and inclusion. Just as archives are not neutral spaces, the landscape forfeited neutrality long before, and information professionals cannot be afforded neutrality in this discourse. Libraries and archives, existing as memory institutions, must play an active role in engaging with these histories, assuming accountability in discussions of history, memory, and knowledge, and actively battling unresolved racial microaggressions that contradict our profession’s ideals of access, democracy, diversity, education, and social responsibility.
With an essay addressing access challenges written for LS558, Archival Representation, Access, and Use, I spoke to archival trends in dismantling accessibility issues. Accessibility issues may manifest unintentionally or organically, developing unrecognized through a privileged gaze. Or, intentionally and, at times, nefariously. Colonial collecting practices have left a host of post-colonial consequences within archival holdings, a point I illustrate through the dialogue between cultural heritage institutions and Indigenous populations. Fraught with imperialistic and colonial complexities, archives and other cultural heritage institutions have found themselves attempting to navigate differing expectations in representation, use, and access, along with divergent understandings of public and private. Colonial collecting practices were destructive, severing Indigenous cultural materials from local knowledge systems, placing them within a system that legally perpetrates this separation and counteracts tribal understandings of access and circulation. The digital turn has presented opportunities, through digitization and digital repatriation, for redress but has complicated the issue at the same time. Cultural heritage professionals have begun to explore ways to meet these complexities by facilitating Indigenous models of access and knowledge into archival practices in the hopes of striking a balance in the management and circulation of Indigenous materials. Even though culturally necessitated levels of access to Indigenous materials contradicts professional ethics, rooted in open access and opposition to barriers and censorship, information professionals are collaboratively and creatively building content management and intellectual property frameworks to mitigate colonial legacies. These initiatives are inspirational, generating personal contemplation in my professional responsibilities and goals, informing my recent work in curating an exhibit entitled To Be Uninvited Guests, undertaken collaboratively with the Muscogee Nation.
In LS501, Information in Communities, I wrote a hot topic paper on the recent movement to remove racist legacies, literally etched in stone, from the facades of libraries and other public and educational spaces. The actions of a group of African American students at the University of South Carolina declaring a new namesake for the university’s library, not as a cry for help to redress racism but as a demand for change, is illustrative of the power naming holds within the cultural landscape and how it functions to privilege those with power. Since place names directly contribute to one’s sense of place within geography, history, and society by inscribing messages into everyday life and presenting a public power dynamic that influences personal perceptions of acceptance or marginalization, librarians and archivists must address this barrier to access and inclusion. Just as archives are not neutral spaces, the landscape forfeited neutrality long before, and information professionals cannot be afforded neutrality in this discourse. Libraries and archives, existing as memory institutions, must play an active role in engaging with these histories, assuming accountability in discussions of history, memory, and knowledge, and actively battling unresolved racial microaggressions that contradict our profession’s ideals of access, democracy, diversity, education, and social responsibility.
With an essay addressing access challenges written for LS558, Archival Representation, Access, and Use, I spoke to archival trends in dismantling accessibility issues. Accessibility issues may manifest unintentionally or organically, developing unrecognized through a privileged gaze. Or, intentionally and, at times, nefariously. Colonial collecting practices have left a host of post-colonial consequences within archival holdings, a point I illustrate through the dialogue between cultural heritage institutions and Indigenous populations. Fraught with imperialistic and colonial complexities, archives and other cultural heritage institutions have found themselves attempting to navigate differing expectations in representation, use, and access, along with divergent understandings of public and private. Colonial collecting practices were destructive, severing Indigenous cultural materials from local knowledge systems, placing them within a system that legally perpetrates this separation and counteracts tribal understandings of access and circulation. The digital turn has presented opportunities, through digitization and digital repatriation, for redress but has complicated the issue at the same time. Cultural heritage professionals have begun to explore ways to meet these complexities by facilitating Indigenous models of access and knowledge into archival practices in the hopes of striking a balance in the management and circulation of Indigenous materials. Even though culturally necessitated levels of access to Indigenous materials contradicts professional ethics, rooted in open access and opposition to barriers and censorship, information professionals are collaboratively and creatively building content management and intellectual property frameworks to mitigate colonial legacies. These initiatives are inspirational, generating personal contemplation in my professional responsibilities and goals, informing my recent work in curating an exhibit entitled To Be Uninvited Guests, undertaken collaboratively with the Muscogee Nation.
1 “Professional Ethics,” Tools, Publications & Resources (American Library Association, July 21, 2021), https://www.ala.org/tools/ethics.
2 “SAA Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics,” SAA Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics | Society of American Archivists, accessed October 20, 2022, https://www2.archivists.org/statements/saa-core-values-statement-and-code-of-ethics.
2 “SAA Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics,” SAA Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics | Society of American Archivists, accessed October 20, 2022, https://www2.archivists.org/statements/saa-core-values-statement-and-code-of-ethics.
Work Samples
evan_leavitt_hot_topic_paper_ls-501_yates.pdf |
evan_leavitt_ls558_final_access_essay.pdf |