ABSTRACT
Wendy M. Duff and Michelle Caswell discuss the concept of impact and present a definition of the social justice impact of archives. They offer a brief history of evaluation research, from its positivist roots to its current more holistic approaches, and eschew traditional, neoliberal frameworks and methodologies by highlighting newer empowering models for research. They provide an overview of research on archival impact, grouping the studies by type, including educational impact, economic impact, social impact, and affective impact. They consider literature that critiques methods used in many library impact studies and conclude with a brief discussion of methods that align with culturally responsive, democratic, Indigenous, and transformative impact measures.
