Rachael Woody (photograph courtesy of Rachael Woody).

This is the latest post in our series Responses and Retrospectives, which features archivists’ personal responses and perspectives concerning current or historical events/subjects with significant implications for the archives profession. Interested in contributing to Responses and Retrospectives?  Please email the editor at archivesaware@archivists.org with your ideas!

As the end of the year approaches we begin to take stock and reflect. The ArchivesAWARE! Responses & Retrospectives (R&R) series began December 19, 2018 and what could be more fitting than a retrospective piece on what the R&R series held for us this year? This post will provide a reflective summary on the response piece issues we covered.

Responses & Retrospectives: Rachael Woody on the Decline of History Majors and Its Impact on Archives, December 19, 2019. We started the R&R series with the not-so-small topic dominating headlines from Thanksgiving to New Year: the history major is dying. While not all archivists are history majors, seeing the history major in decline held obvious implications for archives and archivists. This post covers the issues precipitating history majors in decline and ties the perceived lack of value for history majors to archives and archivists. This would be the first of several posts written on the value of archives and archivists.

Responses & Retrospectives: Alexandra Bisio on “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo,” Konmari, and Archival Appraisal, January 30, 2019. Bisio wrote a post on the still trending topic of “Tidying Up.” On January 1, 2019, Netflix released a short series featuring the “Tidying Up” creator Marie Kondo. In the series (and her book) Kondo teaches us how to sort through and discard our items that no longer bring us joy. While “bringing joy” is not an official appraisal method for archivists, it does have appraisal features. Then, about half-way through the mini-series Kondo makes the recommendation we keep no more than 30 books and people had some feelings about it. This conversation included librarians and archivists on both sides of the issue. The uproar reached such a crescendo that Kondo had to release a clarification two-weeks after the Netflix series release saying it was OK if people kept more than 30 books. Bisio covers the deaccession issue and describes how the Konmari method relates to archival appraisal.

Responses & Retrospectives: Rachael Woody on Myspace and the Precarity of User Content on Social Media Platforms, July 11, 2019. On March 18, 2019, Myspace lost millions of songs, photographs, and videos published to the platform prior to 2016. Though the platform is not as popular as other social media tools it did still raise significant concerns on where we place our digital items and how easily they can disappear. This post reviews the limited ability for users to receive a backup of their content from popular social platforms and offers some guidance on how to safeguard digital content.

Responses & Retrospectives: Rachael Woody’s Annual Conference Coverage on the Value of Archival Labor Sessions, September 6, 2019. The SAA Annual conference held several session opportunities specific to the value of archival labor. This post summarizes the salary forum and panel sessions with additional facts, critiques, questions, and suggestions. The forum and sessions revealed that there are many who care about how archival labor is valued and are experiencing direct, negative repercussions in a field that is literally being devalued. How do we know this? The SAA A*Census report published in 2006 (initiated in 2003) stated an average salary of: $49,329 – that’s $68,507.86 in 2019 dollars. The Archivist Transparency Survey that came out of a grassroots effort from the annual conference shows an average salary of $62,775. That’s a deficit of $5,733. Since the conference an adhoc SAA salary group has been formed to explore actions to alleviate this issue, but a volunteer group can only do so much so quickly. Without active organization support from SAA, many archivists are already too overworked and have little time or energy to dedicate to this issue – keeping in mind the other professional services (free labor) they are involved in.

Responses & Retrospectives: Rachael Woody on October is American Archives Month, October 1, 2019. This retrospective piece offers a summary of activities and links to resources for American Archives Month. Initiated in 2006, American Archives Month just celebrated its 13^th anniversary.

Responses & Retrospectives: Rachael Woody on Resources for How to Convey the Value of Archives, October 15, 2019. With 2019 centering around value this American Archives Month post focused on how to create the archives value proposition and provided a summary of resources from both SAA and peer organizations.

Responses & Retrospectives: “Maybe She Just Has to Sing for the Sake of the Song” Rosemary K.J. Davis on Student Loan Debt and Its Impact on the Archival Profession, November 12, 2019. This response piece was adapted from Davis’ SAA annual conference presentation. Student loan debt is a national crisis with many new to mid-career professionals impacted. Early statistics indicate that student debt laden professionals are postponing home ownership and some are even foregoing having children. This issue is so pervasive that it’s part of several Democratic presidential candidate platforms. And bonus: A recent study shows that student loan forgiveness would boost the economy. Given that student loan debt adds to the archivist devaluation crisis, it will be interesting to see where this issue lands closer to the 2020 election.

Responses & Retrospectives: Not Just Your Problem: Metadata Shame, Imposter Syndrome, and Archivists by Jodi Allison-Bunnell, December 3, 2019. Imposter syndrome featured as a popular panel session during the SAA annual conference. In this post Allison-Bunnell dives into an area where she sees a lot of shame: metadata. As archivists we know that we’re working on a never-ending backlog of items to catalog and legacy data to clean up – and limited resources. And yet, the shame we feel is there. Allison-Bunnell ties shame to a larger issue: imposter syndrome and offers compassionate advice for how we can get through it to the other, shame-free side.

Conclusion: The predominant focus on value and especially the value of ourselves as archivists, contrasted with our conflicting sense of imposter syndrome marks this year as one filled with dissonance. As current events, political and economic issues, and social justice movements continue their march through 2020, I forecast that we will continue to feel these reverberations within the profession as we grapple with systemic problems and institutions that are slow (resistant?) to change. While no one wants to hear that we will continue to struggle in 2020, I find hope in the volume of voices that are speaking out. There is communion found when we pitch in to help raise each other up. And if there’s one thing we can agree on, it’s the unequivocal value of archivists.

