Modern Archives Research Articles

Kingston, R. (2011). The French Revolution and the Materiality of the Modern Archive. Libraries & the Cultural Record, 46(1), 1–25

Kingston, R. (2011). The French Revolution and the Materiality of the Modern Archive. Libraries & the Cultural Record, 46(1), 1–25

Construction of Information Service Platform Based on Blockchain Technology

In order to improve the efficiency of archives management in modern archives information management, blockchain technology can be used to carry out the architecture of archives information service platform, and according to the work requirements of archives information management, relevant operation functions are designed, such as management module design, blockchain data protection module design, file security monitoring module design, etc. This paper analyzes and discusses the realistic path of the construction of information service platform based on blockchain technology.

Membangun Sistem Kearsipan Berkualitas Untuk Mendukung Tata Kelola Kantor Yang Baik Di SD IT Al-Hijrah

This research aims to analyze building a quality archiving system to support good office governance. The method in this research is a qualitative research method. Interview data was transcribed and reviewed using thematic content analysis. The study reports key data themes that include improving operational efficiency, increasing transparency and accountability. In this way, researchers investigate how teachers can build a quality archiving system to support good office governance. The research results show that implementing an integrated and modern archiving system can reduce human error, speed up access to information, and increase transparency and accountability in office operations. Implementation of this system also plays an important role in increasing administrative efficiency and facilitating the achievement of overall organizational goals.

Medieval re-creation and translation in Edwin Morgan and Derek Jarman’s archives: A dialogue

This dialogue brings together two archives: the Derek Jarman collection at Tate Britain and the Edwin Morgan manuscripts at the University of Glasgow Library Archives and Special Collections. Both Jarman and Morgan were queer artists who reforged the medieval past through visual and verbal processes, including scrapbooking, collage, and translation. The dialogue also brings together two critics, Francesca Brooks and E.K. Myerson, who have been responding to these archives through a combination of traditional scholarship and creative practice. Both in their approach to the medieval past and in their multimedia, visio-verbal practices, Jarman and Morgan’s archives are generative, fluid, and expansive spaces that invite embodied, affective, and creative responses. The dialogue explores what it means to be a medievalist working in the modern archive and how our critical approaches to the medieval subjects of our research might be changed and transformed by this work.

O Ryszardzie Przelaskowskim (1903-1971) z powodu 50. rocznicy jego śmierci

The commencement of a series of lectures in 2022 under the name “Konarski Lecture” as well as the reedition of the Polish-English version of Kazimierz Konarski’s textbook “Modern Polish Archival Science and its Purpose” raise the question about the continuation of commemorating prominent Polish archivists. One of the figures worth paying attention to is Ryszard Przelaskowski (1903-1971), the author of “Schedule of Internal Work in Modern Archives” (1935), which was translated into English already in 1940. Ryszard Przelaskowski’s transition in 1939 from working in the archive to working in the library resulted in a change in his research interests. Przelaskowski left a series of essays in the field of librarianship in which he pointed out the connections and similarities between archival science, library science and museology as information sciences. The author of this article, in a dissertation published in 2010, drew attention to Przelaskowski’s pioneering approach in this area. Later, in-depth studies by Klaudia Leśniewska (Jędrzejewska) and Monika Cołbecka confirmed this thesis. The author postulates the need to develop a comprehensive scientific monograph of Ryszard Przelaskowski’s scientific and professional activity. This is particularly important in the era of a renewed sense of fundamental unity among archives, libraries and museums, as well as the need to include this unity in scientific theory.

Digital Archival Training towards Employee of Kelurahan Landasan Ulin Banjarbaru

Archives are needed by various institutions. Various kinds of institutions must have archives to keep, and some of them are certainly important archives. The difficulty that often occurs lies in how to get the archive when needed. That's why an employee must really master Archives. The importance of records for the continuity of the company requires companies to empower their employees in managing company records. Some training on filing can be done, it's just that the training that is carried out every day is an important factor to achieve the neatness of company records. This underlies the holding of this community service activity, namely in the form of modern archives management training for employees in several Kelurahan, Banjarbaru, South Kalimantan. The result of this training is an increase in the quality of archive management, especially digitally

