Introduction

In the wake of influential scholarship around the turn of the millennium, it has become a platitude that archives cannot be neutral or impartial (Cook 2001a, p. 7). Even if a wholesale rejection of objectivity would be unreasonable, it is hard to disagree with the introduction to Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS), recognizing “the necessity for judgment and interpretation on the part of both the person who prepares the description and the institution responsible for it” (Society of American Archivists 2019, p. 2). Furthermore, we certainly must admit that persons’ standpoints and positionalities—including their perspectives, their personal histories, and their social and cultural identities—affect how they interpret the world (Collins 1986; Hall 1990, pp. 222–226). Therefore, we have to accept that finding aids inevitably bear the influence of the positionalities of the archivists who composed them. Alongside this point, note that finding aids are often revised and replaced over time. If we combine all this with the archival impulse to record and to preserve, then a natural thought is that archivists should keep archival meta-metadata: information about the authorship, author positionality, and revision history of finding aids.

A major question for archives, then, is whether to keep and publish archival meta-metadata. In particular, should authorship, author positionality, and revision history be provided along with finding aids? This article helps address that question. First, it develops and articulates a more thorough theoretical case for archival meta-metadata. Second, it reports on a survey of archivists at state archives in the US, examining current practices and opinions about archival description in relation to archival meta-metadata. Survey results reveal diverse practices, as well as hesitation to embrace expressions of positionality in the context of description. The article concludes with two general recommendations about obtaining the benefits of archival meta-metadata within the constraints of current practices and attitudes.

Before proceeding, one preliminary is in order. The connection between authorship and positionality is at the heart of this article, and cannot but bear on the article itself. Hence, I follow the lead of others researching related topics, whose authorship is accompanied by a statement of positionality (Tai 2021, p. 2; Caswell 2021, pp. 3–5; Feinbrg, 2022, p. 8): I am a nonreligious, white, cisgender, straight man, a documented US citizen, who is not disabled. These dimensions of my social identity are not those that tend to cause experiences of marginalization. Arguably (in light of arguments that follow), that fact entails epistemic limitations of my perspective. My orientation to this research, primarily that of an archivist and ethicist, affords one particular analytical lens on archival description. I hope my approach, albeit partial and incremental, will be useful.

Evolving finding aids

This section explains how and why finding aids evolve over time. For purposes here, a finding aid is a document, or set of documents, that describes a collection of archival materials and explains how they are arranged. Finding aids can take many forms—from relatively unstructured prose, to a set of data elements—with conventions and standards develo** over the last century (Trace and Dillon 2012, pp. 504–509). The modern American conception finding aids took shape in the 1970s and encompassed both manuscript registers, for collections of personal papers, and inventories, for organizational records. An influential report by the Society of American Archivists, Committee on Finding Aids (1976) reconciles different approaches to description by laying out a common set of sections for finding aids: a preface about the finding aid itself, an abstract for the collection, a biographical or historical sketch of the creator of the materials, a note about the scope and content, a series description, and a container list.

In the twenty-first century, finding aids have continued to evolve as archivists gradually adopt content standards like DACS and data structure standards, like Encoded Archival Description (EAD) (Gracy and Lambert 2014). Meanwhile, archival content management systems, such as ArchivesSpace, have become central to processing workflows, even for producing minimal descriptions (Toov and Wick, 2017). New standards and new software challenge archivists to adapt, to achieve consistency across finding aids while preserving the content and structure of legacy finding aids (Biswas and Skene 2016; Calahan and Dietrick, 2016).

As standards regarding scope and structure of finding aids have evolved, so have views about their content and orientation. In the 1970s it was becoming more common to consider finding aids a tool to alert the wider world to the existence of archival collections (Gracy 1976, p. 44). Greater attention to the needs of users convinced many archivists to aspire to an impartial perspective, aiming for a kind of neutrality and objectivity that would support any purpose a user might have (Duranti 1993, p. 52). However, postures of impartiality have come to be regarded with suspicion, and there is now widespread recognition that much descriptive metadata in libraries and archives reflects histories of social injustice and calls for reparative work (Cataloging Ethics Steering Committee 2021).

Examples of reparative description include “conscious editing” efforts, aimed at correcting white supremacy manifested in existing finding aids (Dean 2019, p. 43). In one example from the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina, demonstrating the iterative character of reparative description, a finding aid originally from 1988 was updated in 2010 to highlight a particular racist element of the collection, and then rewritten in 2018 on the basis of discussion among colleagues (Dean 2019, pp. 44–47). More recently, librarians and archivists at George Mason University Libraries have implemented a program of reparative description across a large set of resources (Beckman et al. 2022). That involved an audit of finding aids, systematic changes to metadata for digital collections, plans to transform subject headings, revision of objectionable classifications, and implementation of new policies for name authorities. This process has been guided by the influential set of resources collected by the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia working group (Beckman et al. 2022, p. 34; see Antracoli et al. 2019).

