Non-custodial archival practices and the UT Libraries Human Rights Documentation Initiative partnership with the Kigali Memorial Centre
By T-Kay Sangwand, Human Rights Archivist, Human Rights Documentation Initiative
University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin
With a generous grant from the Bridgeway Foundation, the University of Texas Libraries (UTL) launched the Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) [...]
Entries from October 2009
October 30, 2009
Non-custodial archiving: U Texas and Kigali Memorial Centre
October 28, 2009
Building a Network for Human Rights Archives and Archivists
By Valerie Love, Curator for Human Rights Collections
The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut
In recent years, archival institutions and organizations have become increasingly concerned with issues regarding human rights records and archival collections. Questions of access, privacy, politics, trust, and ensuring the safety of those documenting abuses and potentially controversial records all [...]
October 27, 2009
World Day for Audiovisual Heritage: Archiving for Human Rights
Today is World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, started in 2005 by UNESCO in order to help “build global awareness of the various issues at stake in preserving audiovisual heritage.” These issues include deterioration and loss due to time, handling, improper storage, format obsolescence, and poor documentation, and they continue to threaten much of [...]
October 26, 2009
Your Archive Deserves Advocacy
Tomorrow is UNESCO World Day for Audivisual Heritage. Our good friends at Audiovisual Preservation Solutions have issued a callout for stories of audiovisual preservation as part of a “project designed to garner support for audiovisual archive preservation planning and project implementation from influencers, policy makers and funding organs,” which they have christened YOUR ARCHIVE DESERVES ADVOCACY (YADA).
October 20, 2009
The magic of documenting documentation
Guest post from Sarah Van Deusen Philips:
As the project coordinator for human rights at the Center for Research Libraries-Global Resources Network, my primary task is to engage with the life-cycle of human rights documents, which I do through our Electronic Resources Study. In this study, I am busy speaking to human rights field workers, administrators [...]
October 20, 2009
Re-Stalinization and revisionism in Russia
Last week Russian historian Mikhail Suprun was arrested by Russia’s FSB security service for – as Truthdig put it – daring to study Russian history; more specifically, Stalin’s gulags. Suprun’s archives were confiscated; a police official who provided access to archive documents about gulag victims was also arrested. Suprun faces up to four years [...]
October 16, 2009
Amnesty International Asset Management System
The International Secretariat of Amnesty International has launched their new digital asset management system, called ADAM; while mostly an intranet serving AI sections worldwide, there is a public site with a small selection of searchable content. See the Documentalist for a full description.
October 15, 2009
Mandela opens archives for new book
The personal archive of Nelson Mandela will be opened for a new memoir; rights the collection of diaries, letters and other writings were auctioned this week at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
From the Guardian UK:
“Mandela himself, who bestowed these “traces of my life and those who have lived it with me” on his eponymous foundation, hopes [...]
October 14, 2009
User-generated video & authentication: Sri Lanka
In August a video showing what appeared to be the cold-blooded execution of Tamils by Sri Lankan soldiers was released by the group Democracy in Sri Lanka and aired on Channel 4 news in the UK. Dan Verderosa has an excellent blog post on the Hub (“Should You Believe Your Eyes? Allegations of [...]
October 12, 2009
Archival access: ethics, rights, obligations
Access is a primary archival value, driven by many things: legal or organizational mandates, copyright, available technology and resources, a deep-seated belief that access to information is the foundation of a free and educated society, and, in fact, a right. With human rights materials the challenges are particularly acute, sometimes pitting personal safety, [...]
