 Good evening, everyone. Welcome to this session of the Association for Baha'i Studies Conference 2020 in our unusual new format, not live with all of you present, but live virtually. Welcome to this session. It's entitled, Knowledge is a Veritable Treasure, the Present and Future of Baha'i Contributions to Libraries, Archives, and Museums. I'm Bill Collins. I'm the moderator for this evening, and I want to give you some background on what we're doing and who all of the participants are in this panel. This is a panel discussion about Baha'i approaches to libraries, archives, and museums. Panelists include an academic librarian, an archivist, and a museum professional. We will identify relevant discourses to which Baha'is can contribute, explore ways in which institutions of cultural memory can contribute to the community building process, and present libraries, archives, and museums as important professional pathways for Baha'i students. So the first person I'm going to introduce is Lev Rickerts, is the Associate University Librarian for Collections and Scholarly Communication at Santa Clara University. He holds a Master of Science in Information from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Carlton College. Lorraine Sheldon serves as Outreach Librarian at the Gibson D. Lewis Health Science Library in Fort Worth, Texas, connecting communities in the North Texas area with knowledge and resources available through the National Library of Medicine. She previously served at the Baha'i World Center as a photo archivist and received her MS in Information Science from the University of North Texas. Third, we had Ed Sebsic, who serves as the archivist at the U.S. Baha'i National Center. He previously served at the Baha'i World Center and received his Master of Information Studies from the University of Texas. We also have Mae Lample, who is a Race Discourse Officer at the U.S. Baha'i Office of Public Affairs. Mae coordinates the office's collaboration with individuals, organizations, and agencies in the U.S. engaged in public discourses and policy advocacy directed toward racial justice and racial unity. Prior to joining the office in 2017, Mae worked in health education and community mobilization for Southeastern health, in maternal health research for Kimania and Geo in Uganda, and in global discourse on the equality of women and men for the Institute for Studies and Global Prosperity in Israel. Mae has an MPH in maternal and child health from University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in political science from Haverford College. And PJ Andrews coordinates the Office of Public Affairs of the Baha'is of the U.S. collaboration with individuals, organizations, and agencies in the U.S. engaged in public discourses and policy advocacy directed toward racial justice and racial unity. I will turn it over to Lev and the rest of the panel for their presentation. Thank you, Bill, and thanks to everyone for joining us. We're going to jump in with a question that's primarily for Ed and Lorraine about their course of study and what practical preparation they needed for their jobs. But I'd also like to bring PJ and Mae into that conversation if they could share a bit about what brings them to this panel, because it's perhaps not obvious how public discourse connects to libraries and archives and museums. So we'll start with Ed. Hello. Well, practical, my practical course of study and what led me to this position. My undergraduate university degree was in history, which is very common for people who end up as archivists that they took an undergraduate in history. And after receiving that I didn't go. Many people that do it history undergrad go into right into history PhD or they go into a professional like teaching, and I didn't do either one of those for various reasons. I worked a number of different jobs I was I worked as a office manager for startup I worked and I worked and up the software compliance for a bank and some other things like this. And that I mentioned that because it turned out to be more important than I thought at the time but at a later time I went back to my alma mater the University of Texas and did a two year information studies master. Which to work in the profession is the terminal degree you typically don't need a PhD unless you're going on to university teaching or something like that. And, and quickly the information studies embraces library archives and other areas, and I quickly found that I was just drawn to the archival end of the work archival enterprise. I was very lucky to have a, an internship essentially a job at one of the prestigious historical collecting archives at the University of Texas, the Center for American History which is now the briscoe Center for American History. And what I discovered there was first that the work in the work in that eight in that institution taught me at least as much as I was learning in my courses. So the fact that I had spent to some years working in a variety of different areas actually turned out to be a tremendous advantage because having some experience actually made me a better archivist it made me able more able to look at the documents generated by people who had done lots of different things and kind of see the sense and the logic of how those put together. Following that I did offer service to the Bahá'í World Center in Haifa and was honored to be accepted to serve there for about 10 years as an archivist in their department and it was a very, it was a very enriching experience in many ways. And upon returning to the US I was able, I was found a position here at the National Center as archivist. So that's how I'm, that's how I ended up where I am. Wonderful. Thank you, Ed. How about you Lorraine? Yes, I think as Ed referenced, it's actually a strength to come from a very, a variety of fields. So really you can start anywhere because ultimately information comes in many different forms. I think the most common people think of as books but really it could be media, photography, objects. So for me I actually have a bachelor's in radio, television, film production. So I did that for many years and I had a minor in photography. And how I kind of ended up in this field is actually I