Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/23257962.2022.2040455
J. Lowry, V. Harris
. . . sanitized way to talk about the ongoing project of creating a national archival heritage by and for settler society. It is a gloss for the fundamentally pragmatic archival response to the intertwined colonial preoccupations with history, law, nationalism, state-building, land colo-nization and settler emplacement in
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Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/23257962.2022.2051457
James Lappin
ABSTRACT This paper compares and contrasts two very different strands within the archival canon: the archival science strand whose leading lights include Jenkinson, Schellenberg, Scott, Duranti, Bearman and Upward; and the post-modern strand initiated by the publication of Derrida’s Archive Fever and including Harris, Caswell and Cifor among its leading lights. The post-modern perspective has become the dominant research perspective in archival schools across the English speaking world. However a post-modernist theory of how records systems work has yet to emerge and thus there is no post-modernist approach to records management. For these reasons the archival science perspective continues to be important, particularly to institutional archives. The differences between the post-modern perspective and the archival science perspective are illustrated by comparing their attitudes to the thought of Sir Hilary Jenkinson. Jenkinson’s argument that archivists should neutrally preserve the records that an originating organisation had relied on to perform their most important tasks is inadmissible from a post-modern perspective, which requires an archivist to take a much more engaged approach. However the fact that reliable records are very much a ‘double-edged sword’ for an originating organisation means that Jenkinson’s idea of archival neutrality is not necessarily a regressive notion. This paper argues that the post-modern perspective is particularly useful for collecting archives, but that institutional archives will still need the understanding of how record systems work that comes with the archival science perspective.
{"title":"Two archival canons","authors":"James Lappin","doi":"10.1080/23257962.2022.2051457","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23257962.2022.2051457","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper compares and contrasts two very different strands within the archival canon: the archival science strand whose leading lights include Jenkinson, Schellenberg, Scott, Duranti, Bearman and Upward; and the post-modern strand initiated by the publication of Derrida’s Archive Fever and including Harris, Caswell and Cifor among its leading lights. The post-modern perspective has become the dominant research perspective in archival schools across the English speaking world. However a post-modernist theory of how records systems work has yet to emerge and thus there is no post-modernist approach to records management. For these reasons the archival science perspective continues to be important, particularly to institutional archives. The differences between the post-modern perspective and the archival science perspective are illustrated by comparing their attitudes to the thought of Sir Hilary Jenkinson. Jenkinson’s argument that archivists should neutrally preserve the records that an originating organisation had relied on to perform their most important tasks is inadmissible from a post-modern perspective, which requires an archivist to take a much more engaged approach. However the fact that reliable records are very much a ‘double-edged sword’ for an originating organisation means that Jenkinson’s idea of archival neutrality is not necessarily a regressive notion. This paper argues that the post-modern perspective is particularly useful for collecting archives, but that institutional archives will still need the understanding of how record systems work that comes with the archival science perspective.","PeriodicalId":42972,"journal":{"name":"Archives and Records-The Journal of the Archives and Records Association","volume":"43 1","pages":"180 - 187"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48628121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/23257962.2022.2048639
M. Ngoepe, L. Kenosi
ABSTRACT The canonical work of Sir Hilary Jenkinson, Manual of Archive Administration, published in 1922, provided the basis of archival theory and practice in many countries, especially British colonies. In his canon, Jenkinson requested the archivists to evaluate the manner in which they select records for permanent preservation. With examples from South Africa, this paper intends to confront the canon about the selection and destruction of modern archives. A complementary method of appraising records based on an ‘audit or money trail,’ as best illustrated through the Auditor-General of South Africa’s audit reports of public entities such as the Armaments Corporation of South Africa, is proposed. This paper ruffles feathers and argues that contrary to established orthodoxies of records selection, financial audit trails provide the most reliable clues of which and what historical records ought to be set aside and preserved. The authors cite the limits of this ‘follow the money’ method and provide mitigation suggestions. The paper challenges existing appraisal paradigms and has a potential to influence policy, theory and practice of appraisal in developing and developed countries. It also offers a modern-day refurbished continuation and expansion of the ideas addressed by Sir Hilary Jenkinson in his seminal canon.
