Tag: archives

Institutional Memory

In their article, “Archives, Records and Power: The Making of Modern Memory” Schwartz and Cook discuss the important impact archives have on social memory and the often overlooked power held by information professionals. They write:

“archives…wield power over the administrative, legal and fiscal accountability of governments, corporations and individuals…[they] wield power over the shape and direction of historical scholarship, collective memory and national identity, over how we know ourselves as individuals, groups and societies.”

Does the fact that an object is in an archive make it more a more valuable object or reliable as a source?  Who decides?  What are the possible futures of the past and how can the past be found? Whose memory gets stored and whose gets lost? Author Alberto Manguel calls libraries “preservers of memory of our society” and as such as libraries and archives play an essential role in deciding the fate of the past and as such have a power that is rarely associated with them by the general public.

To preserve knowledge and history seems to be a human need. Is it related to our biological instinct for survival?  Perhaps we feel that even though our lives are ephemeral, memory of our lives should be everlasting?  NASA’s golden record was launched into space in 1977 with the hope of reaching other living beings or perhaps human descendants. The record contains sounds of nature along with languages and music from around the world.   Undoubtedly however, one record can not capture every aspect of human diversity, indeed, not even a large archive can contain a history or memory of everything.  Who then, will tell the stories that are not told by archives, and who will listen?

As Rodney G.S. Carter points out in the article, “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences and Power in Silence:”

“A universal archive, one that preserves the memory of a culture is an impossibility as memory is necessarily an individual thing: there are many memories that often are conflicting and contradictory. Even if archivists are willing to allow multiple voices into the archives, it will never be complete. There is simply no way of capturing the multitude of stories, although archivists must try. ”

Even if archivists and librarians aim to create an all-inclusive archive, decisions about what to collect and what not to collect must be made. Not everything can be kept.  As Schwarz and Cook point out, these decisions heavily impact memory of the past and materials given precious archival space are often used to validate ideas of how things happened or are assigned a higher value than items that are not part of an official archival collection. Yet, as Schwarz and Cook write, “what goes on in the archives remains remarkably unknown.” Schwarz and Cook mainly address the content of libraries and archives, but their mission to raise discussion about the power held by archivists is reminiscent of radical catalogers’ calls to draw attention to and change biases in cataloging practices.  The organization and classifying methods used in public collections adds yet another layer to the complex power relations embedded in archives and libraries.   How do archivists and librarians make decisions and how can these decisions be made more visible to the people who use them?

Perhaps one solution may be to raise public dialogue on these issues and to begin to raise awareness about the curatorial aspects of library and archival work.   It seems that weeding is one of aspect of collection management that draws wide public attention. News articles describe the public’s dismay at seeing large quantities of books and other materials being removed from a library’s collection. Articles from library professionals list up ways libraries can help diffuse upset over weeding and how to talk about the deaccessioning process in a way that is more acceptable to the public. Perhaps these are times when the public’s attention could also be drawn to the complex task librarians and archivists face when trying to create diverse and useful collections. Libraries and archives could create a public forum to openly discuss these issues and gather input from community members about the stories they want their libraries and archives to tell.

Another strategy that could be useful would be to offer small public tours of behind the scenes archival and library spaces. Such tours could help shed some light on important issues regarding collection development and cataloging practices. People can see what goes into making all the resources available to them. People often have a greater appreciation for work once they have a better idea of what goes into it. People attending the tour can respond to some of the practices they see.  This type of activity can help libraries and archives make their activities more transparent and open to public input.

Another way to increase public involvement in and awareness of important library/archival issues is through art.  Art has the capacity to reach wide audiences and inspire them to see and hear things they encounter everyday in a new way. A number of interesting artworks that explore human interaction with library and archival systems have been on exhibition around New York in recent years, and some of them have been successful in generating much needed public dialogue about some of the issues Schwarz and Cook raise.  Interactive artworks, such as an audiovisual artwork called Kinokologue invite audiences to participate in cataloging tasks encourage them to engage with collections in a new and playful way.

