[Air-L] Webinar: 'The politics of preservation: cultural collections in dangerous times'

[Kieran Hegarty]

Dear AoIRers,

Please find below a webinar I am running that may be of interest to those working in critical information studies, decoloniality, digital preservation, and/or archival studies.

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The fourth quarterly meetup of the Australasia Preserves digital preservation community of practice for 2021.
Date/time: Tuesday 2 November 2021 11:00AM–12:30 PM AEDT

Event title: The politics of preservation: cultural collections in dangerous times.
Event provocation: "Taking something that would otherwise disappear and making it endure has consequences in the world. This makes it a political act, neither wholly good, nor wholly bad, but dangerous."

A meetup organised by community member Kieran Hegarty to celebrate in the week of World Digital Preservation Day. Kieran is a PhD Candidate (Representing Multicultural Australia in National and State Libraries), at RMIT University. This event brings together artists, activists, archivists, and academics to together think through the politics of preservation with the Australasia Preserves Community of Practice.

Archivists and archival scholars have increasingly recognised that archival processes are at once political, professional, and personal. Archives have consequences. The decisions made at an institutional and individual level shape collections as sources of history, accountability, and evidence. This event considers the politics of preservation. It starts with a basic provocation: that taking something that would otherwise disappear and making it endure has consequences in the world. This process is neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but dangerous. Speakers will examine those consequences and the role archivists and archival processes (including systems, technologies, and structures in which records are kept) play in shaping the political life of collections.

FEATURING:

Narungga woman and activist-poet Dr Natalie Harkin on archival-poetics and decolonising state archives
Information studies scholar Dr Leisa Gibbons on tools to support a critical archival praxis
PhD researcher and librarian Kieran Hegarty on web archives and their political consequences

To register: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/australasia-preserves-quarterly-meetup-november-tickets-171759556457

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Kind regards,

Kieran Hegarty
PhD candidate, Representing Multicultural Australia in National and State Libraries
Centre for Urban Research
School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
RMIT University, City Campus
Building 8, Level 11 │ Melbourne VIC 3000
E kieran.hegarty at student.rmit.edu.au | W assemblingtheweb.com | @assemblingweb

I acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. I respectfully acknowledge their Ancestors and Elders, past and present.