1 On page 99, the central competing dichotomy in mythologies of the archival profession is evidence versus memory. The author states that the central mantra of archives has traditionally focus on evidence. And within this evidence framework for the archival mission, the archivist is seen as neutral, objective, impartial, an honest broker between creator and researcher, working "without prejudice or afterthought." Does that evidence really exist? Since even the so-called evidence is edited or described by human beings, so is there a real boundary between evidence and memory?
2 On page 102, since the development of technology and the generation of multimedia, it is seems like that the content of what archives conserve changed a lot. How could we come out a way to conserve human heritage where the format or the content can still be fully utilized by people in the future?
3 What are objects of archiving? Is there any boundary to limit this? And how does this four paradigms model relate to the objects of archiving? And what this model tells us about the future of archiving?
1 - I think the main reason community archives can appear threatening to archivists is because they view it as a loss of professional control. If anyone can archive, then what makes our degree, or our work, so special? Is there an existing role for the professional archivist to fill within community archives, and if so, how can we do this? Since I already have an answer in mind, I'll bring it up --why are so few archives engaging with the post-custodial method?
2 - In considering the possibility of "total archives" (115) how could we incorporate something like this in to some of our earlier processes, such as arrangement? Is it possible to have multiple arrangements of a collection, instead of one "right" arrangement? Would this permit more accessibility to the collections, or would it somehow damage or de-contextualize them?
I'm interested in your second question especially in terms of digital archives, and the possibility of virtually rearranging and recontextualizing collections without damaging the "default" arrangement of the archive. This might help avoid the "one 'right' arrangement" issue you mention, but it might also facilitate cherry-picking and confirmation bias.
1. The author explicitly mentions the paradigms are for the archives in the western world. What does he mean by western world? Is Japan included in the western world? Is the distinction between western world and the others based on government structure, social and cultural norms, or history? And what’s the applicability of these paradigms to the non-western world, for example China?
2. How do the shifts of the paradigms affect the archival practice on how to process the collections? What are the major differences in processing collection between the evidence advocates and memory advocates? If these differences are fundamental, won’t the inconsistencies of collections cause trouble for the end users?
3. I interpret the dichotomy of evidence and memory and the different opinions of evidence advocates and memory advocates based on the DIKW hierarchy. Evidence advocates aim to preserve the data and contextual information of the collections, and leave the sense-making/ knowledge-making to other professions. And memory advocates pay more attention to knowledge/ meaning in the DIKW hierarchy. Is this correct?
1. On pg. 101, the author writes that 'memory is notoriously selective'. Assuming that this is a generally true statement, how can archivists ensure that they provide an all-encompassing view of the collection or archive for which they work? It's important to show the good along with the bad, but is this something that archives regularly practice? Is this one of the reasons that the memory paradigm was phased out?
2. At one point in the article, Cook writes that there has been a sense of the 'survival of the fittest' in archives, and what is leftover is a type of archival residue. I acknowledge the fact that pieces of archival importance could have been destroyed, lost, or discarded over the years, but the concept of a limited survival rate of records seems to go against the assumption that archivist keep everything. Is this description - survival of the fittest - only applicable to archival records or piece of collections that have had consistent exposure and publicity over the decades?
3. I think the notion of a community paradigm in archives is interesting. It correlates somewhat with the article we read about digital archiving and the usage of volunteers to help move the archival process along. But aren't the issues that arose in reading that article very similar if not the exact same issues that would face a community-based archiving paradigm? It seems like the paradigms described in the article are just the different phases archivists go through in looking for the next, best thing that will fix all of the problems with the former paradigm. We moved from evidence to memory, etc., but I wonder what the next paradigm will be after community?
1. "... spaces of memory-practice, where people can try to put their trauma in context by accessing the documents, not primarily seeking the truth or searching the history, but transforming their experiences into meaning." p. 99. Is this archives for psychological healing? I can see this as a tool for countries at war, or those that were invaded, or cultures that were victimized such as we see happening in much of the world currently. I can really see how these archives could help with healing for generations to come.
2. Archivists seem to be caught in tough situation. Though I don't think it is bad to have a perspective of the archive's mission when evaluating items to include, what happens to those items that are not included? Do other archives or individuals get a chance to keep them? Do we get archives with only a single perspective of the community? What happens if one involves the community to help decide what is kept or not? Perhaps the community would rather not remember negative events, choosing to always have a positive light on their collection.
3. "... becoming mentors, facilitators, coaches, who work in the community to encourage archiving as a participatory process shared with many in society, rather than necessarily acquiring all the archival products in our established archives." p.114. This is a good idea, but can these communities pay the salary of an archivist to perform these roles? Or how does an archivist earn a living providing these roles? Are government grants the answer?
1. What are the implications of this paper's call for "a new identity" for archivists, and a more collaborative practice, for archival training? For the I-Schools movement? How can we see this playing out already in our own curriculum?
2. Who/what groups elsewhere are pushing the Canadian "total archives" model? What are some cons of this (both actual and potential)?
3. I am als interested in exploring the "oral traditions" briefly alluded to in this paper, and thinking about their application to broader archival practices in the 21st Century. I found this reading very convincing, exciting, and a fun read.
1. The evidence-memory dichotomy of archive seems to be confused to me. It said that the central mantra of archives had traditionally focused on evidence. However, since archives also preserve and create memory, I think the evidence and memory have too much overlap. Why did scholars make these categories?
2. What’s the difference between “Identity” and “Community” paradigm? Is it the generation of online archive made them different? If so, why call this paradigm “Community” since it is strongly related to the Internet?
3. It seems like the forth paradigm face a problem of information overload. How will archivists deal with this problem by using the technical tools? The concept is changing; however, the author did not mention their practical solution of managing such a big amount of digital records.
1. On page 103, it says “Without reliable evidence set in rich context, memory becomes bogus, false, wishful thinking, or is transformed into imagination, fiction, ideology. Without the influence of and need for constructing memory/story, assigning value, determining priorities, evidence is useless, irrelevant, and unused, or buried in a vast sea of transient data.” I wouldn't really say that the “evidence” becomes unreliable or useless. Rather it is the case that often times information comes in fragmented pieces to an archive. Just because you don’t have a full set of records or evidence doesn’t always lesser the importance of a collection. In some cases, the lack of what you don’t have can be the answer to other questions.
2.On page 108, “Far from neutral and objective, and guarding what was inherited or received, the archivist determined what would be received by archives, with inevitable subjectivity entering that decision-making process.” A lot of this article speaks about archivist maintaining neutrality in selecting and preserving collections. Is it ever possible for any archivist to be neutral when they all have different social or professional experiences and ways of thinking?
