Archival Thinking Research Articles

A hidden history of our discipline: Latin American archival thinking in the mid-20th century

ABSTRACT This article is based on ongoing research which seeks to explore the development of Latin American archival thinking from the late 1950s onwards. The aim of this study is to broaden, diversify and enrich archival history both internationally and regionally, by incorporating ideas and perspectives which have, until now, received less attention than those from other parts of the world. In the 1960s and 70s, Latin American archivists and National Archives’ directors attended a series of meetings that encouraged the formation of a regional, collective diagnosis of the current condition of archives and the promotion of a set of political and historical reflections to explain that situation and to devise solutions to change it. This article provides a comparative account of these meetings, and of the existing scholarship around them. It also highlights three individuals whose contribution to the archival discourse of the time is worthy of more detailed consideration: José Honório Rodrigues (Brazil), Gunnar Mendoza (Bolivia) and José Pedro Esposel (Brazil). Some initial conclusions are offered and avenues for further research are set out. The main professional and academic motivation for this research is to promote current archival demands by recovering inspiring past experiences that still resonate today in Latin America.

Appreciating the Archives and Archival Thinking of the Middle East and North Africa

Appreciating the Archives and Archival Thinking of the Middle East and North Africa

Creating an Escape Room for Cultural Mediation: Insights from "The Archivist's Dream"

The Archivist’s Dream („Der Traum der Archivarin“) is a Live Escape Room Game that has been developed by the University of Krems’ Center for Applied Game Studies on behalf of the Archives of Contemporary Arts in Krems, Austria, which are dedicated to collecting pre-mortem bequests and post-mortem estates of outstanding artists. Located in the underground facilities of the archive, the Escape Room interweaves selected archival materials, historic media devices and archivist approaches to form an interactive puzzle experience. However, it is not an interactive exhibition showcasing the archives’ contents; and while the Escape Room incorporates elements of educational game design, it is an example for a less common application of (Escape Room) Games: the use of game design in the field of cultural mediation (Kulturvermittlung). Instead of following an educational goal in the narrower sense, the Escape Room is designed to turn aspects of cultural mediation and archival practice into gameplay principles, focusing on letting players explore the tenets of archival thinking rather than on “teachable” content. This is achieved by establishing different levels of (un-)reality players have to travers within the game: players follow a fictional archivist into her dreams, which merge with the real-life archives. In order to “escape” this dream world, players combine archival practices with dream logic to solve a secret tied to actual archival materials, while at the same time dissolving the borders between real life, dream and game.

‘A New Book according to the Syllables’: Organizing Scripture in Clement of Alexandria

Abstract The work of classicists in recent years have shown the creative means by which readers organized knowledge textually within the Roman Empire. In the sixth book of his Stromateis, Clement of Alexandria reflects on a passage from the Shepherd of Hermas that contrasts reading ‘according to the letter’ and ‘according to the syllables’ to interpret Isaiah 8:1–2 on the composition of a ‘new book.’ In this article, I take this passage as a springboard to analyze the grammatical and rhetorical features – hinted subtly in these two passages – that Clement adapted for organizing the knowledge he believes Scripture to transmit. I argue that Clement employs a form of archival thinking to transfer the skills of grammarians and rhetoricians to the hermeneutics of Christian Scripture. This ‘grammatical archive’ and ‘memorial archive’ form the structures to Clement’s craft of thinking, which is ultimately expressed in the construction of textual constellations that aid in understanding the plain sense of the Scriptures and their subject matter.

Archives and AI: An Overview of Current Debates and Future Perspectives

The digital transformation is turning archives, both old and new, into data. As a consequence, automation in the form of artificial intelligence techniques is increasingly applied both to scale traditional recordkeeping activities, and to experiment with novel ways to capture, organise, and access records. We survey recent developments at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and archival thinking and practice. Our overview of this growing body of literature is organised through the lenses of the Records Continuum model. We find four broad themes in the literature on archives and artificial intelligence: theoretical and professional considerations, the automation of recordkeeping processes, organising and accessing archives, and novel forms of digital archives. We conclude by underlining emerging trends and directions for future work, which include the application of recordkeeping principles to the very data and processes that power modern artificial intelligence and a more structural—yet critically aware—integration of artificial intelligence into archival systems and practice.

