Back-ups for the future: archival practices for data activism

Literature on activist archiving theorises the power of recordkeeping to give voice to marginalised communities. However, missing from this archival literature are analyses about the political practice of preserving data as an act of grassroots resistance. Simultaneously, existing scholarly literature on grassroots data activism analyses the creation of new statistical representations to challenge official ones. This literature has largely ignored what will happen to this data over the long term, nor has it treated data archiving as an activist project in its own right. This theoretical article seeks to close the gap between literature on archival activism and literature on data activism, in hopes that both sets of research can draw productively from each other. There are clear affinities between activist archives and data activism: both address the failure by mainstream institutions to account for marginal voices, both have the power to make issues visible and legitimate within the public sphere, and both experiment with traditional forms of memory and statistical evidence. The authors believe that these two powerful forms of activity have much to learn from each other, particularly as the need to steward data over the long term will only grow.     

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.     

"注意力"与档案工作

如果有人问:在新的世纪,最宝贵的财富是什么?应该说,新世纪最宝贵的财富是社会公众的"注意力".这是因为,如果缺乏社会公众的注意力,再先进的科学技术也不可能转变为现实的生产力,再优秀的人才也只能成为"埋在土里的金子".我们常说"档案是党和国家的宝贵财富".但如果缺乏社会公众的"注意力",恐怕再珍贵的档案也是一堆故纸.     

iSchools and archival studies

Whispers and rumors about the iSchool movement lead some to fear that this represents yet another shift away from the valued traditions of library schools, threatening something far different than what library science pioneers ever envisioned. Predating the iSchool movement, however, were other programmatic shifts such as those that led to the formalization of graduate archival education. This essay argues that such evolution is essential to our future, as iSchools tackle the increasingly complex issues confronting a digital society. We consider the mission and history of iSchools and of archival studies, the basic elements and concepts of archival studies that are critical to iSchools, and the relationship between iSchools and the changing nature of personal and institutional archives.     

Education and research in archival science: General tendencies

This text is essentially based on works carried out for a research which was subsidized from 1997 to 2000 by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The goal of this study was to examine the general tendencies of education and research in archival science. First, a review of the literature published from 1985 to 1998 allowed us to establish a state of the art. Then, a survey was completed with a questionnaire which has been sent to educational institutions, national archives institutions and researchers. Answers were received from more than 70 different countries. With regards to the education program, the analysis of data shows that there have seen notable progresses. More than the growth of the number of programs, we must especially recognize the constant improvement of its contents, which is achieved in conformity with the propositions made in the literature. As for the research, it exists a community of ideas about fields and themes to be privileged even if there is an apparent division of the researchers into two groups. The first group distinguishes itself by its cohesion by unanimously recognizing a small number (nine) of priorities in research in archival science. The second group shows multiple interests which cover 30 research themes. The author conclude in saying that the development of education and research in archival science are on their way, but nothing has yet been won. It is important to accentuate the efforts to insure a durable life to education and research as pillars of the discipline. This text is an overview of a project which has been subsidized by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) from 1997 to 2000. It has been presented in September 2000 in Seville (Spain) at the 10th Symposium of the Section for Archival Education and Training of the International Council on Archives (CIA/SAE).     

档案数字化面临的风险及其防控

档案数字化建设需要投入大量的人力、物力,面临着安全保密和数字档案真实性、完整性、可读性维护等方面的风险。全面、客观认识档案数字化面临的风险,积极做好应对档案数字化风险的思想、知识、技术、人才、资金、标准、制度等方面的准备,采取有效措施做好风险防控工作,对于顺利开展档案数字化工作具有十分重要的作用。     

Excluding archival silences: Oral history and historical absence

Despite our society's increasing reliance on electronic documentation, to-date archives remain, largely, material repositories of cultural memory. It is an accepted historical problematic, however, that culture is often resistant to material preservation. There exists an undeniable and profound tension between scholarly efforts to reconstruct history and interpret cultural traditions and the fragmentary, and often limited, material record. That is to say, scholarship is shaped by a sinuous negotiation around the historical silences that encompass all of material culture. Historical silences, however, can at times be marginalized (or at best excluded) by a sensitive configuration of material evidence with oral history.Excluding Archival Silences: Oral History and Historical Absence uses a historically and geographically specific example of oral history to engage in a more generalist discussion of how oral reflection, especially when shaped by material evidences, can be an especially effective tool for preserving the dynamics of culture that often remain undocumented.     