Such reparative efforts make vivid the current consensus that “description must be iterative” because “it continually reflects deeper understandings of agents, records, activities, and the relationships between them” (Society of American Archivists 2019, p. xvii). Thus, finding aids may be rewritten and re-rewritten. Making sense of a given finding aid—understanding what it tells us and knowing how much to trust it—requires recognizing it as the (provisional) outcome of a complex history, sometimes a multistage evolution spanning decades. A finding aid that documents its own complex history will be informative in ways unachievable by a finding aid that obscures its history.

Positionality in archival description

We have just observed that reparative description efforts drive complex revision histories of some finding aids. Examining the theoretical underpinnings of reparative efforts foregrounds another complexity of finding aids: the significance of the perspectives from which they are composed. This section considers how archival description can best take those perspectives into account.

Consideration of archivist positionality figures centrally in recent discussions of reparative archival work. Jessica Tai has recently advocated a framework of cultural humility in arrangement and description, which “entails actively denouncing archival neutrality, requiring the continual and visible disclosure of one’s own positionality (2021, p. 3). With this proposal, Tai develops and extends what Caswell (2021) has called “Feminist Standpoint Appraisal.” Caswell outlines an approach to archival appraisal that decenters the dominant white, ethnically European, bourgeois, Christian, citizen, cis, heterosexual, able-bodied, male perspective (2021, p. 7). She urges attention to the relationship between an archivist’s standpoint and the collection at hand, in light of other standpoints, especially those of oppressed people and those that might be omitted (2021, p. 28).

Alongside its essential moral directive of remediating injustice and better serving oppressed communities, reparative archival work finds its theoretical basis in observations about the significance of perspective and the untenability of impartiality. Caswell, in particular, draws extensively from feminist philosophy and sociology to support her proposals, pressing two distinct but related points about the relevance of perspective. The first point is about the distinctive epistemic advantages of marginalized standpoints (Caswell 2021, pp. 8–10). Caswell invokes the work of philosophers such as Sandra Harding, who has famously argued that, to achieve strong objectivity, a kind of cognition that can be genuinely critical of the dominant forces that shape everyone’s thinking, inquiry must begin from a position outside the dominant perspective (Harding 1995, p. 342). The idea is not that marginalization somehow automatically provides insights, but rather that certain insights are available only from certain outsider perspectives, and that a position of power or privilege can hide or distort important information (Rolin 2009, p. 219; cf. Mills 1998, p. 246). Caswell persuasively applies this line of thought as a rationale for inclusion of persons from oppressed communities in archival processes, whether as archivists or consultants (Caswell 2021, pp. 24–25; cf. Tai 2021, pp. 12–16). Caswell’s second point is that “feminist standpoint epistemology unmasks ‘neutrality’ for the masculinist and white supremacist positions it obfuscates” (2021, p. 11). In this, Caswell is echoing theorists like (Cook 2001a, pp. 15–17), rejecting postures of impartiality, adding that the purportedly impartial perspective has tended to be the perspective of people in power.

We can endorse Caswell’s push for social justice and, moreover, agree that impartiality was an untenable, sometimes harmful, ideal. But that does not tell us what ideals or principles to put in its place. To simply jettison norms of impartiality leaves a void. In the absence of ideals of impartiality, how are archivists to think about the aims of description? This is a question in need of a great deal more attention. Although far from a complete answer, we receive some guidance in an essay by Anne Gilliland (2016). Gilliland evaluates norms of impartiality expressed in archivists’ professional codes of ethics, reaching conclusions substantially similar, though perhaps more moderate, to those of Caswell: Gilliland argues that the aim of impartiality was “dead on arrival” and threatens to perpetuate injustice (2016, p. 8). In light of that critique, Gilliland urges replacing aspirations of impartiality with “transparency in technological implementations and indeed in all our work” as well as “increased reflexivity about our positionality and biases as institutions, as professionals, and as private persons” (2016, p. 6).

Gilliland’s advice that we combine positionality and transparency is an excellent start. To enrich this suggestion, we can return to feminist epistemology, indeed to some of the same strands of discourse Caswell uses to underwrite her proposals. Here, Donna Haraway’s work is especially instructive. Haraway concurs with other theorists that the standpoints of marginalized or subjugated persons offer insights not available from a dominant social position, adding that those who have experienced subjugation are less likely to be under the illusion that knowledge can ever transcend partiality and interpretation (1988, p. 584). On top of this, Haraway highlights the advantages of connection across a multiplicity of local, partial perspectives, through conversations that span webs of local knowledges (1988, p. 584). As she memorably puts it, “We seek those ruled by partial sight and limited voice—not partiality for its own sake but, rather, for the sake of the connections and unexpected openings situated knowledges make possible” (1988, p. 590). But to be in conversation with each other, these local sites of knowledge must be locatable, or else their claims are detached and unaccountable (Haraway 1988, p. 583). We can make Haraway’s abstract exposition more concrete by picturing a conversation among people with very different backgrounds, each aware of each other’s history, standpoint, biases, and orientation.

