Place Of Archives Research Articles

McDonaldization of archives (an introduction to discussion)

The article analyzes the development of archives through the lens of the McDonaldization created by Georg Ritzer. Since archives, like libraries, are deeply rooted in society, they can be analyzed from the perspective of ongoing social change. Referring to the various dimensions of McDonaldization – predictability, efficiency, calculability, and control – the author points to selected aspects of archival reality that exhibit the characteristics identified by Ritzer. Ritzer also pointed out that rationalized systems generate irrationalities and mention contrary tendencies that go (often intentionally) against the tide of the changes taking place. These two phenomena can also be found in the archival field. The article concludes that archives have undergone at least a partial McDonaldization. Nevertheless, the degree of change that has taken place in archives varies between the analyzed aspects. The article is based on an analysis of Polish and foreign literature, as well as the author’s observation of archives (mainly Polish). For this reason, the study uses a comparative, bibliographic, and observational method.

Miraculous, mutilated, mundane: Redrawing children’s art in Francoist Spain

Children’s drawings hold a contested place in archives of war. Often portrayed as unfiltered records of psychological impact on innocent young civilians, the same drawings are also sophisticated testimonies of agency. With child-artists creating their work within classrooms, families, and communities, this article offers an alternative reading of their historical significance. Children’s art offers not simply a firsthand view of conflict but also a critical view onto the alliances and ideologies of the adults who guided their creation. Before and after the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), after which Spain entered into several decades of National-Catholic dictatorship, psychologists and teachers used children’s drawings to further educational projects toward both progressive and conservative ends. Across key nodes of conflict and postwar quietude, I ask how advocacy of children’s art allowed teachers to practice what I call a form of pedagogical postmemory. Centering on Francoist-era education and the artists who created new openings for individual expression, the essay focuses on two educators, namely the artist Ángel Ferrant (1890–1961) and the novelist Josefina Aldecoa (1926–2011). Contrasting their paired views of children’s art as a liberating, imaginative activity with that of the Francoist pedagogue Josefina Álvarez de Cánovas (1898–?), this study exposes how the same fundamental rhetoric of imagination and freedom could result in vastly different archives of children’s drawings under dictatorship. Understanding children’s art as bound up in wider social and political processes, it posits the seemingly neutral sphere of postwar art education as a key vehicle for pedagogical memory and historical recovery.

Literary Remains: Muriel Spark, Auto|Biography, and the Archive

This essay explores Muriel Spark’s archival practice as a form of auto|biography, charting the relationship between Spark’s archives and her published work, and inquiring into the place of archives in literary and cultural studies: What are we doing in writers’ archives? And what is the archive doing here?

An Archive in a Book: Documents and Letters from the Early-Mamluk Period

Abstract The nature and place of archives in the premodern Islamicate world is a much debated topic and various explanations are offered for the relative scarcity of preserved material as well as the regional imbalance in the record. One factor that stands out in this discussion is the general prominence of counter-archival practices for the survival of what we are studying today. This contribution is the first to examine one such practice that has led to the preservation of a great number of documents: the reuse of discarded papers for the production of bindings. The case study looks at the binding of Leiden Or. 122, which preserved letters, decrees, and lists from Egypt and Syria at the beginning of the Mamluk reign. They likely belonged to a large household in Cairo, more precisely located in the Ayyubid palace Iṣṭabl al-Quṭbiyya. The article offers an edition of the material with an analysis of the historical circumstances, namely the eventful early years of Mamluk rule in Egypt and Syria.

Corpos Tatuados

Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar vivências e significados de tatuagens a partir de narrativas de sujeitos adultos e idosos, com base em uma abordagem interdisciplinar. Questionamos: do culto ao corpo jovem, da exigência do labor do corpo adulto e da hipervigilância do corpo envelhecido, qual a significação do corpo tatuado em idades tão díspares? Realizamos uma descrição das narrativas de adultos e idosos com corpos tatuados a partir de um desenho de pesquisa qualitativa. Participaram da pesquisa 15 adultos com idades entre 22 e 67 anos em duas capitais brasileiras, Salvador e São Paulo. Entre as ideias conclusivas estão, de um lado, a tatuagem como metamorfose, liberdade e afirmação de si e, de outro, significações que ressaltam a tatuagem como desejo de memória em completude, uma forma de fazer do corpo lugar de arquivo ou o próprio corpo como arquivo de memória completa.

