{"id":6456,"date":"2026-04-22T05:23:56","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/gso\/?page_id=6456"},"modified":"2026-04-22T05:23:56","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:23:56","slug":"a-guide-to-building-using-or-understanding-an-archive-from-butterflies-to-eagles","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/gso\/a-guide-to-building-using-or-understanding-an-archive-from-butterflies-to-eagles\/","title":{"rendered":"A Guide to Building, Using, or Understanding An Archive: From “Butterflies to Eagles”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translating the Archives<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>In my doctoral program at the University of Arizona, I took a class where I was introduced to the rhetoric of women preachers. The following summer I remember going to see my parents in Oklahoma City and visiting my late grandfather\u2019s library, carefully preserved by my mother in an upstairs bedroom. I picked up a book called Pioneer Woman for Christ,<\/em> and I felt a surge of joy. On the cover was a picture of a statue in Ponca City. It featured a woman holding a Bible in one hand and her young son\u2019s hand with the other, braving the wind, and confidently striding forward in a long dress, boots, and bonnet — eyes ahead, straight faced. Probably feeling that this statue represented her, Grace Hope Curtis shared her stories as a woman preacher in the International Pentecostal Holiness Church in rural Oklahoma during the early to middle twentieth century in the short autobiography I held in my hand.<\/p>\n

After that experience, I chose to research women preachers from Oklahoma for my dissertation and to explore how they built ethos within the resistance of cultural norms, both inside and outside of Pentecostalism, in the U.S. between the early twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. To get started, I made a trip to our denomination\u2019s national archives in Oklahoma City and met with the Director, Dr. Harold Hunter. He offered me guidance, but he also offered me a bibliography of over a hundred books I would need to read to just get started in understanding Pentecostal history and theology. The fact that I had grown up Pentecostal did not mean I understood anything about its history, nor was I familiar with the scholarship produced by its best historians and theologians. In the end, I left with copies of items from the archives that would shape my research, as well as a pathway into a completely new understanding of Pentecostalism that I had never known.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been over twenty years, and I\u2019ve written a dissertation, given several conference presentations, published a handful of scholarly articles, and published two books on Pentecostal women preachers. Yet I am well aware that I still don\u2019t know much. Every time I enter the International Pentecostal Hoiness Church (IPHC) archives, I might uncover something new that upends, rewrites, challenges, and enlivens the history I\u2019ve been trying to write for years. Today, I serve in a part-time role as the Director of Research and Archives Center for the IPHC, and I feel that my experiences using the archives as a student, as an independent scholar, as a college English professor specializing in rhetoric and composition, and now as the Director, have given me some insights into how to best use an archives to explore yourself, the communities that matter to you, the people who can offer you a living history if asked the right questions. It is a window into the collective memory and ideological mindset of a people and the institutions you make a part of your lives as a student, a teacher, a scholar, or a participant.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt Matters Who Does This Work\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Using an archives, either as a student, a teacher, or even as a Director, requires a self-assessment. I don\u2019t remember when Dr. Hunter first suggested I be his successor as Director of Archives and Research for the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, but I do remember using the word \u201cnever\u201d quite a bit in response to him for more than ten years. So I surprised myself when the Bishop reached out to speak with me about the position, and I agreed to apply even though I was happy right where I was at, here in South Carolina, working as an Assistant Professor of English at Spartanburg Methodist College. The archives position was based in Oklahoma City, but after some thought, I suggested that I work part-time, coming into the city a few weeks a year, and complete work online the rest of the year so I could retain my full-time teaching position. In the end, that is precisely what we agreed to do, and I started my new position with the IPHC in July of 2023.<\/p>\n

I remember the day I realized that the archives was the storehouse of people, not just of records, but of a culture that once rose, once shined, but was no more. Sure, the roots are in our people today, but all of the old questions, the old controversies, the old struggles are left behind for us to piece together with the sermons and articles and newsletters and business correspondence on onion paper and the ordination certificates and travel receipts and all the rest. The amount of information that had been collected since the denomination\u2019s first archivist started in 1921 was staggering. But my newly hired assistant and I loved it. We would turn pages in old Bibles, treasuring the handwritten notes in the margins, we would catalog cassettes and films and periodicals, and we learned to understand a person from the library he left behind, reading titles for clues to the intellectual curiosity that drove his imagination. We looked for evidence of women and of missionaries and of services held in brush arbors and in open fields and under tents and we kept finding it in pictures, in typewritten but unpublished histories, in conference minutes, and in out-of-print publications. We read testimonies written on crumbling paper and we parsed shaky handwriting that conveyed stories, and we turned pages in old college yearbooks. At some point, I realized that not one of these items would ever make it into an institutional archives,<\/em> and I knew it was all precious, all valuable, and that no one from the outside of the IPHC could understand these people the way that we could<\/em>. In my archival studies, they offered me several ways to assess the value of an item. But no amount of education could teach one to place the correct value on an item if she were an outsider to these people. <\/em>An outsider could not properly interpret or contextualize what we kept in the vaults. The late Bishop Carpenter once looked at me after I presented my work on women preachers at an IPHC centennial celebration and said in his long, southern drawl, \u201cGirl, you\u2019ve got deep roots.\u201d And so it is. Amen and amen.<\/p>\n