Marilyn Friedman, who offers a sustained philosophical critique of impartiality, helps us see what Haraway’s suggestion about locatable sites of local knowledge might amount to. Friedman argues that well-known theories of impartiality fail to provide a usable practical criterion of impartiality, and she offers her preferred alternative: “I recommend that our definitive notion should not be an abstract (and practically unattainable) ideal of impartiality, but, rather, concrete notions of specific partialities, that is, biases whose manifestations in normative thinking can be specifically identified and corrected” (1989, p. 646). Although Friedman favors minimizing partialities while Haraway advocates their embrace, the immediate prescription is the same: We should identify our partialities—locate our particular situated perspectives—in ways that allow reflexivity and mutual enrichment across the diverse range of partial standpoints. Thus, via transparent positionality, a misconceived aim of impartiality can be replaced by productive engagement with and across particular partialities. Although this is not yet a full prescription for what should come after relinquishing norms of impartiality, it is a step in that direction.

In archival practice, the most relevant aspects of partiality will depend on the collection at hand and its likely users. That said, in general, a thorough accounting of one’s partiality would cover at least two dimensions: one’s interests and one’s epistemic lens. Among the interests are the circumstances that affect the archivist’s livelihood and self-interest, which may include occupational standing, elements of social and economic privilege, or corresponding disadvantages, as the case may be. Constituting the epistemic lens are the cultural, educational, and experiential features of the archivist’s life that guide their inference and curiosity. The archivist’s epistemic lens may also include their commitments to professional standards and the research methods they adopt. Of course, all these interest-based and epistemic aspects of positionality inevitably intersect and intertwine—with social categories such as race, gender, class, and disability spanning and cross-cutting. And, hence, the interest-based and epistemic dimensions of positionality may be impossible to cleanly separate. Nevertheless, attending carefully to each is a useful heuristic for noticing the elements of positionality most relevant to a given task of description.

With that, we have an elaboration of one of this article’s guiding thoughts: that archival description is influenced by the particular perspectives of archivists and that its interpretation is affected by users’ awareness of those perspectives. In short, information about the positionality of the describing archivist gives the user of a finding aid context that may correct or enrich their understanding of it. Furthermore, explicitly connecting finding aids to archivist positionality forestalls mistaken assumptions about the orientation of archivists or their institutions, and it prevents impressions of the archivist as a disembodied, impartial authority.

To conclude this section, several qualifications and caveats are essential. First, crucially, any recommendation that archivists surface their positionalities cannot apply only to marginalized persons. That would be counterproductive, perhaps even reinforcing the perceived otherness of marginalized identities. To avoid the illusion of impartiality, the complexities of description and the perspectives that enter into it must be surfaced across the board.

Second, note that the theoretical argument of this section does not entail hard-and-fast imperatives to disclose archivist positionality. The value of positionality information must be weighed against other factors, especially the privacy and safety of archivists—a point to which we will return in later sections.

Third, as an anonymous reviewer of this article pointed out, there are deep questions to be worked out regarding the relationship between an archivist’s positionality and the descriptive standards the archivist aims to follow. Undoubtedly, content standards (such as DACS, ISAD(G), and others) can limit the influence of archivists’ partialities. On the other hand, an archivist’s particular perspective affects how such standards are interpreted and implemented. For now, besides flagging this complex relationship, we must leave it as a topic in need of further investigation.

Finally, it is critical to emphasize that disclosure and availability of positionality information does not reduce the need for other reforms to archival practice. First of all, changes to description cannot reverse unfortunate appraisal decisions, and so the improvement of appraisal practices remains a vital project. Furthermore, the addition of positionality information, on its own, can have no more than a minor reparative effect on problematic descriptions. Reparative efforts must continue to focus primarily on the descriptions themselves. Positionality meta-metadata is most valuable as a complement, not an alternative, to improved descriptions.

The case for archival meta-metadata

We can now summarize the general case for creating and sharing archival meta-metadata. As we observed in the preceding two sections, a finding aid may be the result of an extended evolution, and it inevitably bears the influence of the perspectives of the archivist(s) who composed it. Hence, the ability to accurately understand a finding aid depends on transparency about these complexities. Without transparency about the process of iterative description and about archivists’ perspectives, descriptions appear eternal and disembodied, inviting unrealistic impressions of finality and impartiality. At worst, this misleads the user; at best, it limits what a user can infer from the way a collection has been described. One means of achieving the desirable sort of transparency is through the creation of meta-metadata: data about archival descriptions, including revision history, earlier versions, author identity, and author positionality statements. As such, meta-metadata provides a helpful ingredient within larger attempts to improve the practice and outcomes of archival description.

