From the sidelines to the center: reconsidering the potential of the personal in archives

This article seeks to center the personal in archives, both theoretically and methodologically. After briefly reviewing how personal archives have been sidelined in archival theory and education programs, we suggest that whether a record is considered personal or not is best determined not based on who created it but rather on how it is activated. In two separate autoethnographic case studies, the authors activate institutional records that, for each of them, are intensely personal. In doing so, they demonstrate how centering the personal in this way might inform and impact archivists’ understanding of their responsibilities to those who create, are captured in and consult the records in our care.     

Documentation practices and recordkeeping: a matter of trust or distrust?

Records are more and more important as instruments of trust, for instance to ascertain accountability. However, they are also objects to be trusted upon themselves. Rather rigorous requirements are established to guarantee the trustworthiness of records; requirements are more elaborated in the digital environment than those that have previously been attributed to analogue records. The purpose of this study is to discuss the conceptualization of trust and trustworthiness in relation to records, and to analyze the relation between the increasing reliance on formal documentation in contemporary organizations and the requirements on records and recordkeeping systems that has been advanced recent years. It can be argued that the effort to enhance trustworthiness actually is a manifestation of diminishing trust.     

Oral culture, written records and understanding the twentieth-century colonial archive. The significance of understanding from within

The educational institutions that train archivists and records managers in Europe and North America have not engaged with the challenges of orality until very recently. As their counterparts in Africa are modelled on the earlier version of European and North American practice, they do not address the relationship between oral cultures and written records either. This article attempts to address this significant omission. It is grounded on evidence gathered during a fellowship at Chancellor College in Malawi and arises from the author??s work in preparing courses on archives and records management for a planned postgraduate degree. The methodological limitations imposed by the author??s lack of the appropriate African language skills are acknowledged. It is observed that the colonial archive has been subjected to vociferous criticism and that oral history programs have been advocated to fill perceived gaps. Yet, paradoxically the colonial archive is itself largely the product of a process of turning oral communications into written records. The nature of the processes and of the products is discussed. It is argued that these archives, like all archives, need to be interpreted as products of their historical and cultural setting. If users can read them ??with the grain??, then they may be able to utilise them for a range of purposes never envisaged by the creators of the records.     

The Cataloging of Self-Published Items

Abstract

This article presents the results of a 2015 survey of librarians who catalog self-published items. The survey was conducted in response to the growing popularity of self-publishing and the increasing prevalence of self-published items in libraries. Survey respondents were asked to describe how they are cataloging these items and to provide representative examples of the records they have created. An analysis of both the survey responses and the records is presented, followed by suggestions for best practices for cataloging these items.     

从纸质到增值:渥太华市的信息治理和电子文件

从2002年起渥太华市档案馆一直致力于探索建立城市电子文件管理体系,为此渥太华市档案馆进行了一系列的工作,包括将各种形式的现行和非现行的文件管理与其档案价值联系起来,按照业务分类法对各类电子文件进行分类管理,依据宏观鉴定方法确定档案保管期限与处置方案,并通过在线联合目录的方式为政府和公众提供利用服务等。渥太华市档案馆基于文件连续体理念,正在探索多元主体协同的信息治理新方案。     

电子文件运动异常现象研究及特征分析

本文综述了国内档案学者所提出的电子文件运动情形的异常现象,并对其特征加以分析。国内档案学者在论述电子文件运动情形的异常现象时都以文件生命周期理论为参照对象,把所有不同于文件生命周期理论内容的情形归为电子文件运动情形的异常现象;以为文件生命周期理论揭示和反映了纸质文件运动的全部;把不同于纸质文件管理的电子文件管理内容也作为电子文件运动内容来看待等,这为我们深入客观地破解电子文件运动情形的异常现象奠定了一个重要的基础。     

Educating for trust

Rapid technological advances are fuelling trust requirements and concerns about public and private sector records alike. To guarantee the reliability and authenticity of records requires a framework of policies, procedures, technologies, and intentional action or intervention by ??trusted custodians?? who have the knowledge required for attesting to and ensuring the continuing authenticity of the records. Records professionals have claimed the role of trusted keepers of the authentic record of our times, but how do they earn that trust? To begin, by acquiring competence. In order to define what kind of education would contribute to qualifying records professionals as competent, it is necessary to identify the components of knowledge they require and the role that society at large expects of them. The responsibilities and challenges presented by managing digital records through time are ones that records professionals should not meet in isolation. In order for records to be able to serve as evidence of actions and events, they must be protected as such. Records-related knowledge requirements are being articulated in the related disciplines of archival science and records management, law, digital forensics, and information assurance and cyber-security. The need for interdisciplinary knowledge to understand and manage the complexities of digital records is being realized in new research alliances that foster the development of knowledge that can support the role of trusted keepers of the authentic record of our times. One such alliance is the Digital Records Forensics Project at the University of British Columbia.     