started as a photo cataloger for my university photographer and then from there went to the World Center for several years. And upon returning, because I wasn't familiar with the field there in applying for jobs, they're like, oh, you need a master's, you're like, okay, I'll do this. So as I was studying getting my master's in information science, I also served as a regional coordinator, so that in depth that constant work in community building through the learning process that the Baha'is are doing. That really led me to the position I have now, which is really a combination of community development and information science because I work in community engagement with a focus on health literacy, health information, because I'm at an academic university that trains medical professionals, doctors, DOs, things like that. So it was really, like Ed mentioned, this combination of life experience in a variety of fields, a variety of experiences that brought me to the profession. Wonderful. Thank you. And May and PJ, could you maybe connect it for us, what brings you to this panel? Yeah, sure. Hi, everyone. Glad to be here. So May and my work focuses at the level of discourse and so we really work at the level of thought trying to contribute by high ideas and concepts and principles to the evolution of thought, particularly as it relates to the national discourse on race in America for the Office of Public Affairs. And early on in our time working when we came on in about November 2017, we were thinking a lot about the question of narrative and conceptions of history. So the early part of the March 2nd 2013 message to the Baha'is in Iran, and sort of laying out the Baha'i vision of global transformation emphasizes conceptions of history very early on, what is the Baha'i conception of history. We were thinking that actually in the discourse on race, a lot of a big strand is the stories we tell each other with stories we tell ourselves about race, and how that can have a really powerful role about understanding who we are. And can also traditionally has been told sort of in a framework of contest and conflict that furthers conceptions of us and them. So we were really interested in what role history could play in helping us envision a future of America that is free from racism but also reflects on this, our inherent oneness but also our diversity, the unity of our and how we express unity and diversity. So we started to engage historians, museum archivists librarians who were telling stories and narratives weaving narratives about race in history and sort of historical narratives about race. And we've actually been able to convene that group a few times and have developed sort of a concept note that guides the way that we think about our engagement with that group of professionals. And so one of the people we actually worked with at one point was live. And so that's how we ended up on this panel and we probably will share our experiences and insights that have been generated by working with that group of people from different professions. I'm glad you're all here and that you can be a part of this conversation. So thank you. This next question is really for everyone but I think we can start with may is there a particular concept from the revelation of Bahá'u'lláh that has changed the way you think about libraries and archives. Thank you. Like PJ mentioned one of the things that we've been thinking about a lot is around this idea of telling history, specifically the idea of telling history as a form of justice. So the idea from from the writings this idea that truth is one has been really helpful for us and the way we tell history or the conversations that we try to have around the telling of history. And so the Bahá'u'lláh said that if five people meet together to seek for truth, they must begin by cutting themselves free from all their own special special conditions and renouncing all pre-conceived ideas. In order to find truth we must give up our prejudices, our own small trivial notions, an open receptive mind is essential. So history is really a field of human knowledge that attempts to highlight truth. But like PJ mentioned it's really been used as a way of promoting particular ideologies that often can really cause or reinforce a variety of permutations of us and them. So we have to tell history in a way that does that we can tell history in that way that's one way but but we're really trying to think about how can we tell history in a way that reflects that we are one people like PJ mentioned. So, keeping all that in mind I think that the role of libraries and archives really becomes how do we investigate truth. They have an opportunity to offer you know frameworks or tools that help us investigate truth. They can offer a variety of narratives that help us underscore truth from different perspectives that provide a richness to us to a story to a particular chapter in history. But it's really important that they also promote this idea that truth is one. Lorraine. I totally agree with me, one of the concepts for from the revelation that particularly speaks to the work I do is this idea of being able to seek truth and that like one of the greatest suppressions that can can take place is someone seeking, having the desire to seek truth wishing to to come to that and not being able to find it. So, again, I think, you know, these kinds of institutions and communities kind of facilitate that they really create that universal access access to communities to engage knowledge. And then I think as well which I'll get maybe answer later questions is this first for knowledge this desire to engage in the generation of knowledge that you know every human being has inherently so. Thank you. And Ed, how about you, a particular concept from the revelation that has changed the way you think about archives. Well, following on what may said. I was speaking particularly from archive perspective, the sort of dirty little secret of archives in general is that for thousands of years it's been true that it was relatively expensive and time consuming to keep and maintain records in good order and therefore the only people who did it were kings and princes, and folks who for one reason or other wanted