With a theoretical case for archival meta-metadata now stated, the rest of this section proceeds toward practical issues. First comes a short review of precedent proposals for meta-metadata. Then I will mention some ways that meta-metadata may benefit archives operations, including initiatives for iterative and reparative description.

The prospect of meta-metadata has long been attractive to scholars across information science. For example, Marcia Bates (1976) recommends recording metadata about systematic bibliographies as a way to make them more useful to users. Similarly, David Bearman (2008) advocates recording the sources of metadata for museum collections. In the archives world, a famous and ambitious proposal for meta-metadata comes from Michelle Light and Tom Hyry (2002), whose enthusiastic postmodernism motivates a recommendation that colophons be appended to finding aids. A colophon would acknowledge the archivist’s role in the representation and interpretation of the collection described (2002, pp. 223–224). In a similar vein, reflecting on postmodernism and emphasizing the potential value of recording biographical information about the archivists involved in managing collections, Cook argues, “[A]ppraising archivists should themselves be formally documented and linked to these same appraisal reports and descriptive entries, with a full curriculum vitae placed on accessible files, complemented by autobiographical details of the values they used in appraisal and that they reflected in description” (2001b, pp. 34–35). Although Cook is talking primarily about appraisal, notice that he extends his prescriptions to description as well.

Tai develops these sorts of recommendations one step farther, taking into account the thoroughly iterative character of descriptive work. She prescribes “the use of revision statements to track and document the alteration of finding aids, as well as tracing those who performed the revisions,” and, for larger projects, the use of version control systems (2021, p. 19). She suggests that a repository and versioning platform like GitHub could be used to provide public access to revision histories. These innovative recommendations for managing meta-metadata potentially encompass both revision history and archivist identity.

In addition to offering interpretive context to users of finding aids, meta-metadata also supports archives operations. Consider in particular the preliminary step in reparative description: figuring out which finding aids have problems. Well, records of finding aid authorship and positionality put archivists in a position to identify which elements might be in need of revision. Our discussion of partiality and situated knowledge teaches us that an archivist’s ability to recognize that a finding aid needs revision may depend on knowing who authored it. Without knowing who produced the old finding aid, an archivist may wonder whether some surprising point of emphasis or unfamiliar vocabulary resulted from the original archivist’s ignorance or from an authentic understanding of the subjects of the collection.

Along the same lines, records of authorship and positionality can provide a crucial datapoint for auditing sets of existing finding aids. In the absence of authorship information, the main methods of auditing existing descriptions are either to search for superficial indications of bias, such as obviously outdated or harmful terminology (Beckman et al. 2022), or to have persons with epistemically advantageous perspectives review everything. The first method is prone to error, catching only the superficial (which is not to say unimportant) problems. The second is extremely time consuming, and often impractical for all but most well-resourced institutions. In contrast, if the positionality of a finding aid’s author is known, this offers the opportunity to identify relationships, even mismatches, between the archivist’s perspective and the subject matter of the collection described. Future archivists may be thankful for this information as they seek to further improve today’s descriptive work.

In light of the theoretical case stated above and the potential operational benefits just discussed, we now turn to the facts on the ground—empirical questions about the prospects for meta-metadata.

A survey of archivist practices and perspectives

At least two broad sets of empirical questions about meta-metadata stand in need of answers. One set of questions is about archives users and how meta-metadata actually affects the experience and effectiveness of their research. The other set is about archivists themselves, and whether their professional orientation and practices can accommodate meta-metadata. Although both sets of questions are important, this article will maintain its focus on the practice of archival description—examining archivists’ current ways of working and their attitudes about them. This choice of emphasis reflects the main conclusion of the earlier discussion of positionality: We respond to the untenability of impartiality by identifying, even embracing, our particular partialities. In this case, that means paying attention to the people who do the work of archival description, shining light on their established practices, as well as the perspectives and attitudes that influence their decisions.

A few studies (e.g., Gracy and Lambert 2014; Toov and Wick 2017; Sweetser and Orchard 2019) have surveyed archivists about various aspects of their descriptive practices. However, none has focused on practices or attitudes around meta-metadata, or shown how those practices might develop. Hence, I conducted a small survey aiming to answer three empirical questions:

RQ1: What are current practices and tools for composing finding aids, managing their revision, and publishing revision history?

RQ2: What are current practices regarding recording and publishing information about the authorship and author positionality for archival finding aids?

RQ3: What identity and positionality information would practicing archivists feel comfortable publishing along with the finding aids they have created?

The first two research questions set the stage for the third, establishing current practices before exploring archivists’ attitudes and perspectives.

For the purpose of obtaining a broad summary of the current state of professional archival practice, a survey is a natural tool. My survey consisted of 21 questions presented in two sections. The first 14 questions were about current descriptive practices at the archivists’ institutions. The last 7 questions were about archivists’ own views about what data, especially about authorship and revision history, ought to be collected and published along with a finding aid. Of the 21 questions, 19 were multiple choice, frequently with the option to add elaboration as free text. The other two were prompts for additional comments on the topics of preceding questions.

