JUDY HEUMANN: I think the average person, they see disability as a threat, as a threat to not being able to do things as people have typically done them. And I think there's truth in that. But the question is is it because one has a disability or because society itself has constructed itself in such a way because they haven't seen us? Discrimination against disabled people has existed from the beginning of time. And we're in a place right now where because of other movements, civil rights movement, the women's movement, Black Lives Matter movement, et cetera, people are speaking up and out. [THEME SONG] CHARLIE BENNETT: You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks, The Research Library Rock and Roll Radio Show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio with Fred Rascoe and Marlee Givens. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it. MARLEE GIVENS: Today's show is called What is the Disability Archives Lab? CHARLIE BENNETT: We'll also be asking some who questions, right? FRED RASCOE: And some why and how questions. CHARLIE BENNETT: The when is now. MARLEE GIVENS: I just didn't think it was practical to entitle the show who, what, where, why, and how is the disability archives lab. CHARLIE BENNETT: When have we ever been practical? FRED RASCOE: Well, I'm guessing we'll find the answers to all those questions, anyway, right? CHARLIE BENNETT: Yes, even the where question. We will be speaking today with the director of the Disability Archives Lab, who is joining us all the way from Canada. FRED RASCOE: And our songs today are all about sharing values, not worrying about how others see you, and finding a natural groove. CHARLIE BENNETT: Something we could all do, Fred. FRED RASCOE: And today, every song is performed by artists who have some form of disability. Let's start with a song from an artist that doesn't shy away from telling his story. He puts his own learning disability to the forefront of all his recorded work. This is "Eat My Disability" by Leroy Moore featuring Fezo d MadOne right here on Lost in the Stacks. [LEROY MOORE, "EAT MY DISABILITY"] [INAUDIBLE] down the voicebox goes the dudes that get dropped. [INAUDIBLE] MARLEE GIVENS: This is Lost in the Stacks. And our show today is called What is the Disability Archives Lab. Let's start by meeting our guest. GRACEN BRILMYER: Sure, my name is Gracen Brilmyer. I am currently an assistant professor at McGill University's School of Information Studies as well as the director of the pretty new Disability Archives Lab. I am located on the traditional territory of the Kanien'kehàka, who are the traditional custodians of these lands and waters. CHARLIE BENNETT: And you are an archivist by trade. You've done archival work. Is that how you got to Information School? GRACEN BRILMYER: I have. I think I can make sense of my history now. But I really had a roundabout way of getting here. I went to art school and did hand-drawn animation and printmaking. And then somehow found myself working in natural history museums with insect collections. And during my undergrad with art archives and then working in museums, working with collections, I had a lot of questions that now I understand to be archives related questions about access, and organization, and use. And so I ended up getting, after a pretty long time working in natural history museums, ended up going to get my master's in information management and systems from UC Berkeley. And that's really where I got way more into archives specifically, but was also still working in the Essig Museum of Entomology on Berkeley's campus. And was still asking all these questions about access, and use, and organization. Yeah, through that, I am disabled. I'm chronically ill. And in lots of the spaces that I've been in, I have really prioritized thinking about other disabled people and what work there needs to be done for disabled people to have access to think about representation in all sorts of ways. And so that was always kind of a thread that was coming through in my work. And then during my masters, I got much more into thinking about digital accessibility and archival studies. And that's kind of where I officially made the decision to get my PhD because I had so many questions that were really squarely at this intersection of disability and archives. MARLEE GIVENS: How do you feel about talking about your own access issues? GRACEN BRILMYER: It's hard to separate out just my own experiences in isolation because I think, for me, a lot of the issues of inaccessibility or ableism and discrimination that I have faced, I also think about in the collective of what work I'm doing to advocate for myself to attend an event or just get in a building. That work is not just for me. But that work is for other disabled people or the disabled people that will follow me. Lots of scholars on access and critical access studies thought very complexly about accessibility and all the emotions that come with access, all of the feelings of belonging or not belonging that come with not only just the logistics of getting into the building, but what it feels like to negotiate those logistics to the processes of asking for accommodations, this whole universe that surrounds disabled people's participation in the world. CHARLIE BENNETT: And is that really the catalyst for Disability Archives Lab? GRACEN BRILMYER: That is a big part of it, yeah. I think it's also-- I founded the lab really as this hub to host a lot of collaborative projects, as well as build new ones by and for disabled people. And so it really is thinking with other disabled