Content and use of colonial archives: an under-researched issue

Namibians often find themselves in situations of litigation where they need person-related records to defend their rights and privileges. Such person-related records include birth, adoption, marriage, or divorce or deceased estates. It has been observed that the institution where such records should be expected, the National Archives of Namibia often cannot retrieve person-related records of persons previously classified as non-whites under colonial and apartheid laws. Many native Namibians end up losing property or have problems claiming their constitutional rights due to lack of evidence. The purpose of this paper was to explore whether the existing archival literature can guide National Archives of new and emerging African nations on how to handle challenges brought about by gaps in inherited colonial archives. Using a literature survey to explore the state of what is written on the content and usage of colonial archives in post-colonial era, this article argues that the content and use of colonial archives in Africa do not feature prominently in the literature of archival science. Although there has been a rising interest on the subject during the last decade, none of this emerging literature has systematically studied archives in depth with a view on what these archives contain for the non-academic user, what they neglect and what they lack altogether in serving the needs of all citizens in post-colonial states. It recommends that archival scholars as well as archival institutions increase research into this neglected area. Raising awareness may produce academic discourse to help archivists in newly decolonised countries to competently support users whose inquiries currently cannot be answered by the inherited colonial archives collections.     

Recording ‘a very particular Custom’: tattoos and the archive

This paper investigates the describing, dissemination and archiving of records, which have previously not been well described by archives. It asks if new methods of accessing the archive may be used to improve understandings of such records. Specifically, this paper will investigate the records created about tattoos in the nineteenth century following the European exploration of Polynesia, and the transmission of tattoos to the West. The ways in which this indigenous cultural practice was interpreted and recorded are discussed with reference to the records created. Tattoos are inherently physical records, which do not survive beyond the lifespan of their owner. The archiving process for tattoos has thus relied on preserving representations of the tattoo. This paper will ask what these representations of tattoos actually provide evidence of and will use two case studies to examine how records about tattoos have been archived. Finally, it is suggested that a more holistic understanding of tattooing records may be achieved through new ways of describing and classifying records, such as folksonomy.     

Access to vice presidential records in the aftermath of Executive Order 13,233: From haphazard past to uncertain future

Because the vice presidency of the United States was for so many years considered a “nonjob,” it is hardly surprising that preserving its records has been a nonissue for most of the nation's history. However, the vice presidency in recent years has emerged as an executive rather than a decorative role, and vice presidential papers have been included both in legislation to promote access to historical documents, and presidential orders delaying that access, such as Executive Order 13,233. The end result is that researchers arguably have less access to vice presidential records than before the groundbreaking Presidential Records Act of 1978, which should have opened doors to this increasingly rich source of government information.     

What is recorded is never simply ‘what happened’: Record keeping in modern organizational culture

Traditional premises in archival theory and practice hold that archival records are authentic as to procedure and impartial as to creation because they are created as a means for, and as a by-product of, action, and not for the sake of posterity. Such Positivist assumptions about the nature of records have come under sustained scrutiny in the archival literature over the past decade. The post-Positivist view of records embraces the record as a socially constructed and maintained entity. This paper situates itself within this new paradigm in an exploration of the beginning of the life of the record. It is therefore concerned with the creator (or recorder) and the social construction of the record. In expanding beyond a purely administrative- and juridical-based theory of records, this paper draws upon research from other disciplines, such as sociology, in order to place records and record keeping within a framework that allows for an understanding of their social nature. In particular, the goal is to determine the underlying social factors that directly influence and shape the creation and keeping of records and to begin to understand how these factors manifest themselves in the construction of the record.     

Memory, justice and the public record

After WWII, there were approximately 10,000 children with Norwegian mothers and German fathers in Norway. In the late 1980s, these ??war children??s?? fate became a topic of public debate, when accusations of maltreatment and harassment were made public. A research project organised by the Norwegian Research Council in 1998 concluded that the children had been subject to harassment and illegally deprived of some of their basic civilian rights between 1945 and 1955. Then, in 2006, Norwegian parliament approved a special reparation system for war children, in which the size of the compensation was made dependent on the documentation that each individual might bring forth. After 2 years of this system??s functioning, it is evident that only a small percentage of the war children have been able to produce the necessary evidence. In this article, I will explore the roles that social memory and archival records may have played in constructing the war children as a social group, why the individual war child??s life tends to be poorly documented in public records, and why the reparation system privileges public records as evidence. Finally, I will discuss the archivist??s position as the intermediary between the records and the individuals seeking justice, how archivists should respond to such calls for justice and what they might do to create a more inclusive memory of the past.     