One other interesting option may be to use beacon technology to help tell alternative narratives about the collections. Beacons are small transmitters that can be placed almost anywhere to send out information to smart devices within a certain range.   Perhaps users could learn about the b-side of library collections, such as the story of where a particular item came from or why it was chosen to be part of a collection. Or maybe the beacons could be used to indicate what’s missing from a collection and invite input on this from patrons.

While each of these solutions may not be possible in every context, they do offer ways of increasing public awareness about the important yet often invisible power issues Schwarz and Cook raise. When people have the opportunity to gain insight into how collections are produced and maintained and the decisions librarians and archivists are faced with, they may begin to see these places as less neutral objective spaces and recognize them for the socio-cultural-historic constructed places that they are. While libraries, archives and museums are sometimes known as memory institutions, perhaps such activities may help people realize that these institutional memories, just like each of ours are inherently biased, faulty and incomplete.  Every object and every memory changes with time and context.  What does not change is the human desire to preserve memories as best as possible with the hope that future generations can learn from and find something of themselves within them.

Works Cited:

Schwartz, J. & Cook, T. (2002). “Archives, records, and power: the making of modern memory,” Archival Science 2: 1–19.

CARTER, Rodney G.S.. Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence. Archivaria, [S.l.], sep. 2006.

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Preserving Dissent: Labor Archives and Archivists’ Labor

The directory of labor archives in the United States and Canada compiled by the Labor Archives Roundtable at the Society of American Archivists makes it clear that preservation of, and access to, records concerning labor movements is a priority for North American institutions of status and power. The Labor Archives Roundtable aims to connect archivists, labor organizations, researchers, and institutions with an interest in records concerning labor to ensure preservation of and access to such records. In its directory the Roundtable lists archives in the field of labor in 30 U.S. states, among which New York is particularly well-represented by the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University, and the archives and library at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. This article will review some of the roles, contradictions, challenges and opportunities faced by archives that deal explicitly with the records of organizations like those in labor movements who challenge established social power relations.

When making decisions about preservation of, and access to, archival records, archivists face significant conceptual, technical, and social hurdles. One conceptual challenge concerns the natures of archives and archival work themselves. In 2002 archivists Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook made an argument for the creative social and historical powers of archives and for the resulting responsibilities of archivists. Their article, titled “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory,” asserted that traditional archival practice had clung to the conjoined myths of professional and archival neutrality. By refusing to recognize the role archives play as sites for the negotiation of social power and the creation of social memory, and the resultant influence of archivists upon that negotiation and creation, archivists refused accountability for their own roles in the perpetuance of existing social power relations. As Schwartz and Cook note, archives originate in the information needs and social values of the powerful; they are not spontaneously-occurring historical repositories but reflect instead the concerns of a society’s privileged classes. Without continual questioning by archivists, the records chosen for inclusion in an archive may well document and justify only the powerful.

This lack of questioning is dangerous because it implicitly supports the archival myth of neutrality and objectivity, and thus sanctions the already strong predilection of archives and archivists to document primarily mainstream culture and powerful records creators (Schwartz and Cook, 18).

The challenges faced by archivists include technical and social obstacles. As the article “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era,” by historian Roy Rosenzweig, underlines, “preservation of the past is, in the end, often a matter of allocating adequate resources” (Rosenzweig, 761). Writing in 2003, Rosenzweig focused on the new challenges of preservation and access posed by records in digital formats. He concluded that although the technical hurdles involved in archiving born-digital materials are substantial, “the problems are much more than technical and involve difficult social, political, and organizational questions of authenticity, ownership, and responsibility” (Rosenzweig, 748). Allocation of resources to preserve historical records is complicated when, as with born-digital materials, ownership of, and thus responsibility for, those records is diffuse and/or ambiguous.