to use the archives as an instrument to control other people wanted to make sure they paid their taxes and served in the army when they were supposed to and all the rest of that so archives have this long legacy of basically being an instrument of state power that assists the state in essentially dominating the people who live under the jurisdiction of the state. The concept from the revelation of the whole law that I have been meditating on is the concept of service. The concept that it could have the way Abdul Bahad talks about Abdul Bahad talks a bit about power and service he talks, he says the power is still there in any feature that had power into the old world, but it's been transformed by the concept that powers is authentic when it's used as in service to humanity, not in the interests of some narrow group. So the, I think this is a concept that has obviously related ideas have been in the discourse of archives and libraries as a professional institutions for some time. But when I engage with those ideas I come at them from this concept of that the power is real, and the obligation to service is also real and that makes it important who we who we understand ourselves to be serving and how we're doing that. Thank you. This next question is for Lorraine. What role can libraries archives and museums play in the community building process of the five year plan. This is obviously a big question because the community building process is a broad framework, but maybe I'll approach this in terms of the generation of knowledge and the role of every human being as a protagonist and that generation of knowledge. So, you know, really that is at the heart of it to this, this right and obligation that every human being has to contribute to the advancement of society. So it's, you know, through this environment that is created that that makes it possible so really, you know in this way these institutions libraries archives and museums are really the only established institutions and communities where people of all backgrounds, age, ages, all sorts can come together and intersect. You know, even in education, you know it's set for a particular person and they have a particular goal, but these are open and neutral spaces where where people the purpose is to engage with information with with knowledge that's generated. So, you know, I think knowledge information, you know comes in a variety of forms, and this is, you know, really important for people to engage these, these different kind of resources. And just to think through my thought, you know, it requires to make new knowledge it requires the engagement of previously existing knowledge. So there is that that role that these institutions play. And also when information when insights are gained, even at a local level, you know these institutions can take on the role of being repositories for those insights from communities. So, really it's this this kind of interplay of being both a physical space and neutral space a place where where people from from every background are coming for the specific purpose of engaging information. And then to take it to the next step is is really to to help them be protagonist rather than just patrons that are served and then specifically and I imagine the rest of the panelists can speak more specifically to this but this engagement with history that archives and museums can play, which has been mentioned, knowing where you are in the context of history is also something that these institutions can provide to the community building process because in order to, to move forward you have to know where you have to make your decisions and reflect in this kind of constant action reflection and consultation with reliable resources with an actual read of reality. And that requires both, you know, information and also an understanding of history. PJ, and perhaps also for Lorraine, what role can libraries archives and museums play in social action and in efforts to transform society. Yeah. So, just to just to return to this, some of the work that we've been doing and actually another principle from the revelation that has been on our, our area of inquiry for us is the relationship between justice and unity. And so we've been guided by a statement of Bahá'u'lláh where he says that the purpose of justice is the appearance of unity. And so there's this sort of like, you know, obviously intimate connection between these two, these two massive principles. And, you know, when we were trying to explore what that could look like in the context of the national discourse and race and how the connection between these two principles might actually be contribute, you know, how we might identify from the faith. It seemed like we needed to get more concrete because there's such huge ideas. And so then we were thinking that there's this, there's a big field that's starting to gain a little traction in the United States and of course has a long history in the United States, although maybe a little bit quieter, but it's kind of truth and reconciliation. And we felt that in many ways, those are expressions of justice and unity. So, so truth is an expression of justice. And then reconciliation is an expression of oneness. And we thought actually that history, there's sort of this bridge of repair between truth and reconciliation. There needs to be something you can walk over to get from one place to the other. It actually plays an incredible role in that. In fact, it was a conversation with Lev where he told us that the word remember is is intimately connected to reconciliation. It's to bring to bring the parts of the body together to remember the body. And so I think in many ways that's incredibly relevant to the to the history of the United States that we've had incredible damage done to the oneness of our American politic of our body. And so we have to somehow remember that in history can help us in that regard. So, so I just wanted to bring up. So that's the sort of the context that led us to work with historians, archivists, museum curators and librarians was was learning how we can find these narratives that will help us become whole again. And so then two areas that we are focusing on and I'll try and be as brief