3.In this modern time “Archivists thus have the exciting prospect of being able to document human and societal experience with a richness and relevance never before attainable, and with it the opportunity to blend our past foci on evidence, memory, and identity into a more holistic and vibrant ‘‘total archive.’’ Would archivists really be able to create a “total archive”? There is so much more cultural and societal media today than ever before and I imagine archivists in the very far future would have a tough time searching for and collecting the thoughts of ordinary people. Not to mention they would have to wade through billions of web pages or the inane garbage that makes its way onto message boards/ forums or social media to find something worthwhile that captures the experience they are looking for.
1. While I understand the desire of Cook to bring recognition to the fact that archivists play an active role as participants in memory building I also have some concerns about the possible misinterpretation of a records meaning to the public after an authors death. In the world of photography many times an archivist or graduate student will take on the task of organizing or digitizing collections and in the process decide to publicize a small fraction of work that she/he has discovered subjectively. This can often be problematic for a photographer as work that was not intended to meet the public eye becomes historically associated. Is Cook saying that we should attempt to interpret the work instead of trying to remain neutral (which he believes is impossible)? Or am I misreading somewhere?
2. I can’t seem to wrap my head around some of the notions of archives presented here. For example, that archives are subconsciously reflective of modernity’s awareness of progress or decay. While I can understand the desire to categorize some archives this way it seems overly scholarly to make the claim that ALL archives are so highly politicized in this way. This problem seems especially relevant when we are talking about textual (governmental) records but I am wondering if these arguments would hold up as well if we were talking about something like a rock collection.
3. Cook talks about the archival possibilities for every individual with the advent of digital technology, in what ways do you see this changing archives role as a societal foundation for identity and justice? This also raises an interesting question about the ways in which people choose to archive their own existence through the medium of the internet, in what ways do these systems dictate the types of history or memory one can archive? Are these systems insufficient to deal with the complex histories of communities?
1. ‘As a result, archives as concept, as practice, as institution, and as profession may be transformed to flourish in our digital era…’(p97) So if archives change a lot, why do we need to study the archival paradigms in the past, which may be not suitable for today’s archive?
2. The contemporary archival paradigm is community, which emphasizes the participation of all the people in archival process. ‘With the Internet, every person can become his or her own publisher, author, photographer, film-maker, music-recording artist, and archivist’ (p113). So can we find a new and universal method to help the ‘archivists’ do a better job in organizing, managing and preserving documents? If it is possible, maybe we don’t need professional archivists.
3. In the conclusion, the author says that ‘paradigms can be destructive or enabling’ (p116). What does that mean? And the author also mentions that ‘In community, then, we archivists may find a new identity that reconciles our twin missions of evidence and memory’ (p117). This article was written in 2012 and it seems that this is a problem or gap in archive field. So are there any other studies working on the problem or gap? And I wonder how to solve it.
1. This paper states that the archival tradition as an object of the state began in France after the French revolution, but East Asia, particularly China, has created and utilized bureaucratic archives as part of governance for centuries. These were not always (and are often still not) accessible to the public but how does this archival tradition fit against the western tradition described?
2. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in several countries are mentioned, and the importance of archives to these enterprises cannot be understated. The roles of these and similar organizations are often disputed. How can archivists help to promote the necessity of “setting the record straight” with the evidence they present while maintaining as impartial a record as possible?
3. Given the tight budget constraints faced by many archives, the fourth phase of archival enterprise, community, seems vital to promote. Cook mentions the involvement of volunteers to assist with some of the processing of the increasing volumes of material held by archives, and suggests the archivist’s role is one to accept material suggested by the community to suit their needs. Will this further tighten the storage limits we already observe, lacking the (non-objective) gatekeeping of the past, or will greater engagement ultimately profit the archival enterprise?
1 - The commonly-held "French Revolution" belief is much more nuanced than just the beginning of the archive - archives have been traced as far back as the Byzantine Empire--but the French Revolution represents the creation of an archive "for the people," essentially against government opaqueness and the use of archival records to actually protect citizens from their government. Cook didn't spend much time explicating that point, although it could be because there's been a lot of literature generated about the French Revolution as a sort of archival turning point. Although there is an International Council on Archives, I have been desperate to find non-Western European centered materials about archival practices, and there doesn't seem to be much information out there, especially because the "Western" influence on archival protocols has been very far-reaching.
1) I thought it was interesting that Canada apparently adhered to a centralized and cultural-materials-inclusive archiving model long before other Western countries did. Is there a reason why this is the case? What about Canada’s culture and governmental priorities prompted it to part ways with what was then the typical Western archiving model?
2) Cook alludes to a continuing tension in archival practice between archivists who consider the material under their charge as “evidence” and a more progressive memory-based approach. It would be interesting to know if this conflict is affected in part by an archive’s (and an archivist’s) disciplinary focus. I would expect archivists working with humanities archives to be more interested in the issues of memory and identity, whereas an archivist in law or the sciences would not necessarily have the same skeptical view of objectivity, but is this hypothesis borne out in practice?
1. Cook, in his discussion of the second paradigm, mentions how archivists became interested in "history from the bottom up." Did the anthropology field have an influence on archives during that period? Did archivists begin to take an interest in collecting artifacts of human history at that time or did it begin even earlier?
2. It seems that the fact that archives in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were so biased in terms of what was saved would affect the value of the archives as evidence and therefore defeat those who argue on behalf of archives as evidence. Once the archives lose their value as evidence, don't they simply become part of the construct of memory?
3. Describe in-depth the "total archives" approach that Canada is employing. In what ways have they begun to implement this approach. Have they had success in the community-based archives guided by professionals interacting with the institutional archives that the author describes in his last paradigm?
1. Ketelaar reminds us that archives are now becoming ‘spaces of memory-practice, where people can try to put their trauma in context by accessing the documents, not primarily seeking the truth or searching the history, but transforming their experiences into meaning.’(Page 99 paragraph 3). But if we put too much trauma or emotional content, will it have an impact on the objectivity of archives.
2. In the article, the author doubted the neutral repositories of evidence several times. It assumed that evidence, testimony, and record are themselves social and political constructs. However, as the tool we can make use of to learn the past, if the evidence is not neutral any more, how could we learn the truth?
3. It is mentioned that archivists have changed from passive keepers of an entire documentary residue left by creators to becoming active shapers of the archival heritage. It is interesting that the archivist have become active. As the importance of keep the archival document, is it still essential to be a passive keeper?
At some point there must exist a point of diminishing returns for keeping an abundance of records and archives from which no one will benefit from it due to the sheer size of the archive itself. With so much information being generated on a daily basis across various fields, how can an archivist truly remain objective and preserve a neutral record of a society or organization when faced with the ever growing mountain of information to preserve?