Alternative, Imaginary, and Affective Archives of the Self in Women's Life Writing

This essay interrogates and expands conventional views of the archive by considering how subjects who write themselves engage in processes of archival thinking and practices of curation in autobiographical discourse. It tracks features of alternative archives of the self in life writing through six microstudies that engage different concerns in autobiographical texts by women in recent centuries. The issues explored are affective archives of feelings and impressions; archives for rewriting the past; the imaginary archives of possible selves; digital archives of embodiment and desire; archives in global circulation; and archival remediation. The conclusion poses questions for those developing theoretical frameworks and methodologies to interpret the archival imaginary in the lives women inscribe and the afterlives they acquire. This article looks to expand methodologies in the field of archival studies that do not sufficiently attended to the status of the evidentiary in autobiographical materials and the archival imaginary mobilized in some autobiographical acts and practices and their afterlives.

Archives as sediments: metaphors of deposition and archival thinking

In their Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives, Muller, Feith, and Fruin compared the accumulation of archival materials with the geological process of deposit of sedimentary materials. This metaphor remained embedded in the European archival traditions and has continued to be discussed until the present, for instance, in the Italian archival literature. This paper explores, from a historical perspective, how and why this metaphor was adopted during the foundational period of modern archival science. The paper analyzes the links between geology and archival science as enterprises involved with historical reconstruction. The paper argues that as palaetiological disciplines, both shared a concern with issues of evidence in the study of individual, historically formed entities. Viewing the formation of archives as parallel to the deposition of sediments provided archival scholars at the turn of the twentieth century with a way of conceptualizing archival thinking as positive scientific knowledge of an essentially individual entity: the archives. This metaphor aligned archival science along with other historical sciences that could boast a measure of reputation and success. The metaphor also matched perfectly the modernist regime of historicity characteristic of the foundational period and culture of the modern archival discipline.

People of remembrance: archival thinking and religious memory in Sufi communities

This paper looks at tariqa-based Sufism, the mystical aspect of Islamic practice, as an example of how archival thinking is used to traditionalize practices by way of religious memory. There is currently a lack of engagement in archival studies with religion and religious practices. Because we are aware of the ways that communities remember through embodied ritual as well as of the powerful relationship between affect and archiving, looking at how religious communities remember seems natural. Key archival concepts of provenance, authenticity, and original order can be seen to be at work in the ways in which Sufi communities seek to preserve both knowledge and spiritual experiences. This has led the author to conceive of tariqa-based Sufism as a system of conscious documentation of spiritual lineages, practices, sacred texts, and experiential knowledge of the Divine.

Records of Dispossession: Archival Thinking and UNESCO's Nubian Campaign in Egypt and Sudan

Abstract This article discusses the creation of architectural and archaeological archives in newly independent Egypt and Sudan during the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, organized by UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). This initiative took place in the contiguous border regions of Egyptian and Sudanese Nubia from 1960 until 1980 in response to the building of the Aswan High Dam. Contingency in these archives demonstrates the necessity of acknowledging the (post-) colonial social and historical conditions in which they were produced. UNESCO's campaign sought to record ancient remains that would be submerged by the High Dam's floodwaters. During the campaign, UNESCO set up 'documentation centres' that helped codify what knowledge about Nubian architecture/archaeology might be archive-worthy, producing index cards dedicated to this purpose in Egypt (concentrating on monuments) and Sudan (centring on archaeological sites). This practice – echoed by other organizations involved in the work – was often purposefully forgetful of contemporary Nubia, whose material traces were also soon to be flooded. Nevertheless, such practices rendered visible other unauthorised histories of Nubia that subverted archival knowledge production: histories of local involvement with the campaign and now-submerged Nubian settlements. This article therefore argues that it is not only possible, but also ethically imperative, to repurpose the Nubian campaign's archives towards the acknowledgement of erased Nubian histories.

