Radical Trust: Access Services and Archives Engaged in Carceral Collecting
In Brief
Access services policies at academic archives in the United States are, in many ways, informed by carceral logics. This essay explores the ethical implications of upholding such policies for academic archives engaged in the growing realm of carceral collecting. Drawing from sources in trauma theory, abolitionist and Black feminism, and critical race theory, the possibility of providing equal access in an unequal society is questioned. Opportunities for further work to increase inclusivity at archives engaged in carceral collecting are offered. These suggestions are aligned with the goal of making archives documenting the history of incarceration and abolitionist thought and action accessible to the individuals for whom the material is most urgently needed to expedite their liberation.
“Carceral collecting” is a new term in the archival profession and a growing realm of collecting for academic archives (Robinson-Sweet, 2024). Here, the term carceral collecting will be used to denote a collection strategy that aims to document the history of incarceration in the United States, a history rooted in the period of enslavement during which the United States was formed (Davis, 1983; Hernández, Muhammad, and Thompson, 2015; Kaba, 2020). The purpose of carceral collecting is to gather primary source material documenting the experience of formerly or currently incarcerated individuals and individuals and organizations working in the field of prison reform or abolition.[i]
A focus on the individuals who have experienced incarceration and those who are working against the carceral state makes this definition notably different from the related term carceral archives. Carceral archives legitimate the carceral state (Robinson-Sweet), a societal structure in which mass incarceration has a pervasive impact (Hernández, Muhammad, and Thompson). Those working against the carceral state refuse the notion that a healthy society is constructed around a system designed to control the population via an ever-present threat of punishment (Bey, 2022).[ii]
The growing interest in carceral collecting at academic archives creates friction between access policies oriented around collection security and an institution’s claim of being welcoming to all. The zine Reading the Room: A Guide to Surveillance Practices in Special Collections documents the facets of the security apparatus researchers must interact with in exchange for access to primary source material at many archives. Surveillance tools include cameras, security officers, photo identification requirements, and the sometimes permanent retention of visitor data (Abolition in Special Collections, 2024). The Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) recognizes the importance of balancing material security needs with the creation of a safe space for all visitors. For example, the “ACRL/RBMS Guidelines Regarding the Security of Special Collections Materials” (revised 2023) suggests that the presence of security cameras be accompanied by signage informing visitors of their use. This can be difficult if implementation of security camera notifications is governed by institution-wide policies outside of an archive’s direct control.
Such challenges demonstrate why the difference between carceral collecting and carceral archives is essential. There is no dissonance between access practices informed by carceral logics in carceral archives. Practices informed by carceral logics are practices that mimic strategies used in the carceral state to control a population or to justify punishment, such as surveillance. Therefore, an ethical rift is laid bare between the stewardship of these records and the implementation of access policies that mimic carceral logics in archives that steward the intellectual work of individuals harmed by the experience of incarceration and prison abolitionists, who advocate for the closure of sites of incarceration and an end to policing accompanied by a reallocation of funds (Kaba; Bierria, Caruthers, and Lober, 2022).
At the latter institutions, the implementation of non-extractive collecting practices must extend beyond acquisition and processing into the reading room. Access, a physical experience, has a perpetually self-reinforcing relationship with discourse, an intellectual experience (Foucault, 1972). Individuals enabled to access archival material become individuals enabled to speak with authority on the topic of those primary source documents.
To rectify the problems that can be perpetuated in a situation of unequal access, making an archive open to all seems like the simple solution. However, universal availability cannot be the exclusive criteria for physical accessibility. On its own, it does not address the power imbalance of who gets to participate in discourse because our physical experiences are, reflexively, informed by our society’s discourse. This discourse includes ideologies, such as white supremacy, that are built on the desire to control what a person can do or be based on the body they inhabit. To break out of this cycle, archives must craft access policies that are conscious of the fact that just because a door is open not everyone will feel comfortable or safe walking through.