It seems like some archivists are dealing with a cognitive dissonance in dealing with memory and evidence. These competing thoughts have yet to be truly reconciled in the midst of the budding community archiving model and the other paradigms listed in this article. However, due to the nature of community archiving won’t there need to be an acceptance of this dissonance as so many individuals tackle archiving from differing perspectives?
On page 112, Cook mentions the identity crisis associated the profession of archives and he notes that there are archivists who have found their identity within the confines of the profession and on a personal level. If this is the case, for what reason does the profession need a solid identity rather than a mercurial identity comprised of every definition outline in the article?
1. This paper mentions the idea of archivists as shaping, or preserving, the collective memory, and even their active role in choosing that collective memory. Do you think this is the primary function of the archivist, or are archivists, rather, objective keepers of evidence? Assigning archivists the role of determining the world’s collective memory offers them a giant task, and perhaps a task which should not really be their burden. I’m interested simply because this is not the first time this concept has been introduced to me and I think it’s important to differentiate, or understand, what archivists are trying to accomplish.
2. The author writes that, to reconcile the strands of evidence and memory, there must exist “a much more active engagement by the profession in the society and communities it serves, an external reorientation towards hospitality rather than an inward isolating gaze” (p. 112). This is interesting in considering the perception of archives and their sort of insular nature. Is community involvement the true fourth archival paradigm? Should archives be moving towards democratization, looking outside of themselves? In doing so, will archivists become even less in touch with their identities as a result of changing the entire nature of the archival profession?
3. I’m interested in this concept of “total archives” which the author briefly touches on, but I am not entirely sure I understand what it means. Is it simply the presentation of a more collaborative archival space? Is it virtual only? Does it bring together the records of an entire country, province or state in one space so as to be more accessible?
1. Isn't the proposed 4th paradigm, where archivists are called to share their archiving knowledge with the community and become in a sense mentors for community members to manage their digital records, in some ways what a personal information management system about already? The only key difference I can think is archivists would tend to try to persuade people against 'weeding' their digital files... even though people to some degree do that because they feel certain items may communicate something differently about them than how they want to be perceived online.
2. This paper also reminded me of our one from last week by the two anthropologists, who stressed the need for folks in IS to learn, in a nutshell, to put themselves in other people's shoes so that they can better understand their users and how they might interact with information. I think if a paper is calling for archivists to learn how to encourage previously marginalized communities to share their history and their records, given that a lot of archival programs were within library schools (many of whom are now iSchools) in a way validates what Seadle was saying.
3. With that in mind, going forward it would likely also be healthy for archivists to take ownership of their identities, points of view and opinions when it comes to how they process collections. As Cook points out "Perharps in such a process we embed our own identity and our own collective memory and mythologies... we have found our sense of community as like-minded individuals." I feel she's on to something with the thought, but where I veered differently was that archivists have found something of a scapegoat to keep them from realizing this, in the form of the potential researcher. They aren't doing these things for themselves, they are doing it for 'the researcher'.
1. Having no archival experience or training it seems weird to me that the author makes this statement: "For some archivists, memory and identity are concepts not very relevant to archives,..." Perhaps this is due to my inexperience with archives but I was under the impression that one of main reasons archives existed was so that we as a society could remember and recall those areas of information to better study and understand our social and cultural identity. Am I wrong in thinking this? Why is it that, as the author states, some archivists think that memory and identity are not relevant to archives?
2. While I agree that there are cultural archives that might be wary of allowing someone outside of that culture to manage that archive, I have to assume that there are reasons that there are strict controls over these types of things and for good reasons. Do smaller, cultural archives retain the same archival integrity that larger, stricter archives have?
3. "The literature abounds with labels reflecting determinations of whether the archivist was keeper, undertaker, or auditor; monk, knight, or artist; curator, manager, or activist; editor, translator, or advocate; of whether archivy was art or science, modern or postmodern; of whether the archival profession itself should be populated with archivists, or with recordkeepers, or with informational professionals" This quote makes me think about the larger group of Information Studies and how there are so many different opinions on what information is and how it should be studied. The difference however is that there is a specific group of archivists and there is some structure there. I am not saying that non-archivist record keepers are wrong or not doing a good job but at least there is some formal archival structure whereas there doesn't appear to be any formal structure that governs Information Studies.
1. On page 101, the author claims that "But beyond evidence, archives also preserve memory, and they create memory." How could archives create memory? Is there any example to explain this process?
2. In the part of "Memory:modern archiving--the historian-archivist selects the archive", the author mentions different levels of description from files, series, record groups, archive groups, and fonds. By which aspects are these levels separated?Do archives have a similar lower-to-higher hierarchy?
3.The author suggests that archivists in community "need to transform themselves from elite experts behind institutional walls to becoming mentors, facilitators, coaches, who work in the community to encourage archiving as a participatory process shared with many in society, rather than necessarily acquiring all the archival products in our established archives. Should archives also take the responsibility to limit, even stop some unprofessional community members, and remove improper archives created by them?
1.If memory and identity are not concepts very relevant to archives, where does the ‘describing’ part of archives fall? Should the description of an archive include an identity of the source? Why should these concepts not impinge on archival processes directly?
2. ‘Pro evidence’ archivists are said to link state archives with nationalism and national culture. Is this an objectionable practice for an archivist? What does the whole concept of ‘pro evidence’ archivists mean and are they different from other archivists?
3.Principles like provenance and original order were introduced in order to arrange,describe and maintain archives instead of merely re arranging them. They also destroy their contextual validity and meaning in favor of their informational content. Having said that, what are the other pros and cons of these principles?
1. In this paper, the author mentioned the new identity of archivists. Then, what is the features of the new identity? Does it mean that a new way of training archivists are required nowadays?
2. Another issue that the author pointed out is the identity crisis of archivists in our times. I believe so because the space for the archivists are narrowed down with the development of Information technologies. How should iSchool see and response to the issue?
3. In the paper, the author outlined how online archive looks like. Just like my previous question, I'm wondering how would the tendency of put everything online affect iSchool? Would iSchool be more like the Internet-School?
1. In this article the author describes the efforts of evidence-focused archivists “to provide, without prejudice or afterthought, for all who wish to know the Means of Knowledge.” These archivists attempt to create archives that are objective repositories of evidence of actions by a government or organization. Is it possible to ever truly create an objective archive? Wouldn’t there always be some subjective component to an archive be it scope or some bias that the archivist has? 2. In describing how archives shifted from an evidentiary role to a memory role the author states that the archivist had become “an active selector of the archive.” What other people or factors might have had an influence on what records were selected for retention? For example what factors might have prevented certain records from ever making it to the archive at all? 3. The author states that now archives are shifting into a new paradigm of “participatory archiving.” They state that archivist are giving up their roles as the stewards of archive and are becoming mentors to communities that are creating and maintaining their own archives. Do you agree that this is the direction that archives are now heading? If so is it safe for archivists to give up the ability to create an identity for a group or organization to individuals that might not share the archivist’s dedication to neutrality and objectivity?
