Podcast Summary: Preserving Disability – Disability and the Archival Profession

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode: Gracen Brilmyer and Lydia Tang, eds., "Preserving Disability: Disability and the Archival Profession" (Library Juice Press, 2024)
Date: November 22, 2025
Host: Clayton Gerard
Guests: Gracen Brilmyr, Lydia Tang

Overview

This episode spotlights the new book "Preserving Disability: Disability and the Archival Profession," edited by Gracen Brilmyr and Lydia Tang. The conversation explores disability's intersection with archives: challenging ableist practices, expanding accessibility, and uplifting the voices and experiences of disabled archivists and users. Through a mix of first-person narratives, case studies, and critical essays, the guests unpack how disabled knowledge and advocacy are shaping the archival world—past, present, and future.

Guest Introductions

[02:36] Gracen Brilmyr:

• Disabled researcher
• Director, Disability Archives Lab
• Assistant Professor, McGill University's School of Information Studies

[03:04] Lydia Tang:

• Senior Outreach and Engagement Coordinator, LYRASIS
• Supports accessibility and leads archive space hosting
• Former archivist; current Council member, Society of American Archivists

Origins of "Preserving Disability"

[03:44] Lydia Tang:

• The idea began in 2020 within the SAA’s Accessibility and Disability Section.
• Sparked by a recent revision of accessibility guidelines (the first update in 10 years) and collaboration among disabled archivists.
• The Call for Proposals opened the project to a wider, international community, including not just archivists but also students and disabled archive users.
• Publishers saw the topic as "niche" until Library Juice Press (Litwin) accepted it—helped by their focus on archival practice.

Quote:
"We were fresh off of building and refreshing the standards and just eager to continue the conversation about accessibility and disability in archives."
— Lydia Tang [04:37]

[06:12] Gracen Brilmyr:

• Joined the project to help it grow and facilitate its evolution.
• Felt a "critical mass of ideas" was emerging, making this book timely and necessary.

Conceptualizing Preservation and Ableism

[07:38] Gracen Brilmyr:

• The book starts with the assertion that disability—and disabled people—are "worth preserving."
• Addresses ableist practices that have historically rendered disabled people as unworthy of preservation, from eugenics to exclusion from archival records and the profession itself.
• Emphasizes the "magic" disabled people bring through care work, storytelling, and memory-making.

Quote:
"The ways that disabled people get told that we are not worth preserving … and even through future imaginaries that write us out of the future through technology or other eugenics-esque solutions."
— Gracen Brilmyr [08:30]

• Cites influential work by Mia Mingus, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Alice Wong in centering disabled voices and preservation as a form of care and advocacy.

Critical Questions Driving the Book

[11:13] Lydia Tang:

• Key theme: Gatekeeping in the profession—“Are you the gatekeeper?”
• Barriers encountered by disabled archivists, including ableist job requirements (e.g. lifting 40-pound boxes), institutional lack of flexibility, and contingent employment.
• Challenges to what it means to "be an archivist," expanding beyond academic or professional credentialing.
• The lived tension of researching disability in archives, dealing with histories of erasure, institutionalization, and the absence of disabled perspectives.

Quote:
"If we can reimagine a future that is more flexible and more inclusive, it can transform our practice and how we discover our histories and share it and describe it."
— Lydia Tang [12:55]

[13:48] Gracen Brilmyr:

• Book closes with Zakiyah Collier’s provocation on “rehousing archivists,” critiquing ableist work culture and emphasizing the need for livable futures for archivists.
• Focus also on archival users—finding (or not finding) oneself in the record, confronting misrepresentation or silence, and the emotional affect of archival engagement as a disabled person.

Disability and Accessibility in Archival Work

[17:50] Gracen Brilmyr:

• Disability work builds upon and is intertwined with the work of Library and Information Science (LIS) practitioners, especially those addressing racism and white supremacy in the profession.
• Reimagining core professional norms is made possible by earlier interventionist and critical work across LIS.

[20:28] Lydia Tang:

• Libraries have a deep history of disability services (e.g., Library services for wounded WWI veterans, services for the blind).
• Accessibility guidelines in archives date to the 1970s, evolving alongside disability rights movements and through dedicated efforts like Frank Serene's Accessibility Manual.
• Current guidelines (now newly revised) were shaped with direct involvement from disabled archivists.

