Culture and evidence: or what good are the archives? Archives and archivists in twentieth century England

Archives have the potential to change people’s lives. They are created to enable the conduct of business and accountability, but they also support a democratic society’s expectations for transparency and the protection of rights, they underpin citizen’s rights and are the raw material of our history and memory. This paper examines these issues in the context of the historical development of archives and archivists in twentieth century England. The research lays the foundations for understanding how and why the modern archives and records management profession developed in England. This paper will investigate the historical conflict (or is it a continuum?) between archives as culture and as evidence. The story identifies and highlights the contributions made by many fascinating individuals who established archives services and professional practice in England in the twentieth century. They shaped the archive in a very real way, and their individual enthusiasms, interests and understandings set the course of the English archival profession. To a great extent, it was these individuals, rather than government or legislation, that set the boundaries of English archives, they decided what was included (acquired) and what was not (of archival value.) The conclusion will consider the more fundamental questions: what are archives and what are they for, or perhaps, ‘what good are the archives’?     

American historians and European archival theory: the collaboration of J.F. Jameson and Waldo G. Leland

J. Franklin Jameson and Waldo G. Leland remain forever linked in American archival history as the founders, respectively, of the National Archives and the American archival profession. From the immediate post-Revolutionary period until the eve of the First World War, American historians recognized that their nation's early history remained locked in European archives. However, not until the pioneering efforts of Leland, working under supervision of Jameson during the early 20th century, did any of these historical researchers bring to the United States, along with the voluminous copies of archival documents, the emerging tenets of European archival theory. This is the story of the collaboration between Jameson and Leland, and of Leland's efforts to professionalize American archival practice on the basis of European archival theory.     

第四等级报刊观念:基于历史文本的解读

在19世纪中期的英国,报刊作为第四等级与其他三个等级抗衡的力量得以充分的彰显。那么,在当时人们的心目中,作为第四等级的报刊应当享有怎样的政治与社会地位?当报刊被赋予这样的地位时,人们期待它能够起什么样的作用并扮演什么样的角色?本文通过英国报刊史上若干篇重要文献,包括1852年《泰晤士报》的两篇社论、19世纪英国报刊史两部专著,以及1855年《泰晤士报》主笔瑞夫《报刊》一文等,分析了19世纪中期的英国报刊史学家以及报人们是怎样理解第四等级报刊观念的。     

博物馆革命历史档案的收集和利用研究

本文对博物馆革命历史档案进行了界定,详解介绍了博物馆革命历史档案的收集和整理过程,并从革命老干部与革命后代交流访谈、革命历史资料收集、专业学术理论支撑三个方面论述了博物馆革命历史档案辨考,最后从历史档案的编撰、历史档案数据库的建设、红色研学游的发展几个方面探讨了博物馆革命历史档案的开发利用以期为博物馆革命历史档案的收集...     

The Russian Orthodox Church and Russian Emigration as Documented in the Archives of the Western American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia

ABSTRACT

Among the extensive archives of the Western American Diocese of the ROCOR (over 2,000 document files), of greatest historical value are undoubtedly the archives of St. John (Maximovich) and of Archbishop Tikhon (Troitskii), the archives of the Russian spiritual mission in China, the archives from the Archbishops and Ecumenical Councils of the ROCOR, and the archives of the oldest clerics and parishes of the ROCOR. Also, the correspondence and labors of Bishop Nektarii (Kontsevich) and Archbishop Antonii (Medvedev) are of considerable significance for historians. In archives is hidden the potential for many research projects, for historians and linguists alike. Some documents have been researched, translated and published in the Diocesan Russian–English magazine, Spiritual Spring Journal. However, the majority of these unique materials are waiting for its researchers.     