Sophia Ziegler\u2019s \u201cIt Matters Who Does This Work\u201d records an interview conducted in 2021 with Tonia Sutherland, Assistant Professor in the Library and Information Science Program at University of Hawaii. In it, she states that she has come to understand that \u201cthe only true experts on Native Hawaiians are \u2014 as it should be \u2014 Hawaiians. I wouldn\u2019t dare assume that I would best know how to represent Native Hawaiian materials\u201d (6). She later shares that as a Black woman and as a \u201cfirst-generation American, the daughter of immigrants,\u201d she would also not trust someone outside of her race to represent her experience (7). Although she does argue that it is possible to do the work in community, in teams, she also states that no one person, no matter who they are, has all of \u201cthe expertise that\u2019s necessary to get all the descriptive work right\u201d (7). Does it matter who does the work? \u00a0You bet it does.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Taylor, et. al. shares the concept of \u201csymbolic reparations\u201d when detailing the injustices of Columbia, South America\u2019s almost nine million victims of the ongoing conflicts that have ravaged the country for years (1). The preservation of historical memory, and the decision to document instead of to ignore the abuses of people, is accomplished through archival work (2). Article 144 of Law 1448 specifically states that a National Center for Historical Memory would be established to do this work (2). They quote Albrechts, et. al.:<\/p>\n

Archives have always been about power, whether it is the power of the state, the church, the corporation, the family, the public, or the individual. Archives have the power to privilege and to marginalize. They can be a tool of hegemony; they can be a tool of resistance. They both reflect and constitute power relations. They are a product of society\u2019s need for information, and the abundance and circulation of documents reflects the importance placed on information in society. They are the basis for and validation of the stories we tell ourselves, the story-telling narratives that give cohesion and meaning to individuals, groups, and societies. (qtd. in Taylor, et. al. 3).<\/p>\n

As a \u201csocial construct,\u201d an archive has the power to tell a story, to preserve evidence of the past, and to argue for a \u201ctransitional justice\u201d (3). Since archives are not \u201cpassive storehouses of old stuff, but active sites where social power is negotiated, contested, confirmed,\u201d then they are clearly of great value to those using them for research, to those considering creating one to document the history of a group or a community, and to those directing them.<\/p>\n

The emphasis on archives as a field of humanistic inquiry is becoming clearer to those of us who have not been immersed in archival studies. James O\u2019Toole defines the \u201cmoral theology of archives\u201d as every activity on the part of the archivist that reflects a decision of what to value – actions that are able to promote accountability and social justice when recovering evidence of abuse or missing parts of the history of marginalized groups, for example (qtd. In Jimerson 272). He also states, \u201cArchivists have only recently begun to re-examine their assumptions about the neutrality and objectivity of archives. In the \u201cinformation age,\u201d knowledge is power. This power gives those who determine what records will be preserved for future generations a significant degree of influence\u201d (254).\u00a0 He goes on to explain that \u201cArchivists can begin [engaging in advocacy] by recognizing the essential nature of their collective responsibility to ensure the preservation of evidence for accountability, individual rights, and social justice\u201d (274).<\/p>\n

Those who engage in archival work in any context should understand that their work is an act of power. By choosing to document, restore, revitalize, or to share our histories represented in archival collections, we are contributing to the preservation of the individuals, groups, and institutions we cherish as it is expressed in scholarship or in an archives we build, contribute to, or maintain. Those working within educational institutions or directing an archive also recognize the need to connect with donors and alumni. Archives can be used to connect institutions and their supporters in a variety of outreach initiatives related to teaching others how to find, use, and communicate a shared history as the contextualized examples in each chapter will illustrate.<\/p>\n

Living History<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As much as my cultural DNA has given me an advantage in the IPHC Archives, it also has not been good enough. And the lengthy bibliography given to me at the start of my dissertation research could not fill in all the gaps. You also must approach archival work by looking for people who are willing to share their stories with you. For example, my mother had worked as an Administrative Assistant for the IPHC for over three decades and served many leaders, including four bishops. She had traveled the world and served missionaries and worshipped alongside our people. She was the one who made sure we went to the Azusa Street Centennial in 2006 so we could pay homage to the site of the three year long led by the son of former slaves, William Seymour, Lucy Farrow (Frederick Douglass\u2019 niece), and Jennie Seymour, and we stood among thousands from around the globe who had traveled there to do the same thing.<\/p>\n