as possible. One is history as a catalyst for reconciliation. And this idea of repair was one we're really trying to explore explore that in practice and and see if we can find examples of this in reality. And, you know, one, one example that does come to mind is the Peace and Justice Memorial in Montgomery, but together by the the Equal Justice Initiative. And really what they've done is they've created a story of how the how they can say how how slavery hasn't ended its evolved and they tell an amazing story. And then they take you to a monument place a place where you can really reflect on the impact of the legacy of the lynching of African Americans between a certain period of American history. They also try and create a dialogue around that history, they don't just end with with remember, they actually try and create at their at that center they have a conversation discussion space that is open to the public for conversation but then they also have taken that this model and connected it nationally so if you are able to find a lynching that happened in your community if you can do the work of bringing together the people, people in that community to understand that history, they will sort of send you a monument and have an installation and basically further as a conversation towards reconciliation which is very profound. And then the other area is the idea of history as a as a means for transformation. And one of the people that we work with is at the Georgetown slavery archive and he's also a history professor there. He's white and Jewish. And he's a he's basically dedicated his life to the history of teaching the history of slavery and also developing the slavery archive at an institution. And he was telling us that his journey is that he was able to through his study of slavery over time. And as he got closer and closer to the primary resources to those artifacts of slavery as he sort of was able to become exposed to the history of that history. He became transformed he became a champion of racial justice and really wanted to tell a different story of American history that many people don't know. And so he's sort of dedicated his life to that so it made us think that the actually history can be a really powerful tool for transformation. And so we're trying to see, especially for people who maybe parts of history they don't feel or see as a part of, but or communities that they don't see themselves a part of but as they learn that this is part of our collective history or collective heritage, and they, they, they transform their outlook and become something different. So, I guess taking the perspective of libraries, and I'll caveat this with this being particularly my opinion of that I think, you know, libraries the area of libraries has some growth that needs to be done, because in some cases, the approach is still very much a transactional one a very passive. I'm providing you this thing this object or a service, and it's not really hasn't always become about engagement or building something. But regardless, I'll maybe speak from the perspective of my current work. So, my, my position, I'm at a medical library but my position is extend exclusively outwardly oriented so my perspective is really to focus on the the generality of the community. Outside of faculty staff and students and really help build health literacy so giving people building capacity within people of the community to locate evaluate and apply the knowledge that they, they engage with really to build the health of the community and help individuals, you know, apply this capacity and share it with their, their family and their friends. So in a way, something that you know might could be just transactional of here's information and very passive, we're taking that and creating a more active role giving someone a power to do it themselves to share it with other people and really build healthier communities with others. So, so I think that's a strength and for particularly with working with public libraries. In my work, they have natural community neighborhoods, they have regular patrons. As we build this kind of consciousness that the library can serve your, your health information needs they can really be a service in that way. It becomes a place where people can have a conversation about that. You know, we've even done particular projects where we, we talk about DNA health and genetic health and people walk away, not just knowing information but recognizing that now they have a responsibility to contribute to the discourse around this because it is such an emerging field of precision medicine and things like that. So, so in that way, libraries have this role as informal educators, and they're, they're starting to really grow in this way and move beyond the traditional concepts that people might have about them. So now for everyone and maybe we can loop back around to Ed to start us off. What are some of the relevant discourses and librarianship and archival science to which you have or would like to contribute. So this is kind of an embarrassment of riches archiving archival science specifically it's a, it's a very diverse profession. There is this versus archives are two discourses that I've been thinking about and I think, you know, that have come to mind in response to this question is first the discourse around archival ethics around the management of information that may be of a very personal or very or very specific nature, archives by their very nature don't always contain the full record of the truth of the lives of the people that are represented in them. Very often, the only record that remains of a person maybe when they happen to come in contact with the government somehow because they either did something wrong or were accused of doing something wrong or were abused. So the, the one of the areas around ethics that archivists are that's that's a discourse in archival enterprise generally is around is around representation of people and, and the management of that in my particular case with the with the National Archives of course we hold many collections of personal and intimate papers and records that people have trusted the National Spiritual Assembly with. And now those people most