Managing “the shapeless mass” in the digital age

In his 1927 “Archeion” article, On issues of modern Polish archival science (Z zagadnień nowożytnej archiwistyki polskiej), the renowned Polish archivist Kazimierz Konarski wrote of the challenge of managing the “shapeless mass” of modern archives in the 20th century. In this presentation, Canadian archival consultant and independent scholar Laura Millar examines the records and archives management challenge of the 21st century: managing the “shapeless mass” of electronic records inundating governments and organizations in the digital age. The “flood” of physical and textual documentation that Dr. K. Konarski faced a century ago has become a torrent of invisible, omnipresent, elusive electronic records – photographs, audio recordings, databases, AI-generated data, and more – stored in countless computer hard drives, cloud storage systems, and personal digital devices. How can the archivist manage digital sources that are both ephemeral and eternal at the same time? To ensure society has the documentary evidence it needs, L. Millar argues that archivists must our shift attention away from the care of static, “old” archives and focus more directly on the work of capturing and recording the present. The digital age may transform our methods, but our mission remains the same: to help society capture, protect, and make available for use essential sources of documentary proof.

Tacit Narratives in the Manuscript Collections of Matthew Parker and Robert Cotton

Over the past two decades, the history of early modern archives has been a topic of considerable interest among historians, and their research has drawn attention to the complex motives and commitments that inspired individuals, communities, and institutions to create, collect, preserve, and use archives in the early modern period. Their research also offers insights into what Eric Ketelaar has called the “tacit narratives of power and knowledge” woven into the formation, preservation, and use of archives and opens up new avenues for exploring the social history of archives. The English Protestant Reformation has provided the backdrop for some of this work, highlighting the ways in which post-Reformation libraries functioned as “polemical weapons” in political and religious struggles to control the historical narrative about the roots of the Reformation. The libraries built by the antiquarian collectors Matthew Parker and Robert Cotton in the 16th and 17th centuries furnish useful examples of the kinds of tacit narratives embedded in the selection, preservation, and use of post-Reformation manuscript collections. This article draws on the research undertaken by early modern historians into the collecting and compiling practices underpinning the formation and use of the Parker and Cotton manuscript collections to demonstrate how their work is helping to illuminate the tacit narratives embedded in early modern archives as well as broadening and deepening the social history of archives.

Digitalisation of Archive Funds, Museum and Library Collections as a Factor of the Preservation of the National Cultural Heritage of Ukraine

The purpose of the article is to analyse the problems of protection and rescue of cultural objects, in particular, to determine the role of digitisation of archival funds, museum and library collections as a factor of the preservation of national cultural heritage. The methodological basis of the research consists of general scientific and special methods of studying the problem, the use of which made it possible to achieve the goal. The applied methods made it possible to outline the problems of protection and rescue of cultural objects, in particular, to determine the role of digitisation of archival funds, museum and library collections. The principle of historicism, which involves considering any phenomenon in its self-development under the influence of various factors, became the main one. The historical-systemic method is aimed at the analysis of society as a whole and transformations within it, caused by changes in the political, cultural and informational and communication space. Quantitative methods were used to process the results of analytical studies, as well as to diagnose the studied phenomena, in particular, to present digitised collections in the network and rank them according to the purpose of digitisation. The scientific novelty of the work consists in the expansion of ideas about the scale of digitisation of archival funds, museum and library collections, its role in the preservation of cultural objects. Thanks to the research carried out by the authors, projects, scientific and popular scientific events are presented, the purpose of which was to discuss the problems of loss, rescue and protection of the national cultural heritage of Ukraine. The authors state that the problems of preservation of cultural values, transfer, promotion and development of cultural heritage in Ukraine are now issues of national security. Conclusions. The research have proved that the implementation of information technologies and large-scale digitization are becoming absolutely necessary for modern archives, libraries and museums, have great significance and are carried out in order to ensure accessibility, preservation and dissemination of knowledge and cultural heritage. Keywords: digitisation, archival fund, museum and library collection, national cultural heritage.

Multiframe fever: Comics as archive

Read through the concept of the multiframe (understood as a database of separable units), this article argues that comics are not a distinct cultural form, but an expression of archive. The principle of the archive orders and animates modern culture in general, infusing it with the unavoidable violence inherent in establishing structure and meaning. If comics are archival, the principles of comics reading can be applied to other archival forms. This article thus also examines the common law (an exemplary modern archive that has wide social and political significance and well-rehearsed connections with violence) as a ‘legal multiframe’ that is nested within the continuum with other frames in the potentially infinite multiframe of material culture. What is seen overall is both the unavoidable nature of the violence of framing in meaningful encounters with the world, and the continuity or interconnectedness of all cultural and meaningful forms. This understanding is enabled by an encounter with the multiframe that is not blinkered to its violent qualities, and does not seek to arbitrarily delineate ‘comics’ from other multiframed structures.

