OVERVIEW: This session will be an analysis of a multi-year grant-funded project at the Arizona State Library, Archives, and Public Records. During this project, we focused on gaining intellectual control over records that documented a high-profile murder in the 1970s. Although the documents we focused on were specific to the Attorney General's office, we had to create workflows and plans to understand how our actions would impact related collections in other parts of our repository. The first year focused on reviewing all the records to answer the question: What do we have? This included an extensive collaboration with the Attorney General's office with the turnover of multiple staff throughout the project. We had to collaborate to understand how to address sealed, confidential, and restricted records while simultaneously keeping archival ethics and access in mind. The second part of the grant was a continuation of part one, which focused on intellectual control. However, we added a focus on physically processing it into the final containers to produce a publicly accessible collection. Although we strove to accommodate this additional focus, we were not successful in accomplishing this part of the project which left us with multiple questions to answer that focus on, such as what resources would have changed the outcome? How could we have advocated differently for these additional resources? Did our additional focus create unexpected barriers to the successful outcome of this project? Was there anything that we could not fix? These questions and more had to be considered when determining how to complete the collection without additional funding and resources.
As part of the analysis for this presentation, we will focus on grant-funding, navigating relationships with external stakeholders that are not familiar with archival best practices, addressing unexpected discoveries that have legal implications, and some suggestions that we hope archivists and records managers would be able to utilize in their profession.
Due to the complexity of public records laws at the state-level, it is important for archivists and records managers to have an understanding of how to navigate complex collections that contain materials in a variety of formats, including electronic records, that have legal and ethical restrictions. Through a careful discussion of this project and its outcomes, NAGARA members will gain a deeper understanding of how to navigate the nuances of working with external stakeholders. Additionally, this presentation will provide information on AirTable, which was utilized to maintain our large database at little to no cost. NAGARA members will take away key methodologies, tactics, and workflows that they can implement in their repositories to assist when dealing with complex confidential or restricted records that may have ethical concerns.
GARA CERTIFICATE CORE COMPETENCY AREA: "Records and Information Management Basics"
TARGET AUDIENCE: Federal, State/Tribal, Local
FOCUS AREAS: Archives
PRESENTERS: Kaitlin D'Amico, Lead Archivist, Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records | Cheyenne Stiegmann, Archivist, Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records