Resmaa Menakem makes the case that “[h]istory matters, and an awareness of it puts our lives in context… History lives through our bodies right now, and in every moment” (2017, p. 258). Therefore, being open to the public must be paired with practices informed by the knowledge that each researcher carries an embodied history with them when they visit the archives.
Because every individual carries a unique history constructed of experiences both personal and collective, I am questioning the very possibility of providing equal access to carceral collections through the use of universalist access policies alone within a fundamentally unequal society, echoing critiques of the profession informed by critical race theory (Chiu, Ettarh, and Ferretti, 2021). This is a core issue for archives engaged in carceral collecting to address because inequalities in the United States are a perpetual cause and effect of living in a carceral state.
An example of the challenges of constructing an egalitarian situation within an unequal society can be found in the history of library organizations’ search for conference locations that will provide a safe and welcoming environment for all attendees. In 1940, the Progressive Librarians Council (PLC) wrote a Letter to the Editor of the A.L.A. Bulletin detailing their disapproval of the A.L.A. council’s vote to “reconsider its 1936 ruling that official meetings of the Association would thereafter be held only where equal treatment could be accorded to all members.” In the letter, the PLC ends their principled argument with the somewhat incongruous statement, “[t]he world of books knows no color line” (Progressive Librarians Council Correspondence, box 1, folder 4, 1940). While the group was right to defend the importance of holding conferences in places where Black attendees would not be subject to explicitly discriminatory treatment under the law, they were wrong to insist that any micro-environment within American society in 1940, including “the world of books,” was truly egalitarian, even in the absence of overt legal discrimination. Indeed, there would have been no need for librarian and PLC member Charlamae Rollins to initiate a letter-writing campaign to publishers regarding the lack of representation of Black children’s experience in children’s books if the world of books knew no color line (Mickenberg, 2006). To insist that “the world of books knows no color line” suggested that society could be rid of racism by transitioning to a colorblind legal framework. This stance does not reckon with what we now know about implicit bias — that the color line not only existed in law but also in our heads (Tippett and Banaji, 2018).
Anti-racist action in libraries and archives requires more than opening the front doors and stating that everyone is welcome in while ignoring their unique identity. The PLC rightly engaged with society critically by pointing out the overtly racist treatment Black library professionals would receive at conferences in states with discriminatory laws. However, achieving the goal of equal access will require that the profession takes the necessary next step and engages constructively with the society of which it is an inextricable part by leading by example and taking accountability for its internal complicity with oppressive ideologies at large to create a more equitable environment. A contemporary example of the complexity of locating a space free of bigotry in the United States is provided by the 2022 Joint Conference of Librarians of Color held in St. Pete Beach, Florida. Ahead of the conference, the Joint Council of Librarians of Color (JCLC) acknowledged the negative impact of anti-LGBTQI+ laws such as Florida House Bill 1557 (often referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill”). However, in their statement on the subject, JCLC doesn’t insist that anti-LGBTQI+ hate is isolated to one state in the United States or that it is absent from library spaces elsewhere. Rather, they acknowledge, “The world has become an even less hospitable place for those who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex (LGBTQI+),” and they turn to reparative action by “[elevating] LGBTQI+ voices in [their] programming, events and presence throughout [their] conference” (n.d.).[iii]
Disrupting the racial colorblindness that often accompanies universalist access policies requires evaluation of the ways in which our bodies influence our relationship to our social environment that is grounded in historical context. Attention to the complexities of this reality is necessary because, as Staci K. Haines shares, “[t]o be a part of change, whether personal healing or widespread social change, we need to be awake to how we embody and participate in social conditions that harm, consciously and unconsciously” (2019, p. 61).
The first recommendation of this essay is that archives engaged in carceral collecting look beyond access policies privileging universality over specificity. Angela Davis argues, “[m]ore often than not universal categories have been clandestinely racialized” (2016, p. 87). A focus instead on embodied inclusivity, an approach to inclusivity that encompasses attention to diverse physical beings, would acknowledge that each visitor carries unique knowledge (Menakem). When the specificities of a person’s identity are embraced rather than washed over, we can begin to develop relationships founded on trust rather than fear (Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba, 2023). A universalist approach to access, while better than an explicitly elitist approach, does not really allow an archive to understand its visitors enough to meet their varied needs to feel safe and welcome accessing carceral collections.