people. Although each of the projects that I've been working on have unique goals or a unique focus, to me, they are also interconnected, interconnected to one another, interconnected to all of these conversations that I'm having with other disabled folks. And are really this constellation of ideas that collectively build towards more disability centered archival knowledge, both to understand the current landscape of how archives impact disabled people today, whether that is around access, or inaccessibility, or representation, or feelings of what it means to feel disabled people in history, but also to think about our desires for the future of what it means to think together with other disabled people to build some new stuff. In other words, founding the lab was really a way for me to put all of these ideas and conversations that I was having in one place to think about them next to one another, which, for me, creates new understandings of each of them, as well as them as a collective set of knowledge by disabled people. CHARLIE BENNETT: I think everyone has a sense of what disabled or disability means. But the idea of a formal definition, I think, eludes a lot of people. GRACEN BRILMYER: Yes, yes, yeah, it's a really complicated question. And I am incredibly indebted to other disabled thinkers, and writers, and organizers and the communities that I've been involved with at different points in my life that have really shaped my identity as disabled, as well as how I think about disability centered research. In one context, when it comes from the work that I do with other disabled people, like interviewing people for projects on disability and archives, it really is not up to me to define. So the folks who I interview only need to self-identify as disabled. And that comes with very complicated relationships to disability, to chronic illness, diagnosis, medicalization, care, and all of the politics that surround disability. And one thing that I learned early on in reading disability studies, the field, was that-- and I credit Alison Kiefer's work, is that not everyone who has a disability identifies as disabled. And not everyone has the same relationship to their body-mind. And many people, including those who may not be disabled or may not identify as disabled, are still impacted by ableism. So the expectations of what is quote, unquote normal and who is acceptable, what behaviors, or aesthetics are acceptable are frequently orbited by notions of ableism. And I guess along those lines too, when I think about what is-- how I define disability when I'm working with historical records, that is also complicated and eludes a particular definition. I really have come to grapple with what it means to use or not use contemporary language around disability with historical records and recognize that people might not have identified as disabled or had the language to describe the complexity of a disability identity. Or if they did, and this is a big piece, that those perspectives are often not represented in records. And so when I think about histories of disability and disabled people in history, I also find myself turning to identifying ableism and thinking about eugenics. Ableism as the central tenet that stipulates who, again, who is assumed to be quote, unquote normal or acceptable, who is allowed to exist or deserves care, and how that also shapes histories of documentation, of resistance, of activism, of community. MARLEE GIVENS: This is Lost in the Stacks. We'll be back with more about the work of the Disability Archives Lab after a music set. FRED RASCOE: And you can file this set under RJ496.L4K49. [MUSIC PLAYING] FRED RASCOE: Kill it, kid. CHARLIE BENNETT: Come on, Fred. FRED RASCOE: That comes from Miami from Josh Barber. That was "Kill it, Kid" by Blind Willie McTell. Before that, "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" by Ian Drury and the Blockheads. Songs about taking your time and finding that natural groove. [MUSIC PLAYING] CHARLIE BENNETT: This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called What is The Disability Archives Lab? We're speaking with Gracen Brilmyer, assistant professor-- excuse me-- assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at McGill University and director of the Disability archives lab. MARLEE GIVENS: And I asked Gracen about their most satisfying Disability Archives Lab projects. GRACEN BRILMYER: Part of my research is thinking more historically. And I use a bunch of archives to think about histories of disability, which is exciting, and difficult, and emotional. But the other half of my research, which I really love, is very much community based and are these set of projects that are really rooted in talking with other disabled folks about their experiences in archives. So for example, I have one project where I interviewed disabled archival users about their experiences in archives, their experiences with representation, misrepresentation, and erasure. And in those interviews, in every single one, accessibility came up. So I ended up digging into archival access and inaccessibility. Another project that is a pretty sibling project to the disabled archival users project is one that I started a couple of years ago in collaboration with another disabled archivist, Veronica Dennison, where we interviewed disabled archivists about archival labor and really reckoning with the harms of the profession, or how the archival profession is experienced by disabled people. And both of these, I can't emphasize enough, what an honor it is to spend so much time not just