STOP REMOVING ARCHIVAL LABOR FROM THE STORY! Multiple #archivists helped hotel for over a year - images found on our digtl colls AND we helped the reporter w history. Yet, these photos were "lost to time and the archive" until the Omni "discovered" them whas11.com/article/news/l…
The hotel "discovered" the photos in our digital collections. But first they went through the photo archivists who processed them, the digital initiatives librarian who runs our digital collections, the student worker who scanned them, the metadata librarian who created metadata
Then our local history archivist, along with others in the department, worked with reporter to tell him history behind images, then we put him in contact with local historian who wrote about black musicians in town.
Our digital initiatives librarian has been working with this hotel for over a year to identify the images they want, create invoices, with assistance from our imaging services manager. There is an entire TEAM of people who make this work possible.
Our images are not just sitting in the archive collecting dust. We work at least 40 hours a week, with an entire assembly line of trained professionals, to provide access to images that WE ARE AWARE OF.
Thankfully the UofL archives got a bit of a shout out in the story - but the way it was produced almost erased the individual labor that went into this and gave the hotel most of the credit. They essentially took non-profit labor and assigned it to a corporation.
Thanks for all of the retweets, comments, & likes. The response proves that this is an issue that many of us in the field have to contend with. If you work at an institution & have had your labor erased in a public way, please DM me your story, if willing to share. #archives
