#Protest: Info-Activism, Archive Literacy and Digital Learning
Creators: name: Houlihan, Barry
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019

description: In 2016, a refrain synonymous with the Brexit campaign was “we have had enough of experts”. The phrase signaled a turn in public consciousness regarding the info-sphere that citizens inhabited while also deliberately seeking to silence dissenting voices. Informed and rational discussion is the antithesis of populist discourse. Public intellectual Tony Judt posits that “A well organised society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves.” (Judt, Schnieder, 2012).

The paper will address new academic modules and projects developed at the Hardiman Library and which reflect and respond to contemporary concerns regarding collective identity, information ethics, and the protest towards info-activism that, I argue, can be sustained through archival literacy.

Protest, in both its physical and online form, are powerful demonstrations against authoritarian thought and propaganda. 2018 and 2019 are years that commemorate the anniversaries of major international protests which were among the first to create a global experience of communal protest – protests in the late 1960s included civil rights in the United States and Northern Ireland, student protests in Paris and Prague and later subsequent events in locations like Apartheid-era South Africa, create an archive of global protest that is being re-animated through digital means today and disseminated and embedded into pedagogical and structured learning environments through libraries and archives.

The dissemination, distortion, and analysis of information, through multiple fora, presents challenges on how to critically judge and analyse information. It moves beyond what is accurate or even ‘scholarly’, but rather to questioning what does evidence mean and how do users encounter and judge that information – trustworthy or not. A myth of archival infallibility is important to question. Gaps in the archive are routine. Records may not have been kept or were destroyed, inadvertently or not. This necessitates a dialogue between user and archive, creating an important space for the archivist as mediator and teacher. Through online and print/material sources, there is instant access to endless information. The archive records, retains and re-disseminates this information to new audiences across generations. Whether this re-transmission of information happens objectively and passively bears the responsibility of mediation – a responsibility to encounter the archive through critical thought.

By using a mixed-media of information sources, from official publications, digitised news footage, diaries, private correspondence, and public ephemera retained within political activist archives at the Hardiman Library of NUI Galway, reveal how the politics and ethics of information creates new opportunities for impactful academic and public learning.

A blended learning approach, combining pedagogical pillars – digital search skills and metadata, source identification, critical evaluation and academic writing – allied with collaborative academic partnerships, enabled progress in creating positive user engagement and learning through encountering – all the while questioning the evidence, sources and truth of the archive.

This paper will address recent case-studies in devising bespoke academic programmes, online learning projects, structured archives literacy and pedagogy methodologies with key impacts for libraries, engagement of new audiences, and transformative learning.