Abstracts
Abstract
This exploratory essay foregrounds the extraction and enclosure cycle between education technology (ed-tech) vendors and public academic special collections and archives departments. Education technology vendors, subsidiaries of academic publishers, often approach special collections libraries and archives with offers to digitize collections through services that McLaughlin et al. (2023) describe as open wrapping or freemium proposals. Since there seems to be no turning back, information professionals in public academic settings should, among other solutions, encourage decision-makers to negotiate preservation and conservation of physical archival materials. Drawing from the literature on commons practices, this essay introduces the concept of reciprocal relations to agreements between cultural heritage institutions and ed-tech companies. A reciprocal approach would disrupt the extraction and enclosure cycle and highlights the professional’s role as a steward of cultural heritage collections with an understanding that digitization is not preservation. Further, it would compel private sector companies to invest in the public sector instead of simply extracting public resources for profit.
Keywords:
- archives,
- enclosure,
- openwashing,
- special collections libraries,
- undercommons
Résumé
Cet essai exploratoire met en évidence le cycle d'extraction et de mise en enclos entre les fournisseurs de technologies éducatives et les départements de collections spéciales et d’archives publiques. Les fournisseurs de technologies éducatives, filiales d'éditeurs universitaires, contactent souvent les collections spéciales et les archives publiques avec des offres de numérisation par le biais de services que McLaughlin et al. (2023) décrits comme des propositions emballage ouvert ou « freemium ». Puisqu'il ne semble pas y avoir de retour en arrière, les professionnel.le.s de l'information dans les milieux universitaires publics devraient, entre autres solutions, encourager les décideur.e.s à négocier la préservation et la conservation des documents d'archives physiques. S'inspirant de la littérature sur les pratiques communes, cet essai introduit le concept de relations réciproques aux accords entre les institutions du patrimoine culturel et les entreprises de technologie de l'éducation. Une approche réciproque perturberait le cycle d'extraction et de mise en enclos et mettrait en évidence le rôle des professionnel.le.s en tant que gardien.ne.s des collections du patrimoine culturel, sachant que la numérisation n'est pas la préservation. De plus, cela obligerait les entreprises du secteur privé à investir dans le secteur public au lieu de simplement extraire des ressources publiques à des fins lucratives.
Mots-clés :
- archives,
- collections spéciales,
- enclos,
- ouvertisation,
- souscommuns
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Appendices
Biographical note
Kellee E. Warren is Associate Professor and Special Collections Librarian at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ms. Warren’s article, “Jean Blackwell Hutson: Black Women’s Leadership in Librarianship and Archives,” a biographical analysis, was published in the May 2022 special issue of Libraries: Culture, History, and Society, 6 (1). “Excessive Workload in Special Collections Public Services Librarianship: Challenges, Feelings, and Impact,” a survey of special collections librarians in public services, was published in the Journal of Library Administration, 61(3), 2021. Her article on an approach to archival instruction with colonial collections, “Reimagining Special Collections Instruction: A Special Case of Haiti” was published in The American Archivist, fall/winter 2020 edition. And her article “We Need These Bodies, but Not Their Knowledge: Black Women in the Archival Science Profession, and Their Connection to the Archives of Enslaved Black Women in the French Antilles” was published in Library Trends, spring 2016. Her research interests include critical pedagogies, publishing history, digital humanities, and oral history.
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