having these conversations, and making new connections, and building this community of thinkers around disabled people's experiences in archives and learning about the important work that's already being done, whether that's reframing harmful records, or searching in an impossible database for erased histories, or archivists doing redistribution or access projects. But it's also just an honor to sit with these words for a very long time. So for the archival users project, I think I conducted those interviews in 2017 or 2018. And I'm just now finishing the last book chapter that I'm using these words for. So it is-- doing community centered research is really an immense privilege that really makes my heart explode just to connect to other disabled folks, and elevate their really powerful words, and spend time with their words for so long to really try to do them justice. CHARLIE BENNETT: What's the professional or logistic advantage to creating the umbrella of Disability Archives Lab around this work, which clearly you would be doing even if it weren't defined as a lab and seems to be project based? What's good about the lab as a entity? GRACEN BRILMYER: The lab is fairly new. I founded it in 2021. So lots of the work is just getting started. But the hope is really to be able to connect. My collaborators, I have-- it's a space where I get to invite disabled students to come work with me on projects. Which is really amazing, not only to share what community based research looks like, but also to get new perspectives into how we're thinking about these ideas. Another piece of the lab, which is not just the research that's happening, but is also-- I wanted a space that could help me expand the way that I communicate about this work outside of academic spaces. So although I'm publishing on some of these projects, I also wanted to make some space for some different types of access to the work that I'm doing, albeit imperfectly. So this year, we launched our blog, which is called Rerecordings, which is one way that I'm trying to elevate more disabled perspectives for more of a general public audience. And I've also recently been putting more energy into the lab's social media. So that is another way to share the work that we're doing and connect with folks and sort of transform the work. So some of it is synthesizing some of what would be published or has been published and attempts to kind of give a peek into these aspects of disabled world building when it comes to archives that isn't someone having to read a whole academic article. So really, the lab is a space to share and expand on the research that we're doing and eventually host some new, more tech-based projects, which I'm happy to talk about too. MARLEE GIVENS: Today's show-- oh. CHARLIE BENNETT: Hey Marlee. MARLEE GIVENS: I just got the pointed finger and jumped to the wrong spot. I'm sorry, everyone. You're listening to Lost in the Stacks. And we'll talk more about people with disabilities in the archives on the left side of the hour. [MUSIC PLAYING] ERIC CARTIER: Hi, this is Eric Cartier. I'm the digital librarian at the University of Maryland. And you're listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta. [MUSIC PLAYING] MARLEE GIVENS: And now, I'm in the right place. Today's show-- CHARLIE BENNETT: It's nice to let the listeners know, Marlee, that we're here. We're real. This is not a Chat-GPT radio show. MARLEE GIVENS: We're not robots. Today's show is called What is the Disability Archives Lab? And we found a piece of Gracen's scholarship that crystallized one aspect of archives and disability studies. This is from an article published in Archival Science last year, which we will reference again later in the show. "Archives and the materials they contain have the power to influence how we understand history, ourselves, and others. Many scholars in the field of disability studies have used records to illuminate pieces of disability history by exploring how disabled people have been historically documented for their deviance from quote, the norm, as well as addressing the scarcity of records or difficulty in finding records around disability. "Susan Schweit, for instance, uses archival records to examine late 19th and early 20th century legislation called the Ugly Laws. Under these laws, people found, quote, 'unsightly,' unquote were often policed, arrested, and institutionalized, which created a plethora of arrest records, asylum, and medical documentation, as well as newspaper articles that reinforce the idea that disability is something to be feared, contained, and eliminated. "Historian Kim Nielsen similarly uses records such as sterilization reports, advertisements for runaway, quote, 'disabled' slaves, asylum documentation, and American colony records to trace how concepts of disability and the historic oppression of disabled people have shaped contemporary legislation, attitudes, and experiences in the United States. These examples demonstrate the ways in which records produced around disability can create, represent, and/or reinforce harmful stereotypes around disability." File this set under HV1552.O94. CHARLIE BENNETT: That was "Yes, I'm a Mess" by Wheelchair Sports Camp. And we started that set with Aina Mun Pitää" by Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät. Those are songs about not seeing yourself in the same way others see you. FRED RASCOE: This is Lost in the Stacks and today's show is called What is the Disability Archives Lab? Our guest is Gracen Brilmer-- BRILMYER, excuse me, assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at