The survey population consisted of archivists who describe collections at state archives in the US. Although this is far from a comprehensive group of archivists, it is a reasonable population to focus on, for three reasons. First, state archives are some of the oldest, most well-established, and most-used archives in the US. Indeed, they are canonical and widely respected examples of archival practice. It would be implausible to suggest that description practices at these institutions are insignificant. Second, as long-running institutions, state archives are likely to have well-established archival practices, but also histories of evolving policies of arrangement and description over time. Third, surveying US state archivists entails two kinds of diversity: geographic (across the US) and size (since state archives vary in size).

Unquestionably, a larger survey—including archivists at university archives, private collections, museums, and community archives—would be more informative. However, considering that there is, as of yet, very little available information about the aspects of archival description of interest here, even a small survey offers notable benefits: validating the survey questions as being sensitive to relevant features of archival practice and establishing an initial snapshot that can be enlarged through future work.

Data were collected via an online survey in early 2023. In advance of the survey, I made an effort to identify one archivist who performed or supervised description at each state archive. For states where one such archivist was identified, a survey invitation was emailed directly to that person. For states where no particular archivist was identified, the survey invitation was emailed to a general address for the organization. In total, fifty invitations were sent, one for each state in the US. Whether sent to a particular person or to a general address, the invitation email included this note:

I am aiming to survey one archivist at each state or commonwealth archive in the US. In some archives, there are several archivists who could indicate how collections are described. In other archives, there may be only a single person who performs this work. If this email has been sent to you by mistake, I would greatly appreciate it if you could suggest someone else, or forward this to one other colleague, at your organization who should be invited to take this survey instead.

The survey was available for 38 days after the initial invitation was sent. A follow-up reminder email was sent to all fifty email addresses after 26 days. At the end of the survey period, the survey had been started 36 times. Among these, there were 7 that answered no more than a single question. That left 29 respondents who completed the full survey. Because the survey was anonymous, it is impossible to guarantee that it was not filled out more than once for a single state. However, the instructions explicitly discouraged that, and there was no indication that the survey invitation was distributed beyond its intended population. So, it is likely that the set of responses actually received indeed covers 29 of the 50 states in the US.

Study results

Respondent profile

Among the responses, there was considerable variation in the amount of descriptive work performed, with several respondents reporting creating fewer than 5 finding aids at their organization per year and several creating more than 100 per year. See Table 1 for details.

Table 1 Participants were asked, “Approximately how many new finding aids does your organization create in a given year?
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Participants were also asked about the availability of their finding aids. Among 29 respondents, only 2 reported not making their finding aids available online, while 17 reported that all or most of their finding aids were available online. In addition, 10 respondents reported making some of the finding aids available online, with the typical qualification being that some older finding aids were not available online because they had not yet been migrated from paper or a legacy system.

Current practices around finding aid revision history (RQ1)

We now turn to RQ1, regarding the tools for composing finding aids, and how revision history is managed and made available. For reasons explained above, it is hard to resist the conclusion that archival description is an iterative process, with finding aids needing updates, revisions, or rewrites, from time to time. This state of affairs was confirmed by archivists when asked, “Do you see a finding aid as static or as evolving over time?” More than half (16 of 29) chose the most “dynamic” option expressed this way: “Finding aids are always provisional, and their composition is iterative. A finding aid should be updated whenever there is an opportunity to improve or enhance it.” Only a single respondent chose the “static” option expressed as, “Once a finding aid has been written, it is done. It should be revised only in unusual or exceptional circumstances.” The rest chose options suggesting moderate approaches to iterative description. The dynamic character of finding aids was emphasized and elaborated by many respondent comments, among which the following were representative:

“Finding aids change not only with the records we receive, but also with our patrons' continually assessed needs.”

“Reparative description efforts, updates needed for agency histories and biographical sketches, links to newly digitized materials, and inevitable occasional corrections needed for description and container/location information make finding aids a continual work in progress, beyond the addition of accruals or updates needed due to deaccessioning.”

“Dynamic. For collections that receive minimal organization and description, it can be the case that staff or researchers that have an opportunity to explore the collection in greater detail can bring new insights into the content.”

One other respondent’s comment about dynamic description is worth noting:

“Programs like ArchivesSpace produce Finding Aids that are truly dynamic, in that they automatically update (the generated pdf) when the collections information is revised. The helps cut down on the time required to change the aids when any kind of addition or reprocessing project occurs.”