I have conducted this research, which is an exploration of ideas in trauma theory and feminist theory, with a particular focus on Black feminist thought, as a white librarian who has not experienced incarceration. The specifications of my identity are problematic in this context because I cannot bring lived experience to bear on the formulation of proposed solutions. I have attempted to fill gaps in my knowledge through study of the work of many other scholars, but a central component of this research is to consider what it would mean to elevate the value of embodied knowledge. Centering lived experience as a legitimate form of knowledge that should be included in the process of developing access best practices in archives engaged in carceral collecting places this work within the framework of feminist theory and praxis (Hill Collins, 2009). My hope is that consideration of the limited nature of the perspectives of those who have not experienced incarceration will generate for library professionals a sense of urgency in implementing the further work that I argue must be done. To be sincere will mean to act.
I began this work with a desire to grapple with the sometimes uncomfortable nature of managing access to carceral collections documenting histories that are not mine to tell as an Access Services Coordinator at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library. Policing access to these records from my positionality of identification with the oppressor in a carceral state built on white supremacist ideals is ethically fraught.
I make use of the verb police here intentionally to make a connection to the ethical issues that should be considered by archives engaged in carceral collecting. To police is “to supervise the operation, execution, or administration of to prevent or detect and prosecute violations of rules and regulations” (Merriam-Webster, accessed 2024). Qui Alexander acknowledges that “[l]iving in a punitively driven society leads us to internalize carceral logics” (2022, p. 284). Therefore, it is essential for me to consider how the parts of my role that require me to police use of archival material in the reading room may be at cross-purposes with my ability to provide “equal access” to a diverse range of individuals as stipulated by the ACRL guidelines for special collections professionals (American Library Association, updated 2017). Within the context of a carceral state built on white supremacy, can employees at archives engaged in carceral collecting truly police access equally? I believe such an application of colorblind universalism is fundamentally untenable in this context.
Following feminist pedagogical practice (Accardi, 2013), the intention of the further work suggested here is to urge archives engaged in carceral collecting to intentionally seek out the diverse embodied knowledge of individuals interested in conducting research in carceral history in the United States. I will make a case for why these archives must include this knowledge in the process of crafting policies that are abolitionist and informed by the needs of researchers in this subject area.
By implementing a philosophy of embodied inclusivity, archives engaged in carceral collecting will be better able to create a safe and welcoming environment for members of the community of incarcerated individuals and prison abolitionists from which carceral collections originate and, more broadly, the community of researchers for whom material documenting the realities of lives negatively impacted by the carceral state is most urgently needed to expedite liberation. This approach goes beyond a professed openness to diverse ideas, placing it in contrast to symbolic inclusion (Hill Collins). The guiding principle of this exploratory essay will be Patricia Hill Collins’ insistence that “knowledge for knowledge’s sake is not enough” (p. 35).
Examining the ethical implications of the practice of carceral collecting in relation to access policies is essential because the carceral state, a traumatizing structure in American society, is a racist institution that functions to uphold the supremacy of wealthy, white individuals (Davis, 2023; Haines). Many in power recognize that structuring society openly on a racist hierarchy intended to protect white supremacy would no longer be accepted by many of us. Therefore, narratives of criminality are used to sow distrust of individuals and communities of color (Alexander, 2010).
Take for example the fact that racism was the rationale for incarceration of individuals of Japanese ancestry in concentration camps across the United States during World War II (Japanese American Citizens’ League National Committee for Redress, 1978).[iv] Document WRA-126 titled “Application for Leave Clearance” from the War Relocation Authority makes plain the importance of proximity to whiteness within carceral institutions. Item number eight on the form directs the incarcerated individual to “Give the names and addresses of references… These need not be Caucasians, but good Caucasian references may be particularly helpful” (Karl Ichiro Akiya Papers, box 6, folder 1, 1941-1944). The implication was that white references were viewed as more trustworthy by War Relocation Authority officials.