My mother understood our people and our history in a way that I did not because she had done the work, she had seen God\u2019s hand in the harvest, she had fought the battles outsiders don\u2019t see. When my mother held a picture retrieved from a box in the archives in her hand, she knew the family, she knew who got married and who didn\u2019t (and why) and who was kind or funny or smart and where they worked and when they left one home to live in another and on and on, details upon details. While my assistant and I love the IPHC, its history, and its people, we did not have their stories etched in our memory and in our hearts the way my mother did. Through her reminiscing, I understood then that every archive must have its interpreters, its storytellers, its keepers of memories. I understood that even with the most complete archives, we need these people to interpret the nuances of the history and to overturn uneducated guesses based on assumptions engrained in our time, not theirs. Some archival history must be found, some must be created through interviews, and some must just be experienced. You must find those who are living history keepers for your archival research \u2013 or to help you if you wish to build an archive of your own.<\/p>\n

Michelle Caswell, Professor of Archival Studies at the University of California, passionately calls for us to understand that archival work is not just service profession, but it is a political action when we acquire, weed out, value, describe, and share items in a collection. So, as the Director of Archives and Research, I hold the power to shape the perceptions of the artifacts we make available to the public through my descriptions and any efforts I make at contextualization. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill\u2019s 2022 A Guide to Conscious Editing <\/em>at the Wilson Special Collection Library demonstrates that descriptions that hold racist, misogynistic, ableist, or other harmful norms can be reshaped with attention to removing or replacing language that assumes that the norm is white, for example, or in adding language that leaves out inconvenient truths, such as when a family held slaves that were simply part of the \u201cproperty\u201d mentioned in a description (88). \u00a0As someone who uses an archives for research or as someone who wishes to build or to maintain an archive, your language holds a great deal of power.<\/p>\n

An archive is a living thing; it is a collective memory that we reanimate through use. Caswell explains that we shape collective memory through the \u201cspringboards\u201d we provide in the records we keep and share (4). \u201cA record can be a document, an individual’s memory, an image, or a recording. It can also be an actual person, a community, or the land itself\u201d (4). Some records are inaccessible to outsiders, particularly when they are in the hands of people, either in their homes or in their memories.<\/p>\n

Context and Intellectual Communities<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Caswell also brings up another key point: She knows what we study in the Humanities, but humanities scholars do not know or use the intellectual work of archivists to understand the opportunities for advocacy or the limitations of collective memory or the nuances of using artifacts gathered from Indigenous peoples that could greatly inform the research they do in an archives. She pinpoints the start of the Humanities\u2019 interest in archives with Derrida\u2019s 1995 Archive Fever<\/em>, but while she says that the archives has been \u201cdeconstructed, decolonized, and queered by scholars,\u201d the books emerging over the next two decades ignore the work archivists have done to unmask the presentation of an artifact as a static truth. Caswell points to the continuum process, articulated by Upward and McKemmish, which explains the fluid nature of interpretation relevant to items in an archives (5).<\/p>\n

She explains:<\/p>\n

The continuum [model] proposes a multidimensional model of concentric circles through which records are created as the byproduct of activity, captured as evidence (disembedded from their creation and extracted into systems that allow them to be used), organized into personal or institutional archives as memory (migrated into systems which allow their use across an organization), and pluralized as collective memory (migrated into systems which allow their use across society). (5)<\/p>\n

In other words,<\/p>\n

The continuum model is characterized by the dynamic and transformative nature of records and recordkeeping within multiple and interacting dimensions such that, while a record’s content and structure can be seen as fixed, in terms of its contextualization, a record is ‘always in a process of becoming.\u2019 (5)<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the record is constantly shifting and being recontextualized with each use (5).\u00a0 Furthermore, Australian archival theorists see those who collect the record as co-creator with those who are in the record (the picture, the text, the film, the object) (7). This means that interpreters of archival artifacts contribute to the archives they use by creating a new life for the fragments of old histories.<\/p>\n

Archivists, Caswell, argues, are shapers of history. So when we leave out any mention of the political, social, or ethical connotations of collecting, valuing, and describing artifacts, we ignore the opportunity for the archivist to advocate for the marginalized through language and curation, we ignore the archivist\u2019s actions as historians through assigning value and contextualizing items, and we ignore the archivist\u2019s efforts to recover lost or deleted histories, particularly in contested locations where one group has been oppressed by another (12). While Humanities scholars are experts at interpretation, by ignoring the intellectual contributions of archivists who understand that their work is anything but neutral, important opportunities to understand the artifacts are missed. The place where the fields come together and are expressed through interdisciplinary written constructs are where the exchanges between fields need to be seen and the work of archival scholars acknowledged.<\/p>\n

When I started as the Director of Archives and Research, I met with other directors in the area and gathered advice and guidance. I had done archival research for my dissertation and first two books, and I had taken workshops in archival research, and at first, I imagined that it was a matter of organizing and labeling things consistently. As I worked with the items in the collection, however, I knew there was more to it than that. So I began taking classes to earn a graduate certificate in Archival Studies from Louisiana State University. We started with Research in the Archival Multiverse<\/em>, edited by Anne Gilliland, et. al., and it was enough to dispel any illusions that I was just going to get better at naming files and knowing the mundane details of how cold to set the thermostat in the vault. Over the next nine months, I learned about advocacy, archival history, collective memory, and practical concerns. It was an awakening.<\/p>\n

