Archivists and their allies on AI, ethics and preservation.
Archives in Context is the official podcast of the Society of American Archivists, and each episode is named for the guests being interviewed. Its range runs from language models and oral history to synthetic voices in documentary film, solo archival work, and queer collections under political pressure in a Deep South state.
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Archives in Context is the official podcast of the Society of American Archivists, built as a series of interviews titled after the people in the guest seat. The co-hosts change. Lauren Kata and Emily Mathay pair up for a string of conversations, and at the top of one they compare morning in Boston with evening in Abu Dhabi. Conor Casey, who introduces himself as head of the Labor Archives of Washington at the University of Washington, co-hosts others, once alongside Adreonna Bennett. Guests come from inside the profession and from its edges. Artificial intelligence gets two linked episodes. Chris Pandza describes using AI to reveal connections across an oral history of the Obama presidency, a project that interviewed more than 450 people and set White House insiders beside near-unknowns. Ben and Sara Brumfield then widen the frame, and one thread asks whether a language model could spot text a medieval writer borrowed without credit, or trace Charles Darwin's paraphrases back to what he read. Documentary film raises a different set of ethical questions. Rachel Antell and Stephanie Jenkins, leaders of the Archival Producers Alliance, lay out the legal fog around synthetic media: what counts as copyrightable machine output in the U.S. is not what counts in Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong or Tokyo. Then comes consent. What does it mean, they ask, to put a dead person's voice into a synthetic model and have them say something? Other episodes stay closer to daily practice. Christina Zamon recalls doubting she was the right author for a book until SAA pointed to her experience as a solo archivist, and she credits Heather Perez, a practicing solo archivist, as the sounding board for her drafts. Julie Thomas describes her teaching sessions with students and takes a question on building critical evaluation of digital primary sources. The stakes rise with Maigen Sullivan and Joshua Burford, co-founders and co-executive directors of Invisible Histories. They describe an archivist at a university in a Deep South state, already barred from collecting more LGBT materials, who feared an order to remove the queer collections on the shelves. Their answer was an offer to find those materials a safe place, and near the end they invite archivists facing anti-DEI measures to reach out. The register is collegial. Hosts build follow-ups on what guests have just said, and small jokes survive, as when 'a drop in the bucket' comes out as 'a puddle in the bucket' and gets claimed anyway. For a first listen, the two AI conversations work as a pair, and the hosts themselves send listeners from the Brumfield episode back to the Pandza one.
Made for: Suits a listener who works with collections, or hopes to, and wants to hear practitioners reason through AI tools, copyright, teaching with primary sources and political pressure on holdings. It also fits a documentary maker curious about how archival producers think about synthetic media.
What sets it apart: As the Society of American Archivists' own podcast, it is hosted by working archivists, and its guest list reaches past the reading room into documentary filmmaking, oral history and LGBTQ history nonprofits. Rotating co-host pairs keep the questions tied to archival practice.
Archives in Context is a podcast about archives and the people behind them. Members of the podcast team include Mary Caldera, Adreonna Bennett, Conor Casey, Lauren Kata, Emily Mathay, Camila Zorrilla Tessler, Carmela Furio, Kate Greenberg, and Hannah Stryker. All opinions expressed in this podcast are our own and are not reflective of a particular institution.
A threatened queer collection and an AI-made historical image ask you who gets to control the record.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Archival producers unpack how generative AI complicates consent, copyright, and trust in the historical record.
Archives in Context brings Rachel Antel and Stephanie Jenkins into a focused conversation about archives, documentary filmmaking, and the often less visible work of archival producers.
Christina Zaman makes the case for solo archivist advice shaped by context, not a single template.
Christina Zaman's work on solo archivists becomes a grounded look at how much archival practice depends on context. As head of Special Collections and Archives at Georgia State University, she brings experience from Emerson College, the National Press Club, the Folger…
A practical guide to teaching students to move from digital discovery toward collection context.
Julie Thomas brings archival instruction down to a practical classroom question: how students can use digital primary sources without losing the habit of asking where those sources come from.
A grounded look at AI in archives, from tracing Darwin's paraphrases to weighing the costs of model use.
Archives in Context gives useful shape to a big question: what can AI actually help people notice in historical materials? Sarah Brumfield brings the discussion down to earth through work on crowdsourcing, artificial intelligence, and digital editions, while Ben Brumfield…
Chris Panza shows how AI can reveal patterns in large oral histories while preserving human judgment.
Archives in Context follows Chris Panza, a Canadian communication designer and oral historian, through the practical challenge of making large archives easier to use without sanding away their complexity.
Range trade talk for firearm instructors.
Clinical CE for busy veterinary teams.
Archives in Context talks with Rachel Antell and Stephanie Jenkins, two archival producers and Archival Producers Alliance co-founders, about documentary research, rights clearance, and why archival labor sits inside pre-production, production, and post-production at once.
Christina Zamon says solo archivists cannot wait for perfect systems when they are also handling reference, collections, facilities, donor work, and copyright.