1. Cook writes that archivists are a community not because we do the same tasks, but because what we do has a value to society (99-100). He also questions whether the field is still an imagined community as we have an identity crisis (112) Do we believe that archivists are an imagined community? My understanding of an imagined community required the members to be anonymous strangers that who feel connection to each other based on some common belief of belonging together. I’m not sure what the term here would be, but I wonder whether archivists form a ‘regular’ community, and not an imagined one because we perform the same tasks and engage in conversations about our field. 2. In the community paradigm, Cook writes that records should often remain with the community that created them and not transferred to a separate archives, allowing the community to participate in processing. Is there a risk that the records may not be well cared if they are not put under the eyes of a trained archivist? Is it possible that an archivist may identify records that could be of potential historical value later on to the community, but the community does not value the records now? Or do we need to take the Jenkinsonian approach that if the community doesn’t value certain records than neither should the archivist?
3. Cook argues that the participatory process of community archives can help to add context and value to the records especially for cultures that use oral histories or have different forms of records than we traditional use. What is the best way for these records to be added to the archives? How can we capture the community’s perspective without dominating the community with our standards for records as Cook cautions?
1. I'm curious as to what the author believes are the greatest benefits to incorporating the four proposed paradigms are/would be? 2. I appreciate the author's discussion of archiving today within the realm of postmodernism, as I think it's important and often overlooked. I think this is especially true when considering the idea or memory and narratives, and how those entities are constructed and differ depending on the specific subject. 3. I'm curious as to the kinds of responses this article has received from the archival community? Are the proposed paradigms and charge for rethinking the archival process something that has been seriously considered--or even adopted?
1. How “real” or actually distinct are the paradigms that Cook has developed? I mean, I recognize that the four periods of the 150 years of archives have been articulated in order to break down the history of archival work in order to better understand its present state, but how, for example, is “societal engagement” that different from “community archiving”? Especially if many of the communities mentioned already had some (albeit non-traditional) ways of archiving their histories and identities for some time?
2. Cook has a particularly positive outlook on digital media and the future of archives. He describes social media as a place where one can find “traces of human life, of what it means to be human, to which trace we as archivists… have rarely had such sustained access before.” How is this true, exactly? I just wonder what this actually means for archivists. What, for example, are archivists going to do with twitter? Tweets on the one hand could be seen as these small fragments of “what it means to be human”, on the other as more worthless clutter clogging up the information flow.
3. In the section on evidence, Cook refers to a “residue of records,” a “natural residue,” and a “juridical residue.” Why does he start using this organic imagery for the description of early, evidentiary, archival documents?
1. The author describes the transformation of the archives profession within four frameworks overtime. Do archivist from all four frameworks exists today because of the differences in collections, communities, and institutional cultures? 2. I could see the fear that archivist could have by moving toward the community based archives where they feel they lose control of their collections and their expertise seems diminished by the contributions of less experienced individuals, but archivist should strive to bring more and educate the populous on the principles and strengths of their profession and knowledge. They will still be the ones in control; they will just be in a managerial role. 3. I wonder where the next stage of archiving will progress after the community-based archive described by the author. Will technological advancements allow for archivist to have more control over their collections and not have the fear, as in the previous question, that their expertise will be lost, forgotten, or ignored by the community based archive approach?
1. I enjoyed the section on postmodern archiving and identity. The assertion that there is no "Truth" but only truths as they are apparent to us in our contexts stirs up interesting ideas about information in general and about the need for archives to be situated somehow, that information can be processed from an appropriate perspective.
2. Would a shift toward community archiving, the slackening of professional archivists' grip on the reins, lead to a loss or lessening of the standards expected and in practice in the archives profession? Or would we expect the now-archiving public to rise to the level of practice of current information professionals?
3. I'm particularly excited to hear Dr. Trace's thoughts on this reading and the shifts in archives toward a more community-centered approach. Having spoken with her, I know how much she enjoys the finding and arranging of the mundane, everyday, anybody-type historical record, the items created in the day to day, because they more than large documents or "items of historical value" speak to the truth of who we as people are.
1. The arc of this paper seems to describe the democratization of archival practice over the course of four paradigms.
2. Are these paradigms really successive, or is there an inherently recursive element to them as well? Will an earlier paradigm ever become dominant again? Perhaps they all happen in different places and times.
3. Is the concept of "evidence" a universal concept? The word itself seems to imply subjective intent by someone using the evidence to prove something. Artifact = data. Evidence = information?
1. In his article, Cook discusses the different roles archivists/archives have filled in the past. He presents an interesting argument by Ketelaar that archives are not simply evidence, but ‘‘’spaces of memory-practice, where people can try to put their trauma in context by accessing the documents, not primarily seeking the truth or searching the history, but transforming their experiences into meaning’’’ (99). I thought this was a unique way to look at archives – as if they are a coping tool rather than just a record. Do you agree with Ketelaar that archives should be considered legitimate “’healing ritual[s]’” (99)? Or are they just evidence of the past?
2. Cook also talks about archives as “preserving memory” (101). Thus, the job of an archivist would not be simply to preserve an artifact, but to actually sustain a piece of cultural memory. He also talks about selection of these artifacts/memories, highlighting the fact that “with memory comes forgetting” (101). He furthers this point by explaining that choosing a “memory” is ultimately subjective – while some elements of a culture’s past would be preserved, others would be erased. Does this present a danger of thinking of archivists as “memory keepers”? Is that role too subjective? Who should be allowed to say what is “remembered” and what is “forgotten”?
3. Cook continues to talk about the four paradigms archival identity has passed through over the course of history. In the final, emerging paradigm, community, Cook suggests what was posited in an earlier reading – that archives should belong to the people. He gives a little more context for this suggestion than the previous author did, saying that archivists should be out in the society helping to “mentor” and “coach” people who are helping manage archives in order to ensure the continuation of the archival process (113). Presumably, this would mean helping them to learn to properly document and catalog items. Cook claims that archivists may need to “give up their recently hard-won mantras of expert, of control, of power . . .”(113). However, if they did shed these labels, would that make everyone an archivist? Should it? Is there merit in an archivist being considered an “expert” – if not, what’s the point of having archival programs?
1 On page 99, the central competing dichotomy in mythologies of the archival profession is evidence versus memory. The author states that the central mantra of archives has traditionally focus on evidence. And within this evidence framework for the archival mission, the archivist is seen as neutral, objective, impartial, an honest broker between creator and researcher, working "without prejudice or afterthought." Does that evidence really exist? Since even the so-called evidence is edited or described by human beings, so is there a real boundary between evidence and memory?
