Abstract
In an article entitled “In the shadow of the continuum: testing the records continuum model through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office ‘Migrated Archives’” published in Archival Science in 2018, Michael Karabinos argued that the Records Continuum Model cannot be applied if the records under scrutiny have not been pluralised and that openness and accessibility are keys to the functionality of the model. He proposed a “shadow continuum” to analyse the Migrated Archives when its existence was unknown to the public. The author of this response believes that Karabinos’ analysis is based on a misunderstanding of the dimensions of the Records Continuum Model and that the addition of a “shadow continuum” is unnecessary because the model can be applied even if records have not been made public. She proposes an alternative way of mapping the Migrated Archives onto the Records Continuum Model, which highlights important issues relating to the ownership of the archives and to the way they have been managed and used.
Highlights
In 2012, Australian archivist Michael Piggott wrote that “the repeated assertion that the [Records Continuum] model is a worldview, that it can be read into any era, that it is era independent and relevant across cultures has never been seriously tested, by its supporters or anyone else
In his article titled “In the shadow of the continuum”, Karabinos sets out to test the universality of the Records Continuum Model by applying it to the case of the “Migrated Archives”, records from British colonies that were transferred to the UK at the time these colonies became independent countries and stored away and “forgotten” until 2011 when a court case brought by 5 Mau Mau veterans led the High Court to order that the British government release all the records relevant to the Kenyan case in its possession (Banton 2012b)
The inferences that Karabinos makes about openness and accessibility are based on a restricted interpretation of the Records Continuum Model as a model that can only be used by researchers analysing archives that are known to the public
Summary
In 2012, Australian archivist Michael Piggott wrote that “the repeated assertion that the [Records Continuum] model is a worldview, that it can be read into any era, that it is era independent and relevant across cultures has never been seriously tested, by its supporters or anyone else. He proposes a “shadow continuum” to analyse the Migrated Archives during the time when their existence was unknown to the public. I believe that Karabinos’ analysis is based on a misunderstanding of the dimen‐ sions of the Records Continuum Model and that the addition of a “shadow con‐ tinuum” is unnecessary because the model can be applied even if records have not been made public. He proposes to use instead a “shadow continuum” to analyse the processes that took place when the archives were not known to the public This shadow continuum “can be visualized as the dark spaces of the records continuum model, where records become obscured and hidden from view”
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