of them are deceased, and the deceased are in a position of weakness they are not able to stand up and defend their, you know, their honor. And yet, in the Constitution of the Universal House of Justice one of the one of the duties that the House of Justice lays upon itself, and which devolves in some degree to its subsidiary organizations is to protect human honor. And so the this this raises some interesting questions about access legitimate access by scholars and historians to records, but also the implications of making certain kinds of information available in certain ways. So that's one, and I'll shoehorn and another one, which is the idea one that interests me a lot is the idea of what we call sort of community archiving. Grass roots archiving in which the archive rather kind of transitions gradually from being this place where an institution stores its official records and people go there to find stuff. And becomes a center in which the community can actually have a participatory role in generating and then placing records of its activities and its hopes and dreams and whatever in there. And the institution kind of helps to structure that and helps the community tell its own story. New technologies facilitate that but it's a challenging. It's a challenging area that there's a lot of talk about. Yeah, actually, touch on what Ed was just mentioning at towards the end of his comments that one of the areas of the discourse that we're really thinking about is around expanding participation in the generation of knowledge around history. Because we really need institutions that can promote a learning process around various areas of knowledge that and and that recognize that we need instruments for a growing number of people to participate in that generation and application of knowledge. I wanted to give two examples actually from Oregon from institutions that we have been collaborating with so one is this archives at Georgetown University that PJ had mentioned before. They have a slavery archives because the university, the founding of the university or the growth of the university was really based on the selling of 272 enslaved people. And as part of the university's attempt to reconcile or reckon with its history, it's, it has started this archives. And originally the majority of the archives was made up really by records that were the records of people who owned enslaved people. So they were things like bills of sale, they were records of ships, they were baptism logs because Georgetown is a Jesuit university or founded by Jesuits that is. And because of their work around trying to reckon with their history, they've been really reaching out more with the descendants of these 272 enslaved people. And they've started to bring in their stories much more into the archives. So they have bills of sale, they have like, I'm sorry, certificates of freedom they have interviews with the descendants they have more profiles of people who have been enslaved. So we're really seeing a shift in who's able to participate in whose stories are told in this archives, which is really exciting. And then another sort of smaller example is in DC there's a museum the Anacostia Community Museum which is actually a Smithsonian museum but it's also a community based museum so it has federal funding but it's really located within a particular neighborhood in Washington DC. And one of their recent exhibits was called a right to the city. And it focused on six neighborhoods in Washington DC and looked at five decades of evolution in those neighborhoods and individuals that contributed to shaping them and organize or community organizing and civic engagement that was happening around housing, transit and education. And at the end of the exhibit actually there was a telephone booth that was allowed people who were visiting many of whom are community members who experienced this history to actually record their own stories so that it allowed them to be a part of the exhibit. So those are just sort of small examples but really thinking about how we can draw more and more people into the time of their of this history. And PJ and then Lorraine. I don't have too much to add I just, you know I'll just underscore what Lorraine said at the beginning about the power of expanding conception of who is able to contribute in the generation and diffusion of knowledge in this area and and just I was thinking about this statement from the, I think is the May, there are 2018 message from the International Teaching Center where they talk about how cluster agencies are developing capacity to tell the story of their cluster as it unfolds. I think we can just see the future like the ability to contribute to the development of narratives like starting to emerge even at the very, very local grassroots. And then, you know, you can even imagine that that capacity of documenting and writing the unfolding story of a cluster. And then starting to be embedded in like junior youth groups and study circles telling the story of the community that's emerging around those activities. So, I think there's, there's, I forget what question six was this last question was but, well yeah just this relevant discourse is that a generation of knowledge and how it's reflected also in the community. So, I think as I mentioned before on the, the day to day, I'm obviously thinking about the discourse around, you know, shifting librarianship not just to being transactional but to really thinking about being as a facilitator libraries or facilitators of these conversations and communities and really working on building capacity, but I think also a really relevant area or discourse that we're hoping to contribute to is, is that of scholarly communication. This is a conversation, particularly that happens a lot in academic libraries like university libraries. There's a lot of polarization that, you know, information has this desire to be free it should all be free and then that is in contrary to how the particular model is currently that a lot of information is behind paywalls. And I think, you know, particularly from the health perspective when you think about physicians needing the most recent information about particular diseases, how that that