Columbia University Libraries and Global
Resources Network Conference
Human Rights Archives and Documentation:
Meeting the Needs of Research, Teaching,
Advocacy and Social Justice
October 4-6, 2007
Amanda Hornby
Media & Technology Studies Librarian
ahornby@uwb.edu
Columbia University: Center for Human Rights
Documentation and Research

Lifecycle of Human Rights documentation

Keynote Speech: A Conversation with Juan
E. Méndez (President of the International Center for
Transitional Justice and former UN Special Adviser on the Prevention
of Genocide) and David Marwell (Director of the
Museum of Jewish Heritage, A Living Memorial to the Holocaust)
Current Approaches to Human Rights
Documentation (collecting, archiving, presentation)
Speakers:
 Trudy Peterson, former Archivist, U.S. Government; "Tribunals
Past and Present"
 Mary Marshall Clark, Director, Oral History Research Office,
Columbia University Libraries; "Oral History and Human Rights
Documentation: Acts of Witness on the Journey to Justice"
 Richard Richie, Cambodian Genocide Documentation Project,
Yale University; "Preservation and Access through Microfilming
of Khmer Rouge Documents and Archives in Phnom Penh,
Cambodia, for Research and Tribunals"
 Kate Doyle, Senior Analyst of US Policy in Latin America,
National Security Archive; "Exhumations: The Recovery of
Repressive Archives"
 Douglas Greenberg, Shoah Visual History Foundation;
"Indexing Memory: Access to Video Testimony of Genocide"
Grassroots Activities and New Forms of
Documentation
Speakers:
 Advocates from Columbia University's Human Rights
Advocates Program, Center for the Study of Human Rights;
"Documentation in Action: Three Human Rights Activists
Share How They Use Documentation in Claiming Rights"
 John Caulker; Executive Director, Forum of Conscience, Sierra
Leone
 Mónica Iris Jasis; Founder & Co-Director, Centro Mujeres,
Mexico
 Elavarthi Manohar; Director of Campaigns, Sangama, India
 Grace Lile, Media Archives Manager, WITNESS; "Bearing
Witness: Issues in Audiovisual Human Rights Documentation
and Archiving"
 Robert Wolven, Associate University Librarian, Columbia
University Libraries; "Issues in Human Rights Web Archiving"
Legal Uses of HR Documentation
(Documentation in Truth Commissions and
Tribunals; Documentation as legal evidence)
Speakers:
 Richard Dicker, Director, Human Rights Watch International
Justice Program; "Seized Iraqi Security Documents:
Assembling Evidence for a Case of Genocide"
 Alison Des Forges, Senior Advisor, African Division, Human
Rights Watch; "Genocide in Triplicate: Use of Documents in
National and International Prosecution of the Rwandan
Genocide"
 Lucy Thomson, Digital Evidence Project, American Bar
Association; "Legal Uses of Human Rights Documentation:
The Challenges of Digital Evidence in Human Rights Cases"
 Graeme Simpson, Director of Thematic Programs,
International Center for Transitional Justice; "The Burden of
Truth: Evidence and Testimony in Dealing with Violations of
the Past"
Teaching and Research: Academic Approaches to
the Use of Human Rights Documentation
Speakers:
 Alice Miller, Professor, School of International and Public
Affairs, Columbia University; "Teaching the Moving Target:
Human Rights as Struggle in History and in the Classroom"
 Paul Gordon Lauren, Regents Professor of History, University
of Montana; "Bringing Human Rights in History to Life:
Documentation for Teaching and Research"
 Peter Nardulli, Director, Cline Center for Democracy,
 University of Illinois, & Kalev Leetaru, University of Illinois;
"News Archives, Advanced Information Technologies and
Human Rights: An Event Analysis for the Post WW II Era"
How can libraries and archives address Human
Rights needs?
Key Issues:
 Support for Human Rights organizations that need to maintain
their records
 Create standards around access, storage, creation of
electronic materials, and be mindful of sensitive information
vs. open access to information
 Volume of material
 What Human Rights issues should be archived? What
collections fall into the scope of “human rights”?
 Training for HR organizations to save their documents;
training for scholars/researchers/students on uses of primary
sources/HR documents
 Increased United Nations involvement in archiving activities;
advocate for UN to adopt archiving conventions and have
support for this
Resources
Selected list of related websites:




WITNESS: http://www.witness.org/index.php
Columbia University Libraries/Center for Human Rights
Documentation and Research (CHRDR):
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/humanrights/ind
ex.html
United Nations Documentation Centre:
http://www.un.org/documents
UW Libraries Human Rights Film Directory:
http://db.lib.washington.edu/hrfilms/hrfilms.htm