Project Description
Documentary focus:
The purpose of this archive is pedagogical in nature, as well as, pedagogical about nature. This digital archive examines the various gardens present on the University of Michigan campus. Specifically, this archive highlights the Matthaei Botanical Gardens and the Nichols Arboretum. While exploring the Matthaei Botanical Gardens page, users can also look at selected documents from the related The Gaffield Children's Garden and Conservatory. Similarly, while examining the Nichols Arboretum users are guided to the Peony Garden exhibit. To add further material to enhance user engagement in the digital archive, we have created activities to guide exploration in the digital archive.
Consideration of archival concepts and practices:
One significant consideration we had during the making of this archive is the ethics of the topic of botanical gardens and how we can responsibly educate children about ethical issues through the content of the archive. Although gardens are joyful and seemingly neutral places, there are still many ethical concerns that must be considered when discussing botanical gardens and the history of these places. Though gardens and landscaping have been a feature of many societies throughout the world, Western-style botanical gardens grew exponentially in popularity due to the colonial desire of Western institutions in powerful empires to collect living and preserved specimens from less powerful, colonized nations (Baber 2019, p. 660). People often collected these “exotic” specimens without the permission of the home country or consideration for an area's ecosystem. Instead, they used scientific “discovery” as justification for their actions. The specimens would then end up in the greenhouses and gardens of Western institutions and collectors.
Thankfully, many modern botanical gardens now focus on the cultivation and preservation of local wildlife or plants that have already been in the area for centuries. The Nichols Arboretum is a prime example of this because much of the land is dedicated to native trees, but they are also home to a massive Peony Garden with cultivars that have been in America for centuries such as Augustin d’ Hour, a cultivar that has been on the continent since 1867 (MBGNA Staff 2016, para. 4). Matthaei Botanical Gardens also follows this practice for its outdoor attractions, though it has a greenhouse with many non-native plants.
Though this archive cannot make attempts of repatriation of species that have been taken from their native landscape, it is still vital that these implications are approached in this archive (Christen 2011, p. 187). Since this archive is intended for children, one must also be mindful of their ability to understand such nuanced issues of colonization, imperialism, and ecology. For this reason, a page dedicated to the history of botanical gardens was added. This page contains a broad introduction to the general ethical issues of botanical gardens in a way that can be understood, at least on some level, by a child.
Another significant ethical issue surrounding botanical gardens, particularly those in the United States, is their land and location. The University of Michigan is famously built on a gift of land from the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Shawnee, and Wendat (Huron) Tribes in 1817 (American Indians at the University of Michigan 2011, para. 1). These tribes held the majority of land in the area at this time, so it is likely that one or more of these groups held the land that would become the Nichols Arboretum and the Matthaei Botanical Gardens (AIUM 2011, para. 1). These lands were not part of the 1817 Gift because they were later donated by the Nichols and Matthaei families. Because of this, it is possible that possession of these lands were taken in some from the Indigenous peoples. This information is unavailable on the websites for these locations, but if these lands were once occupied by Indigenous peoples, it should be acknowledged somehow (Iacovino 2010, p. 367). As a result, this archive made efforts to approach this subject in a way that children could understand and learn from so they are aware of this, all too common, issue across the United States.
An additional consideration we had during the making of this archive was in the arrangement of the site. Traditionally, archives organize records based on the principle of fonds (Millar 2010, p. 29). This method, however, can be difficult for children to understand and could impact the way that they understood the information and navigate the website. Also, we had very few groupings of items that could qualify as a collection that could be organized by fonds. Having isolated collections by fonds would defeat the layout of the website. Because of this, we chose to organize our archive outside of the principle of fonds and original order. According to Laura A. Millar, this is becoming an increasingly popular choice among archives (2010, p. 30). We chose this path because the needs of our user, elementary school-aged children, was always at the forefront of our minds when considering how to navigate principles of archival practice.
Criteria for record selection:
Our record selection process began simply with inquiries into the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan. Quickly we took interest in materials botanical in nature and thus decided our archival focus be related to such materials. The first criteria we used in selecting our materials to highlight in our archive was if there was “enough” materials on each location to properly represent that place in our archive. This “enough” standard guided our group to exclude a University of Michigan garden from our archive. Because there wasn’t a significant amount of material to represent a garden it got excluded. Additionally, this “enough” standard pushed our group to find more materials outside of what was available at the Bentley Historical Library in order to accurately supplement each page of our digital archive. Our group utilizes materials from the digital Harvard Arboretum as well as the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in order to further add historical and scientific items to our education website. Our second criteria for record selection was geared towards our audience. Keeping in mind that our target audience is children, our group selected documents suitable for this audience. Primarily, this meant that colorful and eye-catching materials were central to our archive. Furthermore, this audience is catered to regarding ease of comprehension. With the primary goal being educational we needed to include educational materials, but these materials needed to be easy for children to understand. Hence, maps and graphs in this archive are easy for children to read. Essentially record selection for this digital archive was in order to optimize the learning experience for its chosen audience.