Memory at stake – Swedish private archives in a changing landscape

Private archival institutions collect records from churches, trade unions, companies, associations and any other non-government organisations. Organisations and associations have played an important role in Swedish public life during the twentieth century, being agents in the process of democratisation and societal change leading to the modern welfare state. Citizens' influence on politics and administration has to a large extent been channelled through organisations of various kinds. During the second half of the last century, a nationwide network of so-called popular movement archives emerged, initiated by the records creating organisations themselves. These institutions are important complements to the public archives, covering other spheres of society and contributing to preserve the history of everyday life, and political and social development. However, the traditional forms of stable rule-based organisations with structured records creation are dissolving, and being replaced with more loosely connected and continuously changing communities working in an online environment. Furthermore, the last decades have witnessed the emergence of digital information, and most private institutions lack the technological infrastructure and knowledge to receive digital records for long-term preservation. This study explores the developments and current status of popular movement archives in Sweden, and the challenges they are facing, in order to outline a scenario for future development and consequences for future societal memory.     

GPO Cataloging Records in the Online Catalog:

Reference staff at many libraries are facing a sudden and dramatic change in the size and composition of their library's online catalog as a result of loading large files of Government Printing Office (GPO) retrospective cataloging records. While these records provide a much-needed increase in access to federal documents, they have special characteristics which make them difficult to work with. This article is intended to provide reference librarians with the basic "GPO cataloging record literacy" they need to deal successfully with the load of these records into an online catalog, and also to explore some of the specific implications of such a load for reference service.     

Is This a Serial?

Serials represent a growing proportion of published literature and budget allocations. Since serials frequently contain the most current information and latest reports of research activity, they both generate many reference questions and supply the answers. Due to the continuing and changing nature of serials, their records are more difficult to interpret than are monograph records. The philosophy underlying the creation of serial records, the variations in serial cataloging rules, and the effects of automation partially explain what appears in our catalogs. A review of the essential elements in serial bibliographic records accents the unique characteristics of serials and the problems encountered in trying to create records that are consistent and intelligible.     

The Development in Germany of Archival Processing – The Vertical and Horizontal Appraisal

Based on a discussion about appraisal which has been going on for over a 100 years, the so-called vertical and horizontal appraisal have been developed and tested since the middle of the 1990s. During this process the tasks, functions and competences of the agencies, which are to be appraised were analysed. The appraisal of the content itself is undertaken only when multiple archival processing has been eliminated by this method and the most significant records identified. Actual tasks and functions of single administrative branches of different institutions (federal government, states, counties, and municipalities) are appraised, apart from already closed records. In this way, agencies creating archives and records today receive written decisions on the appraisal of records, which will be offered to the archives in future. Archivists of different institutions are involved in this appraisal procedure. The experience gained here has continually developed the techniques of vertical and horizontal appraisal. This appraisal procedure is being further developed in a constant balance between theory and practice.     

Search for tomorrow: The electronic records research program of the u.s. national historical publications and records commission

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) is a small grant-making agency affiliated with the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The Commission is charged with promoting the preservation and dissemination of documentary source materials to ensure an understanding of U.S. history. Recognizing that the increasing use of computers created challenges for preserving the documentary record, the Commission adopted a research agenda in 1991 to promote research and development on the preservation and continued accessibility of documentary materials in electronic form. From 1991 to the present the Commission awarded 31 grants totaling $2,276,665 for electronic records research. Most of this research has focused on two issues of central concern to archivists: (1) electronic record keeping (tools and techniques to manage electronic records produced in an office environment, such as word processing documents and electronic mail), and (2) best practices for storing, describing, and providing access to all electronic records of long-term value. NHPRC grants have raised the visibility of electronic records issues among archivists. The grants have enabled numerous archives to begin to address electronic records problems, and, perhaps most importantly, they have stimulated discussion about electronic records among archivists and records managers.     

从上孙家寨出土木牍看西汉张良韩信《兵法》和杨仆《兵录》的内容性质及其目录形制

从青海上孙家寨出土的西汉晚期军事律令文书木牍,可以推知西汉张良、韩信《兵法》和杨仆《兵录》在内容性质上都是军事律令的结集。作为结集而成的"一本书",《兵法》和《兵录》都附有目录,但它们并不是"目录著作"。其所附目录都是勒编成册的一书篇名目录(contents),而不是"莫之或先"的群书目录(bibliography),也不是"最早的兵书专科目录"。此外,《兵录》之"录"意为"依次记载",并不是"名图书目录为录"之所始。     

Contexts built and found: a pilot study on the process of archival meaning-making

Over the last 20 years, humanities and archival scholars have theorized the ways in which archives imbue records with meaning. However, archival scholars have not sufficiently examined how users understand the meaning of the records they find. Building on the premise that how users come to make meaning from records is greatly in need of examination, this paper reports on a pilot study of four book history students and their processes of archival meaning-making. We focus in particular on behaviors of an interpretive rather than forensic nature. This article includes a discussion of the theoretical concepts and scholarly literature that shaped our goals for this paper. It then discusses the methodology and our interpretations of the research findings, before turning to a discussion of the findings’ implications and directions for future work.