At the risk of sounding like a complete moron… I realize I don’t really understand what archiving is. I definitely understand libraries and why/how the function. Those articles seemed fairly cut and dry. I even feel like I have a pretty good understanding of digital libraries. And I thought I knew what archiving was… until I read McKemmish’s piece “Traces: Documents, record, archive, archives.” When I think of “archives” the first thing that pops into my head is the scrapbook store Greenway Station named ‘Archivers. ‘ Then I think of people creating elaborate scrapbooks, putting together memories, pictures, tidbits, and snipits of a time that they don’t want to forget. I guess I assumed that formal archives were the same thing, just in more of a professional sense with less pretty paper and sticker embellishments.
It was interesting to learn the archives actual include so much more than just journals and pictures. But can include “oral and written records, literature, landscape, dance, art, the built environment, and artefacts.” That’s a little more than a scrapbook. However, with the example McKemmish gave about the confusion of children being “thrown” overboard in Australia, I began to get a little fuzzy on what an archive was.
Perhaps this is the first question I need to ask: how are archives stored? And where are they stored? Are they in a big box? Stored on a computer? In a glorified scrapbook? (I am being truly naïve here, but honestly, I don’t know). Then here is my next question: who gets to archive a particular event? Are you assigned something? Or is it a personal choice based on interest? It seems from this article that archives can become fairly subjective, depending on how the archivist depicts the information and what they choose to include. It almost seemed to me like a jigsaw puzzle that the archivist was trying to put together. They had all the pieces, and now it was time to put things together and make some conclusions. Is that how it works? It also seemed like an archive is somewhat never ending. There can be more added to it whenever new information is discovered. Yes? No?
It all sounds interesting, but I think I just can’t grasp the whole picture of what an archive is. Or maybe I missed the meat of the article. Hopefully someone who is interested in archives can explain it to me, or even better yet, show me an example!
I'm with you, Abby. I thought archiving was the preservation of old books, magazines, and artwork. I'm only beginning to grasp what an archive actually is in small steps. My husband says the scrapbook analogy may be pretty accurate--that helps me make some sense of things.
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