[22:27] Gracen Brilmyr:

• Scholarship by figures such as Sarah White and projects focused on disability history (e.g., Meg Ryn’s and Bridget Malley’s works) have laid intellectual and practical groundwork for this book.
• Increasing focus on mental health, trauma, and sustainability in archival labor.

Quote:
"All of these lineages … have laid the foundations for a book like this to be possible."
— Gracen Brilmyr [24:12]

Collaborative Process and Book Structure

[25:43] Lydia Tang:

• The book grew from a core group within SAA to a collective project via an open Call for Proposals.
• Dramatically expanded in scope—from a practical manual to a multifaceted collection spanning the lived experience of archivists and users alike.
• Chapters underwent rigorous peer review by other contributors and external reviewers in a highly collaborative process, enhancing quality and inclusivity.

[28:41] Gracen Brilmyr:

• Organizing the book was challenging due to the wide variety of subjects, styles, and voices.
• Chapters grouped into three clusters:
  1. The effects and affects of archives for disabled users, focusing on how disabled people experience archives and records.
  2. Disabled archival workers, exploring employment barriers, professional identity, and workplace transformation.
  3. Archival work shaping narratives, examining how disabled archivists curate, describe, and expand archival stories.

Quote:
"We really wanted to think about, you know, what is the overarching story we're telling … to orient readers to this really broad topic."
— Gracen Brilmyr [29:57]

The Book’s Political and Social Moment

[33:08] Gracen Brilmyr:

• The launch coincides with escalating threats to disability rights, social supports, and inclusive labor practices (e.g. remote work).
• The book foregrounds intersectionality, highlighting compounded barriers for multiply marginalized disabled people—especially queer, trans, and disabled people of color.
• Envisions disability advocacy in archives as part of broader resistance and coalition building for social justice.

Quote:
"We hope that this book not only shows many different intersectional approaches to archives by disabled people who are … addressing disability experiences in all of their complexity … these solidarities that are absolutely like present between disabled communities and other communities where we're doing this work together."
— Gracen Brilmyr [33:41]

[34:55] Lydia Tang:

• The book is a vital rallying point as protections are eroded and as archives and memory work become increasingly threatened.
• The shift away from remote work and from diversity/accessibility initiatives is a tangible setback for disabled professionals.
• The collection serves as a "milestone and a snapshot in time"—with optimism for the ongoing evolution of access and advocacy.

Quote:
"We are just so excited that there is so much that went into this and so many efforts, so, so much that's currently happening right now and to discuss this. And we know that the best is yet to come and we look forward to everything ahead."
— Lydia Tang [38:03]

[38:25] Gracen Brilmyr:

• Beyond everything, the book documents disability—preserving the knowledge, politics, art, and community work that disabled people bring to archival practice and beyond.

Notable Quotes

• "It was really, yeah, pretty magical to enter in as it was taking shape and then work with Lydia to help it come to life."
  — Gracen Brilmyr [06:52]
• "It made me realize that it had grown beyond anything that I could have imagined."
  — Lydia Tang [27:27]
• "If nothing else, this book, again, documents disability. It documents all of the magic that disabled people bring to the world."
  — Gracen Brilmyr [38:25]

Key Timestamps

• 02:36 — Guest introductions and professional backgrounds
• 03:44 — Book’s origin story and initial dreams
• 07:38 — On preservation, ableism, and disabled brilliance
• 11:13 — Gatekeeping, barriers, and reimagining who gets included
• 17:50 — Disability within broader LIS equity movements
• 20:28 — Historical context for accessibility in libraries and archives
• 22:27 — Foundational scholarship on disability/archives
• 25:43 — Contributors and the collaborative process
• 28:41 — Structure and clusters within the book
• 33:08 — The book’s urgency in contemporary political times
• 34:55 — Hopes for the book as a milestone and rallying point
• 38:25 — Book as documentation and celebration of disability

Final Reflections

The episode powerfully frames “Preserving Disability” not merely as a book but as a living testament to the ingenuity, solidarity, and advocacy of disabled people in archives. Brilmyr and Tang chart the profession’s ableist history, celebrate collective resistance, and urge us to reimagine archives as more inclusive, flexible, and just spaces for both practitioners and users. In a moment of political uncertainty, their work stands as a blueprint for building equitable futures and safeguarding disabled memory.

"The best is yet to come and we look forward to everything ahead."
— Lydia Tang [38:03]