This comment suggests that software like ArchivesSpace lowers the barriers to revision, enabling immediate publication of revised descriptions. In response to a separate question about the software used for creating and editing descriptions, 14 of 29 respondents reported using ArchivesSpace or the interface of another archival management system. Almost as many, 12 of 29, use just a word processor like Microsoft Word or Google Docs to write their finding aids. Notably, none of the 29 respondents primarily uses a plain text editor or an XML editor to write their finding aids, although 2 respondents did mention use of such tools in conjunction with ArchivesSpace.

Four questions asked about managing the revision history of finding aids, asking about records of the dates of revision and the retention of earlier versions, then asking whether this information is publicly available. As indicated by Table 2, there was a wide variety in the practices of recording revision dates.

Table 2 Participants were asked, “Do you deliberately keep track of the dates when your finding aids were created or revised?
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From this, it appears that all but two organizations would be in a position to provide users with some information about the dates when particular finding aids were created or revised. However, only 15 of the 29 respondents went on to answer that they do indeed make such information publicly available fully or in part. Among those, most further explained that either the creation date, the revision date, or both were included within the finding aid itself. Two indicated the information was available only in the sense that it could be requested from archives staff, but it was not provided with the finding aid.

It is one thing to record the dates of revision; it is another to retain the previous versions after revision. It turns out that many organizations do indeed retain at least some old versions of finding aids, as shown by Table 3.

Table 3 Participants were asked, “If you ever update or revise your finding aids, do you retain copies of the previous versions?”
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The respondents who chose “Other” for this question indicated that previous finding aid versions from past software systems and some preliminary versions may be retained temporarily, but not systematically. That leaves 21 of the 29 respondents indicating that past versions are retained systematically, at least in cases of major revisions, suggesting the practice is fairly widespread. However, just because information is retained, that does not mean it is actually made available, as we see in Table 4.

Table 4 Participants were asked, “If you revise your finding aids and retain copies of the previous versions, do you make the previous versions publicly available?”
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All five of the participants who chose one of the “Yes” answers provided explanations. Only one indicated that the previous versions were available along with the original, explaining that the new version provides links to old versions. Each of the other four explanations said that the previous versions were available only upon request. Thus, even though the old versions are potentially available, they are no longer foregrounded as sources of information about the relevant collections. Taken offline and out of the catalog, the old finding aids are managed as administrative records. We will discuss this point later.

Current practices around finding aid authorship and positionality (RQ2)

The second research question was about how information about the authors of finding aids is recorded and published. Of interest are records of the archivist’s personal identity, which may be just a name or other identifier, and also the archivist’s positionality. As with preceding questions, the survey asked both what information is retained and whether that information is made available.

Regarding the basic question of whether the identity of a finding aid author is recorded, there appears to be no standard practice. Table 5 shows variety, from not recording the archivist at all, to occasionally recording who worked on a finding aid, to recording the author of every edit.

Table 5 Participants were asked, “As part of your organization’s own recordkee**, do you deliberately record the identity of the archivists who create and revise finding aids?”
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We just saw that 26 of the 29 respondents record finding aid authorship, at least under some circumstances. Another question asking exactly what information about that person is recorded revealed that 23 of those 26 record only the person’s name. That leaves 3 respondents who retain additional information: one noted that they keep both the person’s name and job title; one reported that they create a records in a name authority file; and one reported that they retain wider information about the person, including the person’s name, an authority record, a biographical sketch, and a positionality statement.

Among the 26 organizations that record some information about the creators and editors of their finding aids, 17 make some of this information publicly available. However, the survey did not indicate any standard method of making this information available. Several respondents simply affirmed that the information is available; others said it appears in the finding aid; and others indicated it is available upon request.

Archivists’ comfort with connecting their identities to their finding aids (RQ3)

The survey results reported so far describe current practices. The remaining results pertain to archivists’ perspectives and attitudes, especially their levels of comfort with information about them being associated with the descriptions they create. First, the respondents were asked about whether it is valuable to users to know the identity of the archivist who wrote a finding aid. Table 6 summarizes their responses.

Table 6 Participants were asked, “From your own perspective, do you consider the identity of the archivist who wrote a finding aid an important piece of information for the person using the finding aid? Which of these statements best represents your perspective?”
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Notably, 16 of 29 respondents expressed the belief that it is important for users to know the identity of the archivist. This shows some alignment between archivists’ own views and the theoretical case for connecting positionality and archival description. Also notable was that 3 of the 5 who answered “Other” commented that the identity of the archivist was less important for potential users than for other archivists, who rely on that information for reference work and collection maintenance.

Even if archivists believe their personal information will be useful to others, that certainly does not mean they will be comfortable disclosing or publicizing that information. Another survey question asked about the archivists’ own feelings regarding which of their personal data should accompany their finding aids. Table 7 summarizes the responses.

