Q: How did this project come about, and what is its goal?
Goldman: As the university archivist and someone who is passionate about the environment, I’ve been interested in how our collections can help with the study of environmental change and history. What collections do we have that could help speak to the changes we’re all experiencing in the environment? Can we use them to help guide future research around the environment or document the impacts of climate change? My project seeks to understand how the environment is preserved through collections found in academic archives across the U.S. I also want to understand what environmental information is important to researchers and other communities.
Q: What’s in our collections that relates to the environment?
Goldman: The University Archives hold a considerable amount of material documenting Penn State’s origins as an agricultural college, and its history of research in fields like mineral engineering and atmospheric sciences. In the Special Collections Library, one of our collecting strengths is labor history. Through the records of the United Steel Workers and the United Mine Workers, one can find evidence of the increased awareness about air and water pollution in the 1960s and 1970s. And then we have unique items like a weather diary from Philipsburg, Pa., in the 1820s. Archival records like these have long been used as proxy data to understand past climate.
Q: How will you determine what material is important?
Goldman: I’m seeking to survey a national audience of archivists at academic institutions to understand what kinds of collections they have that speak to some aspect of the environment so I can learn how they’re being used, who’s using them, and what utility they have to researchers—and to writers, historians, artists, and journalists—who might be interested in environmental history. That could help guide us in the future in terms of what materials we should be preserving.
Q: Will you be collecting material from outside academia—from environmental advocacy groups, for example?
Goldman: Yes. And I’m hoping the project can inspire other archival institutions to think about this, too. Environmental advocacy groups often become accidental archivists in their efforts to document what is happening in their communities. Penn State has a few examples of such collections, including the records of the Alliance for a Clean Environment (ACE), a local group from Pottstown, Pa., which donated 20 years’ worth of records documenting environmental action in their community.
Ben Goldman is Penn State’s university archivist and works at the Eberly Family Special Collections Library.
