Review: Personal Archives and a New Archival Calling: Readings, Reflections, and Ruminations

Abstract

Personal Archives and a New Archival Calling: Readings, Reflections, and Ruminations by Richard J. Cox. Duluth, MN: Litwin Books, 2008. 418 pp. ISBN 978-0-9802004-7-8. Within the archival community, the concept of personal archives has evolved from that of the private papers of well-known and/or powerful individuals (literary manuscripts, private diaries of administrators, etc.) to incorporate the daily recordkeeping and memory practices of potentially all individuals, regardless of their status. With the advent of digital technologies, the ability to create and share evidence of self, family, and community has grown in the public consciousness. Richard Cox’s new book Personal Archives and a New Archival Calling is an appeal to archivists to tap into this increased awareness and to develop a “new partnership” with the public. Throughout the book, Cox calls attention to what he calls “citizen archivists”: those members of the general public who are interested in and attempting to preserve, collect, and/or organize personal and family records. Cox’s central argument, articulated at the outset, is that personal archives are becoming more significant due to improved technologies and an increased desire for a personal connection to the past. Consequently, he urges archivists to adopt new roles as scribes-for-hire (p. 77), educators, or consultants, with a concomitant shift in emphasis from primarily serving the needs of academic researchers to equipping amateurs (citizen archivists) to archive themselves. For Cox, a chief effect of this newly envisioned role is what he perceives as the opportunity for archival advocacy and public consciousness-raising about the archival mission. As he points out throughout the text, more and more “citizen archivists” are becoming aware of, and in need of, recordkeeping and archiving skills. Archivists are best equipped to meet these needs, and can position themselves as experts in this area while simultaneously exposing the significance of archival services and repositories in society. One of the strengths of this book is its close examination of emotion, sentimentality, and the personal subjective response to and desire for the record. The first part of the book explores these issues in terms of the impulse to preserve records as evidence of self, and family records as private windows to the past. In chapter 1 Cox points out that the average citizen has always played a role in the development of the public archive. Specifically, many collections only come to the archive after an individual or family has invested in collecting and preserving the documents. He states that “personal recordkeeping is linked to the human impulse for resisting oblivion,” (p. 3) and he argues for a universal wish to leave evidence of the self. Although this chapter is framed within a context of a global desire for record-making and recordkeeping, he stops short of proclaiming that everyone will collect and use records in the same way. Chapters 2 and 3 are