Of course archivists focused on records pertaining to organizations, such as labor organizations, who challenge existing power relations are not immune to the reassuring inclination to view their profession as a neutral endeavor committed to safeguarding an uncontroversial historicity. Neither are they free of the technical, social, and political challenges facing archival work in general and the archiving of born-digital materials in particular. In fact, it could be argued that such archives face those hurdles to a greater extent than do less politicized archives as they document the more diffuse and less well-funded efforts made and media used by those who oppose the interests of society’s powerful. Nor does the existence of specialized archives that treat labor movements, such as the Kheel Center, the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, and the archives at the YIVO Institute, obviate the necessity for sensitive consideration of the ways in which such archives’ records should be preserved for future access. As political scientist Michael Lipsky noted in his 1969 paper, “Toward a Theory of Street-level Bureaucracy,” the existence of such specialized units may only reinforce omission of less powerful groups from consideration and responsible treatment by mainstream organizational efforts.

These units permit Street-level Bureaucrats to allege that problems are being handled and provide a “place” in the bureaucracy where particularly vociferous and persistent complainants can be referred. At the same time, the existence of the units deflects pressures for general reorientation (Lipsky, 19).

Archivists at Cornell, New York University, and the YIVO Institute are privileged and supported in their work by their affiliation with high-status institutions who enjoy substantial funding and influence. Similarly, the Progressive Librarians Guild, an organization committed to hosting discussion of radical and labor-related issues in libraries and library work, locates its archives at the American Library Association Archives. The American Library Association is a well-connected and funded organization whose stability and status will help to ensure the continued preservation of, and access to, those archives (housed currently at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). It can thus be seen that archivists who work with records that explicitly challenge existing power relations, and in archives that prioritize those records, do not enjoy a simplified approach to their material, but rather face a heightened need for sensitivity to the conceptual, technical, and social challenges faced by the archival profession in general. Specialized archives that prioritize the less powerful will need to ensure their own survival, likely by alliance with more powerful organizations. Archivists will need to include consideration of such relationships in their archival work if they are to achieve, as Schwartz and Cook enjoined, an opening of archives’ and archivists’ power “to vital debate and transparent accountability” (Schwartz and Cook, 1).

 

Works Cited

Lipsky, M. (1969). “Toward a theory of street-level bureaucracy.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, NYC.

Rosenzweig, R. (2003). “Scarcity or abundance? Preserving the past in a digital era,” The American Historical Review 108(3): 735–763.

Schwartz, J. & Cook, T. (2002). “Archives, records, and power: the making of modern memory,” Archival Science 2: 1–19.

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Bringing (Un)dead Books Back to Life at Reanimation Library

Reanimation Library's Reading Room, via reanimationlibrary.org
Reanimation Library’s Reading Room, via reanimationlibrary.org

The shelves of Brooklyn’s Reanimation Library are lined with bowling manuals, guides to Gregg shorthand, outdated biology textbooks, a tech-savvy fitness book called “computercise,” and even a thick tome containing nothing but random series of numbers. Browsing the collection feels more like inhabiting a vaguely retro-futurist cabinet of curiosities than a library in the traditional sense. But through this hybrid library and conceptual artwork, Reanimation Library founder Andrew Beccone challenges us to rethink systems of knowledge and cultural value.

Located in the Proteus Gowanus complex since 2006, Reanimation Library serves primarily as a visual resource to inspire artists and individuals to create new work. Though the collection does not circulate, visitors are encouraged to scan and reuse images that they find – in Beccone’s words, to “pan for gold in the sediment of visual culture.” Among Reanimation Library’s audience are book artists, animators, collectors, writers and students. Beyond Brooklyn, Reanimation installs “branch libraries,” which are temporary, site-sourced versions of the library, at art and cultural spaces as far afield as Lebanon. Additionally, the library invites writers to critically respond to works from the collection on its Word Processor blog.

Reanimation Library started out as an extension of Beccone’s personal interests. A practicing visual artist, he worked in libraries for years and studied library science at Pratt. The collection’s scope reflects his interest in the print and visual culture of the era spanning from the ‘40s to the ‘70s, eschewing high-art texts for vernacular subjects. He delights in the “popular modernism” of this atomic-age visual culture, which seems to promise everyone the possibility of transforming his or her world, even through mundane pursuits. The books function more as artifacts than as texts, giving us insight into the era’s mode of visual/textual reproduction and embodying its cultural mindset. Reanimation Library allows visitors to perform their own “archaeology of knowledge,” gleaning understanding of the past’s (failed) promises through its detritus – and reclaiming its visual potential for the future.