Jewish archives and archival documents: Israel and the Diaspora

Throughout 2000 years of exile, Jews amassed documentation reflecting their creativity and organization wherever they lived. Communal archives dating since the Middle Ages have survived. In addition, documentation about Jews is found in archives of rulers, governments, and cities. Conditions changed in the twentieth century due to new developments: the rise of the Jewish national movement, leading to the establishment of the State of Israel, and the destruction of thousands of communities and their cultural possessions in the Holocaust perpetrated against European Jewry by the Nazis. The centrality of Eretz Israel and Israel in Zionist ideology led to the concept that it should be the locale for Jewish archives. Thus, for example, in 1933 the archives of the World Zionist Movement were transferred from Berlin to Jerusalem. The situation became more acute after WWII: If entire or partial archives of destroyed communities survived, to whom do they belong—the states in which they were created or the Jewish people? This dilemma also faces existing communities without archival consciousness. Should everything be concentrated in Israel? In recent years, there has been a change in the paradigm of Israel–Diaspora relations. In a global transnational world, with constantly developing technical means, archives can remain in the communities that created them, provided they are maintained and made available to the public in accordance with accepted archival practice.     

Historians, archivists, and social activism: benefits and costs

This article explores how activism by historians and archivists relates to and affects their work and how their work affects their activism. The findings are based on a survey of 195 historians (including educators) and archivists who self-identified as “someone who takes part in activities that are intended to achieve social or political change, especially someone who is a member of an organization.” The respondents participate in a wide variety of causes. Typically, their activities as activists reflect their professional skills and concerns, with a large majority involved in collecting and preserving the records of activist organizations. The article examines the benefits and costs for employers of employee activism, concluding the benefits outweigh the costs. The article also examines how activism affects the relationship between employers and their activist employees. While many activists receive recognition and other benefits from their employers for their activism, a minority suffers negative consequences up to and including firing and a substantial number feel inhibited from activism by their employers. The article also explores the effects of activism for the different occupational groups, determining that they are relatively similar but with some differences.     

观念创新与档案立法

改革开放以来,我国档案立法有了很大发展,各级政府和档案行政管理部门根据档案工作的具体情况和实际需要制定了许多档案管理的法规,保障了档案事业的发展.     

The zine anthology as archive: archival genres and practices

Jessie Lymn is a PhD Candidate at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and a casual academic in the Information Studies programs at both UTS and Charles Sturt University. Her doctoral research focuses on the archival practices of subcultural communities and how this furthers temporal and spatial understandings of archives.

Building on Eichhorn’s concept of ‘archival genres’, this article considers the recent spate of zine anthologies published in Australia and the United States as examples of these genres. It proposes that the anthologies are archives of content, form and practice, given that they commonly reproduce entire zines as visual material, not just text, and are produced by members of zine communities. This article argues that the anthologies’ narratives, presentation and distribution preserve ideologies of zine culture and that archival genres create spaces for the preservation of practices.     

Afterglow: Conceptions of record and evidence in archival discourse

In the last ten years, influential voices within and on the periphery of the record keeping community have succeeded in establishing the preservation of “evidence” as the governing purpose of contemporary archival theory and methods development. Afterglow offers a critique of the concept of evidence in archival discourse. Its main contention is that one can put records into evidence; one cannot set out to put evidence into records. The argument rests on the following assertions: (1) current discussions of evidence rest on a blindness to certain contradictions embedded in claims that record keeping principally involves evidence keeping, or “evidence management”; (2) a politics of temporality, under which an interplay of disciplinary knowledge claims and professional interest is discernible, helps to account for the contemporary rhetoric describing the relationship between “record” and “evidence”, and (3) the late-twentieth century legal, political, and cultural climate, along with the technological environment, explain the increasing prominence of “evidence” in these knowledge claims and professional ambitions. The essay concludes with recommendations for addressing these issues. Thanks go to Terry Cook, Visiting Professor in the Archival Studies Programme, Department of History, University of Manitoba, and co-editor of this series of essays, for his close reading and detailed comments on this essay. Particularly invaluable was his knowledge of historical and contemporary archival thinking on the notion of evidence.     

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.     

电子文件的管理∶旧瓶装新酒

当前，档案工作者和文件管理人员正围绕电子文件管理问题进行着广泛讨论，他们试图对已有理论有所发展，使其适用于数字化遗产的有效保护。本文就是围绕这些热点问题展开的，并对在电子文件管理方面已采取的措施逐一进行评价。     

业务外包:档案中介机构发展面临的机遇与挑战

业务外包(outsourcing)是将一些传统的由组织内部人员负责的重要但非核心的业务职能交给企业外专业的、高效的服务提供商,以充分利用组织外部最优秀的专业化资源,从而达到降低成本、提高效率、增强自身核心竞争力的一种管理策略.     

地震灾害与档案保护

该文分析了地震灾害对档案的危害,并提出了相应的预防措施。     

可持续发展与档案文献保护

一般认为,美国生物学家R·卡逊所著<寂静的春天>一书在1962年的问世,标志着人类关心生态环境问题的开始.1972年6月,在瑞典斯德哥尔摩举行的联合国人类环境会议上,人们开始认识到环境问题是与发展问题密切相关的,环境问题的解决必须从社会经济发展的角度来寻找途径.