One Health through the lens of historical patient records and human ecology research

Polina E. Ilieva is an Associate University Librarian and an adjunct professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She leads UCSF Archives and Special Collections, including the Industry Documents Library and UCSF Library Development. Previous roles include leadership of Collection Development and Collection Management departments. Polina served as a PI for numerous collaborative multi-institutional grant projects funded by the Sloan Foundation, IMLS, National Archives, NLM, and NEH that support the expansion and digitization of holdings related to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, COVID pandemic, women scientists, as well as making archives computationally actionable. A transformative library leader with 25 years of experience in research libraries and archives, she specializes in strategic relationship building and securing resources for innovative programs at the intersection of technology and the humanities. Her work reflects a commitment to empowering teams, fostering inclusive leadership, and advancing public access to knowledge. She collaborates with community groups to create a more equitable historical record and leads efforts to integrate historical medical records into the contemporary research enterprise. She launched the UCSF Digital Health Humanities Program, enabling research with “archives as data.” She is a Society of American Archivists (SAA) Fellow.

Summary:

Historical patient records preserved by universities and research institutions provide valuable insights into the environmental and zoonotic factors influencing infectious diseases and other health conditions. These collections, when triangulated with researchers’ papers and environmental datasets, can underpin comparative and longitudinal studies that identify underlying drivers of disease. For example, the work of Dr. Karl F. Meyer (a pioneer of One Health) on zoonotic diseases, which focused on pathogen ecology, epidemiology, and public health, demonstrates the historical importance of such records for understanding disease ecology.
While there is renewed focus on One Health and equity, this topic is not new. Mid-20th-century research on human ecology and its intersection with public health is well-documented, with many studies preserved in archival collections, including at UCSF. Comparing these historical studies with contemporary research offers valuable opportunities for longitudinal analysis.
At UCSF, we are developing an ethically and legally robust system for the use of historical patient records dating back to the 1880s. These case files often capture rich socio-economic, occupational, and environmental information essential for understanding the ecology of disease. This presentation will outline workflows that make these collections discoverable and computationally actionable: governance and consent frameworks; de-identification and risk mitigation; digitization and standardized metadata; and AI-enabled network analysis.
I will also demonstrate how physician and researcher collections, especially those focused on human ecology, medical geography, and zoonotic diseases (Drs. Meyer, Dunn, Audy) can be integrated with patient records under a One Health lens to generate evidence of environment-related impacts. Finally, I will discuss how emerging technologies, including AI, can be used to visualize, connect, and analyze these and historical patient records, providing new insights into the interplay between environment and health.

References:
• Abdoel Wahid F, Lichtveld M, Totoni S, Earle B. Taking a Climate and Health History: A One Health-Informed Approach to Primary Care and Services. Annals of Global Health. 2026; 92(1): 2, 1– 9. DOI: 10.5334/aogh.4898.
• Ancheta J, Fadaak R, Anholt RM, Julien D, Barkema HW, Leslie M. The Origins and Lineage of One Health, Part II. Can Vet J. 2021 Oct;62(10):1131-1133. PMID: 34602644; PMCID: PMC8439323.
• Carrel M, Emch M. Genetics: A New Landscape for Medical Geography. Ann Assoc Am Geogr. 2013;103(6):1452-1467. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2013.784102.
• Dong L, Ilieva P, Medeiros A. Data dreams: planning for the future of historical medical documents. J Med Libr Assoc. 2018 Oct;106(4):547-551. doi: 10.5195/jmla.2018.444.
• Honigsbaum M. ‘Tipping the balance:’ Karl Friedrich Meyer, latent Infections, and the birth of modern ideas of disease ecology. J Hist Biol. 2016;49:261–309. DOI: 10.1007/s10739-015-9430-7.
• Macfarlane, W.V., Sargent, F. J. Ralph Audy 1914–1974. Hum Ecol 4, 187–194 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01531220
• Wiegeshoff, Andrea, Sven Opitz, and Carolin Mezes, eds. Ecologies of Disease Control: Spaces of Health Security in Historical Perspective. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025.

Life, Environment, and Archives: AI-Driven Reinterpretation of the Joan Oró Holding within a One Health Framework

Pepita Raventós Pajares is an experienced archives and records management professional who has directed the University of Lleida’s Archives and Records Management Unit since 2004. Under her leadership, UdL became the first Spanish public university to be certified under UNE-ISO 30301, marking a significant milestone in records management practice.

With a background in History and a PhD in Records and Archives Management from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, her work has consistently focused on integrating archives and records into the core of organisational processes. She is a researcher at the Human-Computer Interaction Research Group at the University of Lleida, where she promotes research in archival digital preservation.

She is particularly interested in long-term digital preservation, standards development, and aligning archival practice with real organisational needs.

She is active both nationally and internationally. She serves as Vice-President of CTN/50 (SC1) on Management and Preservation of Digital Records and Information and is a member of the GT9 Digital Preservation Working Group, NEDA (Achival Description Standards), and the National Council of Archives of Catalonia.

Beyond committees, she is a member of the International Council on Archives and collaborates with several professional associations. She also teaches, gives talks, and publishes regularly. She is involved in the Conference of Spanish University Archives (CAU) and the ICA/SUV Bureau, where she is helping to organise the ICA/SUV–CAU 2025 Conference in Barcelona.

Adrià Font is an Archival Technician at the University of Lleida, with experience in records and information management within public-sector environments. Bachelor’s Degree in History, and final-year Master’s student in Archival Science and Information Governance. Involved in documentation control, archival description tasks, and support for internal processes, working across different units to ensure consistent and efficient information handling throughout the records lifecycle. Familiar with quality, traceability, and continuous improvement principles applied to archival services and organisational information workflows.

Selected as an ICA New Professional 2025, contributing to collaborative initiatives, analysis activities, and knowledge sharing within the international archival community. Experience working with multidisciplinary teams and within organisational contexts that require structured information, clear procedures, and service-oriented coordination. Demonstrated ability to organise and standardise information, support operational improvements, and contribute to projects focused on efficiency, access, and transparency. Interested in professional opportunities related to records management, information governance, and archival services in public institutions or international organisations.

Summary: The Joan Oró holding, held in deposit by the University of Lleida, provides a rich archival substrate for investigating life sciences, environmental sustainability, and the interconnected health of human and non-human systems. As a pioneering biochemist devoted to the study of the origins of life, Joan Oró’s scientific trajectory resonates with principles now central to the One Health paradigm, which emphasises the interdependence of environmental, animal, and human health (Destoumieux-Garzón et al., 2018).
In this communication, we present an archival project that applies artificial intelligence to the enriched description, interpretation, and engagement with the Joan Oró holding. The initiative combines semantic archival description with AI-assisted narrative tools to construct a contextualised dialogue with Joan Oró grounded strictly in the documentary record. Scientific correspondence, laboratory notes, and research materials are semantically enhanced to support interpretive pathways that bridge historical scientific inquiry and contemporary environmental discourse.
The project aligns with contemporary archival scholarship exploring how AI can enhance archival practices — for instance, through semantic retrieval and metadata generation that expand access and interpretation without sacrificing archival integrity (Nguyen et al., 2025). Furthermore, recent work on AI and archival theory highlights how emerging technologies are reshaping notions archival description, preservation, use, and access beyond the traditional boundaries of archival practice (Yeo, 2024).
Drawing on current archival debates, this communication also addresses methodological and ethical challenges posed by AI integration, including concerns of bias, authenticity, and contextual specificity. Rather than replacing professional judgement, AI is positioned as a supportive, transparent instrument to foster access and interdisciplinary analysis. This case study thus illustrates how university archives can activate scientific heritage — particularly natural history and scientific collections — as dynamic infrastructures for sustainability research, ethical stewardship, and more-than-human knowledge production.

References
• Destoumieux-Garzón, D. et al. (2018). The One Health Concept: 10 Years Old and a Long Road Ahead. Frontiers in Veterinary Science.
• Nguyen, Ha Dung, Thi-Hoang Anh Nguyen, and Thanh Binh Nguyen. (2025). A Proposed Large Language Model-Based Smart Search for Archive System. arXiv preprint, 13 January 2025.
• Yeo, Geoffrey. (2024). Artificial intelligence and the future(s) of archival theory and practice. Archeion.

Pulling a tiger out of the hat: finding the unexpected in animal related collections at the University of Edinburgh

Fiona Menzies is an archivist based in Edinburgh. She has most recently worked at the University of Edinburgh since 2021 as a project archivist and has found herself mainly working with animal related collections. Prior to working at the University of Edinburgh, Fiona has worked in institutions such as the National Galleries of Scotland within the Modern and Contemporary department, the University of St Andrews where she worked on animal related projects such as the papers of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson and the Sea Mammal Research Unit, and the British Geological Survey and the National Records of Scotland.