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates, a Reanimation Library book
A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates, a Reanimation Library book

Owing to the project’s focus on generating new work, I asked Beccone how he tracked and displayed the art created in response to the collection. While he originally attempted to include the works in his digital catalog and link them to the books they referenced, this proved to be too much of an administrative burden, even with occasional volunteer help. Also, attempting to meticulously track and record every artwork felt a bit authoritarian – patrons actively share in the project, and once the images enter their hands, they are theirs to transform. The library negotiates an interesting space between private and public collection – in some sense, it’s a portrait of Beccone’s own interests, but he’s offering it up to everyone.

Reanimation Library has drawn an ambivalent reaction from library professionals, perhaps because it calls attention to the materials libraries eliminate through weeding. Collection development policies prioritize currently relevant textual information, often assigning little weight to the visual dimension of the work. In our conversation, Beccone noted that there’s something conservative to the way libraries consider useful information, often de-privileging visual information that’s not easily classified and pushing it away from access. His perspective on the library’s power in determining culturally useful knowledge resonates with Foucault’s definition of the archive:

“[The archive is not] that which collects the dust of statements that have become inert once more, and which may make possible the miracle of their resurrection; it is that which defines the mode of occurrence of the statement-thing, it is the system of its functioning,” (Foucault 129).

While Reanimation Library may aim to make this “miracle” possible once more, it is still, resolutely, a library, with books cataloged according to the Library of Congress system. For Beccone, the choice of Library of Congress was a bit arbitrary – it suited his purposes, and was the classification system he was most familiar with. Still, many librarians have refused to see Reanimation Library as something more than an art project, despite the fact that Beccone embraces the library’s spirit of providing free, democratic access to information.

From Reanimation Library's digital image collection
From Reanimation Library’s digital image collection

The project has received a more enthusiastic response in the art world, where it resonates with recent interests in social practice and relational art. Particularly since the 1960s, the art world has showed a continued interest in questioning hierarchies and breaking down disciplinary boundaries. Artworks such as Marcel Broodthaers’ “Department of Eagles” have emphasized the strangeness of the archive, its gaps and its visual repetitions. Artistically, Reanimation Library has found a community at Proteus Gowanus, a gallery and reading room that hosts residents interested in cross-disciplinary inquiry and collaboration. Its neighbors at the space have included Morbid Anatomy Museum, focusing on art, science, and death, and Observatory, a group of “oddball para-academics” who present lectures and events.

Marcel Broodthaers' fictitious museum, Department of Eagles, 1968
Marcel Broodthaers’ fictitious museum, Department of Eagles, 1968

While Reanimation Library encourages engagement with books as physical and material objects, it also offers a full digital catalog and online collection of thousands of images. For Beccone, print and digital are not mutually exclusive – rather, they offer different modes of understanding and searching for information that can support and mutually reinforce one another. The digital archive allows people outside of New York to access part of the collection, as well as offering a browsing experience that’s distinct from the physical space. However, he has no intent of fully digitizing the collection – because of resource limitations, conceptual intentions, and because this may infringe on fair use.

Beccone finds that many people of the younger generation that has grown up with the Internet have taken a strong interest in the collection, and in book arts more generally. Citing the success of the New York Art Book Fair, he notes that there has been an embrace of print objects and analog technologies, in reaction to the ephemerality and intangibility of the digital. Books have a medium-specific way of conveying information, speaking as much through the feel of their pages and the visual quality of color, ink and image reproduction as they do through their content. While techniques of collage, remix and juxtaposition are nothing new, they are the dominant modes of cultural production in the digital environment.