Target user group:
The target audience of our archive was a major consideration in designing our digital archive. Once determining the purpose of our archive, our group needed to decide who we would be teaching because there are different considerations for various age groups. We determined our primary user group would be children from 3rd to 7th grade looking to learn about various natural exhibits at the University of Michigan. Ideally, children would explore this digital archive and then plan to go to these physical locations for a continuous learning experience. With our primary users being children, secondary users are parents, teachers, caretakers looking for an activity for their child. Essentially the secondary users are the people that can give children access to the website and potentially take them to the physical locations featured. For the sake of this user group, we have made provisions and special accommodations to encourage their learning experience. In “Accessing Archives: Teach with Primary Sources in K-12 Classrooms,” Dr. Garcia mentions that in a classroom setting when teachers teach primary sources to children, “the records must be grade-level appropriate, applicable to teaching standards, topical and interesting enough to spark classroom discussion” (191). We also followed this consideration in our document selection. Furthermore, we constructed the archive using simple language in order for the target users to easily access and understand the information. Additionally, Dr. Garcia mentions that teachers, when teaching primary documents, prefer working with, “digitized primary sources set that can be used to create learning exercises that promote critical thinking skills.” (192) To cater to this need, when selecting documents our group chose numerous visuals to catch the eye and keep children entertained in addition to crafting our own activities with these documents to promote critical thinking. Finally, our group strived to make our archive easy to navigate. To get from one page to another a user can simply click the “next” button.
Perspectives:
Since the University of Michigan owns and operates Matthaei Botanical Garden and Nichols Arboretum, the records related to these places are mostly from the perspective of the institution and entities within or related to it. Several voices fall into this category. In this archive, the most represented groups are botanists and scientists from the University of Michigan. We chose to include records from their perspectives in this archive to reflect the core purpose of institutional botanical gardens, to be a place of study and environmental conservation. We conveyed their perspectives on these subjects through academic sources like data and botanical photography from university-curated databases, collections, and websites. Another group represented in the archive are non-academic university and non-university employees. These include university event photographers, garden staff members, employees from the University Planner’s office, and commercial photographers. We chose to include these varied perspectives to communicate the history and non-academic purposes of the gardens, like public enjoyment and conservation of local ecosystems. To convey this, we located more traditional archival sources throughout the website, such as maps, photographs, and artifacts like postcards and botanical drawings from the Bentley Historical Library, Deep Blue, and other sources.
Since this archive focuses on institution-owned spaces, there were few accessible items from other perspectives. We addressed this issue by focusing our theme on the purposes of botanical gardens. However, there were still some perspectives that could not be expressed fully in the archive, such as voices of Indigenous peoples in the Washtenaw County area. These voices matter for an archive about the University of Michigan’s botanical gardens because, as was mentioned, indigenous tribes owned and lived on the majority of land in the area that would become Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan (AIUM 2011, para. 1). This detail is often overlooked and downplayed by those in power throughout the nation. By this reasoning, the grounds Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum could have once belonged to the Indigenous peoples of Michigan. However, there were no discernible accessible archival items that touched on such a niche subject. Nevertheless, the archive still includes an explanation of this issue for children through written information. This way, children are, at least, exposed to this issue as they learn about these incredible places. For this archive, the inclusion of the issues that affect marginalized Indigenous communities is a small first step. It shows that with additional perspectives, especially those of marginalized people, this archive could become inclusive and pluralistic (Punzalan & Caswell 2016, p. 30). However, the archive would still have benefitted from Indigenous voices. For this reason, there is a child-accessible explanation of this issue in the “History of Botanical Gardens” section of the archive so they many understand this ethical issue.
About the Authors:
Each team member has been responsible for various aspects of the assignment. Together we have worked both collaboratively and independently in order to produce the final product. Isabelle Schenkel has been instrumental in the creation of written materials for the project. Marlaine Magewick is a metadata wizard and organizational queen. Marlaine worked to find historical items for our digital archive, assisted in the creation of the written materials ("Considerations of archival concepts and practices" and "Perspectives"), and constructed an appropriate metadata template to describe our items. Kelsey O’Rourke found objects for our digital archive, focusing on the scientific and botanical items. She also took the lead as our group’s Omeka S experimenter, working on the formatting of our archive.
References:
American Indians at the University of Michigan. 30 October 2011. “History of AIUM.” American Indians at the University of Michigan. http://umich.edu/~aium/about.html.
Baber, Zaheer. 2019. “The Plants of Empire: Botanic Gardens, Colonial Power, and Botanical Knowledge.” Journal of Contemporary Asia. 46(4), pp. 659-679. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1080/00472336.2016.1185796.
Christen, Kimberly. 2011. “Opening Archives: Respectful Repatriation.” The American Archivist, 74(Spring/Summer), pp. 185-210. Canvas.
Garcia, Patricia. 2017. “Accessing Archives: Teaching with Primary Sources in K–12 Classrooms.” The American Archivist, 80(1), pp. 189–212., doi:10.17723/0360-9081.80.1.189.
Lacovino, Livia. 2010. “Rethinking archival, ethical and legal frameworks for records of Indigenous Australian communities: a participant relationship model of rights and responsibilities.” Arch Sci, 10, pp. 353-372. Canvas.
Millar, Laura A. 2010. Archives: Principles and Practices. Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc. Canvas.
MBGNA Staff. “Cultivar: Augustin d’Hour (General MacMahon).” Nichols Arboretum Peony Garden: Peony Database. 9 February 2016. https://peony.mbgna.umich.edu/database/cultivars/augustin-dhour-general-macmahon.
Punzalan, Ricardo L. & Michelle Caswell. 2016. Critical Directions for Archival Approaches to Social Justice. Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 86(1), 25-42. Canvas.
Yakel, Elizabeth. 2003. “Archival Representation,” Archival Science, 3(1), pp. 1-25. Canvas.
Yakel, Elizabeth, & Laura Bost. 1 September 1994. “Understanding Administrative Use and Users in University Archives.” The American Archivist, 57(4), pp. 596–615.