{"title":"Confronting Jenkinson’s canon: reimagining the ‘destruction and selection of modern archives’ through the Auditor-General of South Africa’s financial audit trail","authors":"M. Ngoepe, L. Kenosi","doi":"10.1080/23257962.2022.2048639","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23257962.2022.2048639","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The canonical work of Sir Hilary Jenkinson, Manual of Archive Administration, published in 1922, provided the basis of archival theory and practice in many countries, especially British colonies. In his canon, Jenkinson requested the archivists to evaluate the manner in which they select records for permanent preservation. With examples from South Africa, this paper intends to confront the canon about the selection and destruction of modern archives. A complementary method of appraising records based on an ‘audit or money trail,’ as best illustrated through the Auditor-General of South Africa’s audit reports of public entities such as the Armaments Corporation of South Africa, is proposed. This paper ruffles feathers and argues that contrary to established orthodoxies of records selection, financial audit trails provide the most reliable clues of which and what historical records ought to be set aside and preserved. The authors cite the limits of this ‘follow the money’ method and provide mitigation suggestions. The paper challenges existing appraisal paradigms and has a potential to influence policy, theory and practice of appraisal in developing and developed countries. It also offers a modern-day refurbished continuation and expansion of the ideas addressed by Sir Hilary Jenkinson in his seminal canon.","PeriodicalId":42972,"journal":{"name":"Archives and Records-The Journal of the Archives and Records Association","volume":"43 1","pages":"166 - 176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44438951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/23257962.2022.2054406
L. Duranti, Corinne Rogers, Kenneth Thibodeau
ABSTRACT A canon, from the Greek for model, is a body of principles, rules, standards, or norms that is, at least to some degree, regarded as normative by a society, a discipline, or professionals in the area of endeavor to which it applies. This ‘body’ may be more or less coherent and it may include rules that are implicitly embedded in practices as well as explicitly expressed in formal standards and guides. Furthermore, the term canon is typically reserved for conventions that are respected on an ongoing basis, though they may undergo some modifications or interpretations over time. On the topic of records authenticity, one confronts different canons, depending on the context in which the authenticity is addressed. Beginning with a basic, empirical consideration of what an authentic record is, this article explores the canons on authenticity in jurisprudence, diplomatics and archival science, and considers both how they have evolved and how they need to evolve to be meaningful and effective for digital records. The issue of effectiveness is addressed from both an intellectual and practical perspective. Are there clear and adequate principles, standards or norms for ensuring and verifying the authenticity of digital records and preserving it overtime so that it can be proven and attested to throughout their life? If there are, can they be implemented in diverse digital environments? Candidates that could form the basis of a cannon for digital record authenticity are considered and both their promise and shortcomings identified. The final section of this article addresses the empirical question of whether there is a current canon for records authenticity that is generally accepted and applied by records and archival professionals. A survey designed to test whether the results of major research initiatives on the means of establishing and protecting authenticity have become part of the canon for the practice and beliefs of records and archival professionals reveals a significant disconnect.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/23257962.2022.2040456
M. Ngoepe
The authors conceptualized the canon on appraisal looking at the current archival landscape within the Canadian context. They do so by looking at two tenets of the canon, that is, Jenkinson’s advocacy for administrative bodies and historians to be responsible for selection decisions, as well as the role of authority in validating the authenticity and reliability of records. The canon is confronted against the back-ground of the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action, specifically call No. 70 which is related to a national review of Canadian archival policies and practices. While the authors acknowledge the influence of the canon, especially in the former British colonies, they argue that Canada’s archival tradition never subscribed to Jenkinson’s canon as the Public Archives Act of Canada that set the foundation for the country’s archival system precedes this canon. The Act, they argue, made provision for the collection of both private and public records, unlike Jenkinson who would later focus mainly on government records and thereby not make provision for inclusive archives. If this colonial dogma is carried forward, those who have been marginalized in the past will continue to be pushed further to the periphery of the archival system. In this regard, they see Jenkinson’s Manual as having been relevant in a particular period (after the First World War), and as no longer reflecting the realities of today within the Canadian context, especially with regard to reconciliation and decolonization in relation to archives and Indigenous communities. The authors are trying to tell us that the canon is not relevant to the Canadian context especially looking at the work of the Steering Committee on Canada’s Archives, which is highlighting the evolving professional movement towards an inclusive, community-based approach to archival appraisal. This approach is seen as a way of including the voices of those previously marginalized in the archives. They do not see how Jenkinson’s canon can pave the way towards accommodating Indigenous traditional knowledge that is mostly transmitted orally. They further argue that by taking away the responsibility of appraisal from the archivist as propagated by Jenkinson, the archivist