Wyjazd naukowy do Lwowa jako forma kształcenia archiwistów w Uniwersytecie Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej

Archival studies programs include periodic study visits in the modern archives. So far, no thorough publications were devoted to them, which is why this text was written. It is focused on visits to Lviv the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) students’, firstly those enrolled in the archivist specialization of the history program, then, since 2012, archival studies. They were organized annually within the period between 2007 and 2019 for groups of six students with their supervisors. The visits lasted seven days each, and their aim was to explore the archives and libraries of Lviv. Each year a similar student group of the Ukrainian University of Lviv in Honor of Ivan Franko came to Lublin and partook in the explorations of Polish archives along with the UMCS students. Over the described period, 74 students of UMCS altogether went to Lviv, and a similar number of Lviv’ students visited Polish archives. The article characterizes the visit program of the Lublin students to Lviv and its execution, and evaluates the effects of the visits with the use of the student reports, short essays as well as the assessments of visits drawn up after years.

Analysis on Classified Storage and Traceability of Construction Project Archives

With the development and progress of economic construction and market economy, urban construction is also developing rapidly. In the field of construction engineering, a large number of construction engineering files are constantly being produced and accumulated. Therefore, the role of file management is becoming more and more important. The archives are the true records of the whole process of project construction, including the information on the whole process from project design to completion, and are also the main basis for operation management after project delivery. However, there are many aspects to construction project archives, and there are many problems. Nowadays, the classification and preservation of archives are receiving more and more attention. In this article, the origin and development history of construction project archives is first expounded, and its attributes and importance are analyzed. Secondly, the differences between ancient and modern archives management are compared, and at the same time suggestions on improving the archives’ traceability system, strengthening the use of archives, and establishing and improving archives management are given. In this paper, we summarize the problems in archives sorting and put forward specific solutions to improve the standardization and systematic management of archives work and enhance the authenticity and integrity of construction project archives.

Finding Minority Voices in Early Modern European Archives

ABSTRACTSince the rise of postmodernism and the archival turn in the mid-nineteen nineties with the writings of Jacques Derrida and others, much scholarship has been dedicated to the question ‘who is not represented in the archives?’ Indeed, suggested changes and alterations to traditional archival practice include the incorporation of newer models like social provenance, oral history testimonies, shared-stewardship, and community archives. While this wealth of attention and consideration towards creating more inclusive archives today are sorely needed, what can be done for archives of more distant pasts? In this article, I evaluate a number of different scholarly works which address, or demonstrate, the issue of finding minority voices in early modern archives specifically. Whether through the study of works of art, literature, or legal, government documents, these authors either find ways to breathe life into past histories once assumed to be utterly lost, or their problematic analyses uncover potential for using such methods.

India’s Everywomen in the Early Modern Archive

India’s Everywomen in the Early Modern Archive

Performing Babies and the Properties of Race and Ethnicity

ABSTRACT This essay explores how props that play babies perform not just individual characters but also racial and ethnic identities in two plays by Shakespeare and one by contemporary playwright David Ireland. Working across early modern and modern archives of text and performance to track ongoing, transhistorical processes of race-making, the article argues that the stage baby’s mingling of the symbolic and material puts racial formation on display. Each play locates their baby-prop’s performance of identity at the intersection of race and gender by featuring a paternal figure searching for evidence of a kinship with a newborn. The hypervisibility of Aaron’s son’s race in Titus Andronicus, and its connections to theatre history and material culture in performance and editing choices, contrasts with baby Perdita’s relatively unspecific whiteness in The Winter’s Tale that materialises Leontes’s fears of the baby’s indistinct, potential ‘strangeness’. Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue enacts Leontes’s infanticidal threats and paranoia in the twenty-first century, staging the violent consequences of a grandfather’s obsession with British purity. The repertorial relationships between baby-props across these three plays demonstrate how patriarchal questions of filial descent intertwine with constructions of race, ethnicity, and nationality, and how studying performance practices helps reveal social processes of identity formation.

