Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age: Let’s Talk Politics

Sponsored by Springer Nature

Recorded on 01/13/2021
Posted in The Authority File

Episode 175

Whether we like to admit it or not, politics surround our civic, professional, and personal lives. The media we choose, products we buy, and people we engage with reflect our own governance, political party, and position in society. So how do politics factor into the preservation, curation, and dissemination of digital materials?

Susan Mizruchi, director of the Center for Humanities at Boston University, discusses the politics that color the practice of preservation. What is the political urgency in protecting records? How do we ensure that archivists are being valued for their work? Does the compensation keep up with the ongoing pedagogical and technical roles that librarians are being asked to take on?

In this second episode, Susan talks the politics of protecting materials and the issues of status and pay that arise in librarianship. She also digs into the value of collaboration between librarians, archivists, and faculty, offering examples of mutually-beneficial partnerships that formed during the process of putting together her edited volume, Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age.

About the guest:

Susan Mizruchi
William Arrowsmith Professor in the Humanities
Director, BU Center for the Humanities
Professor of English
Boston University

Susan L. Mizruchi has been working between disciplines throughout her career, earning B.A.s in both history and English from Washington University in 1981, and her Ph.D. in English from Princeton University in 1985 with a dissertation on nineteenth-century literature and historiography. Since coming to Boston University in 1986, she has focused on the intersection of social, religious, and literary studies. Her specialties are American literature and film, religion and culture, literary and social theory, literary history, and history of the social sciences.

Her books include: Brando’s Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work (Norton, 2014, 2015); The Rise of Multicultural America (North Carolina, 2008) Becoming Multicultural: Culture, Economy, and the Novel, 1860–1920 (Cambridge, 2005); The Science of Sacrifice: American Literature and Modern Social Theory (Princeton, 1998); The Power of Historical Knowledge: Narrating the Past in Hawthorne, James, & Dreiser (Princeton, 1988); and as editor, Religion and Cultural Studies, (Princeton, 2001) and Libraries and Archives in the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

She is the recipient of many academic honors, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Huntington Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Scholars Program. She serves as Oxford University Press’s Delegate in Literature, Film, and Media Studies, and as a consultant for many foundations, among them, PBS (the American Master’s Series), ACLS, NEH, and the Princeton University English Department Advisory Council. Susan has been on the faculty of the Teachers as Scholars Program since 1999. She has directed thirty dissertations at BU and is the recipient of the Arts and Sciences Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Education (2015), and a Distinguished Teaching Award from Boston University’s Honors Program (2001). She became the Director of the Boston University Center for the Humanities in July 2016. In 2017, she was named the inaugural William Arrowsmith Professor in the Humanities.

Enjoy the episode? Check out the rest of the series:

• Episode one: Background, Forum, and Fruition
• Episode three: Navigating the Flood of Information
• Episode four: The Value of Collaboration

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