An Introduction to “Visualizing Russian History” The Russian Revolution Centennial: Exhibitions,Collections, Audience

ABSTRACT

The Russian Revolution Centennial has called forth many exhibitions of the vast holdings of libraries, archives, museums and other collections. This special issue reviews major exhibitions, the history of the collections and the conceptions and strategies of curators. Revolution’s centennial in 2017 called forth numerous conferences, programs, lectures, publications, and other events. One of the richest avenues of celebration and scholarship was the many brilliant exhibitions organized by archives, museums, and other repositories. The centennial provided an occasion for assessing and for rethinking the modes of presentation and the significance of many types of collections. What to show, how to show it, and for whom became big questions to which curators, archivists, art historians, and many others came up with big answers. These exhibitions and initiatives have pointed the way toward new and welcome collaboration between curators, archivists, historians of art and photography, and political and social historians of the Russian Revolution.     

Administration of the Aurukun archives held at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

ABSTRACT

The Aurukun archives held at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies were initially developed in accordance with a ‘before it is too late’ model. In response to national controversy over proposed bauxite mining on Wik land, the Institute reorientated its documentation strategy towards collaborating with the Aurukun community. Wik people were not so much the subjects of the archive, but collaborators in its production. The outcome was an extensive multimedia archive which underpinned the Wik native title claim in 1993. Since then the collaborative relationship between the Institute and the Wik people has lapsed. Intermittent attempts to repatriate parts of the Aurukun archives were not successful in the long term. While revising controls over key Aurukun record groups, current Institute staff became aware of the extent and some of the strengths of the Aurukun archives. The staff have been attempting to revive the community’s awareness of their archives and their interest in them. Although the community’s interests presently have a different focus, revived collaboration between the Institute and the Aurukun community could result in some form of distributed custody and control of the Aurukun archives which may be of value to Wik society.     

The historian activist and the Gift to the Nation project: preserving the records of the Australian Red Cross

ABSTRACT

In 2014, as part of their centenary celebrations, the Australian Red Cross initiated a project in which it transferred archives to various national, state and territory institutions across Australia including the University of Melbourne Archives and the State Library of New South Wales. The transfer of this voluminous (but not complete) collection built on earlier transfers of archives to the State Library of South Australia and the Australian War Memorial. This paper charts the origins of the plan to donate the records to public repositories. It interrogates the societal provenance of those collections, recognising that the pluralising of records is an historical process, in which the agency of archivists, historians and administrators must be understood. An investigation of Red Cross records in Australia exposes that process in its contingency, inertia and, ultimately, enthusiasm. The paper also reveals the challenges faced by voluntary organisations in preserving their records, and how historians and archivists both can benefit from assisting such organisations. Finally, this paper argues that the ‘Gift to the Nation’ project, with its national and international significance, reflects a shift in our understanding of the First World War to a transnational paradigm that recognises the important role of voluntary organisations.     

Digitised,digital and static archives and the struggles in the Middle East and North Africa

This paper examines the differences between archived material that was always a digital record and hard-copy archives that were subsequently digitised. It considers the rationales behind the digitisation of archives in established western democracies as digitised collections and ad-hoc files are made available online. It compares this with how the archives of regimes in the Middle East and North Africa that collapsed between 1990 and 2011 were digitised. Overt political expediency determined the circumstances under which documents were released and recalled from public view. It examines the digitisation of archival material after the wars in Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and its political implications . Then it examines material that has always been digital: the record of social media exchanges on the day when Colonel Qaddafi was killed in Libya in October 2011 and how the archived digital form reflects the origins and purposes under which it was produced. In both cases the electronic format is not simply a question of ease of distribution, both have become a record because they were assembled for particular purposes. Like ‘traditional’ archived documents, they were never intended to satisfy the needs of later historians but they became a source by being brought together.     

King Demos and His Laureate

This article uses online archives of digitized American and British newspapers to examine the importance of newspaper publication to Rudyard Kipling. Taking ‘The White Man's Burden’ as its particular example, this article recovers the history of that poem's publication and initial reception. That history revises both the poem's date and place of first publication, from Britain to America. In the process, Kipling emerges as a more transatlantic poet than was previously thought, and as a figure who is more influential in America. He is seen to have a sophisticated understanding of the demands and nature of newsprint, of newspapers as a literary and poetic medium, and of newspaper poetry as a journalistic genre. Many agencies and interested parties are seen to be involved in the poem's publication, and the nature of its cultural success offers further evidence for a transatlantic press history.     