This post was written by Rachael Cristine Woody, a member of The Society of American Archivists’ Committee on Public Awareness (COPA). The opinions and assertions stated within this piece are the author’s alone, and do not represent the official stance of the Society of American Archivists. COPA publishes response posts with the sole aim of providing additional perspectives, context, and information on current events and subjects that directly impact archives and archivists.

Jodi Allison-Bunnell (courtesy of Jodi Allison-Bunnell).

This is the latest post in our series Responses and Retrospectives, which features archivists’ personal responses and perspectives concerning current or historical events/subjects with significant implications for the archives profession. Interested in contributing to Responses and Retrospectives?  Please email the editor at archivesaware@archivists.org with your ideas!

It usually happens during the tour of the stacks: As we stand among the grey boxes, in a dark corner, a colleague will lean toward me and confess, sotto voce, that their metadata—accession records, finding aids, donor records, or digital collections—is really a mess. Their eyes are downcast with shame at the gap between the standards that they know and what they actually have. They are certain that they are the only individual or institution with this problem.

But what I know—and am always truly delighted to tell them—is that they are not at all alone. Twenty-three years of work in large and small institutions, a regional consortium, and as a consultant has shown me that everyone has ugly metadata. Everyone carries shame about it. And it doesn’t need to be that way.

Last spring, at the annual meeting of Northwest Archivists in Bozeman, Montana, I co-presented a panel with fellow consultants Rachael Woody and Maija Andersen to predict the future of archives in 2020 (http://northwestarchivists.org/resources/Documents/NWA%202019%20Program.pdf). During that panel, we discussed a number of important themes, including salaries in the archival profession (Rachael’s passion!) and the continued certainty of constrained resources. I used the framework of “The good, the bad, and the ugly” to predict that a year from now, your metadata will still be ugly. And there’s no shame in that.

Metadata shame is part of a larger phenomenon: imposter syndrome. First identified in 1978 by Dr. Pauline Rose Clance and Dr. Suzanne A. Imes, it’s when an individual believes they have insufficient skills, intellect, and experience for a given task or environment, usually professional, despite objective evidence to the contrary. (Clance, Pauline R.; Imes, Suzanne A. (Fall 1978). “The Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention” (PDF). Psychotherapy Theory, Research and Practice. 15 (3): 241–247).  Although Clance and Imes’ initial paper was focused on high-achieving women, the term has since been applied to all genders of highly intelligent, qualified, and achieving people who suffer this crushing self-doubt.

The Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale, a non-diagnostic self-assessment, asks a respondent to indicate degree of agreement or disagreement with statements that include: “I can give the impression that I’m more competent than I really am,” “I’m afraid people important to me may find out that I’m not as capable as they think I am,” “I rarely do a project or task as well as I’d like to do it,” and “Sometimes I’m afraid others will discover how much knowledge or ability I really lack.” (https://paulineroseclance.com/pdf/IPTestandscoring.pdf, accessed 2019 Oct 11. From The Impostor Phenomenon: When Success Makes You Feel Like A Fake (pp. 20-22), by P.R. Clance, 1985, Toronto: Bantam Books. Copyright 1985 by Pauline Rose Clance, Ph.D., ABPP.)

Clearly, there are many archivists who would agree with many of those statements. At the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists last August, Session 701, “My Comeback Story: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome in the Archives Profession” drew hundreds of attendees that overfilled the largest room in the conference facility. The presenters shared their stories of struggling with imposter syndrome and how they have transformed that experience into positive outcomes. Some of their experiences were related to race, education, or the specific dynamics of their institution. But Drew Davis of the College of American Pathologists gave examples that are universal: We have so much to do and so much to know, and one response to that reality is shame. We compare ourself to other professionals and are certain that they are more successful. Davis ultimately found that he is naturally competitive. Instead of fighting that tendency, he turns his comparison with others into an opportunity to be inspired, motivated—and successful

His response is the map for all of us: rather than letting shame overcome us, we can put that energy toward action. When I was building a Digital Public Library of America hub at the Orbis Cascade Alliance, we confronted the challenge of half a million digital object records that had been created before the consortium had Dublin Core best practices. A few core fields needed remediation before the content could be aggregated efficiently at the regional and national level. As part of a series of workshops I developed with consultant Anneliese Dehner and Julia Simic (Assistant Head, Digital Scholarship Services, University of Oregon), we inserted humor and cultivated the concert of the “metadata shame-free zone.” We wanted to create an atmosphere that inspired action, bolstered skills, and created clear priorities for metadata cleanup. And we delivered the results we needed: 100,000 digital objects cleaned up, aggregated, and ready for DPLA.

So let’s come out of that dark corner of the stacks, openly reveal our challenges to colleagues, and support one another in developing solutions. Let’s share our comeback stories to make the profession better for all of us. No more metadata shame. And no more imposters.

This post was written by Jodi Allison-Bunnell. Jodi Allison-Bunnell has twenty-three years of experience leading and participating in collaborations to increase access to unique content in archives, libraries, and museums by using shared systems and standards. She is the owner and principal consultant at AB Consulting (http://consulting.allison-bunnell.net). She was the program manager for Unique and Local Content at the Orbis Cascade Alliance until 2018; prior positions include project manager for Northwest Digital Archives and archivist at the University of Montana. She holds an MA and an MLS from University of Maryland at College Park and a BA summa cum laude from Whitman College.

The opinions and assertions stated within this piece are the author’s alone, and do not represent the official stance of the Society of American Archivists. COPA publishes response posts with the sole aim of providing additional perspectives, context, and information on current events and subjects that directly impact archives and archivists.