The AIDS Prevention Project (APP) of the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health (SKCPH or “Public Health”) produced a substantial body of textual materials along with photographs, posters, and ephemera.

Some thirty years after their original use, these records, now part of the King County Archives, informed the narrative of and provided the visual content for the online exhibit Responding to AIDS: The Seattle-King County Department of Public Health 1982-1996. The exhibit also incorporates oral histories produced for the project with grant funding from 4Culture.

Telling a Story, Not "The" Story

Early in exhibit planning, Assistant Archivist Rebecca Pixler emphasized the importance of keeping a narrow scope, as the story of HIV/AIDS in Seattle is well documented by the communities most affected.  The King County Archives exhibit would, through agency records, add but one facet to that history. A contributor to the oral history project later commented that Responding to AIDS was, to his knowledge, the only historical treatment of the local public health response to HIV/AIDS.

Letting the Records Speak and Also Listening to People

Our interpretation of the archival records was guided by one archivist’s personal experience, having been engaged with the gay community in Seattle through the time period represented by the exhibit. The history was corrected, filled in, and expanded upon using some secondary sources, but most significantly by the oral history project participants.

The good practice of grounding the narrative in records reminded us to limit the scope of the exhibit to the perspective of SKCPH and the APP.  At the same time, the unusual luxury of being able to hear the voices of people who created and used the records allowed us to develop the context of the program materials and to present the APP not only as an organizational entity, but also as a group of individuals.

The moving personal stories of the oral history participants describe the humanity and emotions missing from many archival exhibits. The passion and dedication, as well as mutual affection and respect, among APP leadership and staff, might be reflected in some textual materials, but their expressions and voices bring the history to life.

Subject and Object – Public Health and Communities

As HIV/AIDS came to be recognized as a public health emergency, SKCPH leadership also recognized that the traditional, detached stance of public health in relationship to its “public” would not effectively reach and serve the already marginalized gay community. In fact, by the 1980s, as in other major American cities, Seattle’s gay community had established clinics to provide accepting and responsive care independent of Public Health or major medical providers.

Front cover of “The Seattle Star,” Report No. 2, 1991. The semi-annual report tothe community summarized findings from the "Be a Star" study. Marilyn Monroe was one of the “stars” assigned to subjects, in a system designed to allow long-term, anonymous participation. [Series 1825, History files, Seattle-King County Department of Public Health: Prevention Division / HIV-AIDS Program. [1825-2-13].

SKCPH recruited public health professionals active in these alternative community clinics, to lead the response to the epidemic and build what was to become the APP. The APP worked cooperatively with existing community organizations, and as the epidemic spread, expanded to collaborate with groups representing more at-risk communities, notably the People of Color Against AIDS Network (POCAAN). The APP’s interrelationship with at-risk communities helped Public Health communicate, provide services, and gather epidemiological data in groundbreaking ways. The APP thus innovated by breaking traditional barriers between subject and object; the program was led and shaped by members of the communities it served.

Subject and Object – Archivists and Collections

In a more subtle way, the APP’s archival records also broke a traditional barrier between subject and object. Archivists attempt to maintain a rational distance from the people who created the records we preserve (a stance made easier when the record creators are no longer living).  Like archeologists, we want to demonstrate reverence toward objective evidence that was left just so, and we try to make a science out of its reconstruction into something meaningful. And yet, through archival arrangement, description, and exhibition, we impose our own limited understanding of the records’ importance and use.  Directly or indirectly we tell a story about the records and their creators.

But the core records of the APP were not “discovered” in their original form by processing archivists, because they had been actively collected, curated, and arranged with history in mind by APP program manager Tim Burak, who not only created historical files and scrapbooks as the program grew, but who also maintained a timeline that placed the APP in the context of significant landmarks in the national and international HIV/AIDS epidemic and the scientific, medical, political, and community responses.

Further, the exhibit featuring these records incorporates perspectives, shared in the oral histories, of APP program leadership and staff reflecting on the program. Many specific questions asked in the interviews came out of gaps in our understanding of events, which was based on the archival records.  The oral history interviewees also graciously reviewed and provided suggestions on the exhibit text. Thus the people who lived the experience helped define its interpretation as history.

Cover of pamphlet from “Girlfriends Talking” campaign by the People of Color Against AIDS Network. [Series 1825, History files, Seattle-King County Department of Public Health: Prevention Division / HIV-AIDS Program.1825-3-13.]

Sex and the County

In deciding how to present the APP’s story and records, the Archives encountered a conflict that echoed a theme addressed in the exhibit itself – the need to communicate vs. pressure to self-censor. Public Health had to balance (1) the urgent need to create health education and outreach materials that were both culturally relevant and clinically detailed (such as describing how to safely use a condom) with (2) the public expectation that as a taxpayer funded agency, SKCPH’s materials should stay within the bounds of the social norms of the broader community.  If sex must be discussed, the agency should be discreet, and by no means should it appear to be “promoting” what might be judged by a sensitive public as promiscuous or deviant sexual behavior. The timing of the emergence of HIV/AIDS heightened this conflict, as the onset of the epidemic in the mid 1980s coincided with empowerment of an aggressive social conservatism, led by the Moral Majority and the likes of Jesse Helms.

