American Archivist 89, no. 1 (2026)
(partial open access)
From the Editor
What is the Problem?
Amy Cooper Cary
Presidential Address
Archival Chaos or Archival Community?: A Charge for Change, Equity, and Openness
Derek T. Mosley
Special Section on User Experience (UX) and Archives Introduction
Faith Charlton, Alison Clemens, Betts Coup, and Shaun Ellis
Building UX Capacity in Archives: A Practical Maturity Model
Hanna Sistrunk
“Why Can’t I See That?”: Evaluating the Impact of Access Restrictions on Archival Researchers
Veronica Denison, DiAnna Hemsath, Elizabeth Russell, Ashlyn Velte, and Katrina Windon
Beyond the Reading Room: Exploring the Motivations and Behaviors of Online Archival Users
Chela Scott Weber, Lesley A. Langa, and Lynn Silipigni Connaway
“For the Good of the User”: Harmful Content Mediation Insights from Princeton University Library’s Focus Group Study
Faith Charlton, Christa Ciadella, Shaun Ellis, and Amy C. Vo
Creating Space in ASpace for New Perspectives: Notes from a Year-Long UX Assessment of the ArchivesSpace PUI
Benn Joseph, Dana Lamparello, Kelsey O’Connell, and Frank Sweis
Stronger Together: A Heuristic Evaluation of Content Notices on Digital Collections Websites
Theresa Berger
Archival Motivations, Barriers, and Recommendations from Indigenous Community-based Researchers: Findings from a Mixed-Methods Survey
Diana E. Marsh, Danielle Davis, Joshua A. Bell, Ugoma Smoke, Dorene O’Hara, and Maria F. Vivar-Guzman
Articles
The Struggle of Institutional Recordkeeping: A Case Study Examining American Advisor Records from the Vietnam War
Eliot Wilczek
All the Freaks We’ve Saved: The Louisville Underground Music Archive in Retrospect and Comparison
Elizabeth E. Reilly, Caroline Daniels, and Heather Fox
International Perspectives
Perfecting Digital Archiving: A Comparative Study
Michal R. Rubin, Rinat Stapler, and Alexandra Wolloch-Grandelevskaya
Naming the Fragment: Documentary Forms of Newspaper Clippings
José Francisco Guelfi Campos
Reviews
From Historical Legacies to Future Frameworks: Recent Scholarship in Archives
Rose Buchanan and Stephanie Luke
Access to Special Collections and Archives: Bridging Theory and Practice
Gab Alderete-Cruz
From Interrogation to Integration: Centering Social Justice in Special Collections, Archives, and Preservation
Kate Burns
Digital Humanities and Libraries and Archives in Religious Studies: An Introduction
Adam Stokes
Visualizing History’s Fragments: A Computational Approach to Humanistic Research
Laila Hussein Moustafa
After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory
Lori Podolsky
Stories on Skin: A Librarian’s Guide to Tattoos as Personal Archives
Courtney Marie Gillie
The Book Censor’s Library
Amanda Greenwood
Publishing in the Archives Profession 