Friday, February 23, 2024, 12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
A Conversation on the Commons featuring Elizabeth O’Connell (Massachusetts Archives), Amita Kiley (Lawrence History Center), and Penni Martorell (Wistariahurst)
Social media posts, correspondence, oral histories, videos of events, twitter poetry, community bulletin boards, photographs. Any number of forms of born-digital media and correspondence vie for the attention of archivists and curators of small historical organizations — and not only in the inbox or online. The questions surrounding collecting and preserving them are materially different from the past, when we collected paper, or even when we digitized paper-based collections.
Does your organization hesitate to collect materials whose only existence is digital? What do you collect of your own records? Other materials? How do you choose? How do or should you keep them safe? What about formats? Do you have a budget and what are budget-friendly practices?
On February 23 at noon, join Massachusetts Digital Archivist Elizabeth O’Connell, in conversation with Amita Kiley of the Lawrence History Center and Penni Martorell of Wistariahurst in Holyoke, for a conversation on collecting and preserving born-digital materials, both as part of your own record keeping and to collect the 21st century. We’re going to take a stab at developing guidelines for our digital collecting. Bring your practices, questions, and tips for retaining our sanity!
Registration is free. REGISTER HERE!
We will do our best to monitor your questions and comments during the conversation. A recording will be publicly available in the Conversations on the Commons Archive, and a livestream available on our YouTube channel.
Questions? Email commons@masshistoryalliance.org
About our panelists:
Elizabeth O’Connell has spent the last three years working in digital archives at the Massachusetts Archives, and has been the head of the Digital Team for the past year. Her focus has been on identifying and making accessible records of marginalized groups in Massachusetts, preserving oral histories, and digitizing records of international interest. She also serves on the State Historical Records Advisory Board where she assists with matters related to digital record preservation and digitization. She believes that digital archives are the future of archives and a way to make more equitable access to our shared history. She has an undergraduate degree in Art History from the University of Kentucky and a Masters of Library and Information Science from Syracuse University.
Amita Kiley was raised in Lawrence, MA and graduated from Northeastern University in 2004 with a B.A. in American History. Her experience growing up in Lawrence fostered a love of the city and its history. In 2001, she began working at the Lawrence History Center as a preservation assistant as part of Northeastern University’s Co-operative Education program. She continued her work there after graduation and in 2015 moved into her current role as collections manager and research coordinator. Amita also manages LHC’s social media, supervises volunteers, and handles walk in visitors, school groups, and researchers. She is a Trustee of the White Fund, the Lawrence Public Library, and the Strikers’ Monument Committee of Lawrence, MA. She co-edited the book Covid Conversations: Voices from Lawrence & Lowell, Massachusetts in 2023. Amita enjoys introducing others to LHC’s mission of collecting, preserving, sharing, and animating the history and heritage of Lawrence and its people.
Penni Martorell is passionate about her work as curator of collections at Wistariahurst Museum and is Holyoke’s City Historian. When she is not managing and preserving collections and the archive, or organizing history exhibits and lectures; she is providing opportunities for community organizations, college classes, school groups, and the public to engage with local history through presentations and workshops. She is continually redefining Wistariahurst as a place of engagement and as a repository of local shared memory. She lectures on Holyoke’s industrial history; local textile and paper industries; and women history makers. She has led workshops on preserving heirlooms, and basic textile preservation. Martorell served 5 years on the State Historical Records Advisory Board, and she is a lecturer at Simmons University Graduate School of Library and Information Science where she tasks her students to accept the challenges of becoming 21st-century archivists.
Conversations on the Commons
Where people from Massachusetts history organizations get to vent, empathize, laugh, complain, think, collaborate, brainstorm, plan, and in general be up to no good.