The practice of making race a contingency in assessment of trustworthiness within the criminal legal system[v] persists in our contemporary context despite no longer being explicitly acknowledged in writing (Davis, 2023). While theoretically the law applies equally to everyone, Ruth Wilson Gilmore clarifies that in practice, “substantively different rules and punishments” are applied “to various kinds of defendants” (2007, p. 225). According to the Prison Policy Initiative, people of color “are dramatically overrepresented in the nation’s prisons and jails” (Sawyer and Wagner, 2024). In the context of immigration, racism has historically driven the incarceration of immigrants in detention facilities (Perreira, 2023). Tina Shull names immigration detention as a component of the carceral state nearly indistinguishable from the criminal legal systems’ sites of incarceration (2022).
While it is essential for archives engaged in carceral collecting to be cognizant of the ways in which the archival environment is inextricable from the carceral state, it is important to be clear that an archive’s reading room is not identical to a site of incarceration. The intention here is not to establish an equivalence, but to explore how carceral logics, which entered American life when wealthy, white landowners needed a new means of controlling Black Americans in the wake of the abolition of slavery (Davis, 1983), have permeated culture in the United States creating a landscape of insidious carceral mimetics that archives engaged in carceral collecting have a responsibility not to ignore (Gilmore).
Carceral mimetics found in archives have in some cases been intentionally built into the environment and in other cases become part of the culture surreptitiously over time. The practice of placing security guards in archives mirrors the police presence in society at large, and this practice has not remained static. For example, a cursory examination of memoranda found in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture records displays a greater number of references to security guards and building security procedures in documents in the November 1974-March 1975 memoranda folder as opposed to earlier memoranda folders dated in the 1950s (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture records, box 35, folder 4, 1974-1975; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture records, box 4, folder 5, 1949-1954). This may be incidental or related to other causal factors, but it is notable that the date range of increased security-related topics appearing in the library’s memoranda mirrors the origin of the contemporary period of mass incarceration (Hernández, Muhammad, and Thompson). Time constraints related to funding available for this project did not allow for a systematic review of all memoranda archived in the Schomburg Center records. Further study of institutional records at this archive and others would be required before fully outlining the potential existence of a clear trend in carceral mimetics.
The presence of security officers is another factor that archives housed within larger institutions may have little direct control over. In these instances, archives engaged in carceral collecting should follow the recommendation included in the “ACRL/RBMS Guidelines Regarding the Security of Special Collections Materials” that “The [Library Security Lead] should be involved with the development and implementation of larger institutional security measures, as these may affect the security of special collections materials.”
Requiring visitors to submit to bag checks is a common practice at archives, and it is a form of surveillance that deprives researchers of privacy. While not included in Abolition in Special Collections’ guide to surveillance practices, it is one of “the technologies and practices” used by archives “that perpetuate a culture of distrust toward people in their physical spaces.” Additionally, it can provide the opportunity for disparate treatment of researchers if bags are checked with a varied level of scrutiny[vi].
Here, again, it would be both inaccurate and inappropriate to apply a direct equivalence between the practice of strip searches in sites of incarceration and the practice of bag searches in archives; however, an evaluation of the ways in which both practices are often gratuitous infringements on privacy is of relevance. Strip searches have been performed in circumstances where the incarcerated individual has not had direct contact with anyone from outside the site of incarceration (Abu-Jamal, 1995), and historian Hugh Ryan (2023) has drawn attention to a Department of Corrections report from 1955 stating that in 20 years of using strip searches as a security tactic, no narcotics were found (p. 178). The utility of strip searches as a necessary security tactic is contested. Notably, in archives, bag searches are often performed in situations in which researchers’ bags are locked away for the duration of their visit. While significantly disparate in severity, both strip searches and bag searches are arguably acts of security performance.