ReplyDelete2 On page 102, since the development of technology and the generation of multimedia, it is seems like that the content of what archives conserve changed a lot. How could we come out a way to conserve human heritage where the format or the content can still be fully utilized by people in the future?
3 What are objects of archiving? Is there any boundary to limit this? And how does this four paradigms model relate to the objects of archiving? And what this model tells us about the future of archiving?
1 - I think the main reason community archives can appear threatening to archivists is because they view it as a loss of professional control. If anyone can archive, then what makes our degree, or our work, so special? Is there an existing role for the professional archivist to fill within community archives, and if so, how can we do this? Since I already have an answer in mind, I'll bring it up --why are so few archives engaging with the post-custodial method?
ReplyDelete2 - In considering the possibility of "total archives" (115) how could we incorporate something like this in to some of our earlier processes, such as arrangement? Is it possible to have multiple arrangements of a collection, instead of one "right" arrangement? Would this permit more accessibility to the collections, or would it somehow damage or de-contextualize them?
I'm interested in your second question especially in terms of digital archives, and the possibility of virtually rearranging and recontextualizing collections without damaging the "default" arrangement of the archive. This might help avoid the "one 'right' arrangement" issue you mention, but it might also facilitate cherry-picking and confirmation bias.
Delete1. The author explicitly mentions the paradigms are for the archives in the western world. What does he mean by western world? Is Japan included in the western world? Is the distinction between western world and the others based on government structure, social and cultural norms, or history? And what’s the applicability of these paradigms to the non-western world, for example China?
ReplyDelete2. How do the shifts of the paradigms affect the archival practice on how to process the collections? What are the major differences in processing collection between the evidence advocates and memory advocates? If these differences are fundamental, won’t the inconsistencies of collections cause trouble for the end users?
3. I interpret the dichotomy of evidence and memory and the different opinions of evidence advocates and memory advocates based on the DIKW hierarchy. Evidence advocates aim to preserve the data and contextual information of the collections, and leave the sense-making/ knowledge-making to other professions. And memory advocates pay more attention to knowledge/ meaning in the DIKW hierarchy. Is this correct?
1. On pg. 101, the author writes that 'memory is notoriously selective'. Assuming that this is a generally true statement, how can archivists ensure that they provide an all-encompassing view of the collection or archive for which they work? It's important to show the good along with the bad, but is this something that archives regularly practice? Is this one of the reasons that the memory paradigm was phased out?
ReplyDelete2. At one point in the article, Cook writes that there has been a sense of the 'survival of the fittest' in archives, and what is leftover is a type of archival residue. I acknowledge the fact that pieces of archival importance could have been destroyed, lost, or discarded over the years, but the concept of a limited survival rate of records seems to go against the assumption that archivist keep everything. Is this description - survival of the fittest - only applicable to archival records or piece of collections that have had consistent exposure and publicity over the decades?
3. I think the notion of a community paradigm in archives is interesting. It correlates somewhat with the article we read about digital archiving and the usage of volunteers to help move the archival process along. But aren't the issues that arose in reading that article very similar if not the exact same issues that would face a community-based archiving paradigm? It seems like the paradigms described in the article are just the different phases archivists go through in looking for the next, best thing that will fix all of the problems with the former paradigm. We moved from evidence to memory, etc., but I wonder what the next paradigm will be after community?
1. "... spaces of memory-practice, where people can try to put their trauma in context by accessing the documents, not primarily seeking the truth or searching the history, but transforming their experiences into meaning." p. 99. Is this archives for psychological healing? I can see this as a tool for countries at war, or those that were invaded, or cultures that were victimized such as we see happening in much of the world currently. I can really see how these archives could help with healing for generations to come.
ReplyDelete2. Archivists seem to be caught in tough situation. Though I don't think it is bad to have a perspective of the archive's mission when evaluating items to include, what happens to those items that are not included? Do other archives or individuals get a chance to keep them? Do we get archives with only a single perspective of the community? What happens if one involves the community to help decide what is kept or not? Perhaps the community would rather not remember negative events, choosing to always have a positive light on their collection.
3. "... becoming mentors, facilitators, coaches, who work in the community to encourage archiving as a participatory process shared with many in society, rather than necessarily acquiring all the archival products in our established archives." p.114. This is a good idea, but can these communities pay the salary of an archivist to perform these roles? Or how does an archivist earn a living providing these roles? Are government grants the answer?
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ReplyDelete1. What are the implications of this paper's call for "a new identity" for archivists, and a more collaborative practice, for archival training? For the I-Schools movement? How can we see this playing out already in our own curriculum?
ReplyDelete2. Who/what groups elsewhere are pushing the Canadian "total archives" model? What are some cons of this (both actual and potential)?
3. I am als interested in exploring the "oral traditions" briefly alluded to in this paper, and thinking about their application to broader archival practices in the 21st Century. I found this reading very convincing, exciting, and a fun read.
1. The evidence-memory dichotomy of archive seems to be confused to me. It said that the central mantra of archives had traditionally focused on evidence. However, since archives also preserve and create memory, I think the evidence and memory have too much overlap. Why did scholars make these categories?
ReplyDelete2. What’s the difference between “Identity” and “Community” paradigm? Is it the generation of online archive made them different? If so, why call this paradigm “Community” since it is strongly related to the Internet?
3. It seems like the forth paradigm face a problem of information overload. How will archivists deal with this problem by using the technical tools? The concept is changing; however, the author did not mention their practical solution of managing such a big amount of digital records.
1. On page 103, it says “Without reliable evidence set in rich context, memory becomes bogus, false, wishful thinking, or is transformed into imagination, fiction, ideology. Without the influence of and need for constructing memory/story, assigning value, determining priorities, evidence is useless, irrelevant,
ReplyDeleteand unused, or buried in a vast sea of transient data.” I wouldn't really say that the “evidence” becomes unreliable or useless. Rather it is the case that often times information comes in fragmented pieces to an archive. Just because you don’t have a full set of records or evidence doesn’t always lesser the importance of a collection. In some cases, the lack of what you don’t have can be the answer to other questions.
2.On page 108, “Far from neutral and objective, and guarding what was inherited or received, the archivist determined
what would be received by archives, with inevitable subjectivity entering that decision-making process.” A lot of this article speaks about archivist maintaining neutrality in selecting and preserving collections. Is it ever possible for any archivist to be neutral when they all have different social or professional experiences and ways of thinking?
