Ep. 04: Eira Tansey on Archives and Climate Change

Climate change is reshaping our known world, including our archives. We talk with Eira Tansey, an archivist and researcher who specializes in the impacts of climate change on cultural heritage. She recently published a report with the Council on Library and Information Resources called “A Green New Deal for Archives,” one of the first comprehensive looks at what we need to do to protect our histories. She also founded Memory Rising, which provides research, consulting, and archival services with expertise in climate change, environmental and labor movements, and Ohio Valley regional history. This is the first episode of the Vernacular Archives series on the Bright Archives podcast. 

We talk with Eira about the impacts of climate change on archives, how archives can be used to tell stories about climate change, and how labor issues impact the ability of archivists to respond to the effects of our changing environment.