You probably don\u2019t have time to go back to school like I did, but the Society of American Archivists is also a hub of information, with publications, archival groups dedicated to particular genres of archival work, and online classes you can take. It has an extensive glossary, a treasure trove of case studies, and a code of ethics that all help with understanding the very human work that an archivist does. Textbooks are another way to get both practical as well as theoretical information, like in the Archival Fundamentals Series<\/em>. It may be helpful to attend a conference in order to get a sense of what archivists are debating and to encounter all the latest resources on the publishers\u2019 tables.<\/p>\n

Scholars who are using the archives for a class project or for research or who are considering creating their own archives need to be in community with archives directors. In the case of the IPHC archives, we have a lot of \u201cclosed\u201d boxes. Sometimes these contain hidden histories and protect my denomination\u2019s corporate reputation from misuse, miscontextualization, or mishandling. Granted, some of those boxes hold personnel files, which all institutions keep from the public eye, but others do not. As a Director, I have to trust in the wisdom of those who chose to \u201cclose\u201d the files if I do not immediately understand the purpose. And I have to do my utmost to share all of the files, the books, the articles, the dissertations, the course materials, the recorded sermons, interviews, handwritten letters, photos, videos, testimonies, and material items such as typewriters and quilts and glasses and the like that our vaults contain. Since I have spent many, many hours in the archives, I have a general sense of what we have in our archives, whether it is in \u201cclosed\u201d or in \u201copen\u201d boxes. In many cases, archival research cannot be done most effectively sitting in front of a computer. To make the most out of archival research, speak to those overseeing the archives you use to see what they can help you find. If you are seeking archival materials to support your research, be in community with others to help you with research and to guide your efforts, whatever the project. If you are a new Director or if you seek to start a new archives, work with others to help guide you about what to protect and what to share. It is not \u201cdishonest\u201d to withhold some items from the public. It is a common business practice. Well, a common household practice as well. You need discernment. Get help with that.<\/p>\n

Also, there is the backlog. For those seeking to conduct research based on the use of items from an archives, the MPLP system (more product, less process) system was created to help archivists get items into the hands of users more quickly. There are items that are for public consumption but that we have honestly not had time to sort, but if you speak to those working in an archives and explain your project, they will often get very excited and start looking in the boxes you will not (yet) find on their databases. To offer just one example, a scholar dropped in a year or so back and mentioned he was studying music, and my assistant and I have been scanning hymnals created by our people ever since. We email him every time we make a new find.<\/p>\n

In \u201cStudent-Designed Archival Pedagogy,\u201d Wi\u015bniewska-Drewniak does note that communicating with those on site in an archives has its challenges. Money and time to visit an archive occupies the top of the list, but students also noted challenges with obtaining access to archival materials if they were seen as \u201coutsiders\u201d to a particular community (9). The list of skills students need to learn is also daunting: \u201cskills of digitizing heritage, skills of recording oral history, skills of cataloging objects (including archival description), awareness of ethical challenges in the work of a community archivist, awareness of the legal issues involved in running community archives, and [sometimes] fundraising skills\u201d (10). Also, if they were designing a new, community archive by working with some existing archives, they needed to know how to understand such things as \u201cunderstanding power dynamics in partnerships between public and independent bodies\u201d and \u201cinterpersonal dialogue and conflict resolution skills\u201d (11). Yet, what is most promising about working with students and archives is the new \u201cawareness of the changing role of archivists and the intertwined roles of archivist, activist, contributor, and user in community archives\u201d (11). If you are a student new to working with archival materials, remember that those who work in an archives are here to help. We can assist with overcoming many of these challenges. Your professors can help with understanding the contexts and power dynamics that are at play as well. Join us in the adventure of research so you can add something new to the ongoing histories we build through archival research.<\/p>\n

Interdisciplinarity in Writing and in Research\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the coming months, I will be building a guide for those running archives, creating an archives, teaching using archival materials, or just using an archives for research. This guide is meant to inspire and to guide those of you who wish to build an archive, digitally or in a physical space, or both. It is meant to offer insights into work in the classroom when assigning students projects that draw upon primary resources. It is meant to give scholars a framework for building texts that rely on primary sources and for understanding those primary sources. Believe it or not, all of these endeavors overlap and inform each other. As someone who has done archival research as a graduate student and for the four books I\u2019ve published so far, who has worked in an archive doing all the manual labor and technical work and outreach it entails for the last two and a half years, and as an Assistant Professor of English with twenty-seven years of experience in the field, I know that my work in rhetoric, visual rhetoric, writing-across-the-curriculum, technical writing, professional writing, women\u2019s rhetorics, and multi-modal composition have all helped me articulate what I have found in the archives and use it in different ways, while obtaining a certificate in Archival Studies at Louisiana State University has transformed my perspective on all of it. Let me share those experiences with you.<\/p>\n

