The Impact of Digital Technology and Creating Public Access for Creating Archives

A roundtable collaborative event between the LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project, The Feminist Institute (TFI), and the American LGBTQ+ Museum (ALM)!

Join us for a collaborative conversation about digital archiving as it relates to queer archives and creating public access. Each organization/archivist will talk about their digital archiving work.

Digital archiving, the practice of preserving digital archive records, emerged in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The Smithsonian Institution Archives began collecting digital content in 1994 and, by 2001, had a specific team responsible for its preservation. Moving digital content to new software and hardware environments, and evolving technologies, is a key issue for digital preservation moving forward.

The program will include:

TFI’s Manager of Archives + Programs, Allison Elliott, with the LGBTQ+ Artists Archive archivist, Vivian Stein, on the collaborative digitization of performing artist Lola Pashalinski’s materials, including a show + tell of selected audiovisual materials.

LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project (an initiative of the Pick Up Performance Co.) co-directors Linda S. Chapman and Alyce Dissette with supervising archivist Tanisha Jones will discuss/present their past preservation work mission and history.

ALM and TFI on Queer Legacies Project, with Allison Elliott and Suhaly Bautista-Carolina,which aims to illuminate the personal histories and ephemera of LGBTQ+ elders through facilitated archiving workshops and other activities.

Archivists Steven Fullwood on the Nomadic Archivists Project and The In the Life Archive (ITLA), originally known as the Black Gay and Lesbian Archive (BGLA) at New York Public Library and Christopher Stahling on In The Life Archive 2.0 and Everybody Needs a Witness.