by David Bernabo and Katherine Barbera
Climate change is reshaping our known world, including our archives. We talk with Eira Tansey, an archivist and researcher who specializes in the impacts of climate change on cultural heritage. She recently published a report with the Council on Library and Information Resources called “A Green New Deal for Archives,” one of the first comprehensive looks at what we need to do to protect our histories. She also founded Memory Rising, which provides research, consulting, and archival services with expertise in climate change, environmental and labor movements, and Ohio Valley regional history. This is the first episode of the Vernacular Archives series on the Bright Archives podcast.
We talk with Eira about the impacts of climate change on archives, how archives can be used to tell stories about climate change, and how labor issues impact the ability of archivists to respond to the effects of our changing environment.
The Bright Archives podcast explores what it means to build meaningful archives. We want to listen deeply to the world around us to investigate the value preservation has for all of us. To do this, we developed two series: Collectors Edition, where we talk with collectors to learn what motivates all of us to bring objects into our lives, and how possessions shape our lived experiences, and Vernacular Archives, where we meet people who think about preservation differently and create collections rooted in people and place. This podcast is a project by Bright Archives, an independent archival production house, and it is being cross-posted with Petrichor.
David Bernabo is an oral historian, musician, artist, and independent filmmaker with a deep interest in local history and its repercussions on today’s Pittsburgh.
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