Event announcement: “Watersheds: Critical Moments for Archives and the Environment” 

Posted onAuthorGaby Hale

by the Rose Library Sustainability Committee

Event announcement: “Watersheds: Critical Moments for Archives and the Environment” – April 22, 2025, 10:00am-3:30pm 

Since forming in 2019, the Rose Library Sustainability Committee has been dedicated to aligning archival work with the work of environmental justice. As part of this commitment, we research current thinking around archives and climate change, and create internal guidance for staff day-to-day operations, including sustainable travel, procurement, and digital recordkeeping. 

The committee also engages in outreach, education, and programming. In 2022, we hosted our first public event, titled “Move, Preserve, Sustain,” which explored the crosswords between the environment, performance, and archival research. Professors George Staib and Kristin O’Neal from the Emory University Department of Dance and dancers from National Water Dance researched and created work based on environmental sustainability-related collections in Rose Library. Students from the Dance department performed works set against the backdrop of Emory’s natural spaces accompanied by the Vega Quartet. The event demonstrated how cross-departmental and interdisciplinary collaboration can bring awareness to issues of environmental sustainability.   

This year, the committee will host “Watersheds: Critical Moments for Archives and the Environment,” seminar in the Woodruff Library Jones Room from 10:00am-3:30pm. The theme marks a pivotal moment for archivists to reflect on our role in advancing climate issues and environmental justice through our archival practices. Climate change is reshaping the boundaries and sometimes the very existence of many communities. How should these changes be memorialized and documented?  Eira Tansey, author of A Green New Deal for Archives and a distinguished archivist and researcher specializing in the impact of climate change on archives and cultural heritage, will lead participants throughout a day of knowledge sharing and insightful discussion.   

Join us at 10 am to begin the day with a keynote by Eira which will explore lessons for our future from the construction of large infrastructure projects resulting in community displacement, and reflect on the role of archives in understanding changes to the landscape. At 11:45am, we’ll return for a reading group session. And at 2pm, archivists and cultural heritage workers from around Atlanta will gather to workshop strategies for documenting environmental sustainability initiatives effectively.  Throughout the day, participants are welcome to visit a “mini-fair” of informational tables outside of the Jones Room to learn more about the work of student and Atlanta-area environmental sustainability organizations.  

The keynote, reading group, and “mini-fair” are free and open to the public. The documentation strategies workshop is free and open to all interested cultural heritage (archive, museum, gallery, and library) workers. Participants are welcome to attend as many or as few sessions as desired. Materials for the reading group are below and on Eventbrite.   

Visit here for more information about Eira’s work. 

Visit here for more information about Rose Library Sustainability Committee’s past initiatives. 

Visit here to register for the event. 

Readings: 

Focus articles 

Note: If you only have time for one article, read the Wessell and Thorpe selection 

  • Wessell, Adele, and Clare Thorpe. “Digital Stewardship for River Stewardship: Creating the Richmond River Open Access Repository.” Archives and Records 45, no. 2 (May 3, 2024): 135–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/23257962.2024.2344216.  
  • Schindler, Amy C., and Brian Keough. “Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Documenting Environmental Activism in New York State.” Archival Issues 28, no. 2 (2004). https://www.jstor.org/stable/41102084.  

Additional articles if you want to go deeper on documentation strategies:

  • Rettig, Patricia J. “Collecting Water: An Analysis of a Multidisciplinary Special-Subject Archives.” The American Archivist 80, no. 1 (March 1, 2017): 82–102. https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081.80.1.82. 
  • Hughes-Watkins, Lae’l. “Filling in the Gaps: Using Outreach Efforts to Acquire Documentation on the Black Campus Movement, 1965-1972.” Archival Issues 36, no. 1 (2014). https://www.jstor.org/stable/24589922.  
  • Joint Committee on Archives of Science & Technology, Clark A. Elliott, and Society of American Archivists. Understanding Progress as Process: Documentation of the History of Post-War Science and Technology in the United States. Chicago, Ill.: distributed by the Society of American Archivists, 1983. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000291832.