Archives and Community
The Value of Diverse Professional Organizations
“Diversity is our strength.” This oft-used statement can communicate drastically different concepts. The statement is undoubtedly true if it means that various voluntary associations create and support a healthy pluralistic society. North American culture often emphasizes the value of ethnic or racial diversity but we less often hear of the need for many different voluntary associations. Such associations include religious communities, civic organizations, and affinity groups dedicated to everything from pop stars to deltiology (postcard collecting).
Voluntary associations of archivists play a role in a healthy pluralistic society while also providing a space for professional development and community building. Archivists benefit personally, and support a healthy society, by engaging in professional organizations based on geography, special interests, and ideology.
Geographical
The benefits of local or regional archival associations are considerable. Due to the limited budgets of many archival repositories, archivists often wear many hats and struggle to afford travel to conferences held across the country. Associations near archivists generally provide more affordable in-person professional development opportunities.
Another example of the benefits of the local archival community is seen in preservation efforts. Archivists are responsible for the preservation of the material in their care. This includes handling environmental threats to archival records—threats that are often tied to geography.
The environmental issues encountered in coastal North Carolina (including hurricanes and high levels of humidity) are quite different from those faced in rural Alberta (where winter weather may threaten preservation efforts). Therefore, for archivists such as myself in North Carolina, membership in the Society of North Carolina Archivists (SNCA) provides a local community that understands the unique threats archivists face in our region. Cooperation and collaboration is often the most effective in a local context.
Professional relationships also tend to be stronger with greater face-to-face interaction. Attending local or regional archival meetings fosters such relationships. Archivists should consider joining city-based organizations (e.g. Seattle Area Archivists or The Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc.), state-based groups (e.g. Society of North Carolina Archivists), or regional communities (e.g. Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference).[1] Generally, such organizations provide archivists with a more tight-knit professional community than national groups.
Topical or Affinity-based
Involvement with archival communities centered on topics or affinities is another excellent way to develop close professional ties. As with the unique environmental challenges faced by archivists in different regions, unique issues may arise when preserving and providing access to some types of archival material.
Archivists working with religious material is one example. Professionals seeking to preserve the history of different faith traditions will find helpful partnerships, or mentorship opportunities, from those who work in similar settings. I benefit enormously from involvement in the organization Association of Librarians and Archivists at Baptist Institutions (ALABI)—an association with the best acronym! Members of this small community support each other as we seek to navigate issues pertinent to our Christian tradition.
While national organizations may have subgroups or sections that focus on such work, the independence enjoyed by groups such as ALABI helps avoid the (at times) hostile ideological environment that can characterize broader groups. Larger organizations include many professionals who do not understand the culture in which certain archivists work. The most important diversity, and most pressing to foster, is different approaches to intellectual diversity in archival organizations.
Ideological
In his book The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order & Freedom, sociologist Robert Nisbet advocated for diverse and robust voluntary associations across society. He believed that many different organizations create and protect a healthy liberal democracy.
Nisbet identified the danger of coerced unity: “the greatest single internal problem that liberal democracy faces is the preservation of a culture rich in diversity, in clear alternatives—and this is a cultural problem that cannot be separated from the preservation of the social groups and associations within which all culture is nourished and developed.”[2] The absence of “clear alternatives” to state power, or to other entrenched interests, prevents the rich diversity that should characterize liberal democracy.
While Nisbet focused on the tendency for the state to increasingly monopolize power, concern for a multiplicity of voluntary associations is evident in his writing. If a single association monopolizes a professional community, it may constitute a threat to a diverse liberal democracy and individual freedom. Nisbet notes that, “freedom thrives in cultural diversity, in local and regional differentiation, in associative pluralism, and above all, in the diversification of power.”[3]
More “associative pluralism” is necessary in the field of archives. While many local and regional archival associations exist, additional national-level professional organizations are required to prevent ideological uniformity and professional stagnation. Such diversity helps to avoid ideological strains some archivists find oppressive.
Nisbet noted the connection between freedom and a multiplicity of associational options: “So long as there are other and competing authorities, so long as man has even the theoretical possibility of removing himself from any that for him has grown oppressive and of placing himself within the framework of some other associative authority, it cannot be said that his freedom has suffered.”[4] Freedom suffers when organizations hold de facto or de jure monopoly on enforcing library and archival program accreditation, defining professional ethics, and developing best practices.
Fortunately, archivists in the United States and Canada have more options for professional community than those which existed a few years ago. The rise of alternative professional communities, including HxLibraries and the Association of Library Professionals (ALP), provides archivists with associations that value viewpoint diversity while fostering professional development.
ALP’s Archives Section is a new and growing community of archivists who seek professional excellence while promoting the values of a truly liberal democracy. It provides an outlet for voices not always heard in the field. Membership in multiple national-level communities may be appropriate for many archivists and would certainly promote diversity within the profession.
Conclusion
Viewpoint diversity in the field of archives is respected and promoted when archivists engage in professional communities based on geography, affinity, and ideology. Not all archivists must maintain membership in every organization. However, the very existence of multiple professional organizations offers outlets for differing perspectives, alternative practices, and ideological emphases.
Nisbet gets to the heart of the matter: “The liberal values of autonomy and freedom of personal choice are indispensable to a genuinely free society, but we shall achieve and maintain these only by vesting them in the conditions in which liberal democracy will thrive—diversity of culture, plurality of association, and division of authority.”[5] May archivists support the liberal values of a free society through diverse cultures, plurality of association, and division of authority within our profession.
[1] The author does not necessarily endorse these organizations.
[2] Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1990), 228.
[3] Nisbet, 235.
[4] Nisbet, 240.
[5] Nisbet, 247.
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Jonathan, thanks for this important article on the value of this dimension of diversity. Intellectual pluralism can be elevated through diverse associations of all kinds, and librarians need to avail themselves of a range of options, such as the ones you describe.
Very glad to see that you mention Robert Nisbet, who wrote compellingly about civic society institutions and their importance. Renewing civic institutions is important in a time of monocultures and overpowering influences--and control--from the federal government, large national associations, large technology companies and monopolies that shut off diverse thinking.
I recently discovered another new substack, Civic Attention, that may be helpful as a way of thinking about digital culture and how to renew civil society institutions instead of living only within that culture.
https://civicattention.substack.com/
Such an important article. I teach in Florida, a state of 20+ million people. I teach a course, "Libraries and Cultural Heritage organizations. "Class assignments include visits to local history sites and archives of local communities. I seem to be the default independent study supervisor for students that have interest in religious archives (maybe because I am a member of the Catholic Library association) and the riches in those collections are hardly known to most librarians. I wish I had spent less time on big national issues and more on what is right next store. My students are more prepared to understand the communities in which they will work with the focus on local and state archives. A good book of interest to all that opens up LIS students' hearts is --Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You--David E. Kyvig and Myron A. Marty. This is required reading before students connect with local history archives.