Summary: Since 2021, Heritage Collections at the University of Edinburgh have been making a concentrated effort to make their records relating to human and animal relations and welfare in Scotland since the 1840s. Through funding from the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), Heritage Collections have made three collections (the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, OneKind and the RZSS) accessible for the first time. The cataloguing of these collections has led to research streams which you might expect such as zoonotic infections, movement of animals in relation to colonialism, and animal welfare activism.
What was a surprise in this project were the research streams which directly relate to major “human” events in the past 150 years. The records from OneKind stand hand in hand with the suffragette movement, the use of animals in warzones and campaigns for their welfare, and, of particular contemporary interest, the impact of animal welfare and the anti-vaccination movement.
Due to the variety of topics found in these archives, we have been able to engage much wider audiences to use the collections in a way which was not predicted. This has lead to engagement with broader educational institutions and academics, community groups, and school learning programmes.
I would like to highlight and share with the ICA how making collection relating to animals can open research streams which might not have been imagined before, and I would hope that the topics found at the University of Edinburgh can inspire lively discussion.

References:

https://archives.collections.ed.ac.uk/repositories/2/archival_objects/213645, Anti-Vaccination and Alternative Medicine records in the OneKind archive.
https://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/one-health/2024/04/18/identifying-research-topics-across-the-one-health-archival-collections/ , Elizabeth VanderMeer.

Invisible Hands, Visible Traces – Local Collaborators and the Archival Afterlives of Diamang’s Scientific Production in Colonial Angola (1947–1974)

Diogo Rocha holds a degree in Anthropology from the University of Coimbra and is currently pursuing the Master’s Program in Anthropology, Globalization and Climate Change at the Department of Life Sciences, University of Coimbra. He is an affiliated researcher at CRIA (Centre for Research in Anthropology), having contributed through publications and participation in scientific and cultural projects. He is the co-coordinator of the Antropia Project, a digital science communication initiative developed through Anthropology.

Jorge Varanda is an Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology in the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Coimbra (UC). He coordinates the Master’s programme in Anthropology, Globalisation and Climate Change and serves as Chair of the Ethics Committee of CRIA – Centre for Research in Anthropology.

Ana Margarida Dias da Silva holds a PhD in Information Science from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra. She is an archivist in the Department of Life Sciences at FCTUC and an integrated researcher at the Centre for the History of Society and Culture.

Helena Freitas is a Full Professor of Biodiversity and Ecology at the University of Coimbra. She coordinates the Centre for Functional Ecology and holds the UNESCO Chair in Biodiversity Safeguarding for Sustainable Development.

Summary: The Diamond Company of Angola (Diamang) operated in the Lunda region between 1917 and 1977 and, unusually for a chartered mining company, established a museum (1936), a biology laboratory (1947), and an international scientific journal (1946). Over the twentieth century, Diamang became the most significant non-state Portuguese institution producing scientific knowledge in colonial Angola. Its museum and biology laboratory hosted and collaborated with hundreds of foreign scientists across a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, biology, botany, ethnography, history, and meteorology. Yet how, in practice, was this scientific knowledge produced? Drawing on the archives of Diamang’s biology laboratory (1947–1974), held at the Life Sciences Department of the University of Coimbra, this paper demonstrates that local people and forms of knowledge were decisive at multiple stages of scientific work. It brings to the fore the often-overlooked contributions of men, women, and children who participated in scientific production but remain largely silent in the archival record and overshadowed by renowned Western scientists. These crucial actors were involved in everyday research activities, ranging from field collection to the laboratory identification of endemic fauna and flora. Although largely invisible in scientific publications, their expertise was frequently appropriated and reconfigured within the epistemic frameworks of Western science. Methodologically, the paper triangulates primary and secondary sources—including reports, photographs, correspondence, and scientific publications—and combines readings along and against the grain to render visible lesser-known local collaborators in colonial knowledge-making. It argues that attention to these archival traces not only reframes questions of authorship and credit but also exposes the extractive infrastructures through which knowledge circulated. By foregrounding local contributions, the paper challenges simplistic North–South binaries and instead supports approaches that emphasize multiple epistemologies, the pluriverse, and processes of synthesis and hybridity in the production of scientific knowledge.

Information and Empire: Recordkeeping and Knowledge Control at Kew Gardens

Emily Hughes is a second year PhD student in the Department of Information Studies, University College London. Working in collaboration with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, her PhD ‘Information and Empire: Recordkeeping and Knowledge Control at Kew Gardens as Instrument and Legacy of the British Imperial Project’ explores the link between imperialism and botanic archives. Reflecting on the wider historiographic turn of considering archives as sources of study themselves, she turns attention to what recordkeeping and archival administration can tell us about state use of botany for imperial purposes. A trained archivist, she uses this perspective to consider decisions made at Kew by colonial administrators over organisation, preservation, cataloguing and access as shaping, dynamic forces over the information that historians have been able to access – or indeed, not access – for their writings in the field of natural history.

Summary:

Despite vast research of the connection between Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the British Empire, little attention has been turned towards the records kept of it. Where scholars and historians have considered Kew’s involvement in empire from a historical perspective, this paper explores how recordkeeping can reveal new insights into how botany and natural knowledge became enmeshed within imperial frameworks.

It links the fields of history of science and archival studies to introduce a new perspective: the necessity of considering organisational administrators such as recordkeepers as agents of power and knowledge production within the field of botanic history (Stoler 2002). Where scholars have often built off Bruno Latour’s notion and asserted Kew as a ‘centre of calculation’ for botanic knowledge, this research expands upon this to assert the Kew administrative system as a ‘centre of calculation’ itself, where the choices of administrators to selectively preserve and organise, or choose not to, have played an influential role in the subsequent fields of botany and its history (Latour 1987). In exploring this, it considers natural knowledge as a tool and instrument of colonial control. Moreover, the paper explores how this tool could be harnessed, and indeed weaponised, as the recordkeeping system crucially allowed natural knowledge to be accessible, centralised and retrievable. It takes a material culture approach and assesses how the physical binding and organisation of records can reveal changing colonial priorities throughout the 19th century.

Ultimately, the paper considers the circulation of information and knowledge around the empire through the lens of bureaucratic efficiency and recordkeeping, using examples from the Kew archive to articulate both how colonists saw natural resources and the world, and the present-day legacy onto how archive-users interact with the colonially-organised archive today.

References:
• Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (Harvard University Press, 1987).
• Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Colonial Archives and Acts of Governance,’ Archival Science, Vol. 2 (2002), pp.87-109

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.endeavour.2023.100859.

• Siracusa, Pedro C. de, Luiz M. R. Gadelha, and Artur Ziviani. “New Perspectives on Analysing Data from Biological Collections Based on Social Network Analytics.” Scientific Reports 10, no. 1 (2020): 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60134-y.
• Thomas, Adrian P. “The Establishment of Calcutta Botanic Garden: Plant Transfer, Science and the East India Company, 1786-1806.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 16, no. 2 (2006): 165–77.

Flora and the Imperial Machine: writing the environmental history of colonial botany through Kew’s collection of 19th century exchange lists

Nathan Cornish is a PhD student (2024-) in History and Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton, University of Exeter, and Kew Gardens. His research works towards an environmental history of colonial plant exchange in the 19th century centred around Kew Gardens’ Goods Inwards and Outwards ledgers. These books record incoming and outgoing plants and seeds travelling through Kew from 1793 to the middle of the 20th century. He argues that each of these moments provides a window into an intermediary ecological system built up through imperial plant collecting and circulation. Understanding and mobilising the thousands of receipts for plant shipments involves digital humanities methodology and methods that examine the record books as an extractive technology.
He is widely interested in the intersections between data and nature through the information technologies that encode human-nature relationships. The records of these interactions provide vital histories of the creation and reproduction of modern ecological systems. His research is supported by the AHRC South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership.

Summary:

Characterised as a “botanical network” (Groves 1994 p.339), and a “great botanical exchange house for the empire” (Drayton, 2000 p.xiii), the scientific records of imperial botany have been a rich subject of analysis for scholars of empire and environment. This field of botanical empire studies has focused on following the contours of ambitions, networks, and economic acquisitions through plants characterised as a trade goods (Blais 2019) and knowledge objects (Easterby-Smith, 2015). This paper uses plant exchange lists from Kew’s 19th century ledger volumes to connect more-than-human plant histories into a narrative where Imperial Botany developed an intermediary overlapping of ecology for moving, sustaining, and reproducing plants on a planetary scale.

