Archiving difficult realities: a systematic investigation of records related to sexual violence in US college and university archives

There is no clear guidance or standards for US campus archivists on how to best describe records that contain information on sexual violence. While there are well-established standards for archival description, decisions for how to best describe sensitive material are mostly left for individual archival institutions to decide. The lack of agreed-upon professional guidelines could make description decisions difficult in an environment like a college campus where attention on the topic may be taboo. However, as many campus archives’ mission statements unequivocally state, college and university archives are repositories of campus history and wider societal issues. This puts campus archives and archivists directly in the center of responsibility to document histories that are part of enduring difficult realities. Through a systematic investigation of US campus archival finding aids, this study explores how the problem of sexual violence is represented in campus archives’ holdings. Findings indicate that while campus archives do collect records on sexual violence, records related to the topic may belong to collections that are not associated with campus history, records on campus sexual assault are not always consistently described in campus archives, and discoverability of relevant records can be problematic. Study results suggest that further research on the topic and development of resources on best practices are needed to support campus archivists in this work.