What finding aids do: archival description as rhetorical genre in traditional and web-based environments

Abstract

Research and scholarship in the fields of rhetoric and composition have been instrumental in developing a framework for treating non-literary texts (e.g., scientific articles, memoranda, instructional handbooks) as part of social processes. Rhetorical genre theorists have developed methodologies and modes of analysis for studying both texts and their contexts, that is, their content and structure, the processes involved in their production, transmission, and interpretation, and the temporal, institutional, and rhetorical contexts in which these processes take place. Approaching archival description as a rhetorical genre creates opportunities for examining the social actions that finding aids participate in and accomplish and the ways in which these descriptive texts work to construct a community of writers and readers. It also creates opportunities for examining the impact of the World Wide Web on the communicative aims of archival finding aids. This article reports on the first stage of a research project exploring archival description through the lens of rhetorical genre theory with a specific focus on the finding aids that archivists create as part of the process of making historical records available for use. Its aim is threefold: to explain the rationale for the research, to identify and elaborate the elements of a conceptual framework for studying archival description as rhetorical genre, and to sketch the parameters of such a study and the questions to be addressed within those parameters.