Venkat Srinivasan heads the recently launched Archives at NCBS that speaks volumes about his work. He serves on the review board for archives at IIT Madras, ISI Kolkata, and NID Ahmedabad and on the board of IUHPST‘s Commission on Bibliographic and Archival Records. He served in an executive role in OHAI between 2020 and 2022 and is a founding member of Milli, a collective of individuals and communities committed to the nurturing of archives.
Prior to this, he was a research engineer at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University. In addition, he is an independent science writer, with work in The Atlantic and Scientific American online, Nautilus, Aeon, Wired, and the Caravan. He graduated with a Masters in Materials Science from Stanford University, a Masters in Journalism (science) from Columbia University, and a Bachelors in Engineering from the University of Delhi.
Siddu Huded interviews Srinivasan for Open Interview on the occasion of National Library Week. Srinivasan talks on his inspiring journey into the field of archives. He also speaks on how an archival system may be initiated using minimal resources. Citing the awareness issues about archives as a perennial challenge, he is of the view that there is a possibility to achieve this if all-round efforts are made and also necessary efforts are made in research landscape of archival sciences in India. He also advices on how one can venture into the archival field.
· First of all, we congratulate you and your team for launching the Prof. M S Swaminathan’s archival materials. Indeed, this is an exemplary work. We are curious to know about your journey of passion for archiving.
Thank you for this. Everything in the archive is a collective effort. I should state at the outset that I speak only on behalf of dozens and dozens of people who have shaped the archive over the past few years. The ‘About’ section of the Archives webpage gives a sense of the range of people who have built the space.
For the Swaminathan Papers, we are especially grateful to the Trustees of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, to our funders (TNQ Technologies), and to NCBS for nurturing a space like this.
My personal journey is a little convoluted. I am trained initially in the sciences (engineering, materials science) in my undergraduate and graduate research. After working at a particle accelerator for some time, I got interested in the stories surrounding the context and process of science. I took a break from my research and work at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in 2008 to go to graduate school in journalism to focus on writing about the sciences. That took me down the path of a new field (for me) – history of science, and from there, I found myself looking at other disciplines like oral history and of course, landed in the archives. In my time back at SLAC starting in 2009, I was fortunate to connect with the SLAC archives then and they shared some material that I used as objects to conduct oral history interviews of past and current employees of the center.
In 2009-2010, I was actively thinking about and doing scientific work during the day, conducting interviews after hours and over lunch, and doing my own writing over evenings and weekends. In hindsight, it was a formative period for me and led me to thinking critically about the form and content of archives going forward. I started to develop some basic ideas for the structure of an archive with interconnections to oral history interviews, publicly accessible information, and some methods to democratise description of historical objects. Of course, these are ideas that see parallels across generations, and one is merely building on others’ work. Again, I had luck on my side and was able to connect with the oral historian and archivist, Indira Chowdhury, in ~2012 and she was the one who very kindly connected me to NCBS, where I am now based. I was new to archiving then, and found the archiving community to be extraordinarily welcoming. I am so grateful that archivists from across the world shared ideas and material and really trained me in the past decade.
· The Archives at NCBS is significant work to preserve history of science in contemporary India for the future. How this initiative was conceptualised, rolled out, what were the initial challenges, and how those were resolved?
When I first joined NCBS, the intent was to set up an institutional archive, with some collections around the work of specific resident scholars as well. Our work first began with a story about the history of NCBS (around its 25thanniversary in 2016), and we started the work of the archives in 2017. We were connected to the family of an ornithologist, Ravi Sankaran, and they kindly offered to donate his papers. Sankaran had no direct connection to NCBS, but based on this request, we felt others might also want to donate and we felt we could serve as a public centre for the history of biology in contemporary India. That was the mission when we opened eventually to the public in 2019. Then, later in 2019, we received queries (and material) regarding the histories of a cosmic ray physicist. Again, we decided to keep the material temporarily and hope to find the right home for it. But during the COVID-19 lockdowns, we had the opportunity to process the material (thanks to the extraordinary work of my colleagues who have really built this space). And we got queries from other families of people in the sciences. So, we thought it made sense to reposition the archive as a public collecting centre for the history of science in contemporary India. That’s what we are today, and hopefully, there will be many such centres that will come up in India, along with existing centres of archives that can expand their scope a little bit.