Archive as a Depository of Shared Memories, History and Identity

Given their role in the preservation and protection of an authentic and credible trace of the past (documents) and, consequently, national identity, archives are considered places of choice for interpreting and representing shared memory and the past. Emphasising authenticity and credibility frames archives as seemingly neutral institutions in terms of politics and ideology. However, the trace that provides an insight into the “truth and knowledge” of our (individual and collective) past “that makes us what we are” needs to be questioned. Since the archiving procedure is based on the processes of inclusion and exclusion in all segments of everyday interpretation of material, the archive is a political and ideological institution that takes its place in the order of political power. This paper discusses the role of the archive as a place of preservation of “shared past and history” as an important part of national identity through the prism of institutional apparatuses or forms of knowledge/power (example of architecture) and technologies or manners of articulating and practising knowledge/power (example of everyday practice). The paper points to the role of archives in the (re)interpretation and (re)vision of shared memories, collective history and national identity on the examples of the Croatian State Archives and Archives of Yugoslavia, in the context of changes in the symbolic and political order (SFRY/Croatia). By constructing national memory and narratives of nationality through narratives of history and memory, and by constructing “truth” (knowledge) through exclusion and inclusion, archives (just like museums and libraries) have a role to play in “imagining” the community–nation. Or, according to the theory of performative identity (Foritier 2000), everyday practice that takes place in archives is an institutional identity practice that contributes to the unification and homogenisation of the community through a policy of interpretation by performing and producing (performative) memory (collective identity formation).

Russian Archives and Public Diplomacy: The Actualization of the History of The Soviet-Czech Relations

The author addresses the problem of the role and place of archives in the process of political identity formation, including in the field of “politics of memory.” The article draws attention to the fact that the prevailing notions about archives imply a static understanding of the role and functioning of archives. Instead, the author challenges those assumptions and suggests examining the archives as part of a wide network of institutions of public diplomacy, which forge and nurture mutual understanding and cooperation in the humanitarian sphere. To confirm the stated thesis, the article refers to the joint activities and activities of Russian archives in the framework of Russian-Czech relations, examines in detail the questions of historical memory and complex historical issues in the history of Russian-Czech relations. The article analyzes the current state of the archives on Soviet-Czech relations, the trends in the declassification of archival materials. Particular attention is given to the reflection of bilateral relations in archival documents in 1918, 1938 and 1968. The author concludes that the declassification of documents on problematic issues of bilateral relations does not lead to an automatic improvement of mutual understanding, since the parties may have conflicting interpretations of the same documents.