Also, by interviewing local museum directors and by working as a Director of Archives and Research, I have seen interdisciplinary writing in many forms as it relates to the archive. As a Director, I\u2019ve written grants, marketing materials, speeches, histories, timelines, infographics, brochures, defenses, websites, posters, letters, descriptions for items, a strategic plan, and reports. As a scholar, I\u2019ve written histories, narratives, arguments, reports, analyses, and guides. As a professor, I\u2019ve written lesson plans, assignment sheets, rubrics, assessment reports, journal articles, scripts for videos, responses, critiques, flyers, conference presentations, assessment plans, and evaluations. \u00a0I spent two years as the Marketing and Social Media Publisher for the Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse, creating social media materials pushed through a variety of channels. Writers engaging in archival research might create podcasts, travel guides, documentaries, editorials, blogs, anthologies, edited collections, coffee table books, applications for funded research, and books for any genre using primary sources. Let me share my insights on writing with archival materials as your source, either as a Director for the purposes of outreach, as a scholar for the purposes of engaging with history and sharing it, or as a teacher with the purpose of engaging students in discovery.<\/p>\n

While interdisciplinary writing happens in different academic and public facing contexts, working with primary sources is the heart of interdisciplinary research. The Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy<\/em> were developed in collaboration with the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and published in 2018 on the SAA website. The guidelines are meant to be used by professors, students, librarians, and even K-12 teachers (1). They are flexible and grounded in best practices and can be used to conceptualize how a student or a scholar or a teacher might engage with primary sources to build a project (1).<\/p>\n

They write: \u201cPrimary sources are materials in a variety of formats that serve as original evidence documenting a time period, an event, a work, people, or ideas. Primary source literacy is the combination of knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, and ethically use primary sources within specific disciplinary contexts, in order to create new knowledge or to revise existing understandings\u201d (1-2). They clarify that what makes a source \u201cprimary\u201d might vary based on the research questions or discipline or even how to interplays with other sources (2). Primary sources might inspire research questions or research questions might use primary sources to answer existing questions (2).<\/p>\n

The interdisciplinary nature of understanding and using archival items becomes clear when they write: \u201cPrimary source literacy intersects with other \u2018literacies,\u2019 including information literacy, visual literacy, and digital literacy, and concepts like collective memory, cultural heritage, and individual\/cultural perspectives\u201d (2). They state that those who use and interpret items from an archive do so within a variety of insights provided by different disciplines (2). The guidelines help to bring out those layers.<\/p>\n

The framework consists of five key steps:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Conceptualize<\/li>\n
  2. Find and Access<\/li>\n
  3. Read, Understand, and Summarize<\/li>\n
  4. Interpret, Analyze, and Evaluate<\/li>\n
  5. Use and Incorporate (4-5).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I add the following:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Create<\/li>\n
    2. Collaborate<\/li>\n
    3. Communicate<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      These steps will be used as a framework in each segment of this guide, but key differences between the traditional research and synthesis process will also be illustrated in the contextualized examples of archival research in this guide and shared within this framework.<\/p>\n

      To explain each step listed above briefly, first conceptualizing includes understanding what the range of sources might be and understanding your research question might change as contradictory artifacts are found (4). Second, finding and accessing sources includes understanding what sources (and histories) might be missing or hidden, as well as learning to read finding aids and in looking in non-traditional places for materials (4). Access to primary sources is affected by many factors, as well (4).<\/p>\n

      Third, reading and understanding a primary source requires you to have the education needed to unlock meaning in a text (5). For example, it is easy to misinterpret a 16th<\/sup> century sonnet if you know nothing of the culture. Also, primary sources might be captured in more than one iteration, requiring you to piece them together (5). Fourth, when you interpret, analyze, and evaluate a source, you must take into account the biases of its creator (5), and I would add the particular perspective of the curator who collected, valued, described, and set the rules for accessing the item. Items must be properly contextualized, they write (5). Fifth, to use and incorporate archival items in your research, you need to know copyright laws and citation styles (5).<\/p>\n

      I add the need to create archival resources when you find gaps or when you encounter someone, like my mother, who can provide a broader, richer, deeper understanding of an item. This is information you can\u2019t find in a book. Capture it. You may conduct interviews. You may also create materials through surveys, observations, or by collecting items from donors. Ethical and legal guidelines for such activities will be shared. Next, you need to plan to collaborate. In every contextualized example, there is collaboration. I could not have built the IPHC Archives into an online database with access to books, sermons, music, and videos on my own. I could not share it in presentations without getting invitations. I could not collect items for missing or underdeveloped histories, such as those of our Chaplains and our Hispanic conferences, on my own. In another example where I have gathered and used archival items for research, I could not have gathered the materials needed to research the Cherokee Female Seminary without attending a conference that gave me access to print materials available no where else.<\/p>\n