Counter-archiving Facebook

The article proposes archival thinking as an analytical framework for studying Facebook. Following recent debates on data colonialism, it argues that Facebook dialectically assumes a role of a new archon of public records, while being unarchivable by design. It then puts forward counter-archiving – a practice developed to resist the epistemic hegemony of colonial archives – as a method that allows the critical study of the social media platform, after it had shut down researcher’s access to public data through its application programming interface. After defining and justifying counter-archiving as a method for studying datafied platforms, two counter-archives are presented as proof of concept. The article concludes by discussing the shifting boundaries between the archivist, the activist and the scholar, as the imperative of research methods after datafication.

A ORIGEM DO CONCEITO DE CLASSIFICAÇÃO E SUA APLICABILIDADE NOS DOCUMENTOS DE ARQUIVO

O objetivo deste trabalho é buscar a origem e o desenvolvimento da construção dos planos de classificação e como estes se estabeleceram na literatura e no pensamento arquivístico. O foco se atém na identificação de como, a partir da origem da classificação, a gestão de documentos foi construída para um saber dos documentos de arquivo. Busca-se, ainda, reconhecer os princípios do respeito aos fundos e da ordem original, como fundamentos preciosos à classificação em arquivística. Tenta-se identificar a gênese dessa disciplina e as repercussões da sua prática.

Histórico e origens do princípio de respeito aos fundos

O presente artigo analisa o contexto, o conteúdo e as principais repercussões provocadas pela Instrução n. 14, emitida pelo então ministro do Interior francês, Conde de Duchâtel, em 1841. O texto, considerado basilar para o desenvolvimento da arquivística, fundamenta o princípio de respeito aos fundos, ainda hoje o mais importante preceito para a organização e classificação de arquivos. Para além da análise de conteúdo da instrução, este artigo visa realizar uma espécie de “arqueologia” do princípio referido, contribuindo assim para o debate e a consolidação do pensamento arquivístico.Palavras-chave: Arquivologia. Princípio de Respeito aos Fundos. Teoria Arquivística.Link: https://agora.emnuvens.com.br/ra/article/view/715

O tratamento temático da informação em instrumentos normativos de descrição arquivística

O estudo analisa Instrumentos Normativos de Descrição Arquivística desenvolvidos em diferentes países, a fim de verificar a descrição de conteúdo nestes documentos. Trata das vertentes teóricas do Tratamento Temático da Informação: catalogação de assunto, indexação e análise documental, assim como seus respectivos objetos: produtos, instrumentos e processos. Apresenta correntes teóricas do pensamento arquivístico: tradicional, records management e integrada, assim como, discorre sobre o histórico da descrição arquivística e o desenvolvimento de manuais, normas e orientações que foram criadas na intenção de padronizar o processo de descrição arquivística. Realiza levantamento de Instrumentos Normativos de Descrição Arquivística em diferentes países, tendo sido coletados e caracterizados 12 que se apresentam em línguas portuguesa, espanhola e inglesa. Dentre esses, foram selecionados oito Instrumentos Normativos de Descrição Arquivística que contemplam a descrição de conteúdo em sua estrutura, possibilitando, assim, a análise da existência ou não de características das vertentes teóricas do Tratamento Temático da Informação e a identificação dos aspectos indicados pela literatura da área de TTI: processos, produtos e instrumentos. Conclui-se que documentos de arquivo apresentam características específicas que precisam ser analisadas de forma diferente dos bibliográficos. No entanto, é possível estabelecer diálogo entre as áreas de Tratamento Temático da Informação e Arquivologia, visando à melhoria do acesso à informação. Contribui-se com a transposição desses conceitos e teorias, oriundos da Ciência da Informação, ao contexto do documento de arquivo e com as discussões acerca do desenvolvimento teórico e prático do Tratamento Temático da Informação na Arquivologia.