Paper Slips: Album, Archiving, Accident

Paper Slips: Album, Archiving, Accident Deidre Lynch (bio) … a quilt of patchwork consists of various miscellaneous pieces of different hues and qualities, but jointly combining to make a pleasing and useful whole … in the formation of the Album there is much wider scope for the Mind—a more intellectual occupation; whilst it keeps up a constant and rational excitement during its progress, it becomes a repository for the most endearing sentiments of friendship and affection. —John Britton, “An Album,” prose paragraph written into the Mrs. Anna Birkbeck Album, ca. 1841 A sort of drive compels us to take the Book apart, to make it into a piece of lace. —Roland Barthes, The Preparation of the Novel The moment the eponymous narrator of “the adventures of an Album” launches its first-person memoir it is already on the defensive. Appearing in 1831 in the annual The Comic Offering; or Ladies’ Mélange of Literary Mirth, this tale has lines from Lord Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers for its epigraph: “’Tis pleasant sure to see oneself in print, / A book’s a book although there’s nothing in’t.” The first words this narrator addresses to its readers involve this “impertinent” couplet: “half a hundred persons of my acquaintance” will doubtless recall it, the narrator predicts, when they learn that a “poor Album (with no ideas of my own, and depending for existence on the genius of others)” intends to write its own memoirs: “But this threadbare quotation is totally inapplicable to me: for although I am a Book, yet it is unjust to say ‘there’s nothing in it’, when so many of my pages are filled with charming poetry and unrivalled paintings.”1 [End Page 87] In fact, the storyline that follows, in which this voluble book recounts its passage from human hand to human hand and tracks how those once-blank pages got filled, confirms there might be reasons for the derision the Album expects. Doubts about the Album’s claims to “charm” or “genius” set in just after the adventures begin, when the Album, passing from its mistress’ hands, ends up being passed to a certain bel esprit in her circle. This second woman pretends to supply an original poem to fill up the Album’s opening page but instead plagiarizes from, of all people, Lord Byron. (The knowing album detects the deception, but its mistress, busy exulting over the fact that she has succeeded in documenting her social connection to the Byron-copyist, does not.) Circulating once again after this page has been filled, the Album arrives in the household of a certain Miss Susan Slattern. There its silk bindings are spotted with grease, and the pages between the covers fare no better, though two obtain a clever picture and a poem. Our adventuresome but accident-prone protagonist wends its way next to the home of a married couple who are thought to be very much in love, and there the Album acquires from the husband “an allegorical design of two doves, and two hearts, and two cupids, and two altars, and two torches, and Hymen and Time, and all the other paraphernalia of valentine notoriety,” while the wife contributes a similarly uxorious poem.2 During this same phase of its life, however, the Album is also susceptible to being used as a missile and hurled across the room during one of the quarrels that occur behind the public façade of marital bliss. Additional episodes of disillusionment follow as the book-protagonist’s once-pristine pages are incrementally filled in. By now many real equivalents of this fictional album have found their way from nineteenth-century drawing rooms to their final resting place in archives and special collection libraries. Between about 1790 and 1850, and before they were superseded by related book forms like the photograph album and (in America) the high school year book, these volumes were assembled in great numbers and in multiple locations, from South Carolina to Quebec City to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Carbonear, Newfoundland, to Glasgow to Manchester. Some snippet of Byronic poetry, the sample I have explored indicates, gets inscribed onto the leaves of about every...

The Archive of Place and Land Art as Archive: A Case Study of Spiral Jetty

ABSTRACT The land art movement of the 1960s and 1970s challenged traditional art notions of object-ness, commodification, and permanence. Land art resides within, or on top of, landscapes, which are themselves sites with histories and identities that precede the land art use. Frequently created in remote areas that pose accessibility issues, viewers most often experience the physical locations through visual and written documentation. Literature on landscapes and the built environment serves as a foundation for considering the importance of place in archives and culture memory, and literature on artistic documentation of landscapes informs a discussion about the role of art in interpreting and accessing remote places. This article examines the land artwork Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson as an art object with information worth preserving, while considering how the universe of documentation surrounding Spiral Jetty has shaped its interpretation and accessibility, revealing a complex narrative carefully con...

Decolonising Archives: Indigenous Challenges to Record Keeping in ‘Reconciling’ Settler Colonial States

ABSTRACTFeminist and queer engagements with archives and archival theory have emphasised the affective dimensions of archival processes, particularly the meaning and place of archives when they concern marginalised people and intimate lives. In settler colonial contexts such as Australia and Canada, these ways of thinking about archives have been influential in responding to histories of removal, institutionalisation and abuse of Indigenous children. This article investigates the importance of feminist engagements with archives and historiography in ‘reconciling’ settler colonial states, with attention to sites of archival contention. Feminist modes of history that foreground affect in the formation of public culture need to take account of divergent views regarding the propriety of archival records in ‘reconciling’ settler colonial states. Indigenous peoples’ mistrust of state and institutional archives, demands for control of archives and legal actions for destruction of records, as well as establishment of autonomous archives, all contribute to the important and fraught process of decolonising settler colonial archives.

Shooting the Archives: Document Digitization for Historical-Geographical Collaboration1

This article focuses on the practical and methodological dimensions of a somewhat-neglected aspect of so-called ‘digital history’: user digitization of historical documents for research projects. Increasing numbers of professional researchers, including historians and historical geographers, are embracing digital technologies as a way to speed research, collect large amounts of primary source material, and enhance their use of this material by mobilizing it from its institutional context. Yet few scholars or information managers have reflected on the implications of this vast, decentralized and idiosyncratic digitization exercise. Debates over digital history have focused mainly on the role and place of archives in the digitization of historical sources or the collection and preservation of digitally created sources, or the merits of the application of new information technologies to historical research. In this short reflection on our own research process, we consider the trend towards self-digitization of archival sources, and share our practical experiences of document digitization for research and collaborative purposes. We contend that practitioner document digitization opens up exciting new methods for reading and analysing documents, in particular possibilities for enhanced scholarly collaboration.