Carceral mimetics are also found in libraries’ cultural environment which, in turn, influences libraries’ physical environment. As Baharak Yousefi argues, “the crucial information about the profession cannot always be found in our vision, mission, and values statements or our strategic plans. It can, however, be inferred from our dispositions, our propensities, and the subtleties with which a particular agenda is pushed through while a different goal or intention is espoused” (2017, 97).
An example of the ethical complexity of the dichotomy between what we say and what we do can be found in an examination of archives’ adoption of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements and the library professions’ cultural commitment to neutral framing.[vii] Hill Collins names “paying lip service to the need for diversity, but changing little about one’s own practice” as a “pattern of suppression” (p. 8). Therefore, archives that engage in carceral collecting in an effort to increase diversity within their collection development strategy must consider the implications to policy development in other areas of the archive.
While leaders of libraries and archives may not use the term neutrality directly, a stance of neutrality can still be performed via neutral framing. Chiu, Ettarh, and Ferretti explain that neutral framing is a philosophy that “holds that all viewpoints deserve equal weight and space” (p. 63). This philosophy may appear to be in place for the purpose of remaining open to a wide range of opinions and communities of thought, therefore making the library a more welcoming physical space for a wide range of users. However, librarian Ian Beilin lays out the argument that, in actuality, the idea of neutrality is often used to implicitly uphold whiteness as the standard or normative human experience (2017). Because, unlike carceral archives, archives engaged in carceral collecting do not function to legitimate the carceral state and its racist foundations, these archives are participating in an anti-racist collection development strategy. Anti-racism requires intent and action against white supremacy, and therefore, resists neutral framing. To insist otherwise, leads archives engaged in carceral collecting to an impasse that makes following through on commitments to DEI nearly impossible. At this impasse, these archives become institutions that perpetuate white supremacy under the guise of race-neutral concepts, and, therefore, adherence to neutral framing at archives engaged in carceral collecting is a problematic form of carceral mimetics.
According to the ACRL “Guidelines: Competencies for Special Collections Professionals,” a special collections professional “[p]ossesses cultural and linguistic competencies appropriate for their collections and user communities.” By resisting neutral framing and adopting anti-racist practice, archives engaged in carceral collecting must take on the responsibility of making their spaces truly safe and welcoming. They can do so by building community with and seeking feedback from researchers who have experienced incarceration or the trauma of racist policing who are interested in accessing primary source material as a tool for achieving abolitionist goals.
If individuals who have experienced incarceration or the traumatization of racist policing cannot access archival material documenting the history of that experience and the people who have fought back against it, then carceral collecting reinforces exile. Incarcerated individuals will go “from people to be helped, to problems to be solved,” as Hugh Ryan has argued (p. 37), to objects to be studied by individuals outside the community in a decontextualized environment. [viii] If this becomes the case, effectively, the archive will be facilitating a white supremacist declawing of these primary sources. Because “[a]bolitionist politics demand a literal end to all punitive systems” (Bierria, Caruthers, and Lober, 2022), the life’s work of abolitionist theorists and individuals who have experienced incarceration cannot be held apart for the novelty of study alone by a limited academic community.
Michelle Caswell explains, “[w]e must shift the focus… of the archival imaginary, from some future moment to the present, as users of archives search for past corollaries to their current situation through archival use” (2021, p. 54). Too often, justifying the use of carceral logics to protect records for imagined and disembodied future researchers ranks higher in importance than enabling access to vital primary sources to the fully embodied researchers of today, including those still incarcerated (Robinson-Sweet).
Safeguarding archival materials cannot be neglected entirely, of course. Ensuring materials are available and displaying care in how they are handled is an essential component of showing respect for donors of collections and the communities they represent (Romero and Sykes-Kunk, 2024). It will always be of significant importance to the profession, but making it the highest priority and implementing a security apparatus in support of it is a barrier to implementing a practice of inclusivity that is predicated on a radical trust. Radical trust disposes of carceral mimetics and truly welcomes every researchers’ embodied self into the reading room.
