Using Evidence to Inform Library & Information Practices
A core value of the archival profession, as outlined by the Society of American Archivists (SAA), is to serve a “broad range of people who seek to locate and use the information found in evidentiary records.”1 For an archivist to achieve any semblance of this mandate, one must continually evaluate and identify the multitude of considerations that affect the depth and breadth of an organization’s archival holdings and the degree to which communities can access and affect their representation. To facilitate this and not only understand the decisions one makes, but justify decisions and the processes implemented, it is imperative that archivists, and other information professionals, collect and act upon evidence to inform their practices. This process will drive archival interventions and every level of archival work, from acquisition to description, to access and engagement.
For my LS590 Archival Outreach and Engagement course, I conducted an archival needs assessment to identify an archival need and propose an archival intervention. In order to document the Milledgeville/Baldwin County African American community's contributions to the rich history of R&B and soul music, I proposed leveraging community pride in their stories to foster a more diversely informed collection of narratives built upon participatory engagement facilitated through co-appraisal and co-authorship. I attempted to provide a concise definition of community, grounded in evidence, by illustrating the role demographics and history has in defining the boundaries and characteristics of a specific community of service. Evidencing the community’s contributions, along with their desire to play an active role in the documentation of their histories, paired with the identified archival gaps within the holdings of the area’s cultural heritage institutions, demonstrated the project’s urgency and viability. My proposed archival intervention advocated for a holistic approach, incorporating digitization of self-identified cultural materials, oral histories, and providing community agency in determining access levels and description, paired with workshops educating the community on self-preservation of cultural heritage. The goal of the intervention is to reposition archival representation into the hands of the represented.
For my LS558 Archival Representation, Access, and Use course, we analyzed how standardization can potentially impact accessibility to archives. Archivists must remain cognizant that any standardization or categorization privileges one perspective and silences countless others. This fact is inescapable and illustrative of the politics of power in play within the archive, highlighting the significant role of the archivist. As archival frameworks have become more standardized, in the hopes of promoting greater access, archivists must acknowledge the limitations and barriers imposed by these frameworks and how they threaten the complexity of context. The assignment directed an environmental scan of five archival institutions to determine if standardization was detectible across finding aids and archival descriptions, and whether the SAA's Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS), the official content standard for archival description in the U.S., was applied practically. To investigate, I identified five institutions within the University System of Georgia (USG) to review. I was curious to examine if individual institutions within a larger unifying organization would translate into a recognizable system-wide standardization of archival description. My analysis revealed many differences in the presentation and structure of finding aids across institutions in the USG. The evidence collected illustrates the impact that institutional capacity has on archival outcomes, thus creating different experiential interactions across institutions that can lead to end-user frustrations. I believe developing system-wide support to bolster institutional capacities would result in a more consistent user experience across the academic archives of the state.
For my LS590 Archival Outreach and Engagement course, I conducted an archival needs assessment to identify an archival need and propose an archival intervention. In order to document the Milledgeville/Baldwin County African American community's contributions to the rich history of R&B and soul music, I proposed leveraging community pride in their stories to foster a more diversely informed collection of narratives built upon participatory engagement facilitated through co-appraisal and co-authorship. I attempted to provide a concise definition of community, grounded in evidence, by illustrating the role demographics and history has in defining the boundaries and characteristics of a specific community of service. Evidencing the community’s contributions, along with their desire to play an active role in the documentation of their histories, paired with the identified archival gaps within the holdings of the area’s cultural heritage institutions, demonstrated the project’s urgency and viability. My proposed archival intervention advocated for a holistic approach, incorporating digitization of self-identified cultural materials, oral histories, and providing community agency in determining access levels and description, paired with workshops educating the community on self-preservation of cultural heritage. The goal of the intervention is to reposition archival representation into the hands of the represented.
For my LS558 Archival Representation, Access, and Use course, we analyzed how standardization can potentially impact accessibility to archives. Archivists must remain cognizant that any standardization or categorization privileges one perspective and silences countless others. This fact is inescapable and illustrative of the politics of power in play within the archive, highlighting the significant role of the archivist. As archival frameworks have become more standardized, in the hopes of promoting greater access, archivists must acknowledge the limitations and barriers imposed by these frameworks and how they threaten the complexity of context. The assignment directed an environmental scan of five archival institutions to determine if standardization was detectible across finding aids and archival descriptions, and whether the SAA's Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS), the official content standard for archival description in the U.S., was applied practically. To investigate, I identified five institutions within the University System of Georgia (USG) to review. I was curious to examine if individual institutions within a larger unifying organization would translate into a recognizable system-wide standardization of archival description. My analysis revealed many differences in the presentation and structure of finding aids across institutions in the USG. The evidence collected illustrates the impact that institutional capacity has on archival outcomes, thus creating different experiential interactions across institutions that can lead to end-user frustrations. I believe developing system-wide support to bolster institutional capacities would result in a more consistent user experience across the academic archives of the state.
1 “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
![](http://www.weebly.com/weebly/images/file_icons/pdf.png)
evan_leavitt_ls590_archival_needs_assessment.pdf |
![](http://www.weebly.com/weebly/images/file_icons/pdf.png)
evan_leavitt_ls558_mid-term_spring_2002.pdf |