McGill University and director of the Disability Archives Lab. MARLEE GIVENS: I asked Gracen about their collaborators in the Disability Archives Lab. GRACEN BRILMYER: Yeah, I have a couple of collaborators who are McGill faculty. I have, right now, I think three or four McGill students, master's and PhD students, who are working with me on different projects. But then I have lots of collaborators who are outside of McGill and outside of Canada as well. One person, Crystal Lee, I recently co-edited a special issue of First Monday on disability and information studies. So that is not just about archives, although archives are talked about in that issue. And that was a really amazing collaboration to produce this special issue, which is open access, about predominantly from disabled people who are thinking about information studies as a field, whether that is AI, or archives, or libraries, and all of the different processes, and techniques, and technologies that are used. Another collaborator is Dr. Lydia Tang. And we are currently working on a book that is coming out with Litwin Books, hopefully, this year, called Preserving Disability Disability in the Archival Profession. And the book is a collection of chapters that address the archival profession, so archival work, archival processes and address experiences both from users and archivists. So that's a really exciting collaboration where we had to call for submissions. We're working with some really amazing contributors. We have just this collection of really fantastic ideas that together are really showing some interesting perspectives into the archival profession, as well as we have this really fantastic foreword written by Alice Wong. So really excited about that book. And really excited about that collaboration in the ways that, yeah, working with people that are outside of my university to build new things and to extend conversations in different ways. CHARLIE BENNETT: Gracen, there's a publication of yours from 2021. And the title-- I'm going to read just the beginning of the title, in quotes, "I'm also prepared to not find me. It's great when I do. But it doesn't hurt if I don't." I wondered if you could explain that a little bit. GRACEN BRILMYER: That article was from that project on disabled archival users that I conducted as part of my dissertation research. That article was a tiny slice in my dissertation. The thesis of that article is that the disabled people who I talked to often expected to feel erased in archives or not represented-- not represented in complex ways. So they didn't expect to find disabled people or expected to find partial or harmful types of representation of disability. Initially, I was like, yeah, of course, given certain histories of documentation around disability, of course that disabled people would feel-- would expect this kind of erasure. And in my dissertation, that's-- it was pretty short. It was pretty condensed. And one person on my committee, who is Alison Kiefer, really encouraged me to slow down and spend time with these words even more than I already was. And the more I thought about this seemingly simple finding, the more I realized how complex it was, expectation, anticipation, these types of ways of meeting history are not simple. They don't always look the same. And so I ended up really digging at these ideas and sitting with these words of expected erasure. And it turned into a whole article on the topic, realizing that we anticipate erasure, or harm, or certain types of representation for all different reasons to plan, to protect ourselves, to dream otherwise. And so that article was really difficult, but really fun to write. But really, yeah, took a lot of time of sitting with those words to think about what was happening there. MARLEE GIVENS: So because I was listening to that you're coming up on the end of a five year endeavor, or six, really, work that you started in 2017, 2018 that's been very satisfying. And I love that your thesis advisor was recommending that you take your time and sit with this. I feel like we don't-- the world of the researcher and the publish or perish, it just doesn't seem like it really allows for that. So it's very refreshing to hear that. And also just hearing about all the work you've been doing, I'm like, well, you're certainly doing enough. But is there anything that you're not doing that you want to do, or something that you want to do next, especially as you're kind of coming to the end of this book chapter? GRACEN BRILMYER: Yeah, just to reflect what you said, yeah, time is definitely-- the time it takes to spend with these interviews and the time it takes to slow down and think about these ideas, really can be at odds with the pressures of academia and productivity. This year, I started a new project that will be multi-year. As well, I'm hopefully finishing up the-- we're working with writing a few pieces from the disabled archivist interviews. But as we're finishing that, I just started this year, this new project on crip futurity in archives or how disabled people want to be remembered in the future. So this year, I conducted a series of focus groups with disabled people around this idea of the past, the present, and the future, and how we want to be remembered in the future. And this will take a lot of time. But these conversations will not only go towards writing articles about these themes of archival futurity, and memory, and disability. But also will form some design guidelines for a digital archive that I'm hoping to build around disability. And this piece is-- I've been taking