While archives engaged in carceral collecting can continue to practice preservation best practices, such as implementing climate controlled storage spaces or educating researchers on how careful handling of material can delay deterioration, practicing radical trust requires making researchers’ sense of safety in archival spaces the top priority. Implementation of a security apparatus that mimics carceral logics may reduce risk; however, archives engaged in carceral collecting must always seriously consider what effect security practices may have on access. Because security practices informed by carceral logics mimic those found in the carceral state at large, engaging with carceral mimetics in the archive has the potential to activate a trauma response for visitors harmed by the experience of incarceration or the experience of being targeted by racist policing. Archives must adopt trauma-aware practices that may require dismantling security practices informed by carceral logics.
Ensuring that people feel safe in the reading room will require stronger connections between archives and the communities from which they are soliciting collections. Bessel van der Kolk clarifies, “[s]ocial support is not the same as merely being in the presence of others. The critical issue is reciprocity: being truly heard and seen by the people around us, feeling that we are held in someone else’s mind and heart. For our physiology to calm down, heal, and grow we need a visceral feeling of safety” (2014, p. 81). This connection should include work done by public service departments to ensure that individuals who have experienced the trauma of incarceration or racist policing are able to feel safe while navigating the archive (Alison Clemens and Jessica Farrell, 2025). When working with communities that have experienced trauma, archives engaged in carceral collecting must be attuned to the fact that not everyone experiences the same space in the same way. What may seem innocuous to one person could elicit a strong reaction in another (van der Kolk).
Of course, public services departments cannot ask every visitor to fill out a personal questionnaire on their experience with trauma or ask researchers whether they have experienced incarceration. However, one suggestion for further research is facilitating user studies with volunteers. As Hill Collins states, “[o]ppression is not simply understood in the mind—it is felt in the body in myriad ways” (p. 293); therefore, it is essential to hear from people who have been incarcerated directly about what may or may not make them feel comfortable in the archive. Focus groups including researchers who have experienced incarceration would provide archives with the opportunity to learn what aspects of a visit to the reading room made them feel more or less safe. In turn, these researchers would benefit from knowing that their right to access materials related to the history of incarceration in the United States in an environment where they feel safe is important to the archive, especially if their feedback is acted on and real change ensues. Additionally, libraries and archives are known to conduct security audits. Archives engaged in carceral collecting should consider conducting public service audits to assess how they can improve in making their space welcoming for people who have experienced incarceration.
The carceral state extends beyond discrete physical locations of incarceration to a social structure rooted in distrust that perpetuates a damaging psychological experience within society at large. As Ruth Wilson Gilmore explains, “prison is not a building ‘over there’ but a set of relationships that undermine rather than stabilize everyday lives everywhere” (p. 242). And the influence of the carceral state can be found in archives in places that may seem surprising. Citing the American Library Association, Alison Clemens and Jessica Farrell explain, “[f]or example, public and private college libraries and government offices, where many archives and special collections are located, routinely purchase furniture from correctional services” (p.5). To push back against this structure, archives engaged in carceral collecting should engage in a practice of embodied inclusivity. Archives engaged in carceral collecting must acknowledge that the diversity of researchers’ embodied experiences requires a diversity of approaches to make a wide variety of people feel welcome (Fleming and McBride, 2017).
It is important to consider that there are limits to trust, and there are some individuals who are not going to be comfortable visiting an archive, particularly at Ivy League institutions and predominantly white institutions. Archives should consider how they can be creative in developing specific outreach programs that make people aware of their digital resources.
Finally, archives must address the reality that many people interested in accessing primary source material documenting the history of incarceration in the United States cannot visit the archive at all. Therefore, the final suggestion of this paper is that archives engaged in carceral collecting should consider partnering with education programs for incarcerated students to explore what options exist for making archival material available to them. Knowledge can fuel empowerment, which “requires transforming unjust social institutions that African-Americans encounter from one generation to the next” (Hill Collins, p. 291). Academic institutions that collect the histories and intellectual work of prison abolitionists and individuals who have been incarcerated, including Black, Indigenous, and other people of color as well as individuals held in detention facilities, should support incarcerated students.
