About

Diana Marsh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland. Her research expertise includes Museum Studies, and she is affiliated with the iSchool and Anthropology departments. She is based in Tawes Hall on the College Park campus. Her work focuses on museum-related topics within the broader field of American Studies, contributing to academic discussions and research in this area.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Geography
• Knowledge management
• Archaeology
• Law
• Business
• Gender studies
• Anthropology
• Ecology

Selected publications

• ‘Appears to be about’: an evaluation of AI-generated metadata quality for community archives

  Information Research an international electronic journal · 2026-03-20

  articleOpen access

  Introduction. We report on an evaluation of the quality of metadata generated by a general purpose chatbot using items from a community organisation archive. Method. We developed an evaluation framework adapting quality dimensions from prior work and applied it to analyse a sample of 140 Dublin Core metadata records created by ChatGPT 4o from primary sources drawn from a community organisation collection, based on informal prompts. Analysis. Using independent qualitative coders and a peer review process, we assessed accuracy, conformance, consistency, completeness, objectiveness, transparency, bias, engagement, meaning and context, understandability, and provenance. Results. We found approximately 70% of elements to be accurate. Most records were substantially complete and objective but often vague. Records exhibited significant inconsistencies in how ChatGPT completed fields, conformed to the Dublin Core schema, and interpreted primary sources. Conclusion(s). General purpose AI chatbots have the capacity to provide substantial ‘rough draft’ descriptive records for community collections, even with minimal prompting. These records require significant human intervention to ensure quality in terms of completeness, conformance to schema, accuracy, and meaningfulness to users. We offer insights for organisations and communities working with AI chatbots for description, along with implications for broader archival practice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Franz Boas: Shaping Anthropology and Fostering Social Justice