{"title":"Reflections on “Remnants of Jenkinson: observations on settler archival theory in Canadian archival appraisal discourse”","authors":"M. Ngoepe","doi":"10.1080/23257962.2022.2040456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23257962.2022.2040456","url":null,"abstract":"The authors conceptualized the canon on appraisal looking at the current archival landscape within the Canadian context. They do so by looking at two tenets of the canon, that is, Jenkinson’s advocacy for administrative bodies and historians to be responsible for selection decisions, as well as the role of authority in validating the authenticity and reliability of records. The canon is confronted against the back-ground of the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action, specifically call No. 70 which is related to a national review of Canadian archival policies and practices. While the authors acknowledge the influence of the canon, especially in the former British colonies, they argue that Canada’s archival tradition never subscribed to Jenkinson’s canon as the Public Archives Act of Canada that set the foundation for the country’s archival system precedes this canon. The Act, they argue, made provision for the collection of both private and public records, unlike Jenkinson who would later focus mainly on government records and thereby not make provision for inclusive archives. If this colonial dogma is carried forward, those who have been marginalized in the past will continue to be pushed further to the periphery of the archival system. In this regard, they see Jenkinson’s Manual as having been relevant in a particular period (after the First World War), and as no longer reflecting the realities of today within the Canadian context, especially with regard to reconciliation and decolonization in relation to archives and Indigenous communities. The authors are trying to tell us that the canon is not relevant to the Canadian context especially looking at the work of the Steering Committee on Canada’s Archives, which is highlighting the evolving professional movement towards an inclusive, community-based approach to archival appraisal. This approach is seen as a way of including the voices of those previously marginalized in the archives. They do not see how Jenkinson’s canon can pave the way towards accommodating Indigenous traditional knowledge that is mostly transmitted orally. They further argue that by taking away the responsibility of appraisal from the archivist as propagated by Jenkinson, the archivist","PeriodicalId":42972,"journal":{"name":"Archives and Records-The Journal of the Archives and Records Association","volume":"43 1","pages":"164 - 165"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42204698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/23257962.2022.2031932
A. von Rosen
ABSTRACT This paper addresses the affective dimensions of caregiving in relation to materials outside the canon, influenced by Caswell and Cifor’s notion of radical empathy. The article employs the author’s positionality and lived experience, using specific examples to illustrate ‘zones of friction’ where the dominant discourse and its processes of canon formation show themselves, and how radical empathy can expose and destabilize the performing arts canon. The author begins to use these examples, and the feelings they evoke, as a waymarking tool for the application of methodologies such as ‘dig where you stand.’ This data collection methodology, by recording a wider and more inclusive range of participants as of equal value to performing arts work (in this case), brings Caswell and Cifor’s ‘caregiving’ to more stakeholders. The notion of ‘transforming affect into substantial data’ exemplifies the article’s engagement with the canon to articulate the potential for transformation.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/23257962.2022.2069091
J. Bunn
{"title":"Welcome to this special issue on confronting the canon","authors":"J. Bunn","doi":"10.1080/23257962.2022.2069091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23257962.2022.2069091","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42972,"journal":{"name":"Archives and Records-The Journal of the Archives and Records Association","volume":"43 1","pages":"119 - 124"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46960562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/23257962.2022.2057458
Julia Kastenhofer
‘They’re always changing, aren’t they? And what’s almost more important than what’s in them is the dialectical element: they’re what you react against. I know I sound like a tricksy academic, but in some ways a canon reveals to you not so much what is there as what’s not there. And so, it changes itself; it’s self-destructive. [. . .] It’s making me ask, “Why is it like this?”’ 1
{"title":"Reflections on “Authenticity”","authors":"Julia Kastenhofer","doi":"10.1080/23257962.2022.2057458","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23257962.2022.2057458","url":null,"abstract":"‘They’re always changing, aren’t they? And what’s almost more important than what’s in them is the dialectical element: they’re what you react against. I know I sound like a tricksy academic, but in some ways a canon reveals to you not so much what is there as what’s not there. And so, it changes itself; it’s self-destructive. [. . .] It’s making me ask, “Why is it like this?”’ 1","PeriodicalId":42972,"journal":{"name":"Archives and Records-The Journal of the Archives and Records Association","volume":"43 1","pages":"207 - 208"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46457944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/23257962.2022.2034608
S. Breakell
This piece addresses the creative canon, of practitioners who are noticed and validated by the dominant discourses of the performing arts and their histories. In these discussions, the canon is enacted through the archive by means of practices such as collecting and documentation. Whose archives are taken into the collection and whose are excluded? Once in the archive, whose names — and therefore activities and legacy — are docu-mented as part of the cataloguing process, and whose remain invisible because they are undocumented by selective cataloguing practices and systems? By what institutional, professional or individual inequalities might some be privileged over others? If these are the risks of the archive, then a countering view, seen in this article, is that the archive is a source of data that can be used, through digital humanities work, to challenge and expand the canon. The article also touches on exhibition making as another manifestation and perpe-trator of the canon. In a museum context, the exhibition is a product of an institution and of individuals, who may have their own ‘master narrative’ and blindness. What is the museum’s position in relation to the diversity of its collecting or exhibition functions? the relation-ships between the institution, the collection, and practitioners of all may be a mechanism of the canon.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1080/23257962.2022.2060198
