digitization: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should / Tara Robertson
In this blog post, Robertson takes a critical look at Reveal Digital’s work to digitize On Our Backs (OOB), a lesbian feminist porn magazine that ran from 1984-2004. She points out that there are ethical issues with digitizing and making print collections like OOB available online and that Reveal Digital needs more robust ethical guidelines…
Read MoreZine Librarians Code of Ethics Zine
Created by librarians and archivists with a history of handling, cataloging, and preserving zines in an effort to help other do the same. Serves as a guide and a platform to discuss this relatively new form of media very often created by historically silenced groups, and how libraries and archives can form more ethical partnerships…
Read MoreFrom Archives to Action: Zines, Participatory Culture, and Community Engagement in Asian America
Honma describes the use of zines in an undergraduate classroom to promote alternative pedagogies and incorporate critical inquiry and research skills. By bringing zines into his classroom as research materials, Honma provides an example of how to use archival materials and research to make connections between community archives and community action, and help students view…
Read MoreDoes Information Really Want to be Free? Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Question of Openness
The “information wants to be free” meme was born some 20 years ago from the free and open source software development community. In the ensuing decades, information freedom has merged with debates over open access, digital rights management, and intellectual property rights. More recently, as digital heritage has become a common resource, scholars, activists, technologists,…
Read MoreIndigenous Knowledge, Intellectual Property, Libraries and Archives: Crises of Access, Control and Future Utility
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Read MoreMurkurtu
Mukurtu (MOOK-oo-too) is an open source platform and content management system for digital community archives. The name is a Warumungu word meaning ‘dilly bag’ or a safe keeping place for sacred materials. This grassroots project seeks to empower communities to manage, share, narrate, and exchange their digital heritage in culturally relevant and ethically-minded ways. [zotpress…
Read MoreOpening Archives: Respectful Repatriation / Kimberly Christen
This article highlights the importance of partnerships in digitization projects in relation to indigenous communities. While digitization and the advent of technologies that make information and items widely available, the groups, in this case indigenous communities, should always be consulted before items are made widely available in an effort to ensure that the item should…
Read MoreIndigitization Toolkit: Toolkit for the Digitization of First Nations Knowledge
The purpose of the Indigitization Toolkit is to provide a reference document as well as a series of templates for BC First Nations communities interested in undertaking digitization projects. The Indigitization toolkit also fits into a broader goal to provide support to First Nations communities in the management of their information. [zotpress items=”{1341761:44HD4W8M}” style=”chicago-author-date”]
Read MoreIntroducing Documenting the Now / Ed Summers
In this introduction to Documenting the Now collaborative project, Summers provides background about the urgency and need for this type of open source application, especially for the Black community. He outlines two main goals of the DocNow project: 1) Create an open source app “that will allow researchers and archivists to easily collect, analyze, and…
Read MoreNational Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) Repatriation Policy
“Repatriation is the process whereby specific kinds of American Indian cultural items in a museum collection are returned to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated Indian tribes, Alaska Native clans or villages, and/or Native Hawaiian organizations.” Repatriation at the NMAI is a uniquely proactive and collaborative process. Working closely with Native peoples and communities, the NMAI…
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