98.8%: that’s the percentage of American archives likely to encounter at least one climate risk factor by the year 2100, according to a 2018 article by Eira Tansey and Ben Goldman. In this episode, Nicole speaks with the archivists whose work SAA described as “tireless and… critical to addressing the impact of climate change on the archival profession.” Eira and Ben discuss their approaches to climate activism and the superpowers librarians can bring to the fight for environmental justice, both within and outside of their employer institutions.
Sources and References (in order of appearance)
- SAA Resolution Honoring Ben Goldman and Eira Tansey**
- Tansey, Eira. 2015. Archival Adaptation to Climate Change. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy 11(2):45-56.**
- Mazurczyk, Tara, Nathan Piekielek, Eira Tansey, and Ben Goldman. 2018. “American Archives and Climate Change: Risks and Adaptation.” Climate Risk Management 20.**
- OCLC Archive Grid
- RepoData Project**
- Society of American Archivists Foundation
- Example archival associations: Chicago Area Archivists, Midwestern Archivists, Catholic Archivists, Moving Image Archivists.
- National Hurricane Center
- “The Calls are Coming from Inside the State: Phone-banking after Hurricane Irma,” Society of Florida Archivists, 2018 presentation by Fletcher Durant
- Goldman, Ben. 2018. “It’s Not Easy Being Green (e): Digital Preservation in the Age of Climate Change.” Archival Values: Essays in Honor of Mark Greene, pp. 274–295.**
- Why Data Centres are the New Frontier in the Fight Against Climate Change ComputerWorld
- Flying Less: Reducing America’s Carbon Footprint
- RBMS 2019: Response and Responsibility: Special Collections and Climate Change**
- Ohio River Sanitation Commission
Note: Sources marked by ** are initiatives and writings by the episode’s guests.
Further Reading
- More from our guests
- Scholarly works, journals, and presentations
- Libraries and Archives in the Anthropocene, Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, Guest Editors: Eira Tansey and Robert Montoya, with editorial assistance from Andrew J Lau.**
- Goldman, Ben (2016, October 28), “14th Blackbird: Digital Preservation as an Environmentally Sustainable Activity,” Penn State University PASIG 2016 meeting, Part of Session: Environmental Responsibility, Sustainability, Costs, Benefits and Risks.**
- Goldman, Ben (2017, May 14), “Things the Grandchildren Should Know: Archives and the Origin of an Ecocentric Future.” Libraries and Archives in the Anthropocene Colloquium, hosted by Litwin Books and the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.**
- Gordon-Clark, M. 2012. “Paradise Lost? Pacific Island Archives Threatened by Climate Change.” Archival Science 12: 51–67. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-011-9144-3
- Lowe, Carli V. 2020. “Partnering Preservation with Sustainability.” The American Archivist 83(1): 144–164. doi: https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081-83.1.144
- Pendergrass, Keith L., Walker Sampson, Tim Walsh, and Laura Alagna. 2019. “Toward Environmentally Sustainable Digital Preservation.” The American Archivist 82(1): 165–206. doi: https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081-82.1.165
- Tansey, Eira. 2020. “Regulatory Recordkeeping, Worker Safety, and United States Extractive Industries.” The Extractive Industries and Society 7(1): 209-216.**
- Tansey, Eira. 2018. “Regulation Requires Records: Access to Fracking Information in the Marcellus/Utica Shale Formations.” KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 2(1): 3.**
- Winn, Samantha R. 2019. “Dying Well in the Anthropocene: On the End of Archivists,” in “Libraries and Archives in the Anthropocene,” eds. Eira Tansey and Rob Montoya. Special issue, Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 2(3). https://journals.litwinbooks.com/index.php/jclis/article/view/107
- Meetings and conversations
- Additional writings and work by:
Behind the Mic
Nicole Kang Ferraiolo
Nicole Kang Ferraiolo is CLIR’s director of global strategic initiatives. She was previously a program officer for CLIR’s regranting and fellowship programs. Prior to that, Nicole worked at Columbia University where she oversaw several projects including an interdisciplinary research program on global governance that focused in turn on nuclear proliferation, pandemics, religious conflict, and climate change.
Ben Goldman
Ben Goldman is the archivist for curatorial services and strategy in the Special Collections Library at Penn State University. His research explores the intersection of archives, climate change, and the environment. He is the PI for the Repo Data Project, a project to identify, gather, standardize, and make publicly accessible United States archival repository location data.
Eira Tansey
Eira Tansey is the digital archivist/records manager at the University of Cincinnati Libraries. Her active areas of research include the effects of climate change on archives and archivists, the role of records within environmental regulation, and the enforcement of recordkeeping laws. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of archives, history, and environmental policy journals. See more of her writing at http://eiratansey.com/.