The practical power of human rights: how international human rights standards can inform archival and record keeping practices

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is the preeminent international instrument elaborating on the rights of Indigenous peoples. It contains the minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of Indigenous peoples all over the world. As a consequence, the Declaration provides a blueprint for Indigenous peoples, governments and other third parties around the world to respect the rights and roles of Indigenous peoples within society. At its core, the Declaration is based on the principles of self-determination, good faith and participation in decision-making. In this paper, I outline how the principles of the Declaration can and should influence archival and record keeping practices. I suggest we need to harness the practical power of human rights. In exercising our right to participate in decision-making, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples can demonstrate this practical power. It is critical that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are substantive and major stakeholders in determining appropriate archival and record keeping processes for Indigenous culture, cultural property and knowledge.     

Recordkeeping metadata and archival description: a revisit

Metadata go through an evolutionary process from creation to archival preservation. During this process, some metadata are re-used (inheritance), other metadata are eliminated (extinction) and still others are updated or newly generated (mutation). Unlike other literature that focuses on metadata inheritance and mutation, this evolutionary view highlights the extinction of metadata. As such, it might raise awareness about the appraisal and selection of metadata in digital curation practice.     

Toward a survivor-centered approach to records documenting human rights abuse: lessons from community archives

This article proposes a theoretical framework for managing records documenting human rights abuse based on five key principles learned from community archives discourses: participation, shared stewardship, multiplicity, archival activism, and reflexivity. In shifting the focus of human rights archives to these core community-centric values, this paper proposes a survivor-centered approach to such records and argues that survivors should maintain control over the decision-making processes related to records documenting their abuse.     

Rethinking archival,ethical and legal frameworks for records of Indigenous Australian communities: a participant relationship model of rights and responsibilities

Archival systems have been based on the conventional understanding of the relationship between record subjects as third parties and record creators as the principal parties to the record transaction, thus limiting the rights of those captured in and by the record. An alternative approach is a participant relationship model which acknowledges all parties to a transaction as immediate parties with negotiated rights and responsibilities. A number of legal and archival concepts support a participant model of co-creatorship and associated responsibilities in relation to ownership, access and privacy. The application of the participant model to Indigenous Australian record subjects, in particular to records about them held in archival institutions or in creating organisations would enhance Indigenous rights in records. Indigenous claims to ownership over archival sources of Indigenous knowledge can be characterised in the legal concept of a bundle of rights that recognises more than one interest to control, disclose, access and use records. Human rights principles in international and national human rights instruments also support the assertion of Indigenous rights in records. Archival and legal reform is required to fully implement the participant model but a number of archival, ethical and legal strategies would accelerate its implementation. The re-conceptualisation of the record subject as a record co-creator can also be applied to non-Indigenous contexts and therefore has significant archival and legal implications.     

The archival nexus: rethinking the interplay of archival ideas about the nature, value, and use of records

This article traces an alternative to the evidence/memory dichotomy in archival discourse by highlighting the nexus between archival ideas about the nature, value, and use of records as viewed and imagined through the lens of an archival concept of evidence as a relation between record and event. This article then explores how “the archival nexus” provides a different framework for understanding the various meaning-making processes surrounding archives both within and outside the archival repository, and for rethinking the role of the archivist and the position of the archival discipline with regard to other disciplines that explicitly address and engage with the archive.     

Finding facts and constructing memory: the creation and custody of human rights records in South America

Gabriela Andaur Gómez is currently a student in the Master of Archival Studies at the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies at The University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada. Her interest in Human Rights records arose from her experience as the Coordinator of the Archives of the Federación de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Chile (FECH), the repository responsible for safeguarding the records produced by the student Federation from the dictatorship period to the present, and for documenting the Chilean student movement. Ms Andaur Gomez holds a BA in History from the Universidad de Chile (2010) and is a scholarship holder of the Becas Chile program of the Government of Chile. She will soon start work as a Graduate Research Assistant for the Records in the Cloud project at UBC.

