Jordan Landes, Curator, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, USA

One of the most challenging collections at the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College is that of the Rosine Association, a 19th century organization that served sex workers and women with histories of alcoholism, abuse, and incarceration. Since the collection was acquired in 2019, staff have struggled with questions of how to promote the collection to researchers and the public. Casebooks from the Rosine Association, 1848-1858, have inspired two projects. The first was the creation of a dataset. Archives staff considered carefully how to begin the project, referencing the work of Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein. The second project is Rosine Association 2.0, an interdisciplinary collective of artists, harm reductionists, archivists, and community members involved in today’s street economies that is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Its mission is to facilitate harm reduction through the development of new artistic works and community-based archiving. Most members of the Rosine 2.0 community have never accessed archival materials previously and have been surprised by their own reactions to the archives. Harm reduction practices have guided both projects both in preparing the collection and its output for use and by readers of the papers and anticipating the emotional impact of the records on Friends Historical Library staff, Swarthmore College students and the Rosine 2.0 community, The founder of the Rosine Association wrote about her desire to ‘banish the sad past with its harrowing reminiscences’ - but those harrowing experiences, as well as the emotions of the women helped by the Rosine, are still present in the collections for archivists and users to confront.

Jordan Landes is the curator of the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, overseeing the operations of a library focused on the history of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Landes is a lifelong student of Quaker history with an emphasis on the trans-Atlantic Quaker community in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.