feels in just in a way that, you know, we want professionals to have the most up to date information and and how we can, you know, make that possible like striking a balance so it there's definitely transactional models there's models right now for how information is sold or available to the general public how it's accessible to not only academics, there's a large expansive conversation scholarly communication open access. That requires a lot of thoughts and it intersects a lot with just information intellectual property as well so it's fascinating. Wonderful. Thank you all so much for sharing these thoughts. I think with the help of our chairperson. We're going to open it up for questions now. So, for those in the audience if you haven't yet figured out how to do this I mentioned mentioned meant to mention it earlier. Scroll down in your browser and look for the add comment button and click on that and you can send in questions. And I just wanted to sort of add to something that I see that the panelists are talking about is libraries and archives and museums aren't merely about preserving yesterday's history. They're also about using that history to generate new knowledge and new experience. And this is, I think that the heart of what is being discussed here. So there are there are a few questions up now and the first two are kind of related so if you don't mind panel I'm going to give you both questions at the same time. It's a perennial question that librarians and archivists and museum people get with prop is it propagation of digital technology technology what is the role of libraries in the future. And the second is I worry that the transition to online only sources of information that have traditionally been preserved on paper will hamper the research of behind researchers in the future. Any thoughts I think these are two related questions. So, please, I look to the panel here and it certainly seems that our audience is very wise they knew to pose both of these questions at the same time. The panel will have a lot more to say about this, but I'll just mention that libraries are certainly already deeply engaged in digital collections libraries and archives, and to an extent museums although it's a bit different. Certainly in the university context, an academic library is providing a great deal of online resources many of the traditional academic journals and even scholarly monographs are now provided as ebooks and as as PDFs through a variety of platforms. A lot of the budget of a university library is used to pay the subscription fees and the paywalls that Lorraine was mentioning. And then when you turn to the university archives. There's a great deal of effort to digitize manuscripts and digitize other material and make them available and increasingly findable on on the web. But I'm sure others will have more to say. I think you address me the academic. Since I work with public libraries, I might mention that libraries, you know, again, this idea of information, it goes beyond just a book right so the internet is obviously a huge part of access to information. So if you think about, for instance, the, the recent pandemic libraries have this ability to check out, for instance, hotspots to provide that access to information there's a lot of communities that are on the other side of the digital divide they don't have the access that has necessarily to things we might take for granted just having a computer having access to information. And I think also for particularly public libraries and also academic libraries there's a community around this physical space. And while digital, you know, connects the world. There is still a place for for local. And so besides just providing access to digital technologies and information. There they'll always be a space locally to engage and be together and I think, especially at this time period in our lives there, there's just a thirst for social interaction. And I don't think that'll ever go away. While, so Levin Lorraine have talked eloquently about the this wonderful contemporary roles of libraries and archives spaces of collaboration and access and bringing people in and creation of knowledge and I'm going to now, I'm going to now go against all of that and talk about the old traditional antique role of libraries and archives in this area which is preserving stuff and just keeping it and making sure that it persists into the longer term. And the first truth that I believe I don't know if I could cite a source on this but I certainly picked it up from a wide range of experience in this profession is that the primary that all the problems with digital technology. Well, most of them are actually new versions of old problems and the central old problem is that records don't disappear because their formats become obsolete and unreadable they disappear because people throw them away. Most records have always and books and everything else has always the ones that have been destroyed the vast majority of them it's because of institutional failure, whoever was keeping them just stopped functioning and the thing was thrown away. The institution didn't fail but they decided they no longer needed that and they tossed it in the trash, or allowed it to just slip away and be lost. And so with digital records the same problem occurs, but digital records have all sorts of different areas of fragility that we're not really used to with physical records. One of the most important is that digital information can be distorted in ways that it's hard to perceive. You can call up a digital document that you've had in your digital storage and in fact what comes up is only part of it. Maybe it lost its footnotes or something like that. I don't know because you don't know what it was supposed to look like. And so the one of the role so the answer in my approach to question number one on the role of libraries obviously have many roles which 11 Lorraine have just spoken to. But one role is as an institution for forming the function of ascertaining the authenticity of the material that that they're providing to the public. And that's another role that archives have as well. It's not just that we provide something is that we were supposed to I mean I