From 1985 B-horror classic, Reanimator, which you should all watch
From 1985 B-horror classic, Reanimator, which you should all watch

Reanimation Library’s books may be “dead” in one sense, bearers of bunk knowledge and outmoded cultural trends – but they encourage the mad scientist in all of us to give them life, to make their zombie-like moans reverberate through the cracks in the “official” archive’s walls.

Interested in Reanimation Library? Check out these other alternative library projects:

Work Cited:

Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books.

Posted on by SrrhHamerman 0

The Great and Powerful…

Do you remember the Wizard of Oz? I hope so, or else this will not make sense to the ones who do not. Dorothy and her friends went on a journey to see the great and powerful Oz to ask a certain request. This process can be translatable to those who go to the archives for answers. The archives, in a way, can be seen as the great and powerful Oz. The people of the town go to Oz for answers; he is all knowing. However, Oz magnificence was an illusion, he was merely a man.

 

Oz, and the archive have very similar purpose and position in society. The archive is a place and idea that holds power in the ways we preserve and shape knowledge and memory. But with this power comes great responsibility (thank you spider-man), in other words, where there is power of selection there is the power to exclude and silence.

 

The archive is a truly powerful and political domain. The archive has the ability to not only persevere, and organize information; this domain essentially shapes our knowledge and memory of the past. Yet, the power of selection can also be countered with omission. “Archives are ‘how we know ourselves as individuals, groups, and societies,’” (Carter, 2006) it helps shape one’s identity. However, amongst all the resources that is collected, how does the archivist determine what shall be preserved or forgotten? This question is closely knitted into the issue of archival alienation and silence. Archivist Rodney G.S. Carter notes, “the power to exclude is a fundamental aspect of the archive. Inevitable, there are distortions, omissions, erasures, and silence in the archive,” (2006) not everyone’s voices are heard, especially the marginalized. If the records of these groups are manipulated and destroyed, or excluded, [their narratives] cannot be transmitted across time, the records about this group may ultimately disappear from history (2006).

 

There are three types of powers that are possessed by the archive: control over collective memory, control of preservation, and specifically to the archivist, the interpretation and meditation between records and users. This amount of power is astounding, and scary. These powers shape what and how we learn. It was interesting that archivist Randall Jimerson, suggested archivist to embrace this power. However, there was a catch. We should embrace the powers, in order to use them for greatness. I believe this can be applied to reference librarians as well. Librarians hold somewhat power in the community, because we provide access to service and information that our residents interests or needs. By embracing this power, we can keep ourselves in check in terms of what to record and materials to exclude, how to intercept and provide access to the user.

 

However, the power to exclude materials can, and often leads to archival silence. Archival silence is gaps of information that are not present in a collection. These gaps are often records that connect or represent marginalized groups. Archival silence are gaps in preserved texts such as written, visual, audio-visual, and electronic which are “currency of archives” (2006) These text are often not representable of society. Oftentimes, the history accounted for are from the viewpoint of those in power or privileged, this act can leave a void in the collective memory because it excludes the viewpoints of the minorities or underprivileged. This silence can lead to a lack of identity. Most importantly, these gaps can lead to a history being forgotten or distorted.

 

The duty to be mindful of the gaps within the archive should be accepted by librarians and archivists. There are several tactics that were suggested by numerous archivists that will be helpful in the profession. The first is using a feminist critique to listen to the silences. This is done by listening to the omissions and interrogating the powerful (Carter, 2006). Secondly, archivist Randall Jimerson suggests embracing the power of the archive. By doing so, we can use the power for good, to use our power of knowledge preservations and memory formation to protect the public interest (2005). In addition, it is best, I believe, for anyone in the research profession, to eliminate as much bias in our process mainly neutrality. The act to not take a stance is a loose form of indifference. In addition, by acknowledging bias we avoid using power indiscriminately, or accidentally (Carter, 2006). Lastly, acquiring a social responsibility will help foster awareness and activism to address this type of archival discourse. These tactics will not solve this issue but will hinder the possibility of future gaps.