P. Lester
How do we conceive ‘the canon’? The editorial draws across the writings that comprise this Special Issue to articulate a particular sense of the canon. Here, it is not just the foundations and principles that define and govern theoretical and professional discourses but also something that excludes and erases. It suggests tradition but also invites challenge and critique. It stimulates and generates questions and responses, asking: what does this mean to me? How do I respond to this? Whether deliberately conceived or not, the canon is nonetheless influential in shaping thought and practice. Perhaps most easily defined as the core texts of archival theory and practice, this body of writing can take on the character of a concrete and monolithic body of work, a static corpus of conventions or tenets. The rereading of these texts suggests the ‘loading of a weight’ and, in this sense, they can seem reified and fixed; yet they are, in fact, things that are contingent and subjective. Not only has their writing emerged from (and been shaped by) different social, political, and cultural contexts and conventions, but their canonical status has likewise been constructed over time. Looking to literary criticism or art history, for example, reveals the constructing, legitimizing, and ongoing re-evaluation of socalled canonical works. How, then, to respond to the canon? Perhaps one way is to think of the canon less as a ‘body of work’ and more as something that develops, evolves, and emerges, and which shifts and changes depending on our own situatedness. It is something to which we can therefore respond through ‘dialogue and interaction,’ as the editorial suggests, and to position ourselves in relation to it and to other perspectives. To think through how certain ideas and concepts come to define a professional body of practice is to reveal how the canon has been constructed, why it is the way it is, and what this means for us. This Special Issue marks the centenary of the publication of Sir Hilary Jenkinson’s Manual of Archive Administration. Consolidating earlier concepts, the Manual was produced within a context of technological and bureaucratic change and worked to define and bound the practice of recordkeeping; written at a time of increasing professionalization in archives, it thus emerged as a ‘viable archival theory.’ These contexts gesture towards how the Manual became understood as a foundational text; yet, this is something that readjusts over time. Jenkinson’s ideas were soon to be questioned In particular, by framing the role of the archivist in strict terms – his primary and secondary duties – Jenkinson’s
{"title":"Reflections on the editorial","authors":"P. Lester","doi":"10.1080/23257962.2022.2060198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23257962.2022.2060198","url":null,"abstract":"How do we conceive ‘the canon’? The editorial draws across the writings that comprise this Special Issue to articulate a particular sense of the canon. Here, it is not just the foundations and principles that define and govern theoretical and professional discourses but also something that excludes and erases. It suggests tradition but also invites challenge and critique. It stimulates and generates questions and responses, asking: what does this mean to me? How do I respond to this? Whether deliberately conceived or not, the canon is nonetheless influential in shaping thought and practice. Perhaps most easily defined as the core texts of archival theory and practice, this body of writing can take on the character of a concrete and monolithic body of work, a static corpus of conventions or tenets. The rereading of these texts suggests the ‘loading of a weight’ and, in this sense, they can seem reified and fixed; yet they are, in fact, things that are contingent and subjective. Not only has their writing emerged from (and been shaped by) different social, political, and cultural contexts and conventions, but their canonical status has likewise been constructed over time. Looking to literary criticism or art history, for example, reveals the constructing, legitimizing, and ongoing re-evaluation of socalled canonical works. How, then, to respond to the canon? Perhaps one way is to think of the canon less as a ‘body of work’ and more as something that develops, evolves, and emerges, and which shifts and changes depending on our own situatedness. It is something to which we can therefore respond through ‘dialogue and interaction,’ as the editorial suggests, and to position ourselves in relation to it and to other perspectives. To think through how certain ideas and concepts come to define a professional body of practice is to reveal how the canon has been constructed, why it is the way it is, and what this means for us. This Special Issue marks the centenary of the publication of Sir Hilary Jenkinson’s Manual of Archive Administration. Consolidating earlier concepts, the Manual was produced within a context of technological and bureaucratic change and worked to define and bound the practice of recordkeeping; written at a time of increasing professionalization in archives, it thus emerged as a ‘viable archival theory.’ These contexts gesture towards how the Manual became understood as a foundational text; yet, this is something that readjusts over time. Jenkinson’s ideas were soon to be questioned In particular, by framing the role of the archivist in strict terms – his primary and secondary duties – Jenkinson’s","PeriodicalId":42972,"journal":{"name":"Archives and Records-The Journal of the Archives and Records Association","volume":"43 1","pages":"125 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45435227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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