Questions of trust (and distrust)

Abstract

On 5th and 6th July 2010, Wolfson College in Oxford (UK) played host to an international conference of archival educators, researchers, practitioners and other interested individuals to debate the topic ‘‘Questions of trust? Archives, records and identities.’’ This special issue of Archival Science presents thirteen articles originally delivered in Oxford that summer. The conference was organised by the UK and Ireland Forum for Archives and Records Management Education and Research (FARMER) and the Network of Archival Educators and Trainers (North West Europe) (NAET) and supported by the International Council on Archives’ Section on Archival Education and Training (ICA-SAE), sponsor of the keynote address given by Anne Gilliland. FARMER brings together archives and records management educators and researchers from seven universities in the UK and Ireland (namely University College London, University College Dublin, and the Universities of Liverpool, Aberystwyth, Northumbria, Glasgow and Dundee) to discuss and collaborate around matters of mutual interest. The Wolfson conference was the second international event to be organised by FARMER, following the ‘‘Developing the 21st Century Professional: a learning continuum for archivists and records managers’’ conference held in Aberystwyth in 2006. Building on the success of that first venture, the Wolfson conference attracted approximately 70 delegates from over a dozen countries. The conference was immediately preceded by the fifth International Conference on the History of Records and Archives (I-CHORA 5) in London and followed by a meeting of the ICA-SAE steering committee with the result that for 1 week in the summer of 2010, the UK played host to a series of intense and stimulating discussions about many of the current challenges and trends in archival education and research.