Person:

Hyry, Thomas

The deadpan comedian Steven Wright has a joke I have always been fond of. “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” My role today is to give perspective from special collections and archives within the research library as we consider the future of library collections writ large. Although I work increasingly in a library context, my professional roots are as an archivist and as I have thought more and more about what I might contribute to our discussion that won’t be represented elsewhere, I have found myself returning to archival appraisal. I recognize that archival appraisal theory has not been a fashionable topic in the profession for at least the last 15 years and that there may be some misunderstanding and misconception about it, so I’m entering this territory with trepidation. But I will ask you to trust me as I venture into this valley, as I argue that archival appraisal theory can contribute to our thinking about research library collections as a whole in the era of the collective collection. We need to address the main concerns raised and confronted by archival appraisal as the research library pivots more directly toward special collections and archives, a trend I will also discuss at some length.

Book review of Archival Values: Essays in Honor of Mark Greene

The story of Apollo 11 is fascinating because it involves so many interconnected developments in the history of math and science, engineering and technology, and travel and exploration, driven by both peaceful inquiry and military necessity. This exhibition highlights these connections using rare and important objects, including many carried by the astronauts during their trip to the moon, to animate the stories that made astronaut Neil Armstrong’s “small step” possible.

This paper relates to work I was involved in when I was Director of UCLA Library Special Collections, to acquire two hard drives of documents, correspondence, email, photographs, and other materials created and compiled by Susan Sontag over the course of the last dozen years of her life. This process raised technical, ethical, philosophical, financial, and practical issues that still seem new to the archival endeavor. The paper features a narrative of this acquisition, intended as a case study that allows us to examine multiple dimensions in the changing nature of archives and archival institutions. In particular, it considers how born digital materials should and do factor into the overall marketplace for literary archives, which remains largely undetermined.