Care Networks in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Archives

This talk uses examples from the University of California, Santa Barbara Library’s Ballitore Collection to argue for an ethics-of-care perspective in archival studies, showing how attention to care within the collection and in our use of it can illuminate social dynamics in the period. Focusing on the figure of Mary Leadbeater, the nineteenth-century author who first assembled the collection from her parents’ correspondence, I will argue that curation was an act of care she undertook within her community. The talk will explore practices of care work within the content of the collection and show how our present-day research and archiving can and should fit into this long history of care within archives.