Table 7 Participants were asked, “Still focusing on yourself, as someone who describes archival collections, how do you feel about information about yourself accompanying the finding aids you write? Which of these options best expresses your preference about what level of detail about you is appropriate?”
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These responses suggest that many archivists, including 7 of 29 respondents who prefer full anonymity, are not enthusiastic about their personal information being provided alongside their descriptive work. Interestingly, most of these were the same respondents who, regarding the preceding question, held that knowing the identity of the archivist is not usually important for users of the collection. Only one who answered earlier that knowing the identity of the archivist is potentially important for users expressed a personal preference for anonymity. Although there is nothing inconsistent about that, it could be a source of tension in the person’s professional life.

On the other end of the spectrum, none of the 29 respondents favored having a CV or career description accompany their descriptions, and only 3 were comfortable with a few sentences about their background. The remaining 3 who answered “Other” all stated a preference that their personal identities not be disclosed, but suggested that mentioning their demographic information, background, or social identity (elements of their positionality) might be appropriate.

These results were consistent with a further question seeking more fine-grained information about the personal information respondents would feel comfortable accompanying their finding aids, as summarized in Table 8.

Table 8 Participants were asked, “Please indicate which of the following kinds of information you would feel comfortable accompanying finding aids you write. Please check all that apply”
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Consistent with the previous question, a few respondents who were comfortable with demographic and social characteristics being disclosed were not comfortable with their names being disclosed. And, conversely, many who were comfortable with their names being disclosed did not favor disclosing additional categories of information. The single respondent who selected “Other” commented that they were comfortable with their position title being mentioned alongside their name and educational history.

A final, open-ended survey question sought the roots of archivists’ feelings and opinions about associating their personal information with their descriptive work. It asked, “Please provide any additional comments or thoughts you have about whether and how much information about the authors of finding aids should accompany the finding aids they write. Feel free to discuss both your own perspective and what you take to be the perspectives of other archivists.” Of the 29 participants, 18 offered responses to this question.

Many of those responses reiterated sentiments expressed in the preceding multiple choice questions. Several respondents favored retaining something of the conception of impartiality traditionally associated with archival description, either by attempting to omit any sources of subjectivity or by falling back on the collective perspective of the organization as a whole. However, many archivists saw value in recording information about finding aid authorship, especially for use by other archivists. For example, one explained, “Assignment of authorship is important so that later audiences can take into account potential perspective, but more importantly so that peers in the organization can determine the appropriate source of the information for follow up, potential corrections that are identified or clarity as needed, or as a reference to a patron.” Along similar lines, another offered this:

“Personally, I do my best to remain unbiased and neutral when processing collections. However, I also understand that I have unconscious biases that likely influence how I arrange or weed materials. While the biographical information may not necessarily be best to display to the public, it will be helpful for other staff members, especially as time progresses and collections grow older. Understanding a processors/archivists' background can assist in updating finding aids in the future, or, if needed, reprocessing the collection if obvious bias has been demonstrated.”

However, even among the archivists who saw value in transparency about authorship and positionality, there were reservations, especially about personal privacy. Five different respondents expressed concerns related to privacy or personal safety. One noted, “We are also concerned about staff safety, and publishing personal details about staff could make them a target for harassment or violence.” Another remarked, “Having personal information about myself beyond my name makes me feel uncomfortable.” Several offered thoughtful suggestions about how to navigate the tradeoffs between the value of transparency and the value of archivists’ privacy, for example:

“I think it can be important for the public to know a person's background to see how that may have influenced their descriptions. I don't necessarily think the public needs to know the persons name. I'm always concerned with privacy and safety, both for myself and my staff and as public servants in a public building we are already vulnerable. I do think identifying the individual that created the description internally is important to keep as a means of accountability but I question the necessity of posting it online.”

Overall, the perspectives of archivists about disclosures of authorship information were a mixture, with a few lauding the benefits of information about authorship and positionality, but more expressing reservations, with some questioning the value of such information and others emphasizing personal concerns of archivists, especially about privacy.

Discussion and recommendations

The role of archival meta-metadata

Survey results showed, perhaps unsurprisingly, that some archivists already create records documenting their description processes. However, we have also seen that creating and preserving this data has not always been for the immediate benefit of archives users. Rather, it seems that it is sometimes more in the spirit (or discipline) of maintaining good organizational records. This orientation to archival meta-metadata is apparent in archivists’ opinions about disclosing personal information about themselves within finding aids: Several archivists noted the value to their colleagues and successors of knowing who created which finding aids, while simultaneously expressing reservations about publicizing this information. Considered this way, data about the authorship of finding aids may serve as important internal administrative records, even without inclusion in the public-facing catalog. For example, awareness of which former colleague described a collection may enable a reference archivist to provide better research guidance, but that would not require the end user to know who wrote the finding aid.

This orientation to meta-metadata as administrative records was evident also in responses to the survey question about retention of previous versions of finding aids. Several respondents said the old versions were indeed available—but only upon request. After all, as documents produced by a government agency, state archives’ old finding aids may constitute public records, which members of the public may rightfully access should they desire. But, viewed as organizational records, the old finding aids might be accessible only through a public records request, which is a very different mode of access than visiting the reading room.