obviously this is a struggle and a challenge. But our institutional capacity is partly supposed to be to ensure that what we we can say what we are providing, and that it's what we, if we said we provided the same thing 10 years ago that it actually was the same thing. So just briefly on question to the, it's interesting that the questioner mentioned the transition to online only sources because that's just that's actually distinct online only is a distinct type of digital information. It's not just digital versus paper. It's online which means it's maintained by somebody else that gives you access to it, and could take that access away at any time if they fail as an institution, or if they just decide they no longer want to give you the access, or they get careless or building burns down or whatever the. So, not only do we have the problem with things being digital as such and there's issues with just preserving and maintaining digital records on their own. But also this that you're in a relationship with a provider of the records and so that relationship becomes a very important thing to think about and to maintain which is why libraries spend quite a bit of resources to have relationships with the purveyors of these various information resources. You know the my alma mater the University of Texas had a relationship with a journal, a big scientific journalist I'm kind of forget what it was, and the journal went out of business, and these were in the days when there was no. There was no recourse for that they just suddenly went dark the website disappeared and the University of Texas that we've been paying you know they called him up and found people and said we've been paying you thousands of dollars a month for this United is going to go away. In the end, a truck showed up and they just unloaded cases and cases of hard drives at the loading dock of the pericastinate a library in Austin, Texas, and said here you go take care of it. And so the University of Texas became the owner of this back issues of this journal. So, these are the that preservation role is that is really it is a serious challenge. There are ways of approaching it and there's a lot of thought and discourse in the field about it. So it's not something I bet we're just totally lost. But it is a serious challenge and the only hope I can offer just to circle back to what I was saying at the beginning is that it's a, in many ways it's actually a kind of challenge that we've that's been around for a long time, but it's just resurfacing in a new way, because we're using this technology that would actually be the kind of question that we could do a whole session at the ABS on this whole question of digitization and what it means and so on. There's also a question about validating information held or submitted to the libraries there a place for libraries to be involved in the peer review process, or to ensure the integrity of validation processes. And I think we should address that to a certain degree in terms of the digital things. Do any of you want to address anything with that so we have three more questions that are coming after this and I think we should allow some talk more time for them. And I don't think there's so much experience there but perhaps a brief comment would just be that libraries participate in that process in two ways librarians as scholars as those who are tenure track or have something akin to a library to publish and as such there are journals and librarianship and an archival science and librarians and archivists are often called on to to service peer reviewers in their own discipline. And then there is a bit of a movement related to scholarly communication and open access that Lorraine mentioned for libraries to become involved in academic publishing to assist in the publication of journals, and by extension then let's say it's a journal maybe a particular local regional history, it could be that the library helps to facilitate the peer review process for a journal that they're directly involved in producing. Okay, I'm going to go on to the next question is about Abdul Baha's travels to the West, and how he contributed to the eradication of racism and the unity of the races. And the question is, can the, the, the important historical phenomena that the first interracial behind marriage and the unity feast and others be something that would be added to the, the resources at the National Museum of African American history in Washington DC. PJ may. Yeah, I can start to answer this question and PJ can jump in. So actually PJ and I have been developing a relationship with the religious religion center at the National Museum of African American history and culture. The center has a longer name I can't remember its full name. But they, they are basically dedicated to really exploring the variety of religious life among African American so they're very interested in incorporating as many religious experiences as possible, including through like through original materials from different people of different faiths, including also narrative stories of African Americans, people of import but it also doesn't have to be people of import could just be anyone who is of a particular faith and is African American. So the museum explains that initially the, the, the when the museum started, they didn't have the center so actually religion is sort of like, kind of a little bit in places in the museum but there's not really a focal point. And also, in order to get an exhibit in the museum. That's like a long process there's like he explained it was something like a 10 year they haven't planned out for 10 years so in order to see more new items and actually incorporate into the museum is quite a process, because they really have things planned out, but there already are. Of course, well known African American Baha'is already exists in the museum people like Elaine Locke and Robert Abbott, the founder of the Chicago Defender, a month just to give two examples are already there so I think that this is a process that they're engaged in but to get into a museum with the size of the mock that really takes time for them to introduce new exhibits. I don't know if you wanted to add anything. Yeah, just that they