Our challenge has been the same all the time – to build awareness around the very idea of an archive, and convince people to donate material. But I think these things will take time, and it will probably be a generation before we see more changes. Things are looking up.
We are also working on efforts in developing legal and ethical standards, and digital annotation tools for archival material. A full range of activities undertaken by the archives is on Page 129/130 of the annual report.
· What kind of collections or genre are so far archived and given access?
We have about two dozen collections, and they are all in the sciences from contemporary India, in line with our mission. We do have a few small collections relating to the institutional history of NCBS, and that has been preserved by a few departments on campus and one retired administrative officer, TM Sahadevan. Our focus is on public collections, and are fortunate to house the papers of Obaid Siddiqi, KS Krishnan, BV Sreekantan, MS Swaminathan, TSG Sastry, and Leslie Coleman, to name a few. All processed details are already on our public catalogue that can be accessed through the collections page. By the end of 2022 or early 2023, our public catalogue will have details of everything that we house, which is over 150,000 digital objects across 25 collections, ranging from manuscripts and correspondence to photographs to scientific equipment.
· How do you collect the archival material for archiving? Copyright and appropriate technology for archival are the main matter of concern. Do you have any criteria for digitisation and archiving?
We receive material in the form of donations. We work with donors to try and establish access policies. In most cases, donors are interested in making the material accessible to the public, and we have a Deed of Gift that outlines the conditions of the donation. This allows the archives to maintain ownership and take care of the material for future generations. However, copyright is usually in the hands of the writer or creator of the material (so, a letter donated to the archives may be owned by the archives, but the letter writer holds the copyright usually), and any researcher wanting to use the letter will likely have to seek copyright permissions from that person or their next of kin. We try and assist in this process, but we do have clear researcher and material use forms that outline these responsibilities. Finally, legal access doesn’t always mean that use is ethical, and we realize we have to think carefully about appropriation of knowledge as well. As an archive, we are conscious that we have various agents who are part of the process and we will need to be fair in some measure to all of them – creator, donor, custodian, archive, archivist, institution, user, audience of user, and such. We are still young, and hoping to learn from others as well in this process. By the end of this year, as I had mentioned earlier, we hope to release an early version of a guidebook that outlines archives, ethics and law in the country. This is supported by an ICA grant, and it is the work of two extraordinary scholars, Farah Yameen and Divij Joshi.
Digitisation is a different set of questions. We do have protocols and workflows, and work with an external vendor to create digital preservation files, access files, and PDFs with character recognition coded in. Every physical archival object has five digital objects corresponding to it, and we are now building a system to manage our digital material as well as developing a publicly accessible workflow for this.
We follow international conventions for resolution and file format, and our main concern is that digital files should be in the most commonly accessible format that also allow data migration in the decades ahead. We are likely to make mistakes, but we are hoping we can fix them ahead of time. We are very grateful again to a wonderful set of resources that are made available, especially from Digital Preservation Coalition.
· Could you please explain about the steps that are followed once the collections are sourced?
After sourcing material, we first create accession records to document what is received and in what condition. This is combined with an appraisal process where we evaluate what will enter the archive, and what will be returned to the donor, or given away, or recycled, or in some rare cases, disposed as waste. After the appraisal and accessioning process, we sit down to arrange the material and identify the forms and functions of the person/institution/organization that we are archiving. We develop series and sub-series (sub sections) and a finding aid map for the collection that hopefully reflects the functioning methods of the person/institution/ organization. The process behind this tries to stay true to standard archiving principles of respecting provenance and original order of material, with the intent of preserving the source and the structure of original work. After the arrangement is done, we develop an extensive descriptive summary of the collection, a final finding aid map, and a container list that outlines the various folders (or sub-containers). At this stage, every object in the collection has folder and box identifiers, along with an intellectual arrangement, all contained within a standard classification and numbering mechanism, which is true for all items of the archive. This is followed by a detailed description step where we try and add a few lines of description for each folder (we don’t go beyond folder-level descriptions as a general rule of thumb to allow for efficient and faster access to material). These catalogues are maintained on simple spreadsheets and documents initially, and we then transfer the data to our online catalogues management system. Depending on available resources, we may also start a digitizing process at this stage where we generate preservation and access copies of the material and align it with the physical material. That said, we are not very proficient in digital tools yet, and we have not really explored systematic archiving of digital native files yet. For instance, while we have digital backups of our data, we don’t yet have an efficient management system for digital preservation.