国外档案多元论的发展及其启示

21世纪以来,档案多元论逐渐走入档案界的视野。西方后现代主义思潮为档案多元现象及档案多元论研究提供了哲学和方法论指导。以美国为首的欧美国家历史、文化、社会学研究的开展对档案工作提出新要求,直接推动档案多元论观点的形成和发展。当前,国外档案多元论研究的主题包括：档案多元论视域下档案馆业务拓展、电子文件管理和长期保存、社会记忆及非主流社会群体文化构建、全球档案研究与教育活动的发展。档案多元论对我国档案馆业务工作革新、少数民族档案资源的保存与开发、档案学研究活动的多元化与社会化发展、档案教育及人才培养模式创新具有重要的启示意义。     

Reclaiming history: Arthur Schomburg

Focusing on the inter-war period, this article examines the context of the publication of Sir Hilary Jenkinson’s Manual of Archive Administration alongside the less well-known contemporary publication of Arthur Schomburg’s ‘The Negro Digs up his Past’. By placing these publications together, this article raises questions about the production and reproduction of the professional canon, as well as highlighting Schomburg’s contribution to key archival questions on the nature of collecting. This work discusses Schomburg’s articulation of the purpose of archival collecting which offers a radically different conception of the value and use of archives, one that focuses on the concepts of recovery and transformation. This article also places Schomburg within the wider emergence of the Pan-African movement and situates his work within the developing Pan-African ideologies and the networks in which he operated, and argues that Schomburg’s legacy can be found in the development of Black-led archives in London.     

‘<Emphasis Type="Italic">Arca,archivillo, archivo</Emphasis>’: the keeping,use and status of historical documents about the Spanish <Emphasis Type="Italic">Conquista</Emphasis>

Developing a relativistic concept of the pre-modern archive, this article considers the relationship between knowledge inside and outside the archive to determine how Spain’s historical documents about its new American territories were kept and used. The starting assumption is that collections of documents about the Spanish Conquista circulated among people and were not permanently stored within fixed archival spaces, such as small lockable cases (arcas), private collections of documents (archivillos), or the actual state archives (archivos). This article thus re-evaluates the state of knowledge about the new American territories of Spain and its distribution across various archives and collections. It draws particular attention to the use of historical documents by official chroniclers of Spain and historians of the Conquista of the Spanish Americas.     

Metadata as a machine for feeling in Germaine Greer’s archive

ABSTRACT

What happens when a human coder meets a machine one? This article explores this question with reference to the archive of Professor Germaine Greer: Australian-born feminist, performer, scholar, and professional controversialist. It does so by staging two very different data encounters with the 70,000-word finding aid for the print journalism series, a key component of Greer’s archive. The first encounter is archivist’s creation of the finding aid; the second, archivist and literary scholar’s interpretation of this archival metadata using sentiment analysis. Interrogating these activities side-by-side opens up a productive middle ground between humanities scholars and computer technicians, between historians and archivists, between the hand made and the machine made.

This article argues that sentiment analysis offers a new and highly productive method of interrogating archival metadata, and that, as a method which privileges emotive understandings of content, it is particularly appropriate to the study of feminist archives like Greer’s. It also argues that these kinds of detailed finding aids are new datasets that reward analysis in their own right, and particularly when considered in dialogue with—rather than simply used as straightforward navigational tools for—the ‘original’ archival content.     

Archiving justice: conceptualizing the archives of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) will complete its proceedings over the coming years, leaving behind an enormous collection of records. The ICTY archive provides a record of conviction and acquittal, prosecution case, and defense response—a vast series of contested facts and arguments. The ICTY winds down with a decidedly mixed reputation, especially among the communities of the Balkans, doing damage to the already-discredited idea of a Tribunal capable of aiding the processes of reconciliation. And yet the UN still speaks of the reconciliatory purposes the ICTY archives may serve. Pursuing reconciliation, however, sets up the archives for failure. It would be better for those establishing the archives to focus on other, attainable goals, taking into account Minow’s caution against judicial records that merely ‘speak for themselves.’ This essay provides historical context for the development of the ICTY archives, outlining its two decades of work, and emphasizes the political context from and into which the archives will emerge.     

