Through the Archival Looking Glass

The impulse to create archives is rooted in the very human need to leave one's mark on the world. Whether through letters, diaries, reports, photographs, films, or a teenager's simple need to scrawl "I was here" on a subway wall, there's a deep desire in individuals to tell their stories, to be seen--literally and figuratively--in archives. With this desire also comes the need to ensure that archives are as diverse as the world we live in and to preserve the individuals and cultures that have been consciously or unconsciously underserved in the archives.

Through the Archival Looking Glass: A Reader on Diversity and Inclusion, edited by Mary A. Caldera and Kathryn M. Neal, features ten essays that explore prominent themes related to diversity, including creating a diverse record, recruiting diversity to the profession and retaining a diverse workforce, and questioning the archive itself, on representation, authority, neutrality, objectivity, and power.

This book illustrates a multitude of perspectives and issues so that fresh voices can emerge alongside more familiar ones, and new concepts can be examined with new treatments of established ideas. Diversity is an ever-evolving concept; the term itself is increasingly rephrased as inclusion. By stimulating further ideas and conversation, we can come closer to a common understanding of what diversity and inclusion are or can be and, perhaps most importantly, how they may be realized in archives and the archival profession.