I have chosen three lists from between 1800 and 1811 that characterise the way plant trades en masse developed into Imperial ecology. The first is a shipment to Kew from Felix Brotero at the botanical garden in Coimbra negotiated through Joseph Banks’ friendship with José Correia da Serra. This introduces the trade between imperial gardens as the distribution of plants between living collections with their own networks. The second list introduces an ecological overlap where imperial plant collectors and sellers moved living plants into the european botanical garden system from Chinese Imperial Ecology through Canton. This case study presents a vignette of the frayed edges involved in the translation of plants from Chinese into European botanical systems. Third, with many plants received as seeds, I introduce a list of plants sown at Kew in 1811. This is a key window into imperial ecology because as much as plants might be distributed as living specimens or seeds, it is growing and reproducing them that matters. These archival plant stories build into a narrative of living empire with key relevance to botanical conservation and the ecological legacy of colonialism.

References:
• Blais, Hélène. “The Plant Trade: Empires, Merchant Networks and Consumption (16th-20th Centuries)” Society for Modern and Contemporary History, Vol 66e, No.3 (July-September 2019) pp. 81-102) 2025.
• Drayton, Richard. “Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the ‘Improvement’ of the World” (Yale University Press, 2000)
• Easterby-Smith, Sarah. “Reputation in a Box. Objects, Communication and Trust in Late 18th-Century Botanical Networks” History of Science 53 (2): 180–208. 2015.
• Groves, Richard. “Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860” (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Contested Collections of Angolan Primates Shipped to Germany, a case-study of provenance metadata enhancement for zoological collections and databases

Catarina Madruga works on the history of sourcing and accumulation of natural history collections, 19th-20th centuries, with emphasis on the interstices between histories of colonial collecting and histories of environment and biodiversity. Visiting Researcher at the History of Science Department, Technical University Berlin, and at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung. With previous experience in museum education, exhibition design, and as a curator of historical collections, she co-edited with Déborah Dubald the special issue “Situated Nature: Field Collecting and Local Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century” published in the Journal for the History of Knowledge (2022). Co-founder of the collective “Collection Ecologies”.

Catarina Santos is an archivist and PhD candidate in History, Philosophy and Heritage of Science and Technology at Nova University of Lisbon. Her research focuses on the colonial Dundo Museum, Angola (1946-1974), examining human and non-human actors, as well as local knowledge, through the perspectives of the history of science, imperial history, and environmental history.

Summary: Storage rooms in natural history museums, their associated libraries, and archives are part of a complex of “memory regimes” (1) that span past, present, and future research. Debates on colonial provenance highlight the inequalities between the authority of Global North institutions and the Global South, the natural and cultural framework of the places, landscapes, and territories that were (and are) the source of an overwhelming percentage of museum collections (2, 3). By critically examining the assembly of national collections and considering biographies of individual specimens, alongside other overlooked actors, natural history museums can “honestly” engage with their colonial legacy (4) and reassess their historical role in the face of current environmental crises (5).
In this paper, we discuss the entangled political and scientific histories of collecting from Angolan regions and how these are present or, more often, absent from the registers and databases of museums and archives in Portugal and Germany. We focus on two different historical contexts of appropriation and gift economies when the presence of German naturalists and suppliers of natural history collections were active in Angola, the 1910s and the 1950s. We show how histories of hunting and survival are mingled with individual Angolan primates sent from Benguela to Berlin in 1912, and how inter-imperial competition between Portugal and Germany was at play in the organization of scientific expeditions in the 1950s. The specificities and continuities of the case of Angolan fauna shipped to German institutions are drawn from archival correspondence and photography, publications, and inventories. We present examples of how entity-relationships models can emphasize entangled contexts and connected histories of natural history collections, and reflect on methodological discussions about how biodiversity records can be best interpreted using accurate historical and archival identification, promoting multilingual and interdisciplinary access and sustainability of digital data (6, 7).

References:
1. Bowker, Geoffrey C. 2005. Memory Practices in the Sciences. MIT Press.
2. Das, Subhadra, and Miranda Lowe. 2018. “Nature Read in Black and White: Decolonial Approaches to Interpreting Natural History Collections.” Journal of Natural Science Collections 6: 4–14.
3. Dubald, Déborah, and Catarina Madruga. 2022. “Introduction: Situated Nature: Field Collecting and Local Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century.” Journal for the History of Knowledge 3 (1). https://doi.org/10.55283/jhk.11379.
4. Ashby, Jack, and Rebecca Machin. 2021. «Legacies of Colonial Violence in Natural History Collections», Journal of Natural Science Collections 8 (2021). http://www.natsca.org/article/2631.
5. Bertens, Laura and Ann Marie Wilson. 2022. «Wonder, Empire, Science: The Quagga and Other Extinctions on Display at Naturalis», Museum & Society 20 (1). https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v20i1.3795.
6. Madruga, Catarina. 2024. “Cameroon in Berlin.” Texts by Catarina Madruga and Paul Taku Bisong. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. https://doi.org/10.7479/pqjc-d312.
7. CIDOC-CRM. https://cidoc-crm.org/sites/default/files/cidoc_crm_version_7.1.3.pdf.

Global perspectives on energy sector archives (introduction to panel)

Summary: The energy sector is a key commodity in the world-economy, as means of production, raw material and means of subsistence. Therefore, it follows that the energy sector archives and records are a key category of archives and records in the world-economy. They offer crucial bodies of historical evidence for understanding the energy sector and its importance for society, and for understanding how the energy sector shapes social relations and in turn is shaped by social relations, both globally and within countries.
This panel session will outline the importance of energy sector archives and records, and a conceptual framework for thinking about them. Its geographical focus will be on global aspects, the UK, Europe and China. It will cover different branches of the energy sector, including oil, gas, coal, wind energy, hydropower and nuclear energy. It will touch on issues relating to public/state sector, private business archives, organisational archives, personal archives, and special collections. It will address both the question of historical archives in the sector and current records management, and will have both a general conceptual approach and also focus on specific country or institutional experiences.

References:
• Comma 2021: 2 – Archives and Climate Change, International Council on Archives
• ARA Conference 2024: ‘Climate and Crisis: Tackling It Together’ (entire conference)

Archives Portal Europe and Eogan energy archives network: creating new history connections in the digital sphere

Daniel Moreno Medina has 20 years of experience in the design, implementation, and management of information systems across domains including geographic information systems, distributed systems, messaging, payments, travel, Earth observation, and machine learning. Since September 2025, he has been a resident artist at MILL – Makers In Little Lisbon, exploring the intersection of art and technology through poetry, research, experimentation, and work on metadata architectures, ontologies, virtual museums, and personal archives.

Summary: The presentation provides two examples of how portals and networks create new ways in which archival institutions and researchers interact with the documentation: Archives Portal Europe and EOGAN. Archives Portal Europe is a European-wide repository where university archives, natural museum archives, and all types of archives interact. EOGAN is a European/international network of energy archives, including corporate archives, museums and researchers. EOGAN previously stood for European Oil and Gas Archives Network, but now the network is wider than just Europe and also involves archives from other branches of the energy sector. Its annual conferences have covered topics relating to archives of oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydroelectric and wind energy, as well as energy-intensive industrial sectors such as steel. The presentation explores how EOGAN and Archives Portal Europe have created spaces for researchers to interact and collaborate in new ways; companies, especially primary resources companies such as energy companies, have obviously a strong impact on the world, so researching the archives of these sectors provides n new ways to look at environmental history and archival heritage.

The Mills Archive Trust and the Environmental Memory of Renewable Energy

Elizabeth Bartram is Director of The Mills Archive Trust, where she has worked for over a decade. She is passionate about advocating for the contemporary relevance of archives and history, and enjoys designing projects that engage wider audiences, particularly through co-curation and co-creation with communities.

With a background in the charity sector, Elizabeth is currently enrolled on the Archives and Records Management MA at Aberystwyth University. Her dissertation explores the role and perceived value of charitable trust and foundation archives in the UK and USA. She is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading (UK).

Elizabeth is a member of the International Council on Archives, the Archives and Records Association, and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. She has co-delivered talks and co-authored articles on the Trust’s international collaborative work to survey and advocate for wind energy archives, and has contributed case studies for the Archives and Records Association’s Environmental Sustainability Group and The National Archives (UK).

Summary: For centuries, traditional windmills and watermills operated as low-carbon, site-specific technologies, shaped by wind patterns, water flows, and local landscapes.
Mills were at the centre of the community and were sites of food, energy, technology and contested power. Even nowadays, with the disappearance of most traditional mills from the horizon, their echoes remain in place names, sayings and their traces on the landscape.