  Journal of American Folklore · 2026-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Franz Boas: Shaping Anthropology and Fostering Social Justice is the second of Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt's two volumes on the life and work of Franz Boas (1858–1942). Picking up where Franz Boas: The Emergence of the Anthropologist (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) left off, the second volume begins with Boas’ professorial appointment at Columbia University in 1899 and traces his emergence as the “father of Anthropology” (p. 298) and “venerated Papa Franz” (p. 427) through to his death in 1942.Zumwalt's biography reflects extensive primary source research, carried out over some 40 years and presented with an emphasis on the “emotional aspects” of Boas’ life, including his close relationships with students, colleagues, and family. As I noted in my review of volume 1 (Journal of American Folklore 134:361–3, 2021), scholars in a wide range of fields will appreciate the exhaustive documentation, arranged chronologically. Like her subject, Zumwalt embraces Boas’ “scrupulous regard” (p. 53) for “miniscule details” (p. 92) and “rigorous documentation” (p. xl).Although Zumwalt's title celebrates Boas’ contributions to social justice—as well as discourses on race, cultural relativism, and other causes—her meticulously marshaled evidence sometimes contradicts this claim. In fact, Boas emerges as more than an instrument of his time and its attendant violences. Despite being an antiracist, occasional feminist, and justice advocate in parts of his career, by today's standards, the exploitative dimension of Boas’ research—with students, and in broader nationalist, colonialist, objectifying, extractive, and racist practices—were abundant and sustained throughout his career.Boas, for example, is often lauded for his mentorship of women and students of color. Yet, despite his purported endorsement of women like Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, Zumwalt regularly refers to Boas’ pedagogy as “odd” (p. 53) and to his mentoring style as “endlessly demanding” (p. 233). During this time period, mentors and advisors typically assigned topics to students based on their own shifting interests. But in Boas’ case, some instances appear more coercive. In perhaps the worst case, Boas directed William Jones, who was Fox and raised by his Native grandmother, into anthropological fieldwork. Jones ended up without income, unmarried (despite his wishes), and stranded in the Philippines, where he was murdered.Boas’ supposed support of female-identifying students is in fact dubious. According to Zumwalt, early on, he colorfully described being “overrun” with women in the classroom (p. 228), whom “one does not get as much from” (p. 228), or who “are, I fear, stupid” (p. 229). While such dismissals of women scholars abated during his career, that shift was seemingly pragmatic. Zumwalt illustrates that Boas liked women students (and their labor) for three opportunistic reasons: first, because “certain aspects of the life of people . . . can be approached only by women” (p. 229); second, because he had a steady stream of enthusiastic students—taught by Gladys Reichard—approaching him; and third, because of direct funding from his patroness, Elsie Clews Parsons.Unfortunately, Boas failed to guide these students into viable careers. Zumwalt recounts the case of Laura Benedict, who graduated under Boas’ direction, but who never got a job in the field and primarily worked as a lecturer in social service (p. 89). Writing about Oneida student Laura Cornelius, Boas observed that “her work here has been somewhat erratic,” and Zumwalt never reveals whether Cornelius was ever hired (p. 89). Ella Deloria, a Yankton Dakota student and linguist and “by far the best informant [Boas had] ever had” (p. 321), spent her entire time working for Boas while living in poverty; much of their correspondence involves Deloria begging Boas to pay her on time. Neither she nor Zora Neale Hurston completed their PhDs (apparently the only two out of Boas’ 61 doctoral students) “due to financial challenges” (p. 323). Boas did little for Hurston, whom he characterized as “intelligent but flighty.” Zumwalt writes that he noted, with surprise, that she preferred folklore to wielding “a pair of calipers . . . on a Harlem street corner measuring people's skull[s]” (p. 314).Rather than the humble scholar with great “persistence” (p. 138) that Zumwalt sketches in introductory passages, deeper in the text, Boas appears to suffer from great hubris, at times overconfident in his ability to support pet projects or students, at times entirely out of his depth. Such an attitude accounts for the fairly humorous exchanges between Boas and the Mexican government, which sought to cancel Boas’ teaching contract in the new International School he was venturing to found, because he did not speak Spanish. Indignantly, Boas wrote: “I declined an invitation to lecture in Chicago, got a substitute for summer work in Colombia, declined lecturing in England, and postponed some literary work for the State Museum of Sweden—, all on account of the obligation which I had undertaken for your Government” (p. 136). Boas then asked the US Department of State to reimburse him “an appropriate indemnity” of $1,600, which they refused (p. 138).When the Mexican Revolution began, Boas maintained, against good advice, “I do not think we need to worry about the Mexican affairs,” (p. 142) and insisted that his colleagues remain in increasingly violent conditions: “Radin's return here irritates me more than I can say” (p. 142). In April 1914, after the US Atlantic Fleet finally evacuated Alfred Tozzer and his wife, under fire in their hotel and practically starving, Boas wrote obliviously, “I am sorry that you and Mrs. Tozzer had such a hard time in getting out. . . . What shall we do next year?” (p. 151). Boas continued to insist on reopening the International School, despite being told it would lack funding support. He went to Puerto Rico instead, where there were “attractive problems” such as the “effects of race-mixture with reference to form of heredity in man” (p. 155), which allowed him to eagerly “measure the school children” (p. 165).Throughout, Zumwalt paints an unfortunate picture of the turn-of-the-century academic leisure class, undertaking their work half-seriously and grumbling about trifling inconveniences or lack of compensation. (Meanwhile, Boas was often working from his 16-room home, or while summering in Lake George, with a secretary in tow). In many passages, Boas comes alive as possessing two characters. First, he was motivated, persistent, intelligent, persuasive, charming, spirited, loyal, frank, and unwavering in his principles. He grieved deeply and was consoled by his circles in 1929 for the death of his wife, following closely after the death of his daughter and son. At the same time, Boas was also controlling, naïve, obsessive, paranoid, stubborn, arrogant, pushy, vindictive, and abusive. He was, like his research subjects, human.Zumwalt's is a richer portrayal of Boas than most, and therefore of huge importance to understanding anthropology's history. But that would not be clear to a reader who merely read the introduction or conclusion. The color is in Zumwalt's brilliant, often shocking, detail. In sum, Zumwalt's completion of her 1,000 pages about the life and career of Franz Boas reads on the surface as hagiography, but also is justly critical of its subject. Despite its emotional tone, the core details of the book offer a panorama of minutiae that made up colonial violence and knowledge extraction in Boas’ day—a scholarly contribution that is of immense value.

  PublisherDOI

• Adopting Principles in Indigenous Archival Repatriation as a New SAA Standard

  University Libraries (University of Maryland) · 2026-02-24

  articleOpen access

  The Society of American Archivists (SAA) Archival Repatriation Committee is pleased to announce that the SAA Council approved Principles in Indigenous Archival Repatriation (PINAR) as a professional standard on August 24, 2025. PINAR marks the culmination of a two-year effort, launched in 2022, to create professional guidance supporting the ethical return of archival materials to Indigenous communities.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Adopting Principles in Indigenous Archival Repatriation as a New SAA Standard

  University Libraries (University of Maryland) · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen access

  The Society of American Archivists (SAA) Archival Repatriation Committee is pleased to announce that the SAA Council approved Principles in Indigenous Archival Repatriation (PINAR) as a professional standard on August 24, 2025. PINAR marks the culmination of a two-year effort, launched in 2022, to create professional guidance supporting the ethical return of archival materials to Indigenous communities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cultural Heritage Informatics, Old Idea or Emerging Domain?

  Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS / Actes du congrès annuel de l ACSI · 2025-02-07 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  This is a 90-minute roundtable discussion, moderated by Shirin G. Alamdari. With Hannah Turner (UBC); Stacy Allison-Cassin (Dalhousie), Isto Huvila (UU), Andrea Thomer (UArizona) and Diana Marsh (UMD Maryland). The term, Cultural Heritage Informatics, is being used widely in Information fields and by Information Studies Scholars and programs. This panel will address the questions: What is Cultural Heritage Informatics? Why do researchers and institutions stumble with a definition? Does Cultural Heritage Informatics define a methodology, a subject interest, or a set of technical practices? What kinds of ethical considerations could we, or should we, have?

  PublisherDOI

• Coming Home to Nez Perce Country: The Niimiipuu campaign to repatriate their exploited heritage By Trevor JamesBond, Pullman: Washington State University Press. 2021. 216 pages. $24.95 (Paperback)

  Curator The Museum Journal · 2024-01-31

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We seem to be gaining steam. In January 2023, investigative journalism organization ProPublica released the findings of its “Repatriation Project” in which some of the nation's largest museums were held to account for their holdings of ancestral remains and sacred belongings. In mid-2023, the Association of Tribal Archives Libraries and Museums announced the launch of its Andrew W. Mellon-funded Going Home Fund: Returning Material Culture to Native Communities project to support community funding and networking around repatriation. Two months later, the Smithsonian came under fire for its Hrdlicka collections in a detailed exposé by The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2023/smithsonian-brains-collection-racial-history-repatriation/). A scroll through X (formerly Twitter, if you haven't jumped ship) will yield memes galore about the British Museum and the long history of colonial looting in seats of power. The public is right with Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) when he asks in the opening scene of Black Panther, “How do you think your ancestors got these?” Repatriation is the legal return of objects, belongings, artifacts, or documents to communities or nations of origin. There are evolving legal frameworks for undertaking museum repatriation, some of which stem from international policy, such as the UNESCO Convention of 1970, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007). Highly debated and publicized cases such as the Parthenon Marbles or Benin Bronzes have largely evaded the purview of such policies or international law (Clark, 2021). In the United States, the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (and its immediate predecessor the National Museum of the American Indian Act) established law for the return of ancestral remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to descendants in federally recognized tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. Despite its limitations, NAGPRA heralded many proactive and more collaborative movements in the museum field (Nash & Colwell, 2020). Amidst this wider sea change in public attitude and institutional reckoning, Coming Home to Nez Perce Country is a beautifully detailed account of the struggles of one nation to return their belongings to their community. For the community, the collection holds some of their finest, oldest, and best-preserved belongings, such as hats, dresses, cradles, baskets, shirts, saddles, and bags. These were not items made for sale, but regalia and other belongings, at least 12 of which were used in ceremonies and ritual (105); they were passed down from generation to generation and connected community members with their ancestors (39). Each holds knowledge about its maker, the families that once held them, even if their names are no longer known, as well as knowledge of specific techniques for beading, quillwork, leatherworking, or other craft so important to revitalizing those cultural practices today. In a museum catalog, as Bond illustrates, Western cataloging practices, descriptive terminologies, and thumbnail photos have transformed these into objects for study and display. In this way, the Spalding-Allen collection at the center of the book and the community's claims has a familiar story to many in museum collections: undergoing a long, somewhat meandering line of exchanges and transfers that exponentially disconnected it from the community and original knowledge bearers (Bruchac, 2010; Henare, 2005; Marsh, 2015; Nichols & Parezo, 2017). Missionary Henry Spalding collected these “curiosities” and shipped them to another collector, who donated them in 1893—fittingly perhaps the same year as the triumphant World's Columbian Exposition that celebrated such colonial exploits (Cronon, 1992; Hinsley & Wilcox, 2016)—to Oberlin College, which then transferred them to the Ohio Historical Society in the 1940s, which in turn loaned them to the National Park Service in the 1970s. In 1996, given only 6 months to raise over $600,000, the Tribe battled against the immense bureaucracies, colonial histories, and institutional powers pitted against them and won. Bond examines this inspiring story through what he calls a “life history” approach, melding a museology and oral historical model, and drawing on interviews and archival sources to recount the events (Margaris & Grimm, 2011; Ritchie, 2003). Bond was able to pair beautifully detailed annotated drawings of the items by community members with images of the items themselves, reuniting the belongings with community-based knowledge about them. The project was clearly collaborative. In addition to the intimacy of the interviews and voices being showcased in the book, following emergent ethical protocols, Bond project was cleared by a research permit through the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, the Tribal equivalent of an Institutional Review Board (IRB). That is a departure from most projects, which merely go