3.In this modern time “Archivists thus have the exciting prospect of being able to document human and societal experience with a richness and relevance never before attainable, and with it the opportunity to blend our past foci on evidence, memory, and identity into a more holistic and vibrant ‘‘total archive.’’ Would archivists really be able to create a “total archive”? There is so much more cultural and societal media today than ever before and I imagine archivists in the very far future would have a tough time searching for and collecting the thoughts of ordinary people. Not to mention they would have to wade through billions of web pages or the inane garbage that makes its way onto message boards/ forums or social media to find something worthwhile that captures the experience they are looking for.
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ReplyDelete1. While I understand the desire of Cook to bring recognition to the fact that archivists play an active role as participants in memory building I also have some concerns about the possible misinterpretation of a records meaning to the public after an authors death. In the world of photography many times an archivist or graduate student will take on the task of organizing or digitizing collections and in the process decide to publicize a small fraction of work that she/he has discovered subjectively. This can often be problematic for a photographer as work that was not intended to meet the public eye becomes historically associated. Is Cook saying that we should attempt to interpret the work instead of trying to remain neutral (which he believes is impossible)? Or am I misreading somewhere?
ReplyDelete2. I can’t seem to wrap my head around some of the notions of archives presented here. For example, that archives are subconsciously reflective of modernity’s awareness of progress or decay. While I can understand the desire to categorize some archives this way it seems overly scholarly to make the claim that ALL archives are so highly politicized in this way. This problem seems especially relevant when we are talking about textual (governmental) records but I am wondering if these arguments would hold up as well if we were talking about something like a rock collection.
3. Cook talks about the archival possibilities for every individual with the advent of digital technology, in what ways do you see this changing archives role as a societal foundation for identity and justice? This also raises an interesting question about the ways in which people choose to archive their own existence through the medium of the internet, in what ways do these systems dictate the types of history or memory one can archive? Are these systems insufficient to deal with the complex histories of communities?
1. ‘As a result, archives as concept, as practice, as institution, and as profession may be transformed to flourish in our digital era…’(p97) So if archives change a lot, why do we need to study the archival paradigms in the past, which may be not suitable for today’s archive?
ReplyDelete2. The contemporary archival paradigm is community, which emphasizes the participation of all the people in archival process. ‘With the Internet, every person can become his or her own publisher, author, photographer, film-maker, music-recording artist, and archivist’ (p113). So can we find a new and universal method to help the ‘archivists’ do a better job in organizing, managing and preserving documents? If it is possible, maybe we don’t need professional archivists.
3. In the conclusion, the author says that ‘paradigms can be destructive or enabling’ (p116). What does that mean? And the author also mentions that ‘In community, then, we archivists may find a new identity that reconciles our twin missions of evidence and memory’ (p117). This article was written in 2012 and it seems that this is a problem or gap in archive field. So are there any other studies working on the problem or gap? And I wonder how to solve it.
1. This paper states that the archival tradition as an object of the state began in France after the French revolution, but East Asia, particularly China, has created and utilized bureaucratic archives as part of governance for centuries. These were not always (and are often still not) accessible to the public but how does this archival tradition fit against the western tradition described?
ReplyDelete2. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in several countries are mentioned, and the importance of archives to these enterprises cannot be understated. The roles of these and similar organizations are often disputed. How can archivists help to promote the necessity of “setting the record straight” with the evidence they present while maintaining as impartial a record as possible?
3. Given the tight budget constraints faced by many archives, the fourth phase of archival enterprise, community, seems vital to promote. Cook mentions the involvement of volunteers to assist with some of the processing of the increasing volumes of material held by archives, and suggests the archivist’s role is one to accept material suggested by the community to suit their needs. Will this further tighten the storage limits we already observe, lacking the (non-objective) gatekeeping of the past, or will greater engagement ultimately profit the archival enterprise?
1 - The commonly-held "French Revolution" belief is much more nuanced than just the beginning of the archive - archives have been traced as far back as the Byzantine Empire--but the French Revolution represents the creation of an archive "for the people," essentially against government opaqueness and the use of archival records to actually protect citizens from their government. Cook didn't spend much time explicating that point, although it could be because there's been a lot of literature generated about the French Revolution as a sort of archival turning point. Although there is an International Council on Archives, I have been desperate to find non-Western European centered materials about archival practices, and there doesn't seem to be much information out there, especially because the "Western" influence on archival protocols has been very far-reaching.
Delete1) I thought it was interesting that Canada apparently adhered to a centralized and cultural-materials-inclusive archiving model long before other Western countries did. Is there a reason why this is the case? What about Canada’s culture and governmental priorities prompted it to part ways with what was then the typical Western archiving model?
ReplyDelete2) Cook alludes to a continuing tension in archival practice between archivists who consider the material under their charge as “evidence” and a more progressive memory-based approach. It would be interesting to know if this conflict is affected in part by an archive’s (and an archivist’s) disciplinary focus. I would expect archivists working with humanities archives to be more interested in the issues of memory and identity, whereas an archivist in law or the sciences would not necessarily have the same skeptical view of objectivity, but is this hypothesis borne out in practice?
1. Cook, in his discussion of the second paradigm, mentions how archivists became interested in "history from the bottom up." Did the anthropology field have an influence on archives during that period? Did archivists begin to take an interest in collecting artifacts of human history at that time or did it begin even earlier?
ReplyDelete2. It seems that the fact that archives in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were so biased in terms of what was saved would affect the value of the archives as evidence and therefore defeat those who argue on behalf of archives as evidence. Once the archives lose their value as evidence, don't they simply become part of the construct of memory?
3. Describe in-depth the "total archives" approach that Canada is employing. In what ways have they begun to implement this approach. Have they had success in the community-based archives guided by professionals interacting with the institutional archives that the author describes in his last paradigm?
1. Ketelaar reminds us that archives are now becoming ‘spaces of memory-practice, where people can try to put their trauma in context by accessing the documents, not primarily seeking the truth or searching the history, but transforming their experiences into meaning.’(Page 99 paragraph 3). But if we put too much trauma or emotional content, will it have an impact on the objectivity of archives.
ReplyDelete2. In the article, the author doubted the neutral repositories of evidence several times. It assumed that evidence, testimony, and record are themselves social and political constructs. However, as the tool we can make use of to learn the past, if the evidence is not neutral any more, how could we learn the truth?
3. It is mentioned that archivists have changed from passive keepers of an entire documentary residue left by creators to becoming active shapers of the archival heritage. It is interesting that the archivist have become active. As the importance of keep the archival document, is it still essential to be a passive keeper?
At some point there must exist a point of diminishing returns for keeping an abundance of records and archives from which no one will benefit from it due to the sheer size of the archive itself. With so much information being generated on a daily basis across various fields, how can an archivist truly remain objective and preserve a neutral record of a society or organization when faced with the ever growing mountain of information to preserve?