The records that mills have generated – maps, engineering drawings, correspondence, photographs, and oral histories – bear the imprint of the environmental conditions that shaped and were shaped by mills. They document adaptation to seasonal change, flooding, drought, technological innovation, and social responses to harnessing natural power.

While traditional mills were supplanted by more efficient technology during the mid-1800s and have been largely replaced by modern factories, their technology inspired early investigations in electricity generation. The harnessing of wind and water continue nowadays, yet contemporary records are often at greater risk of loss or destruction than records more recognisable as ‘historical’.
Using the collections of The Mills Archive Trust, an educational charity caring for a specialist archive and library on the history of milling, wind and water power, the speaker explores how records of windmills and watermills constitute an archive of environmental engagement and early renewable energy practice.

The role of specialist archives in preserving the environmental memory of energy systems, past and present will be explored, and local, national and international approaches taken by the Trust presented. The speaker will conclude by considering how archives might imaginatively collect and interpret records of human–nature relationships in an era of accelerating environmental change.

References:
• Mills Archive Trust website: www.millsarchive.org
• Mills Archive Trust archive catalogue: www.catalogue.millsarchive.org
• Dudley, M. (2025). Electric Wind: An Energy History of Modern Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Kealey, EJ. (1987). Harvesting the Air: Windmill Pioneers in Twelfth Century England. California: University of California Press.
• O’Neill, S. (2025). The Visual Life of Climate Change. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

Standardization of Archives Management for Sustainability and Renewable Energy Engineering Projects in China

Hui Chen is an Associate Professor at School of Information Management, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China. She holds a PhD in Knowledge Management from Loughborough University (UK), a MSc in Information Management from University of Sheffield (UK) and a BSc in Information Management and Information Systems from RUC. She has led in over 20 research projects, and published over 60 articles in various international journals and conference. Her main research interests include digital archives management, knowledge management, knowledge sharing, standardization and data governance, etc.

Summary: Archives of renewable energy projects serve as a crucial foundation for the advancement of the renewable energy industry. However, research on the standardization of archive management in this field remains in its nascent stage. Based on an analysis of the current status of management and standardization practices for new energy construction project archives in China, this study addresses practical challenges and proposes a viable pathway toward standardization. It also explores the future prospects of standardized archive management in new energy construction projects, aiming to contribute to the sustainable development of the national energy sector in China.

References:
– National Energy Administration of China. Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of a New Standard System in the Energy Field, September 29th 2020, [EB/OL] http://zfxxgk.nea.gov.cn/2020-09/29/c_139629966.htm.
– Elzahed M, Marzouk M M. Smart archiving of energy and petroleum projects utilizing big data analytics. Automation in Construction, 2022, 133(2):104005.
Katuu S. Managing digital records in a global environment. The Electronic Library, 2016, 34(5): 869-894.

The University of Porto Archives: preserving institutional memory and promoting the use of information in management

Fernanda Ribeiro: She holds a degree in History from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto and has completed the Librarian-Archivist course at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra. She obtained her PhD with a thesis entitled The Access to Information in Archives, under the supervision of Michael Cook. She is a Full Professor in the Department of Communication and Information Sciences at FLUP. Her academic research is mainly devoted to access and retrieval of information in archives, subject indexing and theory and methodology of Information Science as well as professional training in the same area.

Natural history as resistance – Korbinian Aigner’s pictures of apple and pear varieties

Katrin Bäumler, Dr. phil. M.A., studied art history, classical archaeology and Spanish literature at the Universities of Munich (Germany) and Vienna (Austria) from 1997 to 2004. From 2004 to 2020, she worked as an assistant professor in research and teaching at the Technical Universities in Vienna and Munich. For her dissertation on “Reform and Tradition –  The Vienna City Temple by Joseph Kornhäusel (1823-1826)” she received a Leo Baeck Fellowship from the „Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes“ (German Academic Scholarship Foundation). She has published and curated exhibitions on architectural and cultural history, including the TUM anniversary exhibition “The Architecture under King Ludwig II – Palaces and Factories”, which was shown at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich in 2018 and attracted over 40.000 visitors. Since 2020 she has been head of the archives of the Technical University in Munich (TUM). In this role, her work focuses on long-term digital archiving and improving access to archive holdings, for example by developing online finding aids, on-demand digitisation and on-site events.

Summary:

The paper focuses on the history of a collection of botanical drawings from the first half of the 20th century and highlights its changing function, significance and reception. The author of this natural history collection, which was handed over to the archives of the Technical University of Munich in 2000, is Korbinian Aigner (1885–1966), a Bavarian priest who was committed to pomology and openly criticised National Socialism.
Between 1916 and 1966, Aigner created over 2.000 watercolours of the apple and pear species known at that time, each in the same postcard-sized format. From this „card index“ around 900 pictures have been preserved.
In his resistance to National Socialism Aigner was fearless: because of his critical remarks, he was denounced in 1939, imprisoned and subsequently deported to the concentration camps Sachsenhausen and Dachau. However, he managed to grow there four new apple varieties. Referring to their place of origin he called them KZ1, KZ2, KZ3 and KZ4.
Originally, the collection served for the classification of fruit species. In 2012, especially the apple paintings gained recognition through their serial presentation at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel. Since then, they have been in demand internationally as serial works of art. Recently, the significance of the collection has shifted again – it now serves primarily to illustrate the original biodiversity of fruits.
Most notably, the images are increasingly associated with the biography of their author. There are currently over 100 campaigns in German-speaking countries in which the KZ3 apple is planted as a symbol of resistance. This was reinforced by last year’s film about Korbinian Aigner by Walter Steffen, which highlights his civil courage and is named after his quote: ‘A silent dog, I don’t want to be’.

References:
• Holzheimer, Gerd: Ein stummer Hund will ich nicht sein. Der Apfelpfarrer Korbinian Aigner, Munich 2025
• Brenner, Peter J.: Korbinian Aigner. Ein bayerischer Pfarrer zwischen Kirche, Obstgarten und Konzentrationslager, Thalhofen 2017
• Schalansky, Judith (ed.): Korbinian Aigner. Äpfel und Birnen, Berlin 2013 (= series Naturkunden vol. 4)

A Teaching Herbarium in the Archive: Amos Eaton, Science and the Natural World During the Industrial Revolution

Jenifer Monger is the Institute Archivist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), where she leads the stewardship, preservation, and access of the university’s archives and special collections. Her work focuses on the practical challenges of managing complex science, technology, and engineering records within a university archive, with particular attention to material and hybrid collections that fall between archival, library, and museum traditions. Increasingly, her practice emphasizes understanding archival materials not only as carriers of information, but as material objects that document scientific practice, pedagogy, and institutional culture. A core component of her work is collaboration and outreach. She works closely with faculty, researchers, students, and cultural heritage professionals across the region to support engagement with archival collections. These collaborations connect archival materials to scientific inquiry, environmental history, and local heritage, and promote shared stewardship across institutions. Jenifer is an active contributor to ICA-SUV, having previously presented on archival praxis, positionality, ethics, and emerging technologies. Her current research includes exploring Amos Eaton’s Herbarium as a tool for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Matthew Golebiewski is the Archivist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Institute Archives and Special Collections in Troy, New York. He is a graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo where he earned degrees in history and library science. His work focuses on New York State history and environmental sustainability. As a project archivist at the Kelly Adirondack Center of Union College, Golebiewski worked under an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to help foster growing interest in Adirondack Studies. His processing work focused on the mid-20th century conservation movement which included the papers of activists, politicians, and conservation organizations frequently at odds with each other in their approach to wilderness stewardship of the New York State Forest Preserve. These formerly hidden collections were made available to researchers as part of a unique mini term, Exploring This Peopled Wilderness. In addition to numerous articles, his scholarship includes a poster presentation at the 2022 Society of American Archivists Research Forum, Mitigating Catastrophic Risk from Climate Change Through Policy and Technology. He recently presented a paper at the ICA Congress in Barcelona on the environmental impact of artificial intelligence.