through a university's IRB, which, while attempting to ensure projects are ethical, is primarily concerned with protecting university interests. The book is printed in color, which is a rarity and a real asset to the book and the regalia, baskets, and other sacred items. For all the talk of “object agency” (Gell, 1998; Henare et al., 2007; Hoskins, 2006), our oft-printed black-and-white pages rarely do objects, or belongings (Spears & Thompson, 2022), justice. These images help to showcase the power of these items visually. The book's close attention to detail and efforts to reconnect provenance information held in both archival and material culture sources make it an excellent case study for a wide range of Native and scholarly communities to make use of as a model for researching collections histories. In addition to Bond book, the results of the project can be seen in detail, including the oral history recordings, drawings, and full community context, via the Plateau Web People's Portal (https://plateauportal.libraries.wsu.edu/collection/wetxuuwiitin-formerly-spalding-allen-collection-nez-perce) which Bond helps to run in his role at the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation at Washington State University. This example there and in this text will also be of great interest to Native communities and advocates, museologists, legal scholars, historians, students, and others turning their attention to repatriation, rematriation (Gray, 2022), and return (Barwick et al., 2019). [Correction added on 03rd February 2024 after first online publication: In page 2, ‘Owens’ has been replaced with the correct author, ‘Bond’, in this version.] The one limitation of the book is not really of the text itself, but of the wider problem of scale. What's so impressive, and daunting, about this story, is the lengths to which a community had to go to successfully repatriate fewer than 30 items. Yet, as the scholarly literature notes (Daehnke & Lonetree, 2011; Nash & Colwell, 2020, p. 232)—and as projects like ProPublica's make glaringly clear via data visualization—most of the vast collections of sacred belongings and ancestral remains still remain in museums. We are dealing with an immensity of colonial holdings across the United States and the globe beyond our real comprehension. Moreover, as Bond notes, while the nature of their initial acquisition is somewhat unclear, those in the book are well-documented collections. So much work is necessary, as Bond shows, to make clear connections between belongings and communities under NAGPRA law, or in any efforts to return materials even if accomplished by deaccession, MOUs, or pure institutional goodwill. NAGPRA law, while crucial to the U.S. Tribal-museum landscape, requires processes that are both too bureaucratically slow and limiting to address the scale of the problem at hand. State and unrecognized tribes are left out entirely, as are many categories of collections. I, and others in the archival community, have also been trying to address its limitations for returning documents, photographs, notebooks, and other non-object materials that hold so much community knowledge (See the work of a new Archival Repatriation Committee here: https://www2.archivists.org/governance-manual/archival-repatriation-committee). As the new, near-thousand-page volume on Indigenous Repatriation notes, the ongoing work of which Bond's book is a part, allow us to consider both “how far we have come” and “the enormity of the work before us which we must continue to undertake” (Oscar AO, 2020, pp xxxvi). We can only hope that stories like this one are an inspiration to other Tribes and institutions willing to take a proactive stance, and that the swelling tide of public opinion will inspire more action beyond what has so far been accomplished. Diana E. Marsh ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor of Archives and Digital Curation at the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies (iSchool), current member of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Archival Repatriation Committee, and Past Chair of the SAA's Native American Archives Section. Her current work focuses on improving discovery and access to colonially-held archives for Native American and Indigenous communities. Her recent work has appeared in The American Archivist, Archival Science, Archivaria, and The Public Historian, and her book, From Extinct Monsters to Deep Time was released in paperback in 2022 with Berghahn Books.

  PublisherDOI

• Primary Sources as Linked Data: Exploring Motives Across the Sciences and Social Sciences

  Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology · 2024-10-01 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT While long recognized in the humanities, there is growing recognition in the sciences and social sciences that primary sources—as diverse as manuscripts, photographs, cultural belongings, and specimens—hold vast data about scientific and human knowledge for use in scholarship, community research, and global knowledge. Yet, data embedded in these sources are largely disconnected from the systems of discovery, access, and structured data that support reuse and insights across globally dispersed repositories. In this paper, we share select findings of a systematic review to explore the use of primary sources, and the data embedded in them, via linked data across the sciences and social sciences. Our results confirm the use of a variety of primary source data across diverse disciplines, particularly those requiring longitudinal studies and data integration from diverse repositories and contexts. We highlight how linked data are understood to: connect collections to communities; support highly granular credit, attribution, and assessment of impact; and interrelate diverse sources of knowledge. While these results suggest the value of linked data for the specific research needs of anthropology, the effectiveness of linked data in achieving these objectives and the suitability of this approach for a diversity of institutions and communities need further study.