are in the process of this center this I think it's the Center for the Study of African American religious life and culture is part of their work is as much as possible information about basic black religious diversity, the diversity of black religious life in America. And so he has a, our contact there has a really cool job he gets in contact with because the main thrust of religion as we say is very limited at the museum so it's usually it's either in the context of Christianity and the Civil Rights or just Christianity in general, or the nation of Islam. So there's really not much on display so so anything outside of that he is reaching out to and trying to basically go he goes and interviews them like when we had met him last time he had just finished interviewing black nuns in Louisiana and was going to interview black Mormons in Utah and collect their stories so whether or not it gets presented at the museum as one is like may said as a question but at least the museum is collecting. Now we're in consultation with him to to collect more information about the African American Baha'i experience. And so we hope that can at least be in in the archives. And then, and then yeah we we work with a really creative historian archivist behind in Lex musta who some of you may know. And we're working with Lex loosely to kind of develop a, you know, maybe a Baha'i tour of the museum, so that if you wanted to, you could look at the museum through the lens through the lens of the African American through the lens of the Baha'i experience. So we have three other questions and I don't know we'll get to all of them within the time we have but I wanted to ask the question that's related to PJ and mays comments, how to view the processes of information access preservation generation and dissemination as an aid to helping Baha'is develop a deeper understanding of the narrative surrounding the most challenging issue. And share just just from the my experience as a Baha'i Washington DC. There's a really beautiful. There's this this community is very intentional about understanding its history and the legacy of the DC Baha'i community happens to be one of interracial harmony that's been sort of a focus. Lewis Gregory became a Baha'i here. Pocahontas Pope, who actually our dear Bill here did an amazing amount of research on to honor that story. He received the first a tablet from Abdul Baha where he said that she was the first African American Baha'i of Washington DC, so that the the assembly the institutions in DC have really done a lot of work to incorporate the interracial history of the faith in DC, and the ability of that of African Americans have become Baha'is and not only the great stuff that's happened, but also the challenges of that history and then use that to inspire the work of the DC by community in the present moment. And really, and so I think both in terms of addressing questions of race, class and culture but also in the way that we think about who we teach and how the teaching work unfolds in the cluster is informed by that history, which is very intentionally brought forward. We have very few minutes left and there's a couple questions to let left that relate to each other. One or two comments. How do we control the spread of misinformation in the age of digital media, and how do we know what is true how do we filter what is kept. I can take a shot. Very briefly, the process of filtering what is true and deciding what is kept in archives is called appraisal, and it is a notoriously fraught area of the discipline. There's a discourse around it there's a lot of thought around it there's some studies, but basically it's not, it's not always easy to do that. One thing that typically ends up happening is that whoever is doing it must take into account the interests and priorities of the organization or institution that they're a part of. There will be a prioritization of things that are related directly to one's own institution to one's own area of expertise and activities and so on, and then things that that come in from other, from other bodies or individuals that are not related tend to get less, less attention to them. As far as challenging the spread of misinformation. I'm going to be quiet on this because I don't know too much about it but I say I think this is an area of scholarship this is where scholarship where people you can archives can have lots of genuinely antique authentic documents that are full of lies and outright forged documents can actually be making true statements as well you can walk there's all kinds of permutations of this, and it requires the human mind and heart to reflect upon these things and and and put them in context. And that's kind of what scholarship is that's what history is that's what we're all sort of engaged in is the process of, of bringing truth to light from materials of the world that are not necessarily giving us the full picture. And I'll just add to that just really quickly that I think the the power of consultation I think the quote that may reference at the very beginning is a way to figure out what is true or not, and the methods that are provided to us through science through scholarship. And also to give out a shout out to the reflections on the life of the spirit the first unit is really helping people learn how to investigate truth how to formulate questions and understand reality. But so there's an individual role of learning how to study, but also that that capacity to consult with people and apply these methods. We've come to the end of our time, I want to thank our panelists, thank everyone in the audience I understand that we have about 110 viewers. And, you know, this has been a very rich conversation and it's barely scratched the surface of many deep and difficult questions. And I would like to recommend that anybody in the audience as well as the panelists. If you don't know our David Lankas, L-A-N-K-E-S who did something called the Atlas of New Librarianship, go look at that because you find out a lot more about these issues. So I think we've finished and I want to thank you all again and we'll bid you all good evening or good afternoon depending on where you are. And thank you very much for joining us today.