Summary:

This paper examines an herbarium created by Amos Eaton (1776–1842), the founding teacher at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), as an artefact of early scientific inquiry. Eaton’s most significant contribution was in science education: he developed a “learning by doing” approach emphasizing fieldwork, specimen collection, classification, experimentation, and student-led lectures. Under the patronage of Stephen Van Rensselaer III, Eaton conducted geological and agricultural surveys along the proposed route of the Erie Canal while working as an itinerant lecturer.
Preserved within RPI’s Institute Archives and Special Collections, Eaton’s herbarium has received little sustained attention and remains a largely unrecognized resource. It occupies an ambiguous position between archival record and natural history collection. The herbarium links scientific instruction, applied research, and environmental observation. Reconsidered as a teaching collection within the archives, it can be interpreted as evidence of how scientific knowledge was gathered at a time of changing relationships with the natural world. At its core, the herbarium embodies an educational philosophy grounded in direct engagement at a moment when scientific practice in America was becoming increasingly professionalized.
The herbarium reflects both Eaton’s educational ethos and the early mission of RPI as the oldest technological university in the United States. Located in Troy, New York, the area is recognized as a focal point of the American Industrial Revolution. Situated at the intersection of scientific instruction and environmental transformation, the collection documents plant life during a period of rapid industrialization and landscape change. While further interdisciplinary study would be required to assess its use as environmental baseline data, the herbarium highlights the potential of university archives to support environmental and natural history research. It also raises broader questions about archival records of scientific practice and how university archives can steward, interpret, and make such materials accessible.

References:
• Eaton, Amos. Manual of Botany for North America: Containing Generic and Specific Descriptions of the Indigenous Plants and Common Cultivated Exotics, Growing North of the Gulf of Mexico. 6th ed. with the addition of the most approved natural arrangement of genera: also their etymologies and accentuation. Albany: Oliver Steele, 1833.
• Flannery, Maura C. In the Herbarium: The Hidden World of Collecting and Preserving Plants. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023
• Merrill, E. D. “The Amos Eaton Herbarium.” Rhodora 48, no. 573 (1946): 201–5.

From Repository to the Landscape: Rethinking Archaeological and Environmental Evidence as Archival Primary Sources

Brenda Gunn is the Associate University Librarian for Special Collections and Preservation at the University of Virginia (UVA). She is a certified archivist and a Distinguished Fellow of the Society of American Archivists (SAA). Brenda is currently the Vice President/President Elect of the Society of American Archivists.

Summary: Archaeological and natural history collections held in archives hold potential as primary sources for understanding environmental change, colonial expansion, and systems of enslavement, harm, and trauma. Many former plantation sites remain visible in the present-day landscape, where land use, preservation practices, and interpretation continue to shape public memory. Yet archivists often lack shared frameworks for treating material, ecological, and landscape-based evidence as primary sources within archival description, teaching, and access practices.
This session invites participants to collectively explore how archaeological collections, natural history materials, and contemporary plantation landscapes might be understood as archival records. The session is grounded in a case study of an archaeological and natural history collection from a seventeenth-century plantation site in Virginia dating to 1619. The collection includes faunal remains, botanical evidence, soil samples, excavation documentation, and associated archival records that document environmental transformation shaped by Indigenous land use, colonial agriculture, and enslaved labor. The session also considers how present-day landscapes—through spatial organization, vegetation choices, interpretive signage, absences, and silences—function as forms of archival description in the public sphere.
The first half of the session will present this case and outline key challenges: defining non-textual materials as primary sources; integrating environmental evidence into archival description; teaching with material and landscape-based records; and addressing ethical responsibilities toward descendant communities. The second half of the session will be devoted to collaborative discussion, inviting participants to share approaches from different national, disciplinary, and institutional contexts.
Participants will be asked to reflect on questions such as: How do we describe and contextualize ecological and material evidence archivally? How might landscapes beyond repository walls be engaged as part of the archival record? What pedagogical strategies help learners critically read these sources? The session aims to generate shared insights and practical strategies that can inform archival theory, education, and practice across international contexts.

Microscopes, Shipwrecks, and Chameleon Eggs: Reconstructing Knowledge Networks in 18th-Century Natural History Archives

Ilaria Maggiulli is an archivist at the Historical Archive of the University of Bologna. She holds a diploma of specialization in Cultural Heritage and a diploma in Archival Studies, Paleography, and Diplomatics from the State Archives of Trieste. By working with several libraries and institutes of research, she acquired a relevant cataloging experience (early modern books, medieval manuscripts and letters) and ability in transcribing Latin documents. She was secretary of CISUI (Centro interuniversitario per la storia delle università italiane) and editorial assistant of the academic journal “Annali di storia delle università italiane”. Her research interests focus on Book history, Early modern history, History of Universities, Latin Paleography.

Lucia Giagnolini is an archivist at the Historical Archive of the University of Bologna and a PhD candidate in the “Cultural Heritage in the Digital Ecosystem” program at the University of Bologna, where her research focuses on the description of personal born-digital archives. She holds an MA in Digital Humanities and a diploma in Archival Studies, Paleography, and Diplomatics from the State Archives of Modena. Her research interests center on the modeling and representation of archival data, particularly within the Semantic Web context, and on the acquisition, management, preservation, and enhancement processes of personal born-digital archives. Since March 2023, she has been collaborating with the University of Pavia (Centro Manoscritti) on the management of the Pavia Archivi Digitali (PAD) project.

Summary: How did an African scorpion, an English microscope and a Benedictine monk converge to resolve a twelve-year anatomical controversy? What happened when a shipment of chameleons destined for Italian naturalists perished in a Mediterranean shipwreck? Eighteen century Natural history correspondence documents such flows – organisms crossing continents, instruments arriving from abroad, knowledge traveling through Ottoman networks – yet traditional archival description rarely captures these complex material and intellectual exchanges.
This paper presents a three-stage methodology to unlock hidden patterns in naturalist correspondence. Analyzing 30 letters from Italian physician-naturalist Antonio Vallisnieri (1661-1730) to mathematician Francesco Stancari (1678-1709), we show how combining automated extraction with archival expertise can transform manuscripts into structured, queryable resources. Stage 1: a local LLM processes manuscript transcriptions, populating a database with organisms (taxonomic identification, geographic provenance), persons (institutional roles), specimen movements, and scientific observations. Stage 2: Archival validation corrects misidentifications, disambiguates historical terminology and enriches records with contextual knowledge. Stage 3: RDF migration to Darwin-SW creates knowledge graphs that enable interoperability with modern biodiversity databases.
Results reveal dozens of organisms from Africa, India, Vietnam; trade routes converging to Livorno and Genoa; networks of collaborators plus unnamed intermediaries; scientific controversies and experimental observations. Graph-based description expands research possibilities by connecting data dispersed across multiple letters – revealing patterns in geographic provenance, identifying recurring intermediaries, mapping collaborative networks. This approach complements archival expertise: automated extraction reduces weeks of manual work, while the archivist’s validation ensures accuracy and contextual depth. The resulting graphs enable relational queries – tracing specimen movements, visualizing networks, analyzing trade routes – transforming correspondence into structured resources accessible to historians, biodiversity scientists, and environmental humanities scholars through semantically-encoded, interoperable data.

References:
• Vallisneri, Epistolario, a cura di Dario Generali, Milano, Angeli, 1991 e 1998, vol. I (1679-1710) e vol. II (1711-1713).
• Paring, Géraldine, ‘Animal Ontologies: Phenomenological Insights for Posthumanist Research’, in François-Xavier de Vaujany, Jeremy Aroles, and Mar Pérezts (eds),
• The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenologies and Organization Studies, Oxford Handbooks (2023; online edn, Oxford Academic, 26 Jan. 2023), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192865755.013.21, accessed 19 Jan. 2026.

Avenues to enhance discovery of 100 years of analogue scientific research data in university archives: lessons from a pilot study

Stephanie Sparrow is an Extension and Social Sciences librarian at University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. Stephanie received her BA from the College of Wooster and her MLIS from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to working at UMN, Stephanie worked at University of Wisconsin University Archives and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Wildlife Health Center where she worked on a research data migration project.

Summary: Scientific data found in archives is used by scientists who study climate change and other environmental questions (Engelhard 2014, Kelly 2022, McClenachan 2012, McGowan 2012). To assess whether our university archives contained useful scientific data in analog formats, we undertook a pilot study to locate data in agricultural and life sciences. We recorded a number of features for each data set that we found including whether it was descriptive or numeric, the amount, topic, format, geographic location, creator, and date range. We also recorded whether an experimental methodology was included and if we believed the study 1) could be replicated, 2) contained useful background information such as species lists, or 3) contained no useful data. The time spent assessing each container that potentially included data was also noted (Farrell 2023). About half of the data sets had some data we deemed to be useful and 20% appeared to be repeatable studies.
With this preliminary information about our own institution’s archives, we have additional questions, mostly concerning how to best connect scientific researchers with analog data in archives.
* How might we enhance archival description in finding aids to highlight potentially useful data?
* Beyond finding aids, what tools might scientific researchers be likely to use to identify historic data, especially if it is in analog format? Entries in existing data repositories? Data registries?
* Would publishing data papers on particular data sets be useful in connecting these historic data sets to researchers? Data papers typically appear in scientific journals and would be retrieved by a database search.
Also, what are the opportunities for partnerships to further these investigations? We are seeking solutions that can work at different scales, across disciplines, and for both researchers and data stewards.

