On the value of personal archives: Some examples from the archives of Alva and Gunnar Myrdal – with a main focus on Gunnar

Personal digital archiving (PDA) is a type of personal information behaviour related to personal memory and identity construction. The aim of this study is to discover and define individual’s perceived values in relation to personal digital archives, and to explore their relationship between PDA behaviours. Based on the grounded theory, drawing on in-depth interviews with 14 Chinese college students, both the perceived values in relation to personal digital archives and the PDA behaviours were coded through open, axial, and selective coding processes. This study found the perceived values in relation to personal digital archives mainly include subject value, object value, intermediary value, value to other subjects and social value, PDA behaviours mainly include accumulation behaviour, use behaviour, appraisal behaviour and disposal behaviour. Moreover, the value cognition of personal digital archives is the intermediary link between perceived values and PDA behaviours and is the core connecting the two. Value cognition can be divided into judgement on whether personal digital archives are valuable, subdivision of value types of personal digital archives, value evaluation of personal digital archives, and cognition of enhancing or weakening the value of personal digital archives. The study comprehensively analysed the perceived values, value cognition that drive PDA behaviours, built the relationship between perceived values, value cognition and PDA behaviours, and answered the question of why individuals want to archive from cognitive and behavioural perspectives. The findings of the study can help librarians to conduct more targetted PDA education and improve the public’s awareness and literacy in PDA.

We explored general issues concerning personal information management by investigating the characteristics of office workers' paper-based information, in an industrial research environment. we examined the reasons people collect paper, types of data they collect, problems encountered in handling paper, and strategies used for processing it. We tested three specific hypotheses in the course of an office move. The greater availability of public digital data along with changes in people's jobs or interests should lead to wholescale discarding of paper data, while preparing for the move. Instead we found workers kept large, highly valued papar archives. We also expected that the major part of people's personal archives would be unique documents. However, only 49% of people's archives were unique documents, the remainder being copies of publicly available data and unread information, and we explore reasons for this. We examined the effects of paper-processing strategies on archive structure. We discovered different paper-processing strategies (filingandpiling)that were relatively independent of job type. We predicated that filers' attempted to evaluate and catergorize incoming documents would produce smaller archives that were accessed frequently. Contrary to our predictions, filers amassed more information, and accessed it less frequently than pilers. We argue that filers may engage inpremature filing: to clear their workspace, they archives information that later turns out to be of low value. Given the effort involved in organzing data, they are also loath to discard filed information, even when its value is uncertain. We discuss the implications of this research for digital personal information management.

An examination of how John Grierson’s contribution to the film The Heart of Scotland is reflected in his archive of personal papers, held in the University of Stirling Archives. I consider here also the value, importance, and fragility of personal archives.

On August 12, 2022, Tamil relatives of those forcibly disappeared during the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983–2009) marked their 2,000th day of public protest. Since these roadside protests began, elderly women and men searching for their loved ones have passed away and transitional justice promises have failed, but the disappeared have not been found. This article examines archives of the disappeared: collections of files, objects, photographs, etc. about missing loved ones. Paradoxically, these archives, as evidence that the disappeared once lived, are at the core of the protests, yet they are still overlooked by the Sri Lankan state. I explore these collections by examining the intersection of critical personal archives, life writing scholarship, and South Asian studies. The emerging field of critical personal archives suits the unique quality of archives of disappearance, their constructed nature, and their underlying intimacy. Life writing scholarship focuses a much-needed critical lens on self-representation, power, and narrative in archives, especially regarding those whose stories are marginalized and/or not deemed archivable. Drawing on semi-structured interviews I carried out with mothers of the disappeared in 2016–2017 and 2022, I analyze these archives using three life writing concepts: relationality, cultural scripts, and autotopography. The result reaffirms the enduring cultural, political, and personal value of archives of the disappeared and calls for reimagining personal archives as politically and emotionally powerful forms of representation that carve space for love and resistance.