Documenting things: bringing archival thinking to interdisciplinary collaborations

Unlike many archival organisations, the University of Melbourne’s eScholarship Research Centre (ESRC) is not a custodial repository or a teaching facility. This allows the centre to collaborate with a wide range of organisations and individuals, bringing archival thinking and practice to a variety of sectors, many of which are not traditionally associated with information professionals. Central to all the ESRC’s work is the importance of effectively documenting things and their context. This paper draws on project examples, the author’s PhD research and key concepts from archival and knowledge management theory to explore the idea that effective documentation requires more than a focus on items and collections. Instead, it requires working with individuals, organisations and documentary resources (published and unpublished) to reveal explicit connections and capture implicit knowledge in ways which more accurately reflect the complexity of collections and the entities needed to understand them. These ideas are introduced using two examples: a series of projects carried out over many years with the Victorian Government’s Department of Primary Industries and its successors and The Australian Ballet. The paper then uses key concepts from this work to explore the nature of museum documentation and some of the limitations of current practice in museums, including the specific example of the Nordström mining models held by Museum Victoria. Thinking about these issues in the digital world, and applying archival thinking, the author argues for better connections between collection materials, not through convergence but by expanding our concept of collection documentation to include the relationships between things as things in their own right. Arguing for the practical benefits of such a change, the paper concludes by suggesting that testing these ideas in a museum context has the potential to further develop the ideas of the ESRC in ways which will benefit society.

Critical Directions for Archival Approaches to Social Justice

This article explores the rich history of social justice as a concern in archival studies and delineates future lines of inquiry for the field. We begin by examining how social justice has been defined in the archives literature and its implications for archival studies. Next, we draw forth five major strands of archival thinking in relation to social justice. We identify prominent areas in the archival literature that highlight the relationship between archives and social justice. We also identify critical questions in the relationship between social justice and archives and propose new research trajectories that we deem necessary to advance the archival field in general and its scholarship in particular. Finally, we argue for the importance of research that strengthens the tenets of social justice as a central principle in archival scholarship and practice.

Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala, by Kirsten Weld

Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala, by Kirsten Weld. Durham, Duke University Press, 2014. xvi, 335 pp. $26.95 US (paper). In June 2005, investigators with Guatemala's Human Rights Ombudsman's Office (PDH) stumbled upon what appeared to be vast quantities of old papers in derelict offices of Guatemala's infamous national police. The human rights workers soon realized they had discovered the largest collection of secret state documents in Latin American history. The incredible story that follows this discovery, along with the gruesome tale that precedes it, is the heart of Kirsten Weld's brilliantly narrated and written first book. The story Weld tells, while engaging in its own right, holds concrete lessons and insights not only for scholars of Guatemala and Latin America, but for anyone interested in the politics of history and memory, the power of archives and state terror, as well as the process of postwar transition and reckoning. While the role of Guatemala's military in the state-sponsored genocide that took place in the Guatemalan countryside during Guatemala's civil war (19601996) is well known, Kirsten Weld takes us into a lesser known, but equally important, history of the national police and Guatemala City. Paper Cadavers is divided into four parts covering the initial of the archive, the history of the police archive and its role in Guatemala's counterinsurgency, the role of the archives in social reconstruction at the ends of war, and finally the institutionalization of the archive and the development of a new culture in Guatemala. The thread tying these parts and chapters together is the national police archive itself and Weld's compelling argument for archival thinking: putting archives--their histories, silences, distortions, and politics--at the centre of our questions. Drawing upon recent works comprising the archival turn, Weld argues that archives must be analyzed as more than the sum of their parts--as instruments of political action, implements of state formation ('technologies of rule'), institutions of liberal democratization, enablers of gaze and desire, and sites of social (p. 19). The heart of Paper Cadavers is thus a story of how this one particular archive was transformed from a weapon of surveillance, social control, and ideological management for a counterinsurgent state to use against its enemies into a weapon of democratic opening in the pursuit of justice for war crimes for a demilitarized Left, victims of state terror and their families. In the first part of the book. Weld narrates the explosive of the archive and the challenges faced by human rights workers as they grappled with what to do with 75-million pages documenting over a century's worth of blood-filled history. The discovery of the archives, however, was not entirely accidental. Beginning in the mid-1980s, family members of those disappeared and killed in Guatemala City organized around the collective demand for information about victims' fates and state transparency and their struggles provided instructive lessons for those involved in the rescue of the national police archive. The second part of the book takes up these state secrets by looking backward into the history of the national police and its practices. …