ReplyDeleteIt seems like some archivists are dealing with a cognitive dissonance in dealing with memory and evidence. These competing thoughts have yet to be truly reconciled in the midst of the budding community archiving model and the other paradigms listed in this article. However, due to the nature of community archiving won’t there need to be an acceptance of this dissonance as so many individuals tackle archiving from differing perspectives?
On page 112, Cook mentions the identity crisis associated the profession of archives and he notes that there are archivists who have found their identity within the confines of the profession and on a personal level. If this is the case, for what reason does the profession need a solid identity rather than a mercurial identity comprised of every definition outline in the article?
1. This paper mentions the idea of archivists as shaping, or preserving, the collective memory, and even their active role in choosing that collective memory. Do you think this is the primary function of the archivist, or are archivists, rather, objective keepers of evidence? Assigning archivists the role of determining the world’s collective memory offers them a giant task, and perhaps a task which should not really be their burden. I’m interested simply because this is not the first time this concept has been introduced to me and I think it’s important to differentiate, or understand, what archivists are trying to accomplish.
ReplyDelete2. The author writes that, to reconcile the strands of evidence and memory, there must exist “a much more active engagement by the profession in the society and communities it serves, an external reorientation towards hospitality rather than an inward isolating gaze” (p. 112). This is interesting in considering the perception of archives and their sort of insular nature. Is community involvement the true fourth archival paradigm? Should archives be moving towards democratization, looking outside of themselves? In doing so, will archivists become even less in touch with their identities as a result of changing the entire nature of the archival profession?
3. I’m interested in this concept of “total archives” which the author briefly touches on, but I am not entirely sure I understand what it means. Is it simply the presentation of a more collaborative archival space? Is it virtual only? Does it bring together the records of an entire country, province or state in one space so as to be more accessible?
1. Isn't the proposed 4th paradigm, where archivists are called to share their archiving knowledge with the community and become in a sense mentors for community members to manage their digital records, in some ways what a personal information management system about already? The only key difference I can think is archivists would tend to try to persuade people against 'weeding' their digital files... even though people to some degree do that because they feel certain items may communicate something differently about them than how they want to be perceived online.
ReplyDelete2. This paper also reminded me of our one from last week by the two anthropologists, who stressed the need for folks in IS to learn, in a nutshell, to put themselves in other people's shoes so that they can better understand their users and how they might interact with information. I think if a paper is calling for archivists to learn how to encourage previously marginalized communities to share their history and their records, given that a lot of archival programs were within library schools (many of whom are now iSchools) in a way validates what Seadle was saying.
3. With that in mind, going forward it would likely also be healthy for archivists to take ownership of their identities, points of view and opinions when it comes to how they process collections. As Cook points out "Perharps in such a process we embed our own identity and our own collective memory and mythologies... we have found our sense of community as like-minded individuals." I feel she's on to something with the thought, but where I veered differently was that archivists have found something of a scapegoat to keep them from realizing this, in the form of the potential researcher. They aren't doing these things for themselves, they are doing it for 'the researcher'.
1. Having no archival experience or training it seems weird to me that the author makes this statement: "For some archivists, memory and identity are concepts not very relevant to archives,..." Perhaps this is due to my inexperience with archives but I was under the impression that one of main reasons archives existed was so that we as a society could remember and recall those areas of information to better study and understand our social and cultural identity. Am I wrong in thinking this? Why is it that, as the author states, some archivists think that memory and identity are not relevant to archives?
ReplyDelete2. While I agree that there are cultural archives that might be wary of allowing someone outside of that culture to manage that archive, I have to assume that there are reasons that there are strict controls over these types of things and for good reasons. Do smaller, cultural archives retain the same archival integrity that larger, stricter archives have?
3. "The literature abounds with labels reflecting determinations of whether the archivist was keeper, undertaker, or auditor; monk, knight, or artist; curator, manager, or activist; editor, translator, or advocate; of whether archivy was art or science, modern or postmodern; of whether the archival profession itself should be populated with archivists, or with recordkeepers, or with informational professionals" This quote makes me think about the larger group of Information Studies and how there are so many different opinions on what information is and how it should be studied. The difference however is that there is a specific group of archivists and there is some structure there. I am not saying that non-archivist record keepers are wrong or not doing a good job but at least there is some formal archival structure whereas there doesn't appear to be any formal structure that governs Information Studies.
1. On page 101, the author claims that "But beyond evidence, archives also preserve memory, and they create memory." How could archives create memory? Is there any example to explain this process?
ReplyDelete2. In the part of "Memory:modern archiving--the historian-archivist selects the archive", the author mentions different levels of description from files, series, record groups, archive groups, and fonds. By which aspects are these levels separated?Do archives have a similar lower-to-higher hierarchy?
3.The author suggests that archivists in community "need to transform themselves from elite experts behind institutional walls to becoming mentors, facilitators, coaches, who work in the community to encourage archiving as a participatory process shared with many in society, rather than necessarily acquiring all the archival products in our established archives. Should archives also take the responsibility to limit, even stop some unprofessional community members, and remove improper archives created by them?
1.If memory and identity are not concepts very relevant to archives, where does the ‘describing’ part of archives fall? Should the description of an archive include an identity of the source? Why should these concepts not impinge on archival processes directly?
ReplyDelete2. ‘Pro evidence’ archivists are said to link state archives with nationalism and national culture. Is this an objectionable practice for an archivist? What does the whole concept of ‘pro evidence’ archivists mean and are they different from other archivists?
3.Principles like provenance and original order were introduced in order to arrange,describe and maintain archives instead of merely re arranging them. They also destroy their contextual validity and meaning in favor of their informational content. Having said that, what are the other pros and cons of these principles?
1. In this paper, the author mentioned the new identity of archivists. Then, what is the features of the new identity? Does it mean that a new way of training archivists are required nowadays?
ReplyDelete2. Another issue that the author pointed out is the identity crisis of archivists in our times. I believe so because the space for the archivists are narrowed down with the development of Information technologies. How should iSchool see and response to the issue?
3. In the paper, the author outlined how online archive looks like. Just like my previous question, I'm wondering how would the tendency of put everything online affect iSchool? Would iSchool be more like the Internet-School?
1. In this article the author describes the efforts of evidence-focused archivists “to provide, without prejudice or afterthought, for all who wish to know the Means of Knowledge.” These archivists attempt to create archives that are objective repositories of evidence of actions by a government or organization. Is it possible to ever truly create an objective archive? Wouldn’t there always be some subjective component to an archive be it scope or some bias that the archivist has?
ReplyDelete2. In describing how archives shifted from an evidentiary role to a memory role the author states that the archivist had become “an active selector of the archive.” What other people or factors might have had an influence on what records were selected for retention? For example what factors might have prevented certain records from ever making it to the archive at all?