Human rights records have been characterised as those created during the reign of repressive governments or in a transitional context, produced by the state or non-governmental organisations and whose content is related to, or is evidence of, the occurrence of human rights violations. This paper examines three major types of human rights records produced in South America during the second half of the twentieth century, with the aim of identifying their characteristics, the functions that they have served and the challenges that have emerged in relation to their preservation and custody.     

Points of convergence: seamless long-term access to digital publications and archival records at library and archives Canada

In 2004, Canada’s national library and national archives merged to form Library and Archives Canada (LAC). LAC has become more than the sum of its parts, creating synergies between library and archives collections and services, realizing efficiencies and satisfying user demands for seamless access to all holdings. LAC has already created and launched Fed Search, an online search tool that provides clients with single-search access to library, archives and online collections. LAC is in the process of building a Trusted Digital Repository that will combine ingest, preservation, management and dissemination services for archives and library collections.     

The footprint and the stepping foot: archival records, evidence, and time

This paper provides an analysis of the archival concepts of “record” and “evidence” as socio-cultural constructs arising out of a particular view of time. Archival records are usually characterized as having certain relationships to evidence in its temporal aspects—specifically, the requirement for a temporal disconnect between creation and use. This disconnect also necessitates a break between knowledge and the knower in which the record must be externalized and set aside from its creator in order to have “recordness”. This paper explores how Western concepts of time impact concepts of records and archival evidences and proposes an alternative framing. Since records have such power in our lives and societies, practitioners must begin to work with an expanded concept of record and sensitivity to differing time frames and worldviews. The paper proposes a new definition of “record” as an intentional, stable, semantic structure, which is used to identify three broad categories of record types, based on event-orientation or object-orientation, that are flexible enough to account for differing cultural and spiritual understandings of time.     

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笔者鼓吹档案馆人免费利用档案馆馆藏,实是鼓吹在全国范围内培育一支庞大的、足以让世人刮目相看的档案馆文化人队伍.在以人为本的今日社会,这样的队伍绝对是使档案馆文化实现繁荣发达的本钱.     

Insurgent citizens: the manufacture of police records in post-Katrina New Orleans and its implications for human rights

Inquiries into allegations of human rights abuses require a reliable corpus of evidence to proceed and hold violators accountable for their actions. The following article analyzes the 2005 police shootings that occurred on New Orleans’ Danziger Bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a case that illustrates the challenges confronting investigations into human rights violations in the USA. By examining an investigative police report, two survivors’ civil complaints, and federal court filings, the article argues that the methodical nature in which several police officers in post-Katrina New Orleans conspired to document the use of deadly force against several unarmed citizens demonstrates that police records created in the context of officer-involved shootings inhibit accountability processes as much as they facilitate them. The deliberate creation of such records, the article concludes, impairs the ability of a democratic nation to ensure human rights and bring their violators to account.     

Break the rules,save the records: human rights archives and the search for justice in East Timor

How do distinctive historical experiences and political regimes shape human rights archives? How do those archives and those experiences in turn influence the way painful pasts are remembered or forgotten? And what can historical accounts tell us about the wisdom of prevailing norms and practices regarding the management and control of human rights records? This paper explores these questions through a close analysis of the history and politics of the principal archive documenting human rights abuse in East Timor. It underscores the work of archival studies scholars who argue that human rights archives are always in some degree shaped by the historical and political context in which they emerge and that conflicts over matters of content, mandate, and rules of access are virtually inevitable. Noting that such conflicts typically pit political authorities against victims and their advocates, it argues that successful human rights archival programs hinge critically on sensitive historical and political analysis and that, under certain conditions, human rights archivists should play a more active role in facilitating the pursuit of justice for victims of human rights abuse. It also makes the case for a move away from large, state-controlled archives toward multiple, smaller archives with varied mandates. Finally, it proposes the adoption of a new hierarchy of interest in the management of archives; away from the long-accepted principles of national sovereignty and inalienability, and in the direction of access to the survivors of human rights violations and their advocates.     

The records of memory, the archives of identity: celebrations, texts and archival sensibilities

Using a variety of examples of non-traditional archives, the article explores the concept of cultural archives that embraces dynamic events such as commemorations, monuments, and other community-based representations. The paradigm of the postcolonial archive is considered and analyzed as a potential model for such a living cultural archive.