 

For those who wish to pursue the life of an archivist, or a librarian for the matter, be aware of this issue. Be conscious of your selection of material and look for ways in which you can be inclusive. It is a part of our social responsibility in a democratic society to notice alienation in our collection whether it is the library or archives. This awareness can enable information professionals to vocalize those who are misrepresented; this inclusion can lead to proper representation, positive formation of memory and identity.

 

 

 

Carter, R. (2006). Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in       Silence. Archivaria, 61(61). Retrieved October 22, 2014,             fromhttp://journals.sfu.ca/archivar/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12541/13687

 

Jimerson R. C. (2005). Embracing the Power of Archives. Society of American        Archivist. Retrieved October 20, 2014, from             http://www.archivists.org/governance/presidential/jimerson.asp

 

Jimerson, R. C. (2009). Archive Power: Memory, accountability, and social justice.            Chicago: The Society of American Archivist.

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A Monument to Memory

Control of the archive – variously defined – means control of society and thus control of determining history’s winners and losers.1

Or, as Hollywood would have it:

While we must, and will, win this war, we must also remember the high price that’ll be paid if the very foundation of modern civilization is destroyed.

So opines George Clooney in the wonderfully melodramatic trailer for the hotly anticipated movie: The Monuments Men
http://youtu.be/izTbur3YYiY

Based on Robert M. Edsel’s book novel The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History, this is the remarkable true story of six men, handpicked to rescue the art masterpieces of the world from Nazi thieves under direct orders from Hitler during World War II.

In total, there were 345 men and women from thirteen nations who joined the MFAA – Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives, of the Civil Affairs and Military Government Section of the Allied armies. Established in June 1943, members of the MFAA came from a variety of arts based backgrounds, art historians, curators, artists, architects and educators and went on to illustrious careers at America’s top Arts Institutions. Many spent up to six years in Europe during and post WWII protecting monuments, locating artworks, and in the years following the end of the war, handling the restitution of works of art and cultural works stolen by Hitler and the Nazis.

While it may be all too obvious why the recovery and restitution of paintings, sculptures, artifacts and documents stolen during WWII was so important to the Allies, it is worth stressing how vitally important having these works restored to their rightful owners and places is, in terms of serving to reconnect those people, torn apart by war on a scale never before experienced, to their cultural past. While Schwartz and Moore raise questions and concerns throughout their essay: Archives, Records, Power, in their conclusion there can be no doubting the importance of archives:

Memory, like history, is rooted in archives. Without archives, memory falters, knowledge of accomplishments fades, pride in a shared past dissipates. Archives counter these losses. Archives contain the evidence of what went before. This is particularly germane in the modern world…the archive remains as one foundation of historical understanding. Archives validate our experiences, our perceptions, our narratives, our stories. Archives are our memories. 2

The drive to collect, organize and conserve materials from the past seems an innately human one. As does the converse: the desire to destroy, limit access to, or hoard, in order to exert some sort of power or control over others is equally a uniquely human characteristic.

Marlene Manoff, in her essay Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines looks to the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, who, she states:

…claims that Freudian psychoanalysis offers us a theory of the archive premised on two conflicting forces. One is a death drive and the other is a conservation or archive drive that is linked to the pleasure principle. In this formulation, the archive affirms the past, present, and future; it preserves the records of the past and it embodies the promise of the present to the future.13 3

Manoff goes on to point out:

The stakes in this struggle can be very high. In 1992, during the war between Abkhazia and Georgia, four Georgian members of the National Guard threw incendiary grenades into the Abkhazian State Archives resulting in the destruction of much of the history of the entire region.17 According to Derrida’s formulation, such destruction represents the failure of the present in its responsibility to the future. Similar losses have recently occurred in Iraq. In the aftermath of the U.S. led “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” Iraq’s National Museum, National Library, National Archives, and other repositories have been looted and burned. A chorus of voices has declared this a cultural disaster of immense proportion.4

One of those voices was journalist Adam Goodheart whose article in the New York Times Missing: A Vase, a Book, a Bird and 10,000 Years of History, Mannoff cites, was informed of the devastating significance of the Iraq’s cultural losses by John Malcolm Russell, Professor of Art History and Archeology at Massachusetts College of Art.