My research for this paper began with an encounter with Michelle Russell’s essay “An Open Letter to the Academy.” Russell names “the responsibility of women’s studies to those outside the academy’s walls: the mass of women whose lives will be fundamentally affected by the version of reality developed there, but who, as yet, have no way of directly influencing [the academy’s] direction” (1981, p. 101). Working with other education professionals to facilitate access to primary source material for incarcerated students is one way in which institutions engaged in carceral collecting can participate in an exchange with the community of incarcerated individuals in the United States.
None of this necessary work should discourage academic archives from continuing to explore carceral collecting as a growing focus. Including the papers of currently or formerly incarcerated individuals and those involved in abolitionist movements in the archive creates an opportunity for these voices to be heard that is rare within the carceral state. Angela Davis calls attention to the fact that allowing the voices of those behind bars to be heard is essential for those “serious about developing egalitarian relations” (2016, p. 27).
Demonstrated action towards different ways of being in community shows donors and members of the community of individuals negatively impacted by mass incarceration in the United States that the archive views them as co-strugglers and not as objects of curiosity. As explained by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba, “if we can experience other people as co-strugglers… we can act on the values of the world we want to build. We can experience moments of justice, peace, and liberation and in doing so realize that these concepts are not fantasies but realities that can be constructed” (p. 39-40). For a profession dedicated to preserving the history of the full range of American life, the work required to provide access to this material in a respectful manner that reciprocates the trust donors have shown in being willing to share their records is absolutely worth the investment.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the Harvard Library Bryant Fellowship committee for their time and consideration of my fellowship proposal. Participating in the Bryant Fellowship program launched this work and provided me with the opportunity to visit archives on the East Coast. Big thanks to my Schlesinger Library colleagues Jonathan Tuttle, Emily Mathay, Kelcy Shepherd, Rachel Greenhaus, Erin Labove, and Suzi Earle for sharing feedback on an early draft of this work. Thanks also to Ian Beilin and Jasmine Sykes-Kunk for providing peer review and publishing editor Jess Schomberg as well as the rest of the In the Library with the Lead Pipe team for their kind consideration of my article proposal.
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[i] The description of the strategic collecting direction “Voices of Mass Incarceration in the United States” at Brown University’s John Hay Library was informative for crafting this definition of carceral collecting.
[ii] See Mariame Kaba’s “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police” in the New York Times for an introduction to the work and ideas of contemporary prison abolitionists.
[iii] Thanks to Jasmine Sykes-Kunk for drawing my attention to this contemporary example.
[iv] The term concentration camp is used following the practice of Densho. “Despite the seemingly innocuous name [relocation center], these were prisons—compounds of barracks surrounded by barbed wire fences and patrolled by armed guards—which Japanese Americans could not leave without permission. ‘Relocation center’ fails to convey the harsh conditions and forced confinement of these facilities… Our use of ‘concentration camp’ is intended to accurately describe what Japanese Americans were subjected to during WWII, and is not meant to undermine the experiences of Holocaust survivors or to conflate these two histories in any way. Like many Holocaust studies scholars, we believe that ‘concentration camp’ is a euphemism for the Nazi death camps where millions of innocent Jews and other political prisoners were killed” (Accessed June 9, 2024).
[v] Check out “Why We Say ’Criminal Legal System,’ Not ’Criminal Justice System’” from The Vera Institute of Justice.
[vi] See posts from Adam X. McNeil (@CulturedModesty) and Gabrielle Foreman (@profgrabrielle).
[vii] A reference for the library crowd – the ethos of neutrality has culturally stuck to archives so much so that Tig Notaro‘s character, Jett Reno, uses the term in the 32nd century to describe the fictional Eternal Gallery and Archive in episode seven, “Erigah,” of Star Trek: Discovery season five.
[viii] See Archiving Medical Violence: Consent and the Carceral State by Christopher Perreira for information on how incarcerated individuals have already been treated as subjects to be studied by the medical establishment.