Bergis Jules will open Digital Preservation 2016 with a keynote that focuses on the power and promise of diversity and inclusivity in digital preservation work:
"Confronting Our Failure of Care Toward the Legacies of Marginalized People in the Archives"
The politics of what we've traditionally preserved means the archive is fraught with silences, absences, and distortions, mostly affecting the legacies of the less privileged, including black women, LGBTQ people, immigrants, poor people, and victims of police violence. The more selective and specialized space of digital collections preservation prioritizes professionalism, technical expertise, and standards over a critical review of the cultural character of our records. Thus it's an appropriate place to begin asking questions about the diversity of our digital historical records. Who gets represented in the digital historical record is closely tied to who writes the software, who builds the tools, who produces the technical standards, and who provides the funding or other resources for that work. This talk will address the lack of representation in the digital preservation space, the implications, and what we can gain from diversifying and making that space more inclusive.