  PublisherDOI

• Identities Classified: Indigenous Knowledge Management Systems and Gender in the “Age of Information”

  KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  This paper explores the intersections of Indigenous knowl­edge management systems and gender in knowl­edge organization, reflecting on their potential to shape, challenge, and enrich our understanding of identity. We begin by reviewing the ways that Indigenous Knowl­edge Organization (IKO), knowl­edge management systems, and queer archival theory are converging in information spaces, before presenting two case studies of knowl­edge organization that highlight intersectional problems and tensions inherent in attempting to represent complex identities in archival and knowl­edge management systems. We discuss how two-spirit identities are challenging traditional categories of gender identity in traditional naming conventions. Second, we examine the complexity of Native American boarding schools, the inherent hierarchical structures in knowl­edge management systems, and the relational systems that can be used to create more inclusive and responsive knowl­edge structures. We explore how archival knowl­edge management systems can be made more relational, using the examples within the digital tool Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC), and the challenges of relying solely on written structures to verify embodied knowl­edge and gender identity. We consider practical interventions to modify knowl­edge systems into being more adaptable, and the tension between deconstructing and building upon existing knowl­edge structures, using queering metadata as an example.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Learning Takes More Than One Way of Knowing: Embedding Indigenous and Queer of Color Theory within Knowledge Organization Resources

  The Library Quarterly · 2024-06-20 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  Archives, libraries, and cultural information institutions influence and contextualize our cultural knowledge. Embedded in these practices are white supremacist, colonial legacies that have excluded crucial cultural knowledges and contexts, particularly for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities. While momentum is building to create space for other knowledge frameworks, the scholarship broadly has yet to address how archival professionals and students are taught about these concepts, particularly in relation to archival description. Through a critical discourse analysis, we identify the ways in which white supremacist heteronormative practices are upheld within archival description education and training. To highlight interventions, we look at the ways in which scholars are already engaging with alternative or disruptive practices. By applying these approaches more intentionally within these frameworks allows for a more robust and critical archival practice that provides the ability to support the diverse user needs of these communities to create and perpetuate reparative justice.

  PublisherDOI

• The Role of Indigenous Archives and Their Pragmatic Imaginings in the New Museum Anthropology

  2024-01-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Given and McTavish argue that the digital era signals a “reconvergence” of libraries, archives, and museums (Given, Lisa M., and Lianne McTavish. 2010. “What’s Old Is New Again: The Reconvergence of Libraries, Archives, and Museums in the Digital Age.” Library Quarterly 80 (1): 7–32. https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1086/648461">https://doi.org/10.1086/648461). The drive toward decolonization, engagement, and collaboration is also breaking down disciplinary barriers, as many collaborative community projects involve object and archival collections. However, despite their close relationship and the increasing attention to archives in museum anthropology, there is a major gap in practice and professional discourse between museum anthropologists and archivists. This chapter explores the role of archives in the “new museum anthropology” and argues for drawing archival and museum disciplines together. As in museums, repositories of ethnographic archival collections are increasingly collaborating and sharing their collections with Indigenous communities. This chapter explores (1) how archival institutions, scholars, and practitioners are taking engaged stewardship as an ethical stance, research method, and approach to practice in archives; (2) how digital surrogates are being repurposed in tribal contexts for use in cultural heritage, land claims, language programs, and a range of other Indigenous initiatives; (3) identifies gaps that might allow for more successful and collaborative endeavors in our increasingly tethered fields. I draw on two case studies at the American Philosophical Society and Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ricardo L. Punzalan

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  9 shared

• Gwyneira Isaac

  Smithsonian Institution

  5 shared

• Travis L. Wagner

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  4 shared

• Joshua A. Bell

  4 shared

• Robert L. Leopold

  3 shared

• Laura Osorio Sunnucks

  3 shared

• Anthony Shelton

  3 shared

• Elizabeth Macdonald

  University of California, Berkeley

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Anthropology

  University of British Columbia

  2014

• M.Phil., Archaeology and Anthropology

  University of Cambridge

  2010

• B.F.A., Mason Gross School of the Arts--Visual Art

  Rutgers University New Brunswick

  2009