my time, but excitedly awaiting getting to this piece of building something, having spent so much time thinking with others about archives. I'm really excited to imagine what that looks like to imagine archives differently and actually build the thing, so not only the theory but putting it into practice in all of its complexity. This digital archive I'm imagining instead of being a single project, it will sort of function as an umbrella for multiple archival projects with different disabled people who want to build something around archives, whether that is finding the funding for scanning disabled activists records that they have right now, or connecting now disparate historical records from different institutions, or supporting an oral History Project on a certain group of disabled folks. And so I'm really excited to start working with like implementing all these ideas and thinking about what that would look like to build a platform, to build a tool. And to do that with disabled communities, even if that feels impossible. MARLEE GIVENS: We'd like to thank our guest, Gracen Brilmyer, assistant professor in the School of Information studies at McGill University and director of the Disability Archives Lab. Thank you so much for joining us. GRACEN BRILMYER: Thank you for having me. FRED RASCOE: This is Lost in the Stacks. And as always, let's cap our interview with a music set. MARLEE GIVENS: And you can file this set under N8236.P4M35. [HEAVY LOAD, "WE'RE ALL IN A FILM"] We're all in a film. We're all in a film. [GAELYNN LEA, "I SEE IT TOO"] The same song. MARLEE GIVENS: That was "I See It Too" by Gaelynn Lea. And before that, we heard "We're All in a Film" by Heavy Load, songs about working with others who share your values. [MUSIC PLAYING] Today's show is called What is the Disability Archives Lab? And one thing that resonated with me during our time with Gracen was when we talked about representation. I've had similar experiences on the show, like when we talked to Kyle Tanaka, and Melissa Adler, and Jackie Royster. And the important work of finding people in our libraries and archives whom society has, in the past, deliberately made invisible. It's so important to feel seen, and how powerful it can be for someone to find themselves in our collections. My version of this is not in the library or the archives. But it is at Georgia Tech. Close to 10 years ago, Georgia Tech Human Resources created employee resource groups for various communities on campus to find each other, people like veterans, LGBTQ, women, and so on. And one of the groups they created was for people like me, introverts. CHARLIE BENNETT: You librarian stereotype. MARLEE GIVENS: I know, but I was enormously pleased that this group was recognized. Fred, have you had an experience like that? FRED RASCOE: Oh, I am thinking on my feet because I forgot there was going to be this round robin question. And I didn't look at it first. CHARLIE BENNETT: I love it. FRED RASCOE: I have to say that I believe in that Groucho Marx quote. I don't want to be a member of a club that will have me as a member. CHARLIE BENNETT: Fred doesn't want to be seen. FRED RASCOE: And so yeah, my tendency is not to consciously look for where I join. I probably do it subconsciously. I imagine everyone does. But I can't think of an example of doing that consciously. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, well, I am a clinically depressed cis het white man of middle age. So I am overrepresented in the world and in literature. I have always seen myself. And so it-- FRED RASCOE: Oh yeah, I'm same as you, Charlie. So maybe that's it. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, we're-- my demographic is the water in which we swim. MARLEE GIVENS: Yeah, well, I guess you both found each other here in Lost in the Stacks. CHARLIE BENNETT: What's up, buddy? FRED RASCOE: I guess it's time to roll the credits. [MUSIC PLAYING] CHARLIE BENNETT: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library written and produced by a couple of cis het white guys and Marlee Givens. MARLEE GIVENS: Legal counsel and a shiny new package of Hollinger boxes were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. CHARLIE BENNETT: He's got so many of those. FRED RASCOE: I'm glad he shared. Special thanks to Gracen for joining us on today's show, to all the Disability Archives Lab collaborators on their work, to Maria Sotnikova for that one time she set Charlie straight on disability issues. CHARLIE BENNETT: Thank you, Maria. FRED RASCOE: Hope you're doing well. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening. CHARLIE BENNETT: Our web page is library.gatech.edu/lostinthestacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you'd like to get in touch with us. MARLEE GIVENS: Next week's show will be a rerun. But we'll be back with you live in two weeks. FRED RASCOE: It's time for our last song today. Historically, disabled folks have been misrepresented and erased in the archives. But it's the dream of the Disability Archives Lab that this will change. So let's close with a song about the dream of change. And it's by a band that has a guitar player that is known for his heavy riffs, blazing guitar solos, despite missing parts of his fingers on his fretting hand. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yes, Fred. FRED RASCOE: I am talking, of course, about Tony Iommi, guitarist for the legendary Black Sabbath. And this is their track, "Tomorrow's Dream." Have a great weekend, everybody. CHARLIE BENNETT: Now, I feel really seen, Marlee. [BLACK SABBATH, "TOMORROW'S DREAM"]