The meaning and indication of "Rou Ji"

"Rou Ji", as a name of disease syndrome, played an important role with its relevant theories and clinical experiences in historical recordings. However, it was treasured neither in modern archives nor by clinical physicians. The concept of "Rou Ji" started in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period (770 B.C. - 221 B.C.), and its name was first found in Shan Fan Fang in the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-589). The symptoms of this disease mainly suggested weakness of limbs caused by exogenous factors. It was gradually developed into following symptoms, such like emaciation or muscle atrophy, fatigue, skin color change, abnormal skin sensation, poor digestion and absorption function of spleen and stomach. Its etiology was changed from exogenous factors into internal injuries and deficiency of congenital Qi. Its treatment was also changed with the change of the understanding of diseases. The dialectical thinking in its treatment in ancient medical materials may have reference value for current clinical diagnosis and treatment.

A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture

A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture

Preservation and Praesentia: Some Reflections and Objections to Archival Knowledge

Abstract Housing “the world’s largest collection of materials related to the Deaf community, as well as the home to Gallaudet University’s institutional records and the records of the Gallaudet family,” Gallaudet’s Library Deaf Collections and Archives’ (LDCA) structure will act as an entryway into discussions of how archives construct and transmit knowledge. Following this analysis, I will relate my own reactions to an archived object within the LDCA’s “Alumni Cards” collection via praesentia, an underrepresented mode of knowledge explored by Kevin Hetherington. I conclude my reflections and objections by connecting Thomas Osborne’s analysis of the modern archive as a site of self-fulfilling credibility to my two previous points. While only a start and too short to fully complicate these topics, I hope this paper sparks even a mild curiosity about the complex relationships which permeate and produce knowledges, archives, and subjects.

Perspectives on biotechnology: Public and corporate narratives in the GM archives

Societal Impact StatementThe contentious debate over genetically modified (GM) crops in Britain has entered a new era following Brexit and the development of gene editing. At the same time, the events of the 1980s and 1990s are now entering historical archives, including the GM Archive at the Science Museum in London. This article explores how fears of unnaturalness and arguments from historical continuity informed the British GM controversy. It also analyses the limitations of these modern archives. The concerns surrounding the naturalness and continuity of biotechnology have recently been resurrected following suggestions that gene editing will be employed in plant breeding.Summary This research examines the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops to Britain, including the backlash from environmentalist groups and the public that led to a de facto government moratorium on their commercialisation in 1998. Harnessing archival materials from the Science Museum's GM Archive, this paper shows that GM was viewed as an alien or unnatural technology in Britain, while campaigns from Monsanto and scientific supporters of GM attempted to show how recombinant DNA technology was simply the latest step in a long history of plant breeding. By moving outside the archive, it becomes clear that the creation of this narrative from continuity was a standard industry strategy. Appeals to the history of plant breeding was a strategy adopted by Monsanto well before the British GM controversy, while twentieth‐century food scares had already undermined public trust in government and industry. Public concern over the naturalness of biotechnology remains. Meanwhile, contemporary advocates of gene editing have begun to make similar arguments to those deployed in the 1990s, highlighting the similarity of gene editing to natural variation and selection.

Confronting Jenkinson’s canon: reimagining the ‘destruction and selection of modern archives’ through the Auditor-General of South Africa’s financial audit trail

ABSTRACT The canonical work of Sir Hilary Jenkinson, Manual of Archive Administration, published in 1922, provided the basis of archival theory and practice in many countries, especially British colonies. In his canon, Jenkinson requested the archivists to evaluate the manner in which they select records for permanent preservation. With examples from South Africa, this paper intends to confront the canon about the selection and destruction of modern archives. A complementary method of appraising records based on an ‘audit or money trail,’ as best illustrated through the Auditor-General of South Africa’s audit reports of public entities such as the Armaments Corporation of South Africa, is proposed. This paper ruffles feathers and argues that contrary to established orthodoxies of records selection, financial audit trails provide the most reliable clues of which and what historical records ought to be set aside and preserved. The authors cite the limits of this ‘follow the money’ method and provide mitigation suggestions. The paper challenges existing appraisal paradigms and has a potential to influence policy, theory and practice of appraisal in developing and developed countries. It also offers a modern-day refurbished continuation and expansion of the ideas addressed by Sir Hilary Jenkinson in his seminal canon.