In his own, eloquent essay, Why Should We Care?, Russell explains how he found himself responding to western media with the cover-all response: “Because Iraq is the cradle of civilization” 5 when media asked why the world should care about the looting of the Iraq museum in April 2003. But for Russell and his Iraqi born colleagues on site, the significance of the loss went even deeper than the fact that artifacts had been stolen or destroyed. He describes one of his most profound experiences in the days immediately following the looting of the Iraq Museum was participating in an NPR recorded discussion via satellite phone with Ahmed Abdullah Faddam, professor of sculpture at Baghdad’s College of Fine Arts:

Professor Ahmed was very eloquent about what the losses at the museums and libraries meant for the future of the Iraqi people… But his most chilling comment transcended nationalism: “What can you do with a man who is ignorant and doesn’t have any culture? He is just like a dead man.”6

Russell goes on to comment:

He is also a very dangerous man, this empty vessel waiting to be filled with dross. Having a past, having a sense of who we are, allows us to measure our-selves against what political demagogues or market forces say we should be.7

In terms of an on-going commitment to protect the world’s cultural heritage in 2006 the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield was formed, and in September 2008, the U.S. finally ratified the 1954 Hague Convention (Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict), the cultural equivalent of the Red Cross. Between the USCBS and Clooney’s homage to the Monuments Men perhaps there is hope yet for the world’s memories!

1.Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook: Archives, Records, Power – Archival Science 2: 1–19, © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers
2.Ibid
3.Marlene Manoff: Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines, 2004 portal: Libraries and the Academy 4(1): 9-25
4.Ibid
5.John Malcolm Russell,Why Should We Care? Art Journal, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Winter, 2003), pp. 22-29.
6.Ibid
7.Ibid

Posted on by Rachel O'Neill 0

Issues of Responsibility and Opportunity in Digital Archiving

Thinking a great deal lately about the concept of the archive and specifically digital archiving, I recently spent a morning in the Condé Nast Research Library and was interested to see how/where these issues might be at play. In conversation, the senior librarian informed me that the library operates separately from the archive and described the difference as such: the archive serves as the center for preservation while the library provides access to information. While this sounds like a simple and practical divide, the idea was further complicated when I asked about articles published only online. Who handles the preservation of these articles that must make up a huge contribution to the collection of these media brands? She smiled somewhat ruefully and said she wasn’t sure. Not only did the library have no involvement with this process but the librarian actually said she was too apprehensive to even ask questions. With only three librarians, and one other part-time staff member, she said they didn’t have the resources to tackle that issue if it was raised. I was interested in this division between the archive and library and asked some further questions about photo requests, receiving yet another vague response. The librarian informed me that they had “some photo records” and could respond to “some” requests leading me to believe that the divide between the two departments isn’t quite as strict as was originally portrayed. The interaction got me thinking about issues of responsibility in terms of digital archiving.

Condé Nast has digitized the entirety of Vogue from the very first issue, an expensive undertaking that was outsourced to a different company. Currently, a yearly subscription costs $3,250. Digitizing is expensive and time-consuming and corporations like Condé Nast must decide what paper materials to digitize while also considering how to incorporate born digital materials into their archive. As of now, it is quite unclear how that is being handled.

The archive as a physical collection and theoretical concept forms a basis for much of scholarly research and when examined brings up issues of authority, authenticity, ownership, and policy. Attempts to define these objects of study get at the very nature of the disciplines they serve. Associate head of the humanities library at MIT, Marlene Manoff names various concepts of the archive such as the “social archive, the raw archive, the imperial archive, the postcolonial archive, the popular archive, the ethnographic archive, the geographical archive, the liberal archive, archival reason, archival consciousness, archive cancer, and the poetics of the archive”—a list which speaks to the way this concept has permeated many fields (11). Derrida in his influential Archive Fever, claims that the archive produces as much as it records the event. “The archive has always been a pledge, and like every pledge [gage], a token of the future. To put it more trivially: what is no longer archived in the same way is no longer lived in the same way” (18). Within this context the structure of the archive also determines what can be archived, and history and memory are then shaped by the technical processes of “archivization”.

