Gossip practice in the archives

• Hybrid event
• Library and Archives Canada – Public Archives and National Library Building , Ottawa , ON , K1A 0N4
• Zoom meeting link

All lectures will take place in the Pellan Room at Library and Archives Canada (395 Wellington Street). Lectures will begin at 7pm.

Description: 

What does it mean to take gossip seriously as an information practice in archival work? Often maligned as untrustworthy, gossip’s focus on relationships and feelings can help open up alternative paths through institutional records. In this talk, I’ll be using the archives of artist-run centres as a case study, considering them as a site that is in-between an institutional and community archive. How might this mutability create openings for thinking about how we can work in (and across) different archival spaces as information labourers and researchers? A good gossip session usually happens on the apartment stoop or in the bar, but gossiping in the archive can similarly help us get under and through the “official” record, when too often the record means gaps, silences, and erasures 

Biography:  

Emily Guerrero is an information worker, writer and parent living in Vancouver, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. They hold an MLIS from the University of British Columbia, and have worked in archives and both public and academic libraries for over a decade. They currently work as a Community Librarian with a focus on providing library services to patrons who are historically underserved and systematically marginalized. Their work on gossip, arts archives, community work, and abolitionist librarianship have been published in Archivaria, C Magazine, and forthcoming in In The Library With a Lead Pipe. 

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