Archives in Context Season 9, Episode 4 centers on Julie Thomas and her book Teaching Primary Source Research Skills to 21st Century Learners after she says a four-video lesson produced a worse post-test result, with 90% of answers wrong.
Archives in Context Season 9, Episode 3 pairs Lauren Kada and Emily Maffei with Sarah Brumfield and Ben Brumfield to talk about AI and archives.
["Archives in Context examines Chris Panza's AI-assisted oral history practice, with Lauren Kada and Emily Mathey guiding the conversation.", "Panza, a Canadian communication designer and oral historian in Manhattan, 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.", "He traces a path from interviewing people off Craigslist and editing transcripts by hand to studying at Columbia's OMA program after work in children's television and telecom subscriber planning.", "The episode connects Jagged Little Pill, Nobody's Diary, topic modeling, privacy controls, and survey data from the Marshall Project and Slate to show how archives can use AI without giving up human review."]
Archives in Context interviews Megan Sullivan and Joshua Burford, co-founders of Invisible Histories, about documenting LGBTQ history across the Deep South.
Archives in Context interviews Krista McCracken and Skylee Storm about their book Decolonial Archival Futures and archival practice in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Marina Palienko, a Ukrainian historian and archivist at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, explains why archives matter during Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Archives in Context interviews Dindria Barrow, Marika Cifor, Sarah Nguyễn, and Anna Trammell about the Tacoma Public Library Community Archives Toolkit.
Nicole Milano interviews Allegra Favilla, Leah Warner, and Lyric Evans-Hunter about archival training at New York University's Archives and Public History program.
Archives in Context features Rachel Chattelbash, Susan Hernandez, and Megan Schwenke discussing their 2022 Society of American Archivists book Museum Archives: Practice, Issues, and Advocacy.
Archives in Context interviews Christine Fallon, Eliza Leventhal, and Jody Thompson about Born Digital Design Records, a 2022 Society of American Archivists publication organized into three modules.
Archives in Context interviews Marika Sifor about Viral Cultures, her 2022 book on activist archiving and AIDS history in the United States.
Cheryl A.
Archives in Context revisits SAA's first hybrid annual meeting, held in August 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts, through attendee reflections on returning to in-person professional life.
Archives in Context interviews Beth Myers and Bob Clark about the Society of American Archivists Foundation’s funding, grants, awards, travel stipends, and disaster recovery support.
Jesse Ryan Erickson discusses The Gentleman's Ghost, a 2020 essay arguing that Western special-collections reading rooms were designed for white men and shaped by hierarchical, colonial, and cultural values.
Archives in Context features Stacey Williams of the Chicago Public Library and Amy Cooper Carey of Marquette University discussing publication routes through the Society of American Archivists.
Archives in Context features Library of Congress specialists Dana Bell and Guha Shankar discussing primary-source education, community outreach, and archival access during the 2020 pandemic.
Archives in Context interviews Alexis Antroccoli, Annalise Berdini, Faith Charlton, Valencia Johnson, and Katie Rawdon about Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia's 2019 anti-racist description resources.
Archives in Context interviews Alexis Ann Troccoli, Annalise Berdini, Faith Charlton, Valencia Johnson, and Katie Rodden about Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s Anti-Racist Description Working Group.
Archives in Context interviews Petrina Jackson and Veronica Reyes-Escudero about their August 2020 RBMS letter, "A Call for Justice," which followed the killing of George Floyd and called for action against structural racism.
Archives in Context features Petrina Jackson and Verónica Reyes-Escudero discussing their August 2020 RBMS letter, “A Call for Justice,” after the killing of George Floyd.
Archives in Context features Dorothy Berry, Digital Collections Program Manager at Harvard University's Houghton Library, discussing self-care as a practice of centering oneself in relation to community.
Archives in Context introduces the Archival Workers Emergency Fund, which offered U.S.-based archival workers one-time crash grants of up to $1,000 after COVID-19 income loss.
Liza Posas, Head of Research Services and Archives at the Autry Museum of the American West, explains how the Native American Archival Materials Protocols address consultation, cultural sensitivity, intellectual property, and repatriation.
Archives in Context interviews Dr.
Courtney Dean and Grace Danico explain how the Los Angeles Archivist Collective grew from three UCLA graduates' 2014 organizing effort into a community group whose first happy hour drew about 60 people.
Ashley Farmer, a historian at the University of Texas at Austin, explains how her 2018 essay "Archiving While Black" grew from discomfort and surveillance she experienced in archival repositories.
Archives in Context features Lael Hughes-Watkins and Tamar Shute discussing Project STAND, an initiative launched in 2017 to document student activism and marginalized voices in archival collections.
This episode revisits a storytelling event from the Society of American Archivists' annual meeting, featuring live true stories about archives.
An interview with Kathleen Rowe about defining advocacy and awareness in the archives field.
This episode features a conversation with Davia Nelson of the Kitchen Sisters about their podcast The Keepers, which highlights activist archivists and promotes archival awareness.
An interview with archivist Dominique Luster about her work preserving Teenie Harris's photographs and her TEDx talk on diversity in archives.
An interview with Anthony Cosiolo about his award-winning book on moving image and sound collections for archivists.