Indie Tarot Deck Archival Shuffle

Описание: Emilie Hardman, the former head of MIT Libraries’ Distinctive Collections, demonstrates the “archival shuffle” for MIT Libraries indie tarot deck collection. This tarot collection is open for public access and this video illustrates a handling technique when using the indie tarot deck collection. This shuffle is safe for cards, as it avoids bending or flexing them. This technique helps to prolong the deck life in this collection.

Tarot is a deck of cards, usually 78 in number, that can be used for gameplay, divination, meditation, and storytelling. It’s been popular since the mid-fifteenth century and today it has a vital and varied life as a medium for artistic expression. The Department of Distinctive Collections at MIT Libraries, under the leadership of Emilie Hardman, began collecting indie tarot decks in 2019. An early collection priority of the Department of Distinctive Collections had been contemporary artist-made and independently produced tarot decks, with a particular interest in radical, feminist, queer, POC, and spiritually and religiously diverse revisions to the traditional tarot narratives and archetypes. This collection amplifies the Department of Distinctive Collections philosophy to collect, preserve, and foster the use of unique and rare materials such as tangible and digital archives, manuscripts, ephemera, artists’ books, and more. This video appears in “Divine Conservation:What can 500 indie tarot card decks tell us about conservation?,” a lecture on the conservation of MIT Libraries new indie tarot deck collection presented by MIT Libraries Wunsch Conservation Lab staff as part of the Institute for Conservation (ICON) Book and Paper Group lecture series “Conservation: Together at Home Webinar Series.”

00:01– 01:29
Emilie Hardman parts a deck of indie tarot cards. Emilie says "A thought" while shuffling.

01:29 – 03:29
Emilie Hardman says "A wondering." while shuffling.

03:29 –6:00
Emilie picks up the deck and taps the bottom edge on the table.


Demonstrated by Emilie Hardman. Produced and directed by Jana Dambrogio.
Citation information: Author: Emilie Hardman. Title: "Indie Tarot Deck Archival Shuffle." Date filmed: August 2019. Duration: 0:05. Date posted: June 2020. Video URL: [insert URL]. Date accessed: [insert date].

Copyright 2020. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). All rights reserved. The following copyrighted material is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.... Contact the MIT Technology Licensing Office for any other licensing inquiries.

The URL for this video is    • Indie Tarot Deck Archival Shuffle