As a government Archives, we could feel something of this tension that had been documented as Public Health’s experience (though in our case, with far less at stake, both in terms of the urgency of the need to communicate and the potential consequences should we get it wrong).  The purist in me at first trusted that by focusing on the records as evidence, we would tell the story of the program without introducing our own perspectives. I was surprised to find that even in 2015, we practiced a degree of self-censorship.

The source of our caution was not the discussion of homosexuality, which had drawn the strongest public reaction in the first decade of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but that we were discussing sex at all. We wanted our parent institution, the government of King County, Washington, to freely share the exhibit to recognize APP’s significance in the region and its influence on the public health profession. We also wanted former and current Department of Public Health leadership and staff to be represented accurately as innovators effectively responding to a public health crisis.

Designed to attract and engage in order to deliver useful information about uncomfortable topics—sexual behavior and sexually transmitted diseases—the APP’s visual materials could be provocative, playful, or hard-hitting, depending on their intended audience and use.  It mattered that some (like the “penis poster”) were designed for a specific audience, while others, such as the Metro bus signs, were intended for the general public. An important part of the story of the APP was the program’s thoughtfulness and compassion in working with specific communities, how it communicated in ways that would resonate and be respectful toward them, meeting people where they were as peers rather than as a judgmental or intimidating government agency.

And so, we were careful to include materials that were representative of the archival collection and the APP’s work but that we hoped would not distract from the larger story.

Poster from Public Health’s condom campaign displayed in booth at Gay Pride Festival. [Series 1825, History files, Seattle-King County Department of Public Health: Prevention Division / HIV-AIDS Program. 1825-13-2]

Metro bus sign from Public Health’s condom campaign. [Series 1825, History files, Seattle-King County Department of Public Health: Prevention Division / HIV-AIDS Program. 1825-6-20.]

Context in the Age of Social Media

In planning the exhibit design, I began with the assumption that individual pages might be shared directly via social media, and that recipients would likely never click to move beyond the shared content.  Some context would be lost, and I feared an image might take on a life of its own and somehow be made to reflect poorly on SKCPH.

Recognizing that there is no way to control how images might be repurposed, I struggled with how to attenuate this problem in this exhibit where context was so critical. I pictured a physical museum in which there is a linear narrative that one can experience by following the wayfinding created by the exhibit designers. And yet, even with physical space as a guide, visitors might suddenly shift their attention to what draws them across the room, breaking the chronological or other intended order.  This revelation gave me a direction. Each major section of the exhibit should be able to stand alone independent of the others, like a room in a large museum exhibit, and subsections within each page would be self-explanatory and self-documenting, with navigation referencing the whole. The subsections might be seen as akin to exhibit cases or walls.

Citations thus had to be in line with graphics throughout rather than at the end of the exhibit.  In order to minimize visual clutter, I found code to make the full citations appear when the user’s mouse hovers over the images.  Persistent headers, footers, and navigation would help viewers who had landed somewhere in the middle recognize that there was a larger story.

“Stella Seattle” postcard, by Dominic Cappello. [Series 1825, History files, Seattle-King County Department of Public Health: Prevention Division / HIV-AIDS Program. 1825-6-10.]

An Independent Platform

At the time, the King County Archives’ online exhibits all existed within the pages of its King County government web site. I chose to create a separate site for Responding to AIDS for several reasons.  The first issue was that the exhibit would feature a variety of graphical materials with striking design and varied styles and color palettes. King County’s site framework forced a limited, muted color scheme and specified design elements that would detract from the impact of these graphics.  Second, the significance of the project and the quality of the archival materials and oral histories, along with the length of the exhibit, all suggested that the exhibit should reside in its own space. I later saw that the step of removal from the County site relieved concern about placing “inappropriate” content on the government page. The site has its own content warning, while also displaying the County logo and linking back to the Archives and Public Health’s institutional pages.

Reception

We published the exhibit in June, 2016, and were pleased to see it featured on King County’s home page and promoted by Public Health. Most gratifying, though, was its reception by the oral history participants. We felt honored to learn that they appreciated how we had presented their professional and personal stories. The exhibit received the 2016 Technology Award from the Association of King County Historical Organizations, and the oral history participants who were able kindly joined the Archives at the ceremony.

Still from oral history interview produced by the King County Archives with grant funding from 4Culture, June 3, 2016.  Aids Prevention Project Program Manager Tim Burak interviews Dr. Bob Wood, Director of the HIV/AIDS Control Program for Public Health – Seattle & King County.

Notes

Exhibit and oral history project credits respondingtoaidsexhibit.org/about

Labeling

In the exhibit as well as in this article, the terms “gay” and “gay community” are used with the knowledge that they are limiting and problematic. These terms were the most frequently used in the textual materials and in the oral history interviewees, albeit with disclaimers, to refer to people who identified as bisexual or homosexual.  The oral histories and exhibit also discuss other groups: heterosexual women, members of the broader LGBTQ community, men who had sex with men but did not identify as gay, people who used intravenous drugs, and people of color, as well as intersections among these groups.

Carol Shenk has been King County Archivist in Seattle, Washington, since 2013. Before joining King County, Carol was Information Manager for the Seattle City Clerk and Municipal Archives where she managed online databases, led digitization projects, and helped lay the groundwork for the Municipal Archives’ Digital Assets Preservation program. Previously, Carol has served as records manager, public disclosure officer, cataloguer for Amazon.com, city clerk, and librarian. Carol earned her Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Washington in 1998 and has a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Oregon.