3. The author states that now archives are shifting into a new paradigm of “participatory archiving.” They state that archivist are giving up their roles as the stewards of archive and are becoming mentors to communities that are creating and maintaining their own archives. Do you agree that this is the direction that archives are now heading? If so is it safe for archivists to give up the ability to create an identity for a group or organization to individuals that might not share the archivist’s dedication to neutrality and objectivity?
1. Cook writes that archivists are a community not because we do the same tasks, but because what we do has a value to society (99-100). He also questions whether the field is still an imagined community as we have an identity crisis (112) Do we believe that archivists are an imagined community? My understanding of an imagined community required the members to be anonymous strangers that who feel connection to each other based on some common belief of belonging together. I’m not sure what the term here would be, but I wonder whether archivists form a ‘regular’ community, and not an imagined one because we perform the same tasks and engage in conversations about our field.
ReplyDelete2. In the community paradigm, Cook writes that records should often remain with the community that created them and not transferred to a separate archives, allowing the community to participate in processing. Is there a risk that the records may not be well cared if they are not put under the eyes of a trained archivist? Is it possible that an archivist may identify records that could be of potential historical value later on to the community, but the community does not value the records now? Or do we need to take the Jenkinsonian approach that if the community doesn’t value certain records than neither should the archivist?
3. Cook argues that the participatory process of community archives can help to add context and value to the records especially for cultures that use oral histories or have different forms of records than we traditional use. What is the best way for these records to be added to the archives? How can we capture the community’s perspective without dominating the community with our standards for records as Cook cautions?
1. I'm curious as to what the author believes are the greatest benefits to incorporating the four proposed paradigms are/would be?
ReplyDelete2. I appreciate the author's discussion of archiving today within the realm of postmodernism, as I think it's important and often overlooked. I think this is especially true when considering the idea or memory and narratives, and how those entities are constructed and differ depending on the specific subject.
3. I'm curious as to the kinds of responses this article has received from the archival community? Are the proposed paradigms and charge for rethinking the archival process something that has been seriously considered--or even adopted?
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ReplyDelete1. How “real” or actually distinct are the paradigms that Cook has developed? I mean, I recognize that the four periods of the 150 years of archives have been articulated in order to break down the history of archival work in order to better understand its present state, but how, for example, is “societal engagement” that different from “community archiving”? Especially if many of the communities mentioned already had some (albeit non-traditional) ways of archiving their histories and identities for some time?
ReplyDelete2. Cook has a particularly positive outlook on digital media and the future of archives. He describes social media as a place where one can find “traces of human life, of what it means to be human, to which trace we as archivists… have rarely had such sustained access before.” How is this true, exactly? I just wonder what this actually means for archivists. What, for example, are archivists going to do with twitter? Tweets on the one hand could be seen as these small fragments of “what it means to be human”, on the other as more worthless clutter clogging up the information flow.
3. In the section on evidence, Cook refers to a “residue of records,” a “natural residue,” and a “juridical residue.” Why does he start using this organic imagery for the description of early, evidentiary, archival documents?
1. The author describes the transformation of the archives profession within four frameworks overtime. Do archivist from all four frameworks exists today because of the differences in collections, communities, and institutional cultures?
ReplyDelete2. I could see the fear that archivist could have by moving toward the community based archives where they feel they lose control of their collections and their expertise seems diminished by the contributions of less experienced individuals, but archivist should strive to bring more and educate the populous on the principles and strengths of their profession and knowledge. They will still be the ones in control; they will just be in a managerial role.
3. I wonder where the next stage of archiving will progress after the community-based archive described by the author. Will technological advancements allow for archivist to have more control over their collections and not have the fear, as in the previous question, that their expertise will be lost, forgotten, or ignored by the community based archive approach?
1. I enjoyed the section on postmodern archiving and identity. The assertion that there is no "Truth" but only truths as they are apparent to us in our contexts stirs up interesting ideas about information in general and about the need for archives to be situated somehow, that information can be processed from an appropriate perspective.
ReplyDelete2. Would a shift toward community archiving, the slackening of professional archivists' grip on the reins, lead to a loss or lessening of the standards expected and in practice in the archives profession? Or would we expect the now-archiving public to rise to the level of practice of current information professionals?
3. I'm particularly excited to hear Dr. Trace's thoughts on this reading and the shifts in archives toward a more community-centered approach. Having spoken with her, I know how much she enjoys the finding and arranging of the mundane, everyday, anybody-type historical record, the items created in the day to day, because they more than large documents or "items of historical value" speak to the truth of who we as people are.
1. The arc of this paper seems to describe the democratization of archival practice over the course of four paradigms.
ReplyDelete2. Are these paradigms really successive, or is there an inherently recursive element to them as well? Will an earlier paradigm ever become dominant again? Perhaps they all happen in different places and times.
3. Is the concept of "evidence" a universal concept? The word itself seems to imply subjective intent by someone using the evidence to prove something. Artifact = data. Evidence = information?
1. In his article, Cook discusses the different roles archivists/archives have filled in the past. He presents an interesting argument by Ketelaar that archives are not simply evidence, but ‘‘’spaces of memory-practice, where people can try to put their trauma in context by accessing the documents, not primarily seeking the truth or searching the history, but transforming their experiences into meaning’’’ (99). I thought this was a unique way to look at archives – as if they are a coping tool rather than just a record. Do you agree with Ketelaar that archives should be considered legitimate “’healing ritual[s]’” (99)? Or are they just evidence of the past?
ReplyDelete2. Cook also talks about archives as “preserving memory” (101). Thus, the job of an archivist would not be simply to preserve an artifact, but to actually sustain a piece of cultural memory. He also talks about selection of these artifacts/memories, highlighting the fact that “with memory comes forgetting” (101). He furthers this point by explaining that choosing a “memory” is ultimately subjective – while some elements of a culture’s past would be preserved, others would be erased. Does this present a danger of thinking of archivists as “memory keepers”? Is that role too subjective? Who should be allowed to say what is “remembered” and what is “forgotten”?
3. Cook continues to talk about the four paradigms archival identity has passed through over the course of history. In the final, emerging paradigm, community, Cook suggests what was posited in an earlier reading – that archives should belong to the people. He gives a little more context for this suggestion than the previous author did, saying that archivists should be out in the society helping to “mentor” and “coach” people who are helping manage archives in order to ensure the continuation of the archival process (113). Presumably, this would mean helping them to learn to properly document and catalog items. Cook claims that archivists may need to “give up their recently hard-won mantras of expert, of control, of power . . .”(113). However, if they did shed these labels, would that make everyone an archivist? Should it? Is there merit in an archivist being considered an “expert” – if not, what’s the point of having archival programs?