THE DIGITAL TURN

Advances in digital technology have made the recent past seem like a foreign country. Media historians did things very differently in 2002. In the last decade, hundreds of historical newspapers and periodicals have been digitised and made available to researchers via online archives. Whilst the emergence of these resources has generated contrasting responses from historians, an increasing number of researchers are now embracing the new methodological possibilities created by keyword-searchable digital archives. As the first examples of this scholarship begin to appear on the horizon, this paper considers whether media history is on the cusp of a ‘digital turn’. It outlines the existing responses to digital methodologies, deconstructs digital newspapers in order to explore how they differ from their paper originals and uses case studies drawn from my own research into the late-Victorian transatlantic press to demonstrate how new methodologies might be applied.     

基于引文分析法的我国历史学者档案利用特征研究

为揭示不同领域历史研究对档案的利用需求差异,分析不同类型档案对历史研究的支持力度,本文基于《历史研究》期刊2013—2017年发表的史学论文中的档案引用记录,采用引文分析法,从施引文献和被引档案分析角度探讨了我国历史学者利用档案的主题、年代、类型、载体、地区和机构分布等特征,并基于此从档案文献编纂、档案全文数据库建设和平衡档案利用需求等方面为档案机构面向历史学者开展馆藏建设与利用服务提供对策。     

Mea Maxima Culpa: John Reith and the Advent of Television

There is no doubting the influence and impact of (Lord) John Reith on the shape of British broadcasting, both radio and television. As one cultural historian argues: ‘he occupies an important place in the social and cultural history of twentieth-century Britain.’ The most commonly-accepted view in television histories is that John Reith disliked television, would have nothing to do with the medium, viewed those involved with establishing and running the BBC's television service with contempt, and refused to watch television programmes. However, drawing on both archival and secondary resources, together with Trine Syvertsen's notion of ‘media resistance’, I argue that Reith's relationship with television was far more complex than has been understood thus far and that his attitude towards the new technology was shaped by a combination of personal and professional factors.     

Archiving the Visual

That technologies often govern the realm of possible research is a reality of the historian's enterprise. Although much attention has been paid to considering both the promises and pitfalls of newspaper digitization—specifically the increased speed with which searches can be conducted and archives culled for information alongside the drawbacks of proprietary databases and software—these are not the only transformations to the research-scape. Using her research examining news coverage of the controversial 1985 bombing of the MOVE¹1. The organization known as MOVE – a name that is neither an acronym nor an abbreviation—was founded in the late 1960s by Vincent Leaphart. While MOVE is often described as a ‘radical’ and ‘back-to-nature’ organization, the precise belief system of MOVE members remains ill defined. This is a point made by Wagner-Pacifici, Discourse & Destruction: The City of Philadelphia versus MOVE, 25–42. house in Philadelphia, PA as a case study, the author explores the challenges of using digital newspaper archives that configure articles as plain text rather than as image files. The author considers how the absence of visuals, specifically photographs, from such databases complicates the work of media historians. Such databases, the author argues, stifle the otherwise productive communicative tension between ‘seeing and saying.’     

美国州公共图书馆员职业认证制度比较研究

美国各州已有公共图书馆员职业认证制度,其认证制度由各个州自行决定,差别较大。通过文献调研和比较研究的方法,对美国不同州的公共图书馆员职业认证制度进行分析,发现美国公共图书馆员职业认证制度包括以下特点:重视继续教育及职业发展;加强小型公共图书馆员认证;强化公共图书馆领导认证;政府成为认证制度的推手;职业认证成为一种趋势。美国公共图书馆的馆员认证制度可为我国公共图书馆员职业认证制度的建立和发展提供借鉴。