      Finally, you need to communicate your findings. Each contextualized example has a different purpose, a different range of audiences, and a variety of communication outlets. I will discuss Creative Commons and copyright concerns for those establishing an archives or contributing to an archives or just publishing materials online.<\/p>\n

      Archives, Collective Memory, and Advocacy<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

      Archival work is important for understanding identities as they are rooted in the collective memories and experiences of a person, a group, or an institution. In fact, an archive can provide a means to agency. In 1977, Howard Zinn changed the field of archival studies with \u201cSecrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest\u201d by defying the structures of \u201csocial control\u201d that were supported by archival collections carefully curated to support the elite or the government entities who sought to shape public memory by leaving out the voices of the marginalized or victimized in a particular collection (16).<\/p>\n

      Just one of many examples of Zinn\u2019s legacy is found in Tonia Sutherland\u2019s \u201cArchival Amnesty: In Search of Black American Transitional and Restorative Justice,\u201d published in 2017, where she argues that because archives operate as \u201cmemory institutions\u201d they must resist and actively collect histories of \u201cmarginalized peoples and communities\u201d to avoid the \u201cpervasive homogeneity\u201d represented by what is valued and what is left out of archival collections (2). Archivists have investigated their role as activists in collections, such as in investigating lynchings that occurred in the American South or in the \u201ccolonial systems\u201d in Canadian institutions that also try to hide the atrocities of the Indian Residential Schools, which \u201coperated in Canada for over 150 years\u201d (McCracken 183).<\/p>\n

      The idea of an archive as housing collective memories is a powerful concept. Harris argues that \u201cFar from being a simple reflection of reality, archives are constructed windows into personal and collective processes. They at once express and are instruments of prevailing relations of power\u201d (63). Josias argues that the \u201cdynamics of memory\u201d and \u201ccollective memory\u201d is a negotiation between the past, storytelling, today\u2019s politics, and today\u2019s social agendas (96).\u00a0 He follows that with \u201cSchwartz and Cook note that, Archives \u2013 as records \u2013 wield power over the shape and direction of historical scholarship, collective memory, and national identity, over how we know ourselves as individuals, groups, and societies\u201d (97). Archivists who choose what goes in an archive, how it is described, processed, and made available for use wield power over collective memory in that way (97). Harris later states in his article:<\/p>\n

      If archival records reflect reality, they do so complicitly, and in a deeply fractured and shifting way. They do not act by themselves. They act through many conduits – the people who created them, the functionaries who managed them, the archivists who selected them for preservation and make them available for use, and the researchers who use them in constructing accounts of the past. Far from enjoying an exteriority in relation to the record, all these conduits participate in the complex processes through which the record feeds into social memory. 65<\/p>\n

      He goes on to argue that the archives do not reflect Indigenous or African epistemologies; being included is one thing, but shaping the narratives built on those artifacts should be done by the people they come from (83). I agree; in the archives I oversee, there is a Pentecostal epistemology that is unique to those who have united under that name. If we do not control our own story, then someone else will probably just get it wrong. Also, our way of creating, validating, and sharing knowledge and truth is natural, and is part of our faith. Without faith, without the practices that define us, the whole process falls apart.<\/p>\n

      Verne argues that if we take knowledge without its rich contexts, we contribute \u201cto what Jean-Francois Lyotard has called the commodification of knowledge\u201d (83). We must make room for \u201csub narratives\u201d and \u201ccounter narratives\u201d as well (84). \u201cThe archival record,\u201d Verne writes, \u201clike all repositories of memory, is an extraordinary creation of remembering, forgetting, and imagining. Moreover, as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and others have argued, and as recent South African history has demonstrated, the archival record is at once expression and instrument of power\u201d (88). Furthermore, Jeannette Bastian teaches us the history and memory were treated as two separate subjects in the past, but \u201dfor social scientists as well as historians, the cataclysmic events and social movements of the twentieth century with their competing narratives and diversity of voices, defied traditional historical documentation and analysis\u201d (118). In fact, \u201cMemory offered a way to comprehend, study, and explain these traumatic events with their multiple stories in meaningful and connected ways\u201d (118).<\/p>\n

      Bastian offers lists of \u201cthings that carry memory forward\u201d in our memories: Folk songs, film, narrative, poetry, exhibits, conferences, websites, monuments, historical sites, murals, national historic landmarks, buildings, grave marking, honoring each year, political campaigns fueled by memories of events or people, books, articles, encyclopedia articles, websites, documentary film\u201d (124-125). Another source is \u201ccountermemory\u2014memory that goes against attempts to memorialize one group,\u201d as well as \u201ccoroner reports, court reports, congressional hearings, and Centennial celebrations\u201d (125). He quotes Jay Winter who says, \u201chistory is not simply memory with footnotes; and memory is not simply history without footnotes. In virtually all acts of remembrance, history and memory are braided together in the public domain, jointly informing our shifting and contested understandings of the past\u201d (131).<\/p>\n