· The web-look of NCBS archive is impressive. The web contents is indeed well presented and reflects the hard work of the project team. Please share more on this.
What the public sees is largely just a webpage that outlines the work of the archive, and a catalogues where we showcase the material accessible, and one exhibition based on material at the archive. As you state, this, too, is a collective effort. We developed the design of the website in 2018 thanks to wonderful work done by a web designer, Narayan Gopalan, and this was then implemented in code by the NCBS IT team, along with a set of external vendors. We are working on an upgrade of the website and implementing new designs developed by Anoopa John, and this will be implemented in code soon, thanks to creative work done by Umesh Mohan, and we will also be hiring a person dedicated toward software development for a short project. The exhibition on the site, 13 Ways, was done much before the setting up of the archive, and this was done thanks to initial designs by Sakshi and Thara Thomas, and implemented in code by the team at Janastu, led by Bhanu Prakash, TB Dinesh Shalini A, and Pradyumna T.
Finally, the catalogue is built using an open source system called ArchivesSpace, and this has been developed thanks to the work of former NCBS students actually!
· Since this is a not-for-profit initiative, how the whole project is being operated in terms of mobilising financial resources to sustain the initiative?
We are very fortunate to have initial backing from NCBS itself for the setting up of the archive. Much credit goes to the institution for their vision, and this has been in the works and the back of the management’s mind for more than 10-15 years probably, long before any of us current folks were around. Over the last two years, we have also been fortunate to receive financial support from TNQ Technologies, which helps sustain the core operations of the archive as well as the Obaid Siddiqi Chair in the History and Culture of Science. At this point, most of the running of the archive – salaries, in particular – is supported through TNQ Technologies, with a continued baseline support from the core funds of NCBS as well. Finally, we do constantly apply for grants toward our specific projects and we have been lucky to receive some, like the ICA grant for our work on archives, law and ethics in India.
· How is the response (you usually get to hear on the launch/curation of the archive) from those who are within NCBS and outside NCBS and especially from those who are directly or indirectly connected to Prof. M S Swaminathan?
So far, we have had fairly positive feedback for the archives and its holdings. But more importantly, we are especially grateful that various members of the public have been sensitised about an archive and have walked through the doors to find out more. We have not had as many research scholars come and use the space as we had initially imagined, but I think this is a matter of time, but also making active efforts to go to universities and conveying to departments there. As a public archive, we feel we have various constituents that we cater to, and we are not only focused on the research scholar.
·Does NCBS Archives provides any training programs for those who wants to become archivists?
We have an active internship programme. Over the past five years, we have been fortunate to work with over 60 students from across dozen+ disciplines, and ranging from high school to post-doctoral levels. The intent here has not been to train them to be archivists, although some of them end up doing that), but to build a sensibility around historical context in the sciences. We try and develop projects with selected students around their areas of interest and match an archival element to it. Their backgrounds are varied – the sciences, engineering, history, education, design, law, and the social sciences. Working with these students has perhaps been the most rewarding aspect of our work here, and I am personally grateful that many of them chose to have the archive as a waypoint in their careers. Their questions have influenced the direction and purpose of the archive. And students (and then, young professionals) have been the anchors to developing the archival collections at the Archives at NCBS. I would encourage any reader to please visit the Archives website to see the whole list of people who have shaped the space and made it their own. And we are very proud to see many of them take the ideas of the archive further into their careers, and some of them have also worked as independent archivists at other centres.