En mal d'archive: Postmodernist Theory and Recordkeeping

‘Postmodernist’ theories and philosophies have given a significant impetus to extensive rethinking of the role of records and recordkeepers; the power and place of archives and records within a wider societal framework; and the relationship between memory, the past, and identity. This article examines the core propositions and perspectives of records theorists who have adopted postmodernist standpoints or been influenced in their thought and practice by postmodernism. It offers a critique of certain aspects of postmodernist thought in the context of recordkeeping, focusing on the intellectual claims made for postmodernism, the use of the past, and the tensions between ethics and a relativist conceptual framework. The article concludes that while postmodernist theory can be contested on many points, its true value lies in its relentless questioning, which cannot honestly be dismissed.

Sites of Truth or Metaphors of Power? Refiguring the Archive

Historians have made extensive use of archives for retrieving knowledge about the sporting past. Indeed, most practitioners will agree that archives are indispensable storehouses of sources, particularly official documents. But some historians are also taking a second look at archives. Rather than conceptualizing archives as sites of knowledge, they view them as sites of power. This article examines the place of archives in sport history and looks at the growing scepticism in them as sites of historical knowledge. Drawing on examples from sport history that lend support to archive sceptics, this article calls on sport historians to refigure the archive. Refiguring refers to the processes of questioning the privileged place of archives in historical practice, opening them to ‘critical inspection’ and articulating their contexts.

Revisiting the Harris-Hatang Dialogue: A Critique of “What it (Might) Mean(s) to be an African Archivist”

I wish to react to the Harris-Hatang article published in the last issue of the ESARBICA Journal (no. 19 of 2000) entitled “Archives, Identity and Place: A Dialogue on What it ( Might ) Mean(s) to be an African Archivist”. The article by the duo raises several provocative issues which merit responses. Discussions regarding the identity and place of archives in Africa are long overdue. When I first met Harris physically in Zanzibar, I muted to him the possibility of coming up with a vibrant journal that would engage us rigorously. I had, however, had numerous contacts with his writings. Ironically Zanzibar provided us with two different images. While outside the conference building Harris saw Zanzibar as a “living archives”, I saw instead a “living museum”. A city rich in culture that for once forced me to wish that I should have been a sociologist or anthropologist. The idea of Zanzibar as an archives never crossed my mind. Harris still has to convince me about that. This kind of difference in seeing and perspective, shows how much intellectual groundwork we still have to cover. It is for this reason that I find the Harris-Hatang article stimulating. In a nutshell, Harris and Hatang debate the form and content of ESARBICA1 conferences, the Africans, Thabo Mbeki’s “African Renaissance”, issues of language and the place of orality. In a lot of ways these issues are critical to African archivists. This article attempts to address them one by one. ESARBICA Journal Vol.20 2001: 125-131

The Place of Archives in the Universe of Architectural Documentation

Architectural drawings are not synonymous with architectural archives, but they do constitute a significant part of architectural documentation. With many of the earliest architectural collections containing only books, the interpretation of the importance of architectural drawings has changed over the years. It has been shown, however, that the primary users of architectural archives are not architects looking for design ideas, but those conducting historical research. All forms of architectural records--books, journals, models, pictures, working drawings, and specifications, to name a few--provide different intellectual content to a researcher. Therefore, the elimination of working drawings from the archival architectural record would not eliminate duplication of content, but would substantially change the documentary record available.

Automation in North American College and University Archives: A Survey

The authors summarize survey results covering six topics: responsibility for machine-readable records, campus administrative databases, automated control systems, use of word processing, entry of holdings information in library network databases, and the place of archives in library automation planning. Almost one-fifth of the 979 institutions surveyed were active in one or more of these areas. Findings include the need for more emphasis on appraisal and preservation in the development of machine-readable archives, the probable increase in the use of microcomputers and database management systems for internal control, and the probable development of closer integration of archives and libraries as library automation begins to be more accommodating to archival needs. Educational issues remain highly important. While archivists may not need to be expert programmers, a greater grasp of computer capabilities and the environment of computer professionals is needed both to preserve the machine-readable record and to utilize automated techniques in physical and intellectual control.