      Millar reminds us that just because we hold an artifact, it does not mean we can experience the episodic memory it is connected to in the mind of the creator (116). Archivists must try to protect the original artifact and \u201cthe contextuality of records\u201d to help lessen the impact of interpretations of the item that change over time (117). She writes that \u201cThe notion of collective or social memory was first articulated by philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in 1926, when he suggested that a group has as much capacity to \u201cremember\u201d as an individual, and that collective memory was the framework within which individual recollections were created and maintained,\u201d but qualifies this by noting that the individual still has agency in the creation of memory (120). An archives is only one way to house memories, she writes, noting songs and oral histories and all the other ways that culture is passed down (121).<\/p>\n

      Writing assignments and research projects that draw upon archival resources have the potential to engage learners in personally meaningful work that can potentially shape historical narratives that define, empower, and assign value to people, groups, or institutions. In 2023, Nacca and Lang, both at the University of Texas at Austin, co-authored the chapter, \u201cConfronting Issues of Power and Privilege with Student-Designed Public Online Exhibits\u201d in the book Transforming the Authority of the Archive: Undergraduate Pedagogy and Critical Digital Archives<\/em>. They described their motivation for working with students to design their own exhibits in terms of the limitations of institutional archives that leave out those who are not part of the elite classes (217). They write that \u201cThe goal of this course is to lead both novice and intermediate- level undergraduate researchers to do original social- justice themed archival research projects (on underutilized special collections on the UT- Austin campus) and to communicate the results of that humanistic research to a general audience\u201d (217). Students would do primary source research, learn about copyright, become aware of the \u201cbiases\u201d that can be expressed through \u201cmetadata creation,\u201d and gain digital literacy by building exhibits using Omeka for their digital-born projects (218). They chose a social justice theme because many of the students taking the course would come from a variety of disciplines (221). As they practiced the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting items, they learned how fluid the process really was and to become more comfortable with unfinished conclusions (222). The students were required to find all of the items for their archives (not to create them), and then to share them online on a platform that required them to use project management skills to build and marketing skills to share (223). The end products operated as advocacy opportunities for exhibits focused on social justice themes (256).<\/p>\n

      Taking this into account, as well as the experiences of many who have engaged in similar work, this guide will show others who wish to engage in archival research by providing practical tools. Indeed, writing assignments and research projects that draw upon archival resources have the potential to engage learners in personally meaningful work that can potentially shape historical narratives that define, empower, and assign value to people, groups, or institutions. This guide aims to articulate processes through contextualized examples for engaging in archival work in the classroom, in an institution, or in a digitally-born archives. These are activities rich with meaning and imbued with power.<\/p>\n

      Indeed, I have been affected by this power. Thomas Woody changed my life. He conducted extensive archival research on the education of women in the United States, assembling a two volume set which he published in 1929. I have often poured over the pages, soaking in his words. In 2015, I co-authored a book titled Female Seminaries and the Rise of Social Justice<\/em>, and his work provided us a way to articulate the Christian roots of women\u2019s educational history, as well as the contradictions that characterize its staunchest defenders who pretended to support social norms while obtaining an education for women that would allow them to defy them. Instead of glossing over details or rushing through research, Woody carefully contextualized artifacts and harnessed them to share the story of women\u2019s rise to equality through education. In our book, Dr. Ruelas and I shared African-American and Native American women\u2019s histories, recovering and enriching the narratives that matter so much to women.<\/p>\n

      There is one quote that has long stood out to me in one of Woody\u2019s books. To sum up just how powerful a good education was, Woody quoted a visitor to a school in Ohio who once compared women to \u201cbutterflies\u201d and men to \u201ceagles\u201d to illustrate the empowerment of American women through education.\u00a0 She wrote:<\/p>\n

      You cannot but know, then, that in all ages and in all countries, up to a very recent period, your half (and the common parlance is equally complimentary and true) the better half of the species was viewed, as a race holding to man the relation of butterflies to eagles\u2026All that has passed away, and we hope, forever\u2026it has been proved, no longer to be contested, that you have minds capable of illimitable progress\u2026<\/p>\n

      Woody\u2019s power was in the archival research he shared that advanced the cause of women, by documenting and supporting their dignity, their power, their accomplishments. He saved texts from obscurity, reprinted photos most of us will never hold in our hands, celebrated the triumphs of women, and articulated the challenges that came from without and from within. Woody made the most of his opportunity to use archival research to shape his world.<\/p>\n

      What will you do with yours?<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      Works Cited<\/p>\n

      A Guide to Conscious Editing<\/em> at Wilson Special Collections Library<\/em>, The University of North<\/p>\n

      Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2022, file:\/\/\/C:\/Users\/Kristen\/Downloads\/A_Guide_to_Conscious_Editing_Final_April_2022_accessible%20(2).pdf<\/p>\n

      Bastian, Jeannette, \u201cFlowers for Homestead: A Case Study in Archives and Collective<\/p>\n