References:
• Engelhard, G. H., Righton, D. A., & Pinnegar, J. K. (2014). Climate change and fishing: A century of shifting distribution in North Sea cod. Global Change Biology, 20(8), 2473–2483. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12513
• Farrell, S., Kelly, J., Hendrickson, L., & Mastel, K. (2023). A Pilot Study to Locate Historic Scientific Data in a University Archive. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, (103). https://doi.org/10.29173/istl2728
• Kelly, J. A., Farrell, S. L., Hendrickson, L. G., Luby, J. J., & Mastel, K. L. (2022). A critical literature review of historic scientific analog data: Uses, successes, and challenges. Data Science Journal, 21, 1–11. http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2022-014
• McClenachan, L., Ferretti, F., & Baum, J. K. (2012). From archives to conservation: Why historical data are needed to set baselines for marine animals and ecosystems. Conservation Letters, 5(5), 349–359. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-263X.2012.00253.x
• McGowan, S., Barker, P., Haworth, E. Y., Leavitt, P. R., Maberly, S. C., & Pates, J. (2012). Humans and climate as drivers of algal community change in Windermere since 1850. Freshwater Biology, 57(2), 260–277. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2427.2011.02689.x

Archives as Active Research Infrastructures: Evidence from the University of Coimbra Scientific Repository

Susana Jarmelo (SJ) obtained her PhD degree in Chemistry, in 2006, at the University of Coimbra (UC), Portugal and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), USA.

In 2012, SJ started working in the field of bibliometrics at the Department of Chemistry of the UC, supervised by Professor Sebastião Formosinho (a renowned researcher in the field of chemistry and one of the pioneers of bibliometrics in Portugal). Since then, she has been developing work in the field of bibliometrics, reporting to the Vice-Rectors for Research at the UC.

SJ’s research interests focus mainly on scientific production assessment (quality and impact). Societal impact of scientific research and open access & open science are also themes of her interest.

CIÊNCIAVITAE: https://www.cienciavitae.pt/portal/DC1C-0062-DC90

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5771-458X

Summary:

Research archives increasingly play an active role in enabling scientific visibility, reuse, and impact, moving beyond their traditional function of long-term preservation. This study presents a detailed bibliometric characterization of scholarly works indexed in the Web of Science that refer to datasets and scientific results archived in the University of Coimbra’s institutional repository. The analysis aims to assess how archived scientific data contribute to knowledge production and dissemination within the global research ecosystem.
A systematic and reproducible search strategy will be applied to identify publications that explicitly acknowledge or reuse data deposited in the University of Coimbra archive. The resulting corpus will be examined using standard bibliometric indicators, including publication output over time, citation performance, journal distribution, subject categories, and open access status. Authorship and collaboration patterns will be analyzed to identify core contributors, institutional affiliations, and international research networks associated with the archived data.
In addition, metadata-related aspects, such as data typology, presence of persistent identifiers, and licensing information, will be explored to evaluate their relationship with scholarly visibility and reuse. Network and thematic analyses will be employed to reveal disciplinary clusters and interdisciplinary connections emerging from the use of archived data. Where available, altmetric indicators will be used to complement citation-based measures of impact.
By providing an archive-centered bibliometric portrait, this study offers evidence-based insights into the role of institutional archives as active research infrastructures. The findings will support archivists, repository managers, and policy makers in refining data curation strategies, enhancing repository visibility, and aligning archival practices with open science and research impact objectives.

From Personal Scientific Archives to Institutional Records – The David C. H. Florance Archives

Garfield Lam is a Certified Archivist (CA) and Chartered Librarian (MCILIP). He works as University Archivist since 2021 at the University of Hong Kong. He gained his fist degree in Leipzig, Germany and followed by his Masters Studies in Library Science, Archival Studies, Museum Studies and History of Books and Medieval Manuscripts gain in Hong Kong, Dundee, Sydney and London respectively. He is responsible for the University-wide Records Management Programme and management of both of the University Archives and Records Centre, and the Special Collections in the University Libraries. Before joining the University in 2018 he was an Archivist of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong Government (2013 – 15), then Regional Archives Manager of the HSBC Bank in Hong Kong (2015 – 17). Garfield actively uses the materials kept in the University Archives and Special Collections from his University for publications with Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), UK; Society of American Archivists (SAA) and Archives and Records Association (ARANZ), New Zealand.

Summary:David Charles Hamilton Florance was the Chair Professor of Physics at the University of Hong Kong in 1919-23. A New Zealand born and raised Scientist, he was educated in Canterbury, New Zealand and in Manchester, UK before arriving in Hong Kong. His personal archives came to the University Archives purely by chance and connection through my second home in Wellington. The donor of this collection was Florance’s grandson Mr Abraham, whose brother had once donated a photograph of Florance to the University Archives. Mr Abraham got in touch when I was in Wellington and we managed to meet and looked at the papers together. It shows that the acquisition of archives is sometimes serendipity.
The relevance of his collection is highly significant to the University Archives because of his capacity as the early Chair of a University department, the internationalism of the people involved, the importance of the contents relating to the then global affairs and the reflection on how scientific knowledge developed across the globe through colonies and dominions of the British Empire. Majority of the early correspondence was written before and after Florance was offered the position as Professor of Physics by the University of Hong Kong. The content of these letters was about the development of the Department, personnel and their scientific networks and research works done with other scientists overseas, mostly in the UK, New Zealand and Australia. Some of the personal correspondence was with Ernst Rutherford, the New Zealand born Nobel Prize winner of Chemistry and Director of Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. They were friends for many years since Canterbury College, University of New Zealand. This collection includes also other Florance’s letters with his science students who worked on the atoms at the War Office, his close families in Wellington, New Zealand. Other historic materials include scientific research journals collected for his research. Researchers can not only use his personal archives to answer questions of institutional history, but also see a wider scope of development of global scientific research amongst colonies between the West and the East, from the UK to Australasia.
This personal collection contains not only the personal achievement and legacy of a scientist, but also reflects on interpersonal connections amongst global scientists, international scientific research, as well as the subject’s development of physics and chemistry amongst British colonies. His Collection also closely connects with other collections scattered around New Zealand, Australia, and the UK, from the Alexander Turnbull Library to the University of Cambridge, which shows the early movements of academics and development of academia in the British Empire. Although the colonial archives in the postcolonial context have remained Eurocentric in shape and form, it still represents the importance of freedom of movement and it helps with knowledge inheritance and transfers locally and globally. Movement of archives through acquisition, or repatriation sheds lights on how knowledge to be transferred, how cultures to be exchanged, how people interacted and learnt from each other, and most importantly, how one or a nation regain identities and powers.

References:
• Ellen J. Ravndal, ‘Archives’, in International Organisation and Research Method: An Introduction. University of Michigan Press, 2023, pp.124-31.
• Mpho Ngoepe and Sindiso Bhebne, Indigenous Archives in Postcolonial Contexts – Recalling the Past in Africa (New York: Routledge, 2024)

An Environmental History of Penn State University: Using Institutional Archives to Explore Interactions Between a University and the Natural World

Ben Goldman is the University Archivist in the Special Collections Library at Penn State University. His research explores the intersection of archives, climate change, and the environment He has presented and written on topics including the environmental impact of digital preservation, the climate vulnerabilities of U.S. archival repositories, and the carbon footprint of academic libraries. He was recently awarded a grant from the Mellon Foundation to conduct a study on environment and climate-related collections found in academic archives.

Summary: Pennsylvania State University (“Penn State”) is an American land-grant university that traces its origins to the Morrill Act of 1862, which allocated expropriated indigenous lands to states for the purpose of establishing colleges to support education in agricultural and the “mechanical arts.” Penn State’s mission has evolved considerably over the course of 170 years, but “land” and the natural environment are themes that emerge through much of its educational history. From its agricultural roots to its training of engineers in the Pennsylvania mineral industries and later, to its post-war expansion in research related to energy and environment, Penn State’s identity as an institution has often been defined by its academic offerings related to human exploitation of the natural world and its subsequent impacts.
The Penn State University Archives serves as the institutional memory of Penn State. Its mission is to identify, acquire, and maintain records of enduring value that chronicle the development and experiences of the Penn State community since the University’s founding in 1855. While often used to support historical inquiry related to the university, its major events, and influential figures, these records can also be utilized to surface an environmental history of the institution. This descriptive paper will explore how the Penn State University Archivist has engaged with the institution’s environmental history through teaching and outreach. In particular, the paper will focus on the curation of an exhibition, “Earth Archives: Stories of Human Impact,” and the development of an undergraduate course, “The Environmental History of Penn State,” which was embedded in the archives. Beyond exploring Penn State’s contributions to environmental knowledge, these examples will also demonstrate how academic archives can be employed to investigate the university’s environmental impacts – the resources needed to create, sustain, and manage a university – and inspire climate action.

