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Libraries Indiana University Bloomington

Archiving Activism

Things to consider

The major concern about documenting this current moment is maintaining the privacy of activists that wish to not be identified both now and/or in the future.See below for a variety of options and tips for archiving present day events with this in mind: 

Methods to Archive

Given the current climate, it is understandable that some might not feel comfortable donating their materials to a repository such as IU Archives (and that's ok!). Below you'll find some tips compiled by IU archivists and preservation professionals to provide some guidance on how to preserve things for yourself. 

Tips for preserving physical materials (ie posters, flyers, etc): 

  • Store posters and other large paper items flat if at all possible; don’t roll them. If rolling is necessary, roll as loosely as possible and place inside a box so it doesn’t get crushed or crumpled at the ends. 
  • Store like-sized materials together. 
  • Store materials in boxes or folders made from acid-free paper or board. 
  • Rubber bands and paper clips cause damage over time so best not to use them. 
  • Store in the best place in your house where temperature is moderate or cool, and it is not damp – so not the attic, basement, garage, or barn. 
  • Limit exposure to light, which causes irreversible fading of some materials. 
  • Don’t store materials on the floor (floods happen), or in vulnerable places where leaks can occur. 
  • Tape always seems like a good idea at first, but eventually it does more harm than good. 

Additional resources: 

Tips for preserving born-digital materials (ie photos, videos, text documents, etc) 

  • Photographs and videos can pile up - consider saving only the best images and videos or those most representative of the moment. 
  • Organize files with descriptive file names and folders so that they are easily identifiable. Add metadata that will help you to find and identify files. 
    • 2002-05-07 Peace Camp.jpg
    • 2011-11-03 Occupy IU Meeting IMU (part 1).mov 
    • 2024-04-29 Ceasefire Resolution Petition.pdf  
    • 2024-07-02 Gardening zine.pdf 
  • Back up your files with the 3-2-1 rule 
    • Save 3 copies of important files 
    • Using 2 different kinds of storage (computer, external hard drive, cloud) 
    • Stash 1 copy far away (store in different geographic locations) 
  • Digital files don’t survive by accident. Check your storage annually and test files. Copy your digital storage to new media every 5-7 years. 

Additional resources:  

This is a normal donation method for University Archives. In this scenario both archivists and future researchers WILL know the identity of the donor of materials. For example, see this inventory from a collection effort during the COVID-19 crisis. As you might notice some submissions are listed as either restricted or anonymous, see the "semi-anonymous" tab on this guide for those details. 

Submission process: 

  • First, please fill out this Archiving Activism Submission form which serves as a Deed-of-Gift for your donation. 
  • Once you have submitted this form, if you have a digital submission please email the IU Archives (archives@iu.edu) to receive a link to upload your files.
  • If your submission is in physical form (for example handouts or zines) you're welcome to either drop it off at the IU Archives during open hours (Monday-Friday 9-4:45), mail it to the following address, or send us an email and we will happily come do a pickup:

Indiana University Archives
1320 E. 10th Street
Herman B Wells Library E460
Bloomington, IN 47405
Attn: Carrie Schwier

This is also a normal donation method for University Archives and not a totally uncommon request. In this scenario, archivists WILL know the identity of the donor of materials and this will be recoded in an internal accession record. However, donors can choose to either restrict access to their donation for a period of time, or chose to keep their idenity anonymous from future researchers. For example, see this inventory from a collection effort during the COVID-19 crisis. 