      Memory\u00a0The American Archivist<\/em>\u00a0(2009) 72 (1): 113\u2013132. https:\/\/doi-org.libezp.lib.lsu.edu\/10.17723\/aarc.72.1.k751734304667050<\/a><\/p>\n

      Caswell, Michelle,\u00a0‘\u2018The Archive\u2019 is Not an Archives: Acknowledging the Intellectual<\/p>\n

      Contributions of Archival Studies’,\u00a0in Andrew Prescott, and Alison Wiggins (eds),\u00a0Archives: Power, Truth, and Fiction<\/em>\u00a0(2023;\u00a0online edn,\u00a0Oxford Academic, 18 Dec. 2023),\u00a0https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/oxfordhb\/9780198829324.013.0002<\/a>,\u00a0accessed 22 Mar. 2026.<\/p>\n

      Gilliland, Anne J., et. al. Research in the Archival Multiverse, <\/em>Monash University Publishing,<\/p>\n

      2017.<\/p>\n

      Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy<\/em>, SAA-ACRL\/RBMS Joint Task Force on the<\/p>\n

      Development of Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy (JTF-PSL), 2018, GuidelinesForPrimarySourceLiteracy-June2018.pdf<\/a>, Accessed March 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

      Harris, V. The archival sliver: Power, memory, and archives in South Africa.\u00a0Archival Science<\/em>\u00a02<\/strong>,<\/p>\n

      63\u201386 (2002). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/BF02435631<\/a><\/p>\n

      Jimerson, Randall C. \u201cArchives for All: Professional Responsibility and Social Justice,\u201d The<\/em><\/p>\n

      American Archivist<\/em>, vol. 70, no. 2, 2007, pp. 252-281. http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/40294571<\/a><\/p>\n

      Josias, A. Toward an understanding of archives as a feature of collective memory.\u00a0Arch Sci<\/em>\u00a011<\/strong>,<\/p>\n

      95\u2013112 (2011). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10502-011-9136-3<\/p>\n

      McCracken, Krista, “Community Archival Practice: Indigenous Grassroots Collaboration at the<\/p>\n

      Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre.” The American Archivist, <\/em>vol. 78, no. 1, March 2015, pp. 181\u2013191. doi:10.17723\/0360-9081.78.1.181.<\/p>\n

      Millar, Laura. \u201cTouchstones: Considering the Relationship Between Memory and<\/p>\n

      Archives\u201d.\u00a0Archivaria<\/em>, vol. 61, Sept. 2006, pp. 105-26, https:\/\/archivaria.ca\/index.php\/archivaria\/article\/view\/12537.<\/p>\n

      Nacca, Elise and Elon Lang, \u201cConfronting Issues Of Power And Privilege With Student<\/p>\n

      Designed Public Online Exhibits,\u201d Transforming the Authority of the Archive Book: Undergraduate Pedagogy and Critical Digital Archives Book, <\/em>Andi Gustavson and Charlotte Nunes, editors, Lever Press, 2023. https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.3998\/mpub.12752519.11<\/a><\/p>\n

      Publishing in the Archives Profession<\/em>, Journals \u2013 Publishing in the Archives Profession<\/a>,<\/p>\n

      Accessed March 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

      Sutherland, Tonia, \u201cArchival Amnesty: In Search of Black American Transitional and Restorative<\/p>\n

      Justice,\u201d Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 2, June 2017, DOI:10.24242\/jclis.v1i2.42<\/a><\/p>\n

      Taylor, Claire L., et. al., “Archives of Human Rights and Historical Memory: An Analysis of<\/p>\n

      Archival Practices \u2018From Below\u2019 in Four NGOs in Colombia,”\u00a0Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies<\/em>, (2021), Vol. 8, Article 3. https:\/\/elischolar.library.yale.edu\/jcas\/vol8\/iss1\/3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

      Welch, Kristen and Abraham Ruelas, The Rise of Female Seminaries on the Road to Social<\/em><\/p>\n

      Justice<\/em>, Wipf and Stock, 2015.<\/p>\n

      Wi\u015bniewska-Drewniak, Magdalena, “Student-Designed Archival Pedagogy: A Workshop-As-<\/p>\n

      Research Approach to Pluralizing Community Archives Education,”\u00a0Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies<\/em>, (2025), Vol. 12, Article 15. https:\/\/elischolar.library.yale.edu\/jcas\/vol12\/iss1\/15<\/a><\/p>\n

      Ziegler, Sophia, \u201cIt Matters Who Does This Work: An Interview with Tonia Sutherland,\u201d<\/p>\n

      Special Issue, Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship<\/em> 1, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 5-14<\/p>\n

      Zinn, H., \u201cSecrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest,\u201d Archival Issues, <\/em>vol.2, no. 2, 1977, pp.<\/p>\n

      14\u201326.<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"excerpt","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-6456","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","5":"entry"},"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/Pb62Bx-1G8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}