What are Archives? Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives: A Reader

Citation

Em, S. (2009), "What are Archives? Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives: A Reader", Records Management Journal, Vol. 19 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/rmj.2009.28119bae.003

What are Archives? Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives: A Reader

What are Archives? Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives: A Reader

Article Type: Professional resources From: Records Management Journal, Volume 19, Issue 2

Edited by Louise Craven,Ashgate,Aldershot,2008,ISBN 978-0-7546-7310-1,£60.00

Keywords: Archiving, Archives management

What are Archives? Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives: A Reader is a collection of nine essays, based on presentations delivered at the Society of Archivists’ Annual Conference 2006. These are arranged thematically into four groups, dealing with continuity and change in the archival paradigm, the impact of technology, the impact of community archives and archival use and users.

The aim of the book is both clearly stated and ambitious: to initiate in the archival profession a debate that will lead to “a new set of answers to the question ‘What are archives?’”, and to encourage that debate to happen in an intellectual environment that is outward-looking and philosophical, and that looks at the impact of the world upon archives, in its widest sense.

Though the title might imply that the book is an introduction to archives, it is in fact an introduction for archivists, into a philosophical debate that is not the tradition of publications on archives. It is a laudable attempt to unpick the seams of a profession which, needing the long view to be taken in order to function, often seems monolithic. This collection of essays draws the professional’s eye to an approaching elephant – since the nature of information, its use, its creation, its perception, has changed radically, the nature of historiography will also change and archivists need to be prepared for that inevitability.

The collection looks at many aspects of the archival profession, and not everyone will agree with the ideological lenses employed. But if archivists are to be certain that their approach to the writing of history is robust enough to contribute to, but not be diluted by, the “democratization” of information then every test should be run, from case studies to the harsh light of necessity in the face of apparent technical capability to post-modernist analyses of the possible realities implied in what is apparently a purely factual document.

Occasionally the essays are frustrating, a weakness of their strength, where, like Gerard P. Collis’ contribution “Permitted use and users”, they raise a number of topics that could each have furnished an essay on its own and leave the resultant questions unanswered. The collection is an opportunity to reflect on the big, and ever-increasing, picture of what archivists do and why, and three essays perhaps best encapsulate the nature of the discussion. Andrew Prescott’s article “Archives of exile …” gives guidance on how the archival profession can, or should, “do” theory, using researching exiles as an example. Both this essay and Andrew Flinn’s “Other ways of thinking …” investigate the nature of the archives and archival work by placing the professional archivist in a different relationship to the author, subject and user of an archival item and thus question the two faces of historiography – what is available and how – and why – it is used by historians. The practical or even the theoretical consequences of these proposed relationships, whether it is Prescott’s questioning of the use of placement, as well as of content, of archival items to yield historical truths, or Flinn’s vision of the interaction between archivists and the marginalized, remain to be investigated.

The last essay in this triad is Michael Moss’ “What is an archives in the digital environment” which examines the tension of a potential archival paradigm, where the traditional view of the archives as the canonical authority which can confirm or contradict a proposed historical interpretation is replaced by the archives as “an interpretative moment”.

Some of the essays take a very practical view of the challenges presented by the new world of information and focus instead on possible solutions like Jane Stephenson’s “The on-line archivist” … which offers an admirably concise view of the skills required to deal with digital archives and their users, a theme also picked up by Andrea Johnson’s “Users, use and context” which offers potential solution based on findings of her recent research into users of digital archives, the results of which are also summarized.

The volume is not for the archivally uninitiated, but neither is it exclusively for an audience of archival professionals. It would be a valuable addition to the library of anyone who has an interest in the current upturned state of historiography and epistemology, and who wishes to begin to get a grasp on what theoretical as well as practical challenges need to be faced in order to provide a robust future for both.

Susan EmRoyal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, London, UK