Security Without Obscurity: Managing Personally Identifiable Information in Born-Digital Archives

This article examines current archival thinking and practice surrounding the identification and management of personally identifiable information (PII) found in born-digital collections in an academic repository context. Data from recent surveys and reports, along with examples of how several different repositories have attempted to balance management of born-digital records that require access control, inform the recommendations of the authors.

Issues with contact centres – as a new interface between public organisations and citizens

PurposeVarious levels of government offer citizens different channels and services using information technology (IT). Within e‐government different types of “e‐services” are used. The communications are made through a user interface consisting of an e‐service application. E‐services are used for digital management of routine matters: records are created, received, maintained, used and disposed during the processes of capturing and maintaining evidence about business activities and transactions. Besides e‐services, public administrations are establishing new channels organised as contact centres, in order to interact more efficiently with the citizens. The establishment of contact centres could be seen as an expression of an integrated approach to manage and control information flows in order to improve and ensure effective services. The purpose of this paper is to identify recordkeeping challenges related to public organisations' e‐government development and documentation practice.Design/methodology/approachThe data presented and analysed are based on a qualitative study of Swedish local governments' (municipalities) establishment and implementation of contact centres during 2011. The study was designed as a multiple case study, using interviews as a data collection method.FindingsThe findings demonstrate that the establishment of contact centres has other motives than the traditional need to use information as evidence for decision making: namely internal business process development and cost savings. The information is captured proactively and serves different purposes, which challenges the strong bond between processes, legislation, organisation and accountability.Practical implicationsThis paper will be of interest to record‐keeping practitioners working in the shift to e‐government.Originality/valueInformation is captured in new ways where the same information serves several interests. This research addresses the importance of including research in the beginning of the life of the record in relation to the influence made by the creator and the social construction of the record as part of archival thinking and research.

A ciência arquivística e o pós-modernismo: novas formulações para conceitos antigos

Process rather than product, becoming rather than being, dynamic rather than static, context rather than text, reflecting time and place rather than universal absolutes - these have become the postmodern watchwords for analyzing and understanding science, society, organizations, and business activity, among others. They should likewise become the watchwords for archival science in the new century, and thus the foundation for a new conceptual paradigm for the profession. Postmodernism is not the only reason for reformulating the main precepts of archival science. Significant changes in the purpose of archives as institutions and the nature of records are other factors which, combined with postmodern insights, form the basis of the new perception of archives as documents, institutions, and profession in society.This essay explores the nature of postmodernism and archival science, and suggest links between the two. It outlines two broad changes in archival thinking that underpin the archival paradigm shift, before suggesting new formulations for most traditional archival concepts.

Evidence, memory, identity, and community: four shifting archival paradigms

This essay argues that archival paradigms over the past 150 years have gone through four phases: from juridical legacy to cultural memory to societal engagement to community archiving. The archivist has been transformed, accordingly, from passive curator to active appraiser to societal mediator to community facilitator. The focus of archival thinking has moved from evidence to memory to identity and community, as the broader intellectual currents have changed from pre-modern to modern to postmodern to contemporary. Community archiving and digital realities offer possibilities for healing these disruptive and sometimes conflicting discourses within our profession.