In this episode, cohosts Adreonna Bennett and Conor Casey speak with Julie Thomas, the instruction and electronic records archivist at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS), about her new book, Teaching Primary Source Research Skills to 21st-Century Learners. Drawing on her extensive experience, Thomas discusses theories and pedagogies for teaching primary source research skills in the classrooms of today. The conversation touches upon active learning strategies, effective methods of incorporating archival materials into instruction, and the importance of adapting our teaching approach to the learning styles of today’s students.

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Purchase your copy of Teaching Primary Source Research Skills to 21st-Century Learners in the SAA Bookstore!

JCAS Reviews Teaching Primary Source Research Skills to 21st-Century Learners
The Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies (JCAS) recently published a review of Julie Thomas’s Teaching Primary Source Research Skills to 21st-Century Learners (SAA 2024).

Join co-hosts Lauren Kata and Emily Mathay as they chat with Ben and Sara Brumfield, co-founders of Brumfield Labs, about the future of AI in the archives. Sara and Ben discuss their ongoing work developing projects at the intersection of cultural heritage and emerging technologies, including FromThePage, a platform for crowdsourcing transcription of handwritten documents. This episode also touches on the potential challenges of integrating AI into archival work: its impact on jobs and employment, the types of tasks for which it is useful, and the importance of choosing and evaluating AI tools carefully.

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Check out: FromThePage

“10 Ways AI Will Change Archives” webinar series 

Archives as an Antidote for ChatGPT

SAA Description Section YouTube video: Current Uses of AI in Archival Description

In this episode, cohosts Lauren Kata and Emily Mathay speak with Chris Pandza, Canadian communication designer and oral historian living and working in New York City. Pandza’s practice involves combining experience design and artificial intelligence to make archives that are more accessible, beautiful, and equitable than otherwise possible. He has led communication design and curation for the Obama Presidency Oral History, the Baldwin-Emerson Elders Project, and the Movements Against Mass Incarceration oral history. His work has been covered in the New York Times and MSNBC and honored by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. This November, he won a gold Anthem Award for innovation on the Elders Project digital archive. He currently works at Incite Institute at Columbia University, which is home to the Columbia Center for Oral History Research.

Read the transcript.

Check out: nobody’s diary;

Incite; and

Methodological Experiments in the Field of Oral History, Fall 2023 Talk

Other resources include: “Slow work” comes from “Slowing Down to Listen in the Digital Age: How New Technology Is Changing Oral History Practice” by Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki

The discussion of agendas in this episode is from “Living Voices: The Oral History Interview as Dialogue and Experience” by Alessandro Portelli

In this episode, cohosts Adreonna Bennett and Conor Casey speak with Maigen Sullivan and Joshua Burford of Invisible Histories, a community-based archives that locates, collects, preserves, researches, and creates for local communities an accessible collection of the rich and diverse history of LGBTQ life in the US South.

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Check out Invisible Histories on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook!

You can help support the Invisible Histories mission here.

Register or submit a proposal for Queer History South 2026. The event will be fully virtual from February 20–21, 2026. 

In this episode, Project Coordinator Mary Caldera speaks with the new Archives in Context team, including Producer Kate Greenberg; Cohosts Adreonna Bennett, Conor Casey, Lauren Kata, Emily Mathay, and Camila Zorrilla Tessler; and Staff Liaison Hannah Stryker. The podcast members discuss their backgrounds, areas of interest in archives, and what they’re excited to explore as part of the podcast. You can learn more about the team here.

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Listen to other episodes here, or on Spotify and Apple Podcasts!

In this episode, cohosts Camila Zorrilla Tessler and Conor Casey speak with historians Krista McCracken and Skylee-Storm Hogan-Stacey about Decolonial Archival Futures, their new book that challenges non-Indigenous practitioners to think consciously about the histories we tell. Listen for a discussion about rethinking structures of archival provenance and ownership, community relationship building, and decentering the settler perspective in archives.

Read the transcript.

Order your own copy of Decolonial Archival Futures here!

Read “Decolonizing Our Archival Future: A Conversation with Krista McCracken and Skylee-Storm Hogan-Stacey” from the November/December 2023 issue of Archival Outlook here.

In this episode, co-hosts Chris Burns and Camila Zorrilla Tessler speak with Maryna Paliienko, a Ukrainian historian, archivist, and Fulbright Scholar conducting research at New York University on the topic “Archives in the Time of War and Emergency: Problems of the Cultural Heritage Preservation and Usage (from the Experience of the United States and Ukraine).” Listen to learn more about Dr. Paliienko’s work, the crucial role that archives play in documenting shared history and memory during times of war, and evolving strategies for preserving archives in times of emergency.

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Visit Maryna Paliienko’s faculty website and learn more about the projects and collections mentioned in the episode:

Fulbright Scholar Program: Maryna Paliienko

Fulbright Visiting Scholars and FRDP Fellows, 2023–2024

The State Archival Service of Ukraine

Archives of Ukraine journal

In this episode, cohosts Chris Burns and Camila Zorrilla Tessler speak to counterculture historian and archival music producer Pat Thomas about his new book Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg. Join us for a discussion about Pat’s research process, favorite items from Ginsberg’s collection, and thoughts on Ginsberg’s legacy.

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Order your own copy of Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg here!

In this episode, cohost Chris Burns speaks with dindria barrow, Marika Cifor, Sarah Nguyễn, and Anna Trammell about their work on The Community Archives Center Toolkit, which was collaboratively developed by the Tacoma Public Library and the University of Washington.

This free resource is now available for other libraries and archives to use in creating community-focused projects. Listen to learn more about the toolkit and how you might use it at your institution.

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Check out the web version and the PDF version of the toolkit. To learn more about Tacoma Public Library’s Community Archives Center, visit their home page and their collections access portal.

What is on the minds of our newest professionals? In this episode, host Nicole Milano speaks with Lyric Evans-Hunter, Allegra Favila, and Lia Warner, all new or recent graduates of New York University’s Archives and Public History program. They share how they came to the field, what they find exciting and daunting about the profession, and how we might increase mutual understanding between archival practitioners and those who rely on our work.

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Check out Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s, an exhibition organized by the the Grey Art Gallery, that explored “mid-20th-century abstract art from North Africa, West Asia, and the Arab diaspora—a vast geographic expanse that encompasses diverse cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds.”

Also take a look at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, a collection of more than 300,000 images documenting the history and culture of those with African descent.