Submission process: 

  • First, please fill out this Archiving Activism Submission form which serves as a Deed-of-Gift for you donation. In the form, please note if you would like to restrict your submission and/or be anonymous (a restricted AND anonymous submission is fine too!)
  • Once you have submitted this form, if you have a digital submission please email the IU Archives (archives@iu.edu) to receive a link to upload your files.
  • If your submission is in physical form (for example handouts or zines) you're welcome to either drop it off at the IU Archives during open hours (Monday-Friday 9-4:45), mail it to the following address, or send us an email and we will happily come do a pickup:

Indiana University Archives
1320 E. 10th Street
Herman B Wells Library E460
Bloomington, IN 47405
Attn: Carrie Schwier

This is a new donation process for University Archives. In this scenario, archivists and future researchers will NOT know the identity of the donor of materials. A few things that are important to consider before choosing this option:

  • This submission process with require some work on the part of the donor to strip identifying metadata and possibly even identifying content from files before submission. 
  • As archivists/historians there are some concerns that these materials won't carry the same historical "weight" for future research because in essence they won't be able to be authenticated (for example if a future historian wants to cite something in a paper). As noted above this is not a normal process for any archive to collect materials, so this option is a bit of an experiment for University Archives. If at all possible we recommend that activists either hold their materials until they feel comfortable (for example after graduation) and then make either a normal or semi-anonymous/restricted donation. 
  • The “Recommendations for born-digital materials” are suggestions and cannot be guaranteed to result in a fully anonymized file. University Archives is doing due diligence to offer methods for anonymous digital file donations but there is no way to guarantee digital file donations will be fully anonymous, especially into the future (think Robocop!). If you are hesitating to make a donation without it being fully anonymous, consider referring back to “Self documentation” and preserve the donation yourself until you feel comfortable making a non-anonymous donation to the University Archives. 

Submission process for physical materials: 

  • Please print out a copy of the submission form and provide as much information as you feel comfortable. Even providing your affiliation (ie student vs faculty) and a brief description of the items and how they were used, will make them much more valuable for future research. 
  • You will find a tan metal lockbox with a slot near the top near the entrance to the IU Archives (Wells library - east tower room E460). The box is located to the right of the wood exhibit cases, across from the gender neutral bathroom. We encourage you to put your items in an envelope prior to dropping them in - we'll leave some envelopes on top of the cabinets. If your items are too large, there are 2 large folders behind the lockbox to us. Leave your items in those. Archivists will collect items each morning Monday-Friday. If you'll be dropping things off outside of our normal Monday-Friday hours of 9am-5pm, if possible we encourage you to drop off shortly before the Wells library closes the night prior. 

Recommendations for born-digital materials: 

Review contents of files to ensure that names or other identifying information is removed or redacted. For video and audio files, removing identifying information from the content will require video or audio editing software (such as Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut, Apple iMovie, or other similar software applications). 

Check for Personal Identifiable Information (PII) in filenames and headers of any files (also called file metadata). This is file format-dependent but there are tools available that can help. A selection of tools for different file types is suggested below. 

  • PDF 
    • Remove sensitive content from PDFs, including redacting text (Adobe Acrobat) - https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/removing-sensitive-content-pdfs.html  
  • Microsoft Word 
    • Anonymize Microsoft Word documents - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/help-protect-your-privacy-252a47ec-1b31-4fd0-8450-e66d6c2de950 
  • Image files (JPG, PNG, or other image files) 
    • Edit EXIF information (image metadata) using Adobe Lightroom or ExifTool (https://exiftool.org/) or Mac OS Exif Editor (https://exifeditor.com) 
    • Sometimes also editing properties of image files in Windows (https://www.cnet.com/culture/how-to-remove-personal-data-from-image-files/) 
  • Video and Audio files (MP4, various other AV file types) 
    • Various tools (ExifTool, Photo & Video Metadata Remover on Mac, ViewExif on iOS) - https://blog.pics.io/how-to-remove-metadata-from-videos/  

Files below 5GB in size can be uploaded and then emailed to archives@iu.edu anonymously from a service like Proton (https://proton.me/drive). Either Proton or https://temp-mail.org/ can also be used to create a temporary (throwaway) email address. Alternatively (or for files larger than 5GB), anonymous digital files can be loaded onto a physical drive and dropped off at University Archives’ anonymous lockbox on the 4th Foor, East Tower of Herman B Wells Library on campus (1320 East 10th Street, Room E460).