12th Annual Archives Lecture: Jeannette A Bastian

Islands, specifically the former colonial islands of the Caribbean and the Pacific, share many similar archival and records issues. Questions around the repatriation and custody of colonial documents mingle with the archiving and preserving of the oral and performative records of indigenous communities. Drawing on her own island experiences, Jeannette Bastian explores the concept of a cultural archives as a fruitful and productive path towards the documentation of these dynamic island communities.

Jeannette A Bastian is a Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, Boston where she directs their archives education program. She was Territorial Librarian of the United States Virgin Islands 1987 to 1998 and received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1999. She has published widely in the areas of collective memory, post-colonialism and archives education. Her books include Owning Memory: How a Caribbean Community Lost Its Archives and Found Its History (2003), Archival Internships (2008), and Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory (2009).