Anne J. Gilliland
Department of Information Studies
3039D Moore Hall
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1521
Email: gilliland@gseis.ucla.edu
Anne Gilliland is Professor and Director of the Archival Studies specialization in the Department of Information Studies, as well as Director of the Center for Information as Evidence at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Education & Information Studies and Coordinator of the Rights in Records in Displacement and Diaspora network (RRDDn). She is a faculty affiliate of UCLA's Centers for Digital Humanities, European and Russian Studies, and for the Study of International Migration, and of the Promise Institute for Human Rights at the UCLA Law School.
She is a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists and recipient of numerous awards in archival and information studies. She is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Centre for Global Research, RMIT University in Melbourne and also of the University of Liverpool Department of History. She has served as a NORSLIS (Nordic Research School in Library and Information Science) Professor (with Tampere University, Finland; Lund University, Sweden; and the Royal School, Denmark), and as an Honorary Professorial Research Fellow, Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute, University of Glasgow. She has also taught courses as a visiting faculty member at Renmin University of China and the University of Zadar, Croatia.
Her interests relate broadly to the history, nature, human impact, and technologies associated with archives, recordkeeping and memory, particularly in translocal and international contexts. Specifically her work addresses recordkeeping and archival systems and practices in support of human rights and daily life in post-conflict settings, particularly in the countries emerging out of the former Yugoslavia, and rights in records for forcibly displaced persons; the role of community memory in promoting reconciliation in the wake of ethnic conflict; bureaucratic violence and the politics of metadata; digital recordkeeping and computational archival science; and research methods and design in archival studies.
A native of Derry, Northern Ireland, she holds an M.A. from Trinity College Dublin, an M.S. and C.A.S. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Books
Authority, Provenance, Authenticity, Evidence: Selected Papers from the Conference and School Authority, Provenance, Authenticity, Evidence, University of Zadar, Mirna Willer, Anne J. Gilliland and Marijana Tomić, eds. (University of Zadar Press, 2018).
This volume contains selected papers from the conference organized under seven sub-themes:Shifting conceptual constructions in archival science; Authority and authenticity; Originals and copies; Digital transformations and provenance; Evidence and evidencing; Libraries and archives on the international agenda; and Methodological approaches. Together the papers provide some vivid illustrations of the different ways in which these various concepts are understood in different fields and are intended to be provocative and inspirational for future research, standards development, and the interfaces between archives, libraries and museums, as well as with disciplinary scholarship.
Research in the Archival Multiverse, Anne J. Gilliland, Sue McKemmish and Andrew J Lau, eds. (Monash University Press, Social Informatics Series, October 2016). Available in print and digital formats from www.publishing.monash.edu.
Research in the Archival Multiverse contains 34 critical and reflective essays by scholars around the globe across a wide range of emerging research areas and interests in archival studies with the aim of providing current and future archival academics with a text addressing possible methods and theoretical frameworks that have been and might be used in archival scholarship. The book lays out questions and methods that are exemplary of the current state of archival and recordkeeping research in the archival multiverse, encompassing the pluralism of evidentiary texts, memory-keeping practices and institutions, bureaucratic and personal motivations, community perspectives and needs, and cultural and legal constructs. It is relevant also to many other fields, including those that have engaged with the Archive in its broadest sense, history, memory studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, anthropology, sociology, business administration, digital humanities, systems analysis and design, and information seeking, retrieval and use. The book seeks to review the conceptual lineage of the field, as seen through different epistemological lenses and archival traditions; to underscore that theoretical framing and conceptual clarity are important in both theoretical and applied research; to provide literary warrant for a range of methods that have been adopted or adapted in archival and recordkeeping research and to provide rigorous examples of how they have been applied; to demonstrate the diversity of settings in which the research is, or might be undertaken; and to draw attention to the kinds of challenges and dilemmas that emerge when working within a pluralised research paradigm.
Records, Archives and Memory: Selected Papers from the Conference and School on Records, Archives and Memory Studies, University of Zadar, Croatia, May 2013, Mirna Willer, Anne J. Gilliland, and Marijana Tomic, eds. (University of Zadar Press, 2015).
This volume highlights a thought-provoking diversity of issues and approaches and draws upon several disciplines including the information sciences, archivistics, history, librarianship and digital humanities. It begs interesting questions about cultural heritage and also about humanities and social science research. For example, how are cultural heritage and historical materials viewed differently by the different professions involved with its identification, preservation, description and use? How do archives and other memory institutions reconcile humanities and social science research agendas and associated digital developments with exigencies to address very different kinds of user needs emerging out of human and civil rights concerns? Might we perhaps design new systems to better address both more effectively? One of the contributions of this book, therefore, is to illustrate some of what is distinctive among these different theoretical perspectives and traditions as well as some of the points of convergence around common interests and needs such as the identification and interpretation of historical evidence.
Conceptualizing Twenty-first-century Archives (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2014).
This monograph traces the development of descriptive systems, the creation and management of computer-generated records, and the curation of digital materials. With each chapter, the book addresses either the historical development or the current state of an area within archival science that information and communications technology have significantly affected to ultimately construct a picture of how archives arrived in the 21st century and to suggest where they might be going in the foreseeable future.