Controlling the Past: Documenting Society and Institutions. Essays in Honor of Helen Willa Samuels

Citation

Hare, C. (2012), "Controlling the Past: Documenting Society and Institutions. Essays in Honor of Helen Willa Samuels", Records Management Journal, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 76-77. https://doi.org/10.1108/09565691211222153

With a title like Controlling the Past: Documenting Society and Institutions this book declares itself as a substantial work with a wide‐ranging and ambitious topic. It is a festschrift to honour the work, influence and impact of Helen Willa Samuels on archival theory and practice. It is a weighty tome comprising eighteen chapters which cover more than 400 pages. The introduction is also substantial. But this is by no means a volume which, after a cursory review of the table of contents, will sit gathering dust or at least it should not be. It is not the sort of book that you can read from cover to cover in a short time but I have rarely been so interested or intellectually enthused.

The work is divided into three sections. The first section entitled Documenting Society comprises nine chapters and explores the philosophy behind and the process of identifying the documentation that needs to survive to record the society and institutions from which it has emerged. Underpinned by Samuels's twin principles of collaborative documentation strategies and institutional functional analysis the essays review approaches to appraisal in the public and private sectors. A common theme is Samuels's mantra of conceptualization before collection and the importance of context. The chapter by Joan M. Schwartz entitled The Archival Garden, through the analysis of a single nineteenth century photograph, expertly demonstrates how context impacts on how an item is assessed and viewed. Richard J. Cox explores similar themes but focuses on technology and the impact of copying technologies. He proposes a middle ground resisting both pessimism and optimism which chimes well with the reality check offered by Robert Horton in his “cautionary tale” about making the case for electronic records management in the public sector where the political context comes into play.

The seven chapters in the second section (Representing Archives/Being Archival) focus on how to manage the documentation which survives and who should manage it. Again the chapters are of great interest, whether analyzing existing models, exploring exciting new alternatives and roles. Here I was personally very interested not only to find authors like David Bearman and Verne Harris whose work I know but also to discover new writers exploring themes which have fascinated me all of my professional life.

The final section is made up of a review of selected writings by Samuels and an unusual feature in a festschrift i.e. an afterword by the honoree in which she presents her own journey and personality even including anecdotes about her practice of knitting discreetly in meetings.

The hand of the editor, Terry Cook, is very apparent in the work especially in the introduction in which he provides his own detailed interpretation of the work together with his personal tribute to Samuels. I believe he was absolutely right to stick to his own idea of the introduction rather than provide a short abstract at the beginning of each chapter as recommended by one of the peer reviewers of the work.

Overall this is an exceptional work. The reader is left in no doubt of the nature and the importance of Helen Willa Samuels and her work. The range of contributors, including records managers, librarians, historians, practicing archivists and IT specialists, reinforces another of Samuels's key principles i.e. the range of stakeholders necessary to manage documentation. The variety of contributions from theoretical discourse through reviews to case studies and future gazing provides a valuable and exceptional resource which I would recommend without reservation for students, educators and practitioners of records and archives management.