These technical processes have seen huge transformations with recent advances in information technology. Manoff claims that the methods for transmitting information shape the nature of the knowledge that can be produced, and points to social theorist Adrian Mackenzie’s claim that the centrality of the archive to cyberspace stems from the fact that existence in virtual culture is premised on a live connection. In Mackenzie’s phrasing, “to die is to be disconnected from access to the archives, not jacked-in or not in real time” (10). In this culture of connectedness, there is a new kind of instant archivization where the moment of production and preservation happen at once.

This situation leads to two potential opposing issues. On the one hand we are producing very vulnerable digital records at an alarming pace, however; if digital archiving efforts prove effective we could end up with a more complete historical record than ever before, an information overload.

Information consultant, Terry Kuny, commented on this situation fifteen years ago,

As we move into the electronic era of digital objects it is important to know that there are new barbarians at the gate and that we are moving into an era where much of what we know today, much of what is coded and written electronically, will be lost forever. We are, to my mind, living in the midst of digital Dark Ages; consequently, much as monks of times past, it falls to librarians and archivists to hold to the tradition which reveres history and the published heritage of our times.

Kuny places the responsibility for this future preservation work on librarians and archivists, and it seems that in terms of the opposing dilemma—information overload—these same professionals would take center stage. Manoff points out that archival work is “about making fine discriminations to identify what is significant from a mass of data. These kinds of distinctions are also central to the work of librarians and archivists” (Manoff 19). However issues of digital preservation have far-reaching implications relevant to almost every discipline, and one of the biggest issues currently facing digital archiving is a lack of a clear path or a defined sense of responsibility as I saw at Condé Nast.

In Scarcity and Abdundance: Preserving the Past in a Digital Era, Roy Rosenzweig points to an absence of process in digital archiving. “Over centuries, a complex (and imperfect) system for preserving the past has emerged. Digitization has unsettled that system of responsibility for preservation, and an alternate system has not emerged. In the meantime cultural and historical objects are being permanently lost” (745). He discusses historians’ lack of attention to these issues, in part due to an assumption that these are “technical” problems outside of the purview of scholars in the humanities and social sciences. Manoff points out that, “archival discourse has also become a way to address some of the thorny issues of disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge production and the artificial character of disciplinary boundaries” (11). The most important and difficult issues of digital preservation are social, cultural, economic, political, and legal—issues humanists should excel at. Yet this professional division between historians and archivists leads to a confusion of responsibility that seems to go beyond solely this historian/archivist split. Within the discourse surrounding archives, libraries, museums and archives are often conflated and there is confusion not only concerning the overarching questions of how and what to save but also who will be doing it. Digital documents are disrupting our traditional system of publication, dissemination, and preservation. Digitization challenges our notion of ownership, who owns the materials and thus who is responsible for their preservation. Licensed and centrally controlled digital content erodes the library’s ability and responsibility to preserve the past. Why preserve something you do not own?

Rosenzweig ends his discussion, pointing to “one of the most vexing and interesting features of the digital era…the way it unsettles traditional arrangements and forces us to ask basic questions that have been there all along” (760). Digital preservation and the challenges it presents open up an opportunity to re-think disciplinary boundaries, to potentially form greater cross-disciplinary connections, and in doing so strengthen our own field. One thing is for certain, there isn’t time to wait for a perfect solution and if seen as an opportunity for joint action, this recreation of the processes of preservation can be an exciting opportunity. Let’s not avoid asking the questions that need to be asked.

Sources

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january00/01hodge.html#Kuny

Derrida, J. & Prenowitz, E. (1995). “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression” Diacritics 25(2): 13

Manoff, Marlene. “Theories Of The Archive From Across The Disciplines.”portal: Libraries and the Academy 4, no. 1 (2004): 9-25.

Rosenzweig, R. (2003). “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era” The American Historical Review 108(3)

 

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