Archival Problem-Solving Exercises

Problem-Solving Exercise #2
Digital Repositories and Archives

For this Problem-Solving Exercise, your group will consider all of the implications – archival, organizational, historical, social, and critical – of representing women in digital spaces. Locate and examine one collection from each of the repositories listed below (for a total of 6 collections), paying attention to scope, aim, arrangement, navigation, and anything else noteworthy:

Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture

Library of Congress “American Women” project

University of Michigan’s “Women’s Education Evolves 1790-1890”

North American Women’s Letters and Diaries

UVA “Salem Witch Trials”

Pennsylvania State University Eberly Archives

Consider the following:

• Who seems to be the audience for the collections you have examined?
• What have been the criteria for selecting and preserving them?
• What principles seem to inform the arrangement, description and accessibility of materials in these collections?
• What are the factors that you think have guided the re/construction of these collections, and how might those factors be prioritized?
• How can the locations (or historical placements) of women in these archives be construed as both limitation and agency?

Now consider the decisions you and your group have made about how best to process the Cecilia Hennel Hendricks collection, and compare them with the factors and the principles you have noted above. What possibilities and constraints can you notice in all of these collections (including yours)? In other words, what should archivists keep in mind when deciding how best to represent the social, rhetorical, and/or literary activities of women in digital spaces versus in print spaces?

Problem-Solving Exercise #1 (Part Two)
Beyond the IU Archives

Next Step - Option 1: Ever since you learned that Hatt was an early Fulbright Scholar for South Africa, you have decided to write your final paper for the class on female Fulbright scholars. Where would you go to unearth information about other female scholars, their countries of service, and their influence on the profession?

Next Step - Option 2: Because of your research, you have become interested in the pioneering status of Richard Dorson, known as the “father of American folklore” and Warren E. Roberts, the first person to earn a Ph.D. in Folklore in the United States. You are hoping to write an essay on either of these pioneers for a brand new undergraduate research journal published by the Mortar Board Senior Honor Society. Where would you go to find other information on these scholars, particularly links between their work and local or national genealogical societies?

Next Step - Option 3: Your sociology professor was so impressed with your program that she suggested you take on an independent study and write a paper about campus civil rights protests, broadly construed. She thinks it could work as your graduate school admissions essay. Where else can you go to find good information about how IU’s civil rights activities fit in with other universities’ activities in the nation?

Next Step - Option 4: You have decided to look further back chronologically, especially since some of your findings on Women’s Clubs have raised your awareness of trans-Atlantic precursors to what have become known as distinctly American literacy practices. One of your classmates mentioned a woman by the name of Jane Johnson as having some presence in one of the campus collections. What can you find out about Johnson, both on campus and off? Where could you go for the most comprehensive information on how Johnson’s collection impacted domestic literacy practices in the new world?

Next Step - Extra Credit Option: Your Herald Times article gained so much positive attention that your public history professor has suggested you write an honors project focused on stories of early transit disasters in the middle west region of the United States. Where else might you go for anecdotes, information and images?

Problem-Solving Exercise #1 (Part One)
In the IU Archives

Option 1: You have been assigned a report on IU alumna Mary Geraldine Hatt for your Gender, Culture, and Society class, and you need to know what year she graduated from IU, what her degree is in, and her address while on campus. How would you locate this information, and what are the answers? What else can you find out about her?

Option 2: As a summer intern in the department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, you are helping to develop an exhibit on Folklore Studies. You know that the IU Archives has a somewhat strong, but mostly unprocessed collection. You want to include some artifacts in your exhibit, but have had little luck so far. How would you locate this information? What is available?

Option 3: For the next Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration, you are creating a program on civil rights protests for the Office of Student Organizations and Leadership Development, and you want to include some information about the range and type of activities that have occurred on IU’s campus and in Bloomington to commemorate these protests. What types of resources would be useful for your program and how would you locate them?

Option 4: In your Women and Literature class, you recall reading an article about the importance of women’s clubs, parlor groups, and literary circles on the formation of women’s discourse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Someone told you that “The Dames Club” met on IU’s Bloomington Campus and you are interested in learning more about what they did. How would you find out about the Club’s history, and what kinds of records can you access and would you use to learn more about their discourse practices?

Extra Credit Option: Your stellar work on the Indiana Daily Student has landed you a paid internship at the Herald Times for the summer writing a town-and-gown history column. You’re starting with an article for a local newspaper on the historic Purdue train wreck of 1903 (which your history professor mentioned in passing one time). The Purdue football team was traveling to Indianapolis to play the annual IU-Purdue game, and you would like to know if the IU Archives has any information on it. Where would you look up this type of information? Briefly describe what’s available.