References:
• Lee, Robert, et al. “Land-grab universities.” High Country News 52.4 (2020): 32-48.
• Goldman, B., Drummond, C. (2020). Earth Archives: Stories of Human Impact. https://eartharchives.psu.edu/

An Elephant Never Forgets: Zoological Archives in Amsterdam

Emma Morse is an archivist and collections manager working at ARTIS, Amsterdam Royal Zoo, having studied at the University of Bristol and Leiden University. ARTIS contains, alongside the animal collection, two museums and a planetarium. She is a new professional within the archival field. Her current focus is the establishment and preservation of the ARTIS archives. She is working on various archival projects; including the historic building archive and photo archive. Emma aims to create a future network of archivists from nature-related archives, which can provide support and advice for professionals, who are working on this interesting and varied subsection of the archival field. In 2025, Emma presented at the ICA Barcelona conference, in an international collaboration with zoological historians from two continents, on the importance of the preservation of the archives from zoos and nature institutions as well as how they are used in research and their cultural and historical relevance, also including their immense value as an irreplaceable future resource.

Summary: Hidden in the attics of many well-known natural history or botanical institutions may lie a wealth of information. At least, this was the experience when starting my job at ARTIS, Amsterdam Royal Zoo at the end of 2022.
ARTIS, a botanical garden as well as a zoo, was founded in 1837 and is the oldest zoo in the Netherlands and the fifth oldest zoo in the world. Such an institution has a rich history, both in regards to the natural world but also in its national and international social impacts, and has archival documents related to this history. When starting at ARTIS, the archive had previously not been neglected and was located in various buildings throughout the park. During my time, I have established an archival system with categories such as: animal, historic, building, photo and film, and digital.
One of my main projects during my tenure so far has been the preservation of the building archives. These include drawings of the animal enclosures over time, many of which are registered national monuments. This helps to create a timeline of the animals within the zoo as well as any progressions in architectural styles and approaches towards animal welfare and education. For this project, I am working in collaboration with the Amsterdam City Archives, who will be responsible for the final storage of these archives, and the University of Amsterdam, with whom I organised an on-site project for their post-MA Book and Conservation students to partake.
My presentation will focus on my work of establishing these archives in such an institution, the collaboration with other Amsterdam institutions, as well as my goal of connecting with archivists at similar institutions through an ICA-SUV Nature Archives subsection.

References:
• Mehos, D. C. (2006) Science and Culture for Members Only: The Amsterdam Zoo ARTIS in the Nineteenth Century Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press
• Silva, N. (2006). Paradise in the Making at Artis Zoo, Amsterdam. In M. Bouquet & N. Porto (Eds.), Science, Magic and Religion: The Ritual Processes of Museum Magic (1st ed., Vol. 23, pp. 119–140). Oxford: Berghahn Books

“Public transport is good for you”: Creative Engagement with Climate Change Materials in the Campaign for Better Transport Archives at the National Railway Museum

Kait Buchbaum, Archive Cataloguer, National Railway Museum and Michael Solomon Williams, Head of External Affairs, Campaign for Better Transport

Governing AI-Mediated Environmental Research Records in University Archives

Kenneth Atuma is a Knowledge and Information Management scholar and Lecturer in Information Studies at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom, where he teaches postgraduate courses in Archives and Special Collections, Records and Information Management Practice, and Law, Information Governance.  His research interest focuses on how best practices in archives and records management, and in information governance, can enhance accountability, promote good governance, and improve service delivery in public sector organisations, while also addressing data privacy and the ethical and compliance challenges of integrating AI into data management systems to support responsible information governance. Kenneth has also made significant contributions to professional and academic scholarship through research presentations at both local and international conferences and academic engagements.

Summary: Universities and research institutions are increasingly integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and computational methods into environmental research, including climate modelling, biodiversity monitoring, and environment–health datasets. While these technologies transform how environmental knowledge is generated and analysed, their implications for archival recordkeeping, accountability, and ethical governance remain under-examined within university archives.
This paper explores the information governance and compliance challenges posed by AI-mediated environmental research records. Drawing on archival theory, records management principles, and ethical frameworks for responsible AI, it examines how algorithmic processes complicate core archival concepts such as provenance, authenticity, transparency, and evidential value. AI-generated and AI-processed records—models, training datasets, automated outputs, and decision logs—often lack sufficient contextual documentation to support long-term interpretation, reuse, and public accountability.
Focusing on university and public-sector-funded research contexts, the paper analyses three interrelated issues: ensuring provenance and explainability in AI-assisted environmental research; managing privacy and ethical risks in the reuse of environmental and health-related data; and preserving computational records to enable reproducibility and institutional memory. These challenges are situated within broader debates on the “non-human turn,” where both natural systems and algorithmic agents shape knowledge production.
The paper argues that university archives must move beyond passive custodianship toward active governance of AI-mediated environmental records. By embedding ethical oversight, compliance mechanisms, and accountability requirements into archival and records management practices, archives can support trustworthy environmental science, responsible innovation, and sustainable institutional decision-making.

Sustaining Climate Archives: Navigating Political, Environmental, and Resource Constraints

Julie Judkins is an Associate Professor and the Department Head of the Special Collections & Archives Research Center at Oregon State University Library & Press. Judkins previously held positions at the University of North Texas and the University of Michigan. She has published and presented on processing born digital materials, the translation of English archival exhibits and finding aids into Spanish, teaching with primary sources, and the information-seeking behaviors of filmmakers using audio-visual archival collections, among other topics. Her scholarship has appeared in journals such as Collections, The Journal of Copyright in Education & Librarianship, and The American Archivist. Judkins earned a Master of Science in Information (MSI) from the University of Michigan.

Summary: Based on scientific evidence, it is undeniable that Earth is facing an existential climate crisis and that an increasingly volatile climate will have a detrimental effect on all life. To support future advancements and policies aimed at addressing climate change, it will be important to document and archive ecological collections. Unfortunately, documenting climate change for the historical record is threatened by several converging factors, such as: unreliable funding for relevant research due to politicization,[i] limited funding and staffing for archival repositories that necessitates tough choices about what work is possible,[ii] the environmental impact of the servers and climate control needed to preserve archival documents,[iii] [iv]archives’ vulnerability to environmental disasters,[v] and lack of knowledge by archivists regarding collecting policies that would benefit climate scientists’ needs. This paper explores the challenges that archives collecting climate collections face, the value of collecting ecological data, and incorporates data from a survey of participatory citizen scientists on how archives can assist their work. The co-authors will share perspectives on this topic from backgrounds as an archivist and an advocate for environmentally sustainable library services, respectively.

References:
i. For example: Temple, J. (2025, June 2). The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/02/1117653/the-trump-administration-has-shut-down-more-than-100-climate-studies/
ii. Weber, C. S., O’Hara Conway, M., Martin, N., Stevens, G. & Kamsler, B. 2021. Total Cost of Stewardship: Responsible Collection Building in Archives and Special Collections. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/zbh0-a044.
iii. Pendergrass, K. L., Sampson, W., Walsh, T., & Alagna, L. (2019). Toward Environmentally Sustainable Digital Preservation. The American Archivist, 82(1), 165–206. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48659833
iv. Faulkner, J., Lu, L., & Chen, J. (2021). Archivists’ golden egg: environmental sustainability practices of archives. The Electronic Library, 39(2), 258-280. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-09-2020-0260
v. Tansey, E. (2015). Archival adaptation to climate change. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 11(2), 45–56. https://doi-org.oregonstate.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/15487733.2015.11908146

Developing a Course of Action for Practicing Archivists on the Environmental Impact and History of Archives

Summary: What practical steps and philosophic positions should archivists adopt in a world endangered by excessive energy and resource use? How must archives change to prepare their communities of practice for rising sea levels, sudden floods, or destructive wildfires? Does the digitization of physical collections result in more than a doubling of the carbon footprint of a collection or archives, for example?
This session takes the form of a discussion on the subject of how archivists can contribute in small or large ways to reducing, mitigating, or re-thinking the impacts of archives on the physical environment. Part of the discussion may involve critique of proposals from the growing literature on the subject, as well as data collected from archival institutions; the creation of professional workshops or graduate-level courses on environmental history and impact of archives may also be discussed.