We do have a small training manual that we share with current students and new employees at the archives, which grounds them in theory and practice for archival appraisal and arrangement, and oral history work.
On a personal level, I started teaching an open course to graduate students at Azim Premji University in 2022, and that has been incredibly rewarding as well. In 2023, we are hoping to also develop a small archival training module or work with the Milli Archives Collective in developing this.
· What is your advice for the one who wants to become an archivist like you and start the projects on their individual capacity or at institutional level?
I wish I had something concise and directly useful to say! I think the archiving community works in a very collaborative way, and there is much to share and learn from each other. So, I guess just jump in and read through the incredible amount of information – through research journal articles, standards, and introductory videos — and feel fearless in asking questions to a healthy network of people. I’d only ask that people focus on the fundamentals of archival theory and ensure that catalogues and archival description follow standards that have been developed and are widely available on the Internet. Building along standards makes archives scalable, discoverable, and interoperable.
I would also hope that people entering archives are careful of the distinction between an archive, an exhibition, a gallery, a museum and a library. There are ways in which they are actually connected to each other, but they also have their own distinct identities, and it is important that we don’t confuse one for the other. The ICA declaration on archives has a wonderful opening line: “Archives record decisions, actions and memories”. It would do us well to follow this message. Additionally, what we do need in India is a way for archival catalogues to speak to each other and develop a network of archives. To this end, we have partnered with colleagues from across India on the Milli Archives Collective. And what we would like is for various archives, big and small, to find ways to link to each other, and see if a platform like Milli can help them on this journey.
Milli is a network of individuals and communities interested in the nurturing of archives, especially in South Asia. The digital platform for Milli will allow the public to find, describe and share archival material and stories. Archives enable diverse stories. Milli helps individuals and institutions to build and sustain archives. It facilitates discussions among the community around issues of diversity, archival standards, conservation, physical and digital access, pedagogy, privacy and the development of inclusive description standards. These ideas have seen strong public interest and involvement, as evident through the first two editions of the Milli Sessions, with over 1500 registrants over two years, over 400 active participants from all across the country, and 40+ partnering institutions.
· Future plan or your vision for NCBS Archives?
The Archives at NCBS is a new public centre for the history of science in contemporary India. We are actively working on receiving and processing material from across the country and we are hoping the public at large will feel motivated to work with us and donate material for posterity and future scholarship and understanding of our collective history. We want to stress to the public that they don’t need to have a room full of stuff.
They could just have one letter at home, something their grandparent had written, and something that seems to help take forward the shared, diverse history of science in contemporary India. We will hopefully do field work to spread the word. We are also hoping more research scholars will come and use the archive in the coming years.
Over the next few years, the Archives at NCBS intends to solidify its work along four verticals, and this is something I feel is pertinent to any archive or any archival collective in India (we have suggested that the Milli Archives Collective has a similar focus): strengthening research collections and access in domain areas, pushing the frontiers of research in archival sciences in India, building capacity and public awareness through education, training and programming, from high school to professional practice, and reimagining the archives as part of the commons through
vibrant public engagement. Our work over the next few years will hopefully map to these objectives, and we become a vibrant public centre.
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Note · All the answers/ opinions expressed in this interview/document are of the interviewee.
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Cite · Huded, Sidlingappa M. (2022 November, 23). We need to push ahead for efforts in nurturing archives: Venkat Srinivasan [Blog post]. Retrieved from: https://openinterview.org/2022/11/23/venkat-srinivasan-we-need-to-push-ahead-for-efforts-in-nurturing-archives/
Credits · Research assistance and editing – Santosh C. Hulagabali, PhD
Sidlingappa M. Huded (fondly called Siddu Huded) is a part of the Knowledge Resource Centre of Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. He is associated with the archives and special collection team of the University. He one of the team members of the recently launched Schoolbooks Archive, an open-access international archive of schoolbooks and artefacts. He is currently working on a couple of other archival projects at the University. His areas of interest are: scholarly communication, archives, open access, and digital content management.
An excellent work which is very useful to library professional to implement in their respective universities.