L-60v. Introduction to Archives for Special Collections Librarians, Booksellers & Collectors - Advance Reading List

• Required Reading

  Students admitted to L-60v should read/watch the following materials in advance of the beginning of the course. These materials, taken together, will frame our presentations, activities, and discussions during the week. For those not entirely familiar with the work of archivists, we recommend reading these in the order given below:

  Meissner, Dennis. Arranging and Describing Archives and Manuscripts. Archival Fundamental Series III, no. 2. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2019.

  • This is the only book that we recommend that you purchase and read in its entirety (the appendices only as you find them necessary or useful). It is available from the SAA Bookstore and from the ALA Store. At $69.00 the instructors recognize that this book’s price may be prohibitive for some enrollees in L-60. If you have access to InterLibrary Loan, you may want to consider that option. Feel free to contact the instructors once you’ve been accepted into the course to explore other access arrangements.

  Society of American Archivists, Technical Subcommittee on Describing Archives: A Content Standard (TS-DACS). Instructional workshop series videos on Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS).

  • Romans, Laura. “What is Archival Description?” (Video 1), 9:39, 2016.
  • Bost, Sarah. “Principles of Archival Description” (Video 2), 10:23, 2016.
  • Luftschein, Sue. “What is a Content Standard?” (Video 3), 9:05, January 2017.

  The following two items should be read together.

  • Society of American Archivists. Describing Archives: A Content Standard (version 2019.0.3). Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2020. Read the “Statement of Principles,” pages x–xvii, as part of the advance readings for course L-60v.
  • Drake, Jarrett M. “RadTech Meets RadArch: Towards A New Principle for Archives and Archival Description.” On Archivy: Occasional Writings About the Archive, posted 6 April 2016.

  Arnold, Hillel. “Practicing Care: Constructing Social Responsibility through Feminist Care Ethics.” In Archival Values: Essays in Honor of Mark A. Greene, edited by Christine Weideman and Mary A. Caldera, 30–41. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2019.

  • The instructors will supply a PDF copy of this article to students registered in L-60v.

  Cook, Terry. “Evidence, Memory, Identity, and Community: Four Shifting Archival Paradigms.”  Archival Science, no. 13 (2013): 95–120.

  • The instructors will supply a PDF copy of this article to students registered in L-60v.

  Light, Michelle. Controlling Goods or Promoting the Public Good: Choices for Special Collections in the Marketplace. Presentation at the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, Association of College and Research Libraries, conference, Las Vegas, NV, June 2014.