References:
• Baillot, Anne. 2023. From Handwriting to Footprinting. Text and Heritage in the Age of Climate Crisis. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. 179 pages. ISBN 978-1-80511-089-7. e-book. Free access: https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0355.
• Tansey, Eira. A Green New Deal for Archives. Published by Council on Library and Information Resources, July 2023. 50 pages. e-book. Free access: https://www.clir.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2023/07/A-Green-New-Deal-for-Archives2.pdf.

Cynthia Luk brings an interdisciplinary background to her archival practice, shaped by her academic studies in the arts, and a MScLIM from the University of Hong Kong. She began her career at the South China Morning Post, where she received training in news archives, research support, and digitisation workflows – experience that shaped her approach to managing complex information environments.

Summary: The Shiu‑ying Hu Collection at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) University Archives offers a remarkable window into the life and work of the late Dr. Hu Shiu‑ying (1908–2012), a pioneering Chinese botanist. This poster highlights how archival legacy collectively charts the development of botanical education at CUHK—ultimately laying the groundwork for the CUHK Herbarium and its specimen research laboratory. These archival materials illuminate how the university’s botanical and horticultural practices evolved alongside Hong Kong’s own changing landscape.

Dr. Hu’s extensive field observations, specimen lists, plant locality records, and survey notes capture a rare picture of Hong Kong’s early plants before rapid urbanisation reshaped the environment. These primary records reveal the systematic approaches she adopted in plant identification and taxonomy, which became foundational to the Herbarium’s early holdings and later supported the subsequent growth of Chinese herbal medicine studies. Her correspondence with CUHK colleagues, Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum, and other regional institutions sheds light on the international scientific networks that contributed to the Herbarium’s early formation.

Overall, the Shiu‑ying Hu Collection demonstrates how a small archive can enrich institutional memory while advancing scientific understanding. It also underscores the lasting value of personal research records for contemporary botanical work—from conservation and environmental education to re-examining Hong Kong’s historical plant diversity. Beyond preserving Dr. Hu’s legacy, the collection continues to serve as a vital resource supporting the ongoing enrichment of botanical research at CUHK.

References:

• University Archives, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. (n.d.). Shiu-ying Hu papers. Retrieved January 16, 2026, from https://archives.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/repositories/6/resources/540
• Shiu-Ying Hu Herbarium, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. (n.d.). About Professor Shiu-ying Hu. Retrieved January 16, 2026, from https://syhuherbarium.sls.cuhk.edu.hk/about-professor-shiu-ying-hu/

Maria Medeiros is an Associate Professor at the Graduate Program in Biological Sciences (Botany), National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil. She has a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences (Botany), UFRJ and did Postdoctoral studies in Botany and Ecology, UFRPE. She is an educator at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (2012), Federal University of Campina Grande (2013-2018) and National Museum/ Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (since 2018). She has held the Secretariat and Presidency of Brazilian Society of Ethnobiology and Ethnoecology and representative of the Ethnobotany Group of the Botanical Society of Brazil and is Curator of the Herbarium of the National Museum (R). Her interdisciplinary perspective of investigation searches for a dialog between Ethnoscience, with emphasis on Ethnobotany, History, Museology, Education, Biological Collection and Biocultural Heritage.

Summary: Considering the need to  ecologize in the face of the contradictions of the current historical period of the Anthropocene, the intention regarding the circulation of a Brazilian popular artistic culture within the scope of collection and exhibition were based on Mulungu  tree (Erythrina velutina Willd.) as an expression of the Department of Botany at the National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (MN/UFRJ). The curation of the biocultural ethnobotanical subcollection at the Herbarium of the National Museum (R), as well as of the module “From Mulungu to Mamulengo” in the exhibition “A Museum of Discoveries” at the MN/UFRJ Visitor Center, was highly effective in building the connection between biocultural heritage and the University’s collection. The creation of the biocultural subcollection within R Herbarium, integrated into the museological narrative, has been fostering reflection among the transdisciplinary fringes of collaboration and the modes of documentation and incorporation into the scientific and museum collection. In this intercultural context, formal and informal educational processes that encompass diverse age groups are valuable in this learning process in the pursuit of symmetries. The development of critical thinking based on biological and cultural elements leads to new approaches to ecologize botanical collections and museums through biocultural heritage, especially in a country as diverse as Brazil. In this work, the results of research involving a “living archive”, literary sources, and both botanical and exhibition collections are presented, focusing on one of the first exhibition projects by the Department of Botany at the MN/UFRJ following the fire that occurred in 2018. In this first exhibition held by the MN/UFRJ in its own home, the reasons for creating the biocultural ethnobotanical subcollection are discussed, as well as the creative themes of the Botany exhibition module in relation to ideas about the future of biological collections and the Museum.

References:

• Medeiros, M.F.T., 2021. Methodological aspects for researching in historical ethnobiology. In: Medeiros, M.F.T., Historical Ethnobiology. Academic Press; Elsevier, Cambridge.
• Murgia, E.I. (Org.), 2010. Memória: Um lugar de diálogo para Arquivos, Bibliotecas e Museus. Compacta Gráfica e Editora, São Carlos.

Sara Albuquerque is an Assistant Researcher in History of Science at the University of Évora, working within the Institute of Contemporary History (IHC) and IN2PAST. She currently leads the KNOW.AFRICA project as Principal Investigator (KNOWledge networks in 19th-century AFRICA: A Digital Humanities approach to colonial encounters and local knowledge in the narratives of Portuguese expeditions (1853-1888); ref. 2022.01599.PTDC; https://doi.org/10.54499/2022.01599.PTDC). Her earlier career includes research positions at the Natural History Museum, London (2013), the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2007– 2012), and the National Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Lisbon (MUHNAC) (2005–2007). She earned her PhD from the University of London in 2013, following a BSc in Biology from the University of Évora (2006). She is also an Honorary Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.

Arthur Freitas is an architect and urban planner by the Federal Fluminense University (2023), he is currently undertaking a Master’s degree in Management and Enhancement of Historical and Cultural Heritage, specialising in Heritage and the Environment, at the University of Évora, where he is writing his dissertation on “The development of Interpretation Centres in Portugal: The case of the Alentejo”. He is also a member of ICOMOS Young Professionals. He was an intern at the Superintendency of the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage in Rio de Janeiro (IPHAN-RJ, 2023) and at the State Institute of Cultural Heritage (INEPAC, 2021–2023). He worked as a researcher on the research project Mapping Vila Real da Praia Grande in the city of Niterói, for the research group ‘The City as a Document of Urban History’ (CiDHUrb, 2020–2023), developing a GIS platform featuring 19th-century cartography of the city of Niterói.

Summary: During the nineteenth century, the height of European scientific expeditions across African territories consolidated a colonial narrative of knowledge production, often centred on male European explorers and naturalists. Yet, behind these expeditions were numerous African women: queens, guides, interpreters, healers, and local knowledge holders – whose contributions were systematically erased from the historiography of science. This presentation reconstructs fragments of these women’s presence and agency through travel journals, correspondence, collections of natural history, drawings, and publications, analysing how they mediated the encounter between local epistemologies and Western science. It argues that these figures were fundamental to the collection, classification, and translation of knowledge, acting as invisible co-authors of a global scientific enterprise. By reintroducing these agents into the narrative, the study proposes a decolonial rereading of the nineteenth-century history of science, emphasising the role of orality, empirical experience, and female knowledge networks in shaping what came to be known as “modern science”. With this perspective, we analyse the invisible women in the expeditions of F. Welwitch and H. Carvalho. The work is funded by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P., in the framework of the UID/04209/2025 e LA/P/0132/2020 (doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0132/2020) and KNOW.AFRICA (ref. 2022.01599.PTDC) | https://doi.org/10.54499/2022.01599.PTDC.

References:

• Albuquerque, S., & Figueirôa, S. (2018). Depicting the invisible: Welwitsch’s map of travellers in Africa. Earth Sciences History, 37(1), 109–132. https://doi.org/10.17704/1944- 6178-37.1.109
• Candido, M. P. (2015). Engendering West Central African History: The Role of Urban Women in Benguela in the Nineteenth Century. History in Africa, 42, 7–36. doi:10.1017/hia.2015.16
• Pratt, M. L. (2008). Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation (2nd ed.). Routledge.
• Schiebinger, L. (2004). Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvk12qdh
• Schiebinger, L. (2017). Secret cures of slaves: People, plants, and medicine in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Stanford University Press.

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