Hence, organizations have a choice: Should archival meta-metadata be considered an extension of archival description, or considered a part of archives’ own organizational records management? Although these are not mutually exclusive, approaching the issue as a choice between two options encourages an organization to clarify its stance. Treated the first way, archival meta-metadata enriches finding aids, by revealing their relationality; the identity and positionality of the describer become part of the description. According to the second way of thinking, archivists would maintain records of the situation and perspective from which descriptions were produced, but that information would be detached from the description itself. Only when treated the first way is the archival meta-metadata fully responsive to the theoretical case presented earlier. But, either way, retention of meta-metadata may benefit future stewards of the collections.

In light of this discussion, this article’s first recommendation is that archives clearly articulate their relationship to the records they keep about archival description. Should archival meta-metadata be part of the finding aid, or should this information be treated as organizational records? Is it for archives’ users, or primarily for internal use? Or might some middle way be most appropriate? Answers to these questions affect how archival meta-metadata should be captured, managed, and communicated.

Acknowledging archivists’ concerns about their information

Survey results have shown that some ways of expanding recordkee** practices pertaining to archival description would not align with all archivists’ own conceptions of their roles. In particular, disclosing their identities falls outside the comfort zone of many archivists. This is understandable. Although there is obviously a wide variety of personalities among archivists, we might plausibly speculate that many people who have embraced careers in archives are more inclined to elevate the voices of others than to foreground their own participation. Furthermore, for many archivists who have long been processing collections with minimal acknowledgment, the prospect of publicizing their involvement may seem daunting and unnecessary. General worries about privacy may naturally exacerbate such misgivings. Even if traditional notions of impartiality continue to lose favor in the profession, archivists’ personal reservations about disclosing their identities and perspectives may well persist.

Hence, archivists are confronted with a dilemma. On one hand, disclosure of archivists’ identity and positionality information advances transparency, interpretability, and accountability for archival description. On the other hand, such disclosures may feel invasive and expose archivists to unwanted attention. This dilemma may not be entirely avoidable, since it reflects a more general tension between privacy and the values of transparency and accountability (Allen 2003; Moore and Martin 2020).

This article’s second recommendation is a strategy for dealing with this dilemma: Consider treating identity and positionality separately. Most, though not all, concerns about privacy (and safety more broadly) hinge on disclosures of who the archivist is, not what the archivist’s perspective is. The latter can be disclosed without the former. This recommendation echoes the remark from the survey respondent who noted that it can be important for the public to know an archivist’s background, even without knowing the archivist’s name. Accordingly, in the face of concerns about archivists’ privacy and safety, it may be desirable to present the archivist’s positionality with the finding aid while recording the archivist’s identity only as an internal record.

Nevertheless, there will remain situations where a finding aid would benefit from both information about the positionality of the archivist and also disclosure of the archivist’s identity. Those situations are most likely in institutions with collections whose subject matter, for whatever reason, demands a high level of public accountability. Under such circumstances, the task of describing the collection should be delegated to archivists comfortable with the appropriate level of disclosure. The challenge, then, would be to find an archivist who is both (1) qualified, including having a relevant standpoint, to describe the collection and (2) comfortable with that personal disclosure. These criteria will sometimes be in tension, a tension that may be resolvable only in light of details about the collections in question and the values of the organizations that steward them.

These complexities notwithstanding, it is important to note that archivists’ preferences about publicity and worries about privacy do not bear on all kinds of archival meta-metadata. In particular, the concerns survey respondents expressed do not weigh against expanding access to the revision history and past versions of finding aids.

Conclusion

This article began from two observations: First, archival description requires judgment on the part of the archivist. Second, in many contexts, description is an iterative process. From there, the article developed a general rationale for recording archival meta-metadata and making it available: The ability to properly interpret a finding aid is bound up with the availability of its metadata, including its revision history and the positionalities of archivists involved in its creation. Against that theoretical backdrop, the survey offered one snapshot of archivists’ current practices and perspectives. Although the snapshot was limited in its scope, the survey results nevertheless surfaced some tensions that any organizations implementing archival meta-metadata would likely encounter.

Confronting these complexities led to a pair of recommendations for archives—really a pair of questions that organizations should ask and answer as they describe the collections they steward. One is about how to conceive of records of descriptive processes: Is archival meta-metadata an organizational record, or part of the finding aid? The second is a question that must be asked repeatedly, about each collection to be processed: How can the benefits of disclosing the archivists’ positionalities be balanced with personal preferences of the archivists available to describe it? Asking these questions pulls us toward issues at the core of the archival profession—issues about the scope of archival record-kee** and issues about the personal rights and professional obligations of archivists. Regardless of how such questions are actually answered in each particular institutional context, deliberating about them heightens our awareness of the interwoven relationships among our processes, our perspectives, and the collections we steward.