ARCHIVAL SCIENCE最新文献

Archival boxes are both practical and conceptual objects, and systems and practices are built around their logic. In this paper, I start by examining uses of literal boxes in very mundane and day-to-day archival works. I go on to discuss how these objects embody an aesthetics of spatial order, historicization, and sanitization. I offer a critique of the box logic as the center of the archival order, and the very basic point of divergence from what communities need, in ways that are both technical and critical. And I compare these archival boxes to seemingly “messy” community practices beyond the boxes. Toward the end, I also provide my own preliminary answer to what we archival researchers and practitioners can do to break out of physical and metaphorical boxes, especially in archival processing. To me, dignity by design is like everyday resistance: it is not only about ethics, slogans, and high goals, but needs to engage these very mundane practices, objects, and systems, and to reimagine them through critique if not art. After all, dignity boils down to these accumulated unassuming moments.

The purpose of this paper is to document the creation of the Archivo del Paro #28A, a digital archive created in Colombia as a result of the social mobilizations that took place in 2021. To this end, we situate the cycle of protests that has been referred to as “social outburst” in a context of economic, political, and social crisis deepened by the effects of unequal management of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also in a context of political opening following the peace agreements between the State and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army (FARC-EP) in 2016. In this context, we argue that the social outburst of 2021 constituted a historical milestone in terms of democratic political participation and, consequently, we respond to the ethical and political duty of archiving it. We then show that the project for creating the Archivo del Paro #28A is inspired by other initiatives that have taken place in the international arena. Finally, we describe the process of creating the archive through the campaign “Hacer eterno lo efímero” [Making the ephemeral last forever], which framed the processes of gathering, classification, valuation, and dissemination of the collected documents as a strategy to achieve a broad diversity of voices.

This work presents a case study that examines a complex web of cultural documentation that spans multiple record formats and creators with varying, and sometimes conflicting, perspectives. We show how recent efforts to expand and refine the archival concept of provenance may carry practical benefits for a broad range of cultural heritage professionals as they seek to organize and interpret collections that cut across distinct personal, social, institutional, and disciplinary boundaries. The case explores provenance as an interdisciplinary framework that might be applied by archives, museums, and libraries as a means to inform restitution for cultural heritage representing non-Western cultures. The case shows how an archival approach to provenance research can be an effective means through which cultural heritage professionals may evaluate the actions and underlying perspectives of record creators and subjects, hopefully leading to richer, more complete accounts of how objects have been collected by individuals as well as the communities to which they belong.

The positioning of archives in relation to state power is characterized by an inherent tension. Archives buttress the authority of the state by institutionalizing and legitimizing preferred historical narratives. National archives exemplify this, as their management and accessibility is determined by state legislation. Yet archives can also threaten state power by enabling counter-histories that dispute and undermine official narratives. We explore this tension here in relation to the Palestinian case. Palestinians have long been at the forefront of archival contestation, curating grass roots archives to provide alternatives to the state collections that exclude them, while challenging conventional ideas of what comprises an archive. In so doing, they have utilized the power derived from archives’ implicit legitimacy. By seeking to bestow this legitimacy on different ideas of “the archive,” Palestinians act upon the latter’s potential power: Whoever owns the archives can own the past, and whoever owns the past owns the present. Drawing on Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics, we examine how the creation, capture and treatment of Palestinian archives by various actors fit within the postcolonial archival terrain. In so doing we argue that contestations over Palestinian history show how archival power can come about not only by curating alternative collections, but also by challenging the very concept of an archive itself.

Web archives collections are often excluded from archival science discussions, and their description instead focuses on bibliographic approaches to item-level metadata. This article argues that web archives are best understood using approaches of archival description, focusing on a case study of the Danish Netarchive, a long-running national web archive. By capturing and preserving web sites for the purposes of legal deposit, the Netarchive creates and maintains historical records of the web. Examining the Netarchive’s systems and activities through the lens of archival representation, this article develops a typology of representational artifacts that support this work, including the use of database entities, wiki documentation, classification and management via Jira issues, and codes, identifiers, and structures embedded in network protocols themselves. The analysis considers how meaningful aggregations can be understood via these representational schemes, systems and architectures, and how the nature of born-networked records challenges concepts of singular, hierarchical orderings of records aggregations. The closing discussion proposes new modes of description that address these multiple interconnected systems, and raises questions about what this might mean for aggregate-level description in the context of digital and born-networked records more broadly.

Over the past two decades, many digital humanities projects have presented themselves as various forms of digital archives, and the term ‘archive’ has been used frequently by many digital humanists, leading to an expanded but also eroded concept of the archive. This phenomenon, described as the linguistic turn of the archive, has sparked intense debates in both the digital humanities and archival science research communities. The conceptual divergence between the concept of the archive in archival science and in digital humanities can lead to misunderstandings and academic exchange gaps on both sides. To bridge this divide, we conducted research by selecting all 58 cases related to archives from the International Digital Humanities Awards (2012–2023). This study draws on the socio-contextual analysis and discourse–historical analysis framework to code and analyze the characteristics of the linguistic turn. By extracting four layers ‘concept-tool-cognition-scenario’ from existing research, we innovatively proposed a framework suitable for analyzing archival terminologies within the contexts of different projects. Through analysis, we identified the following four turning features: (a) an expansion of the traditional archival terminology, i.e., many digital resources are referred to as ‘digital archive’; (b) the application of archival theories, principles, and tools for resource preservation; (c) the embedding of archival cognition in the processes of digital humanities projects; and (d) the integration of archives into broader and more socially oriented digital scenarios. This paper suggests that archivists and digital humanities researchers need to increase the dialogue between the two disciplines to better facilitate an archival paradigm shift and ensure the sustainability of digital humanities research.

This paper discusses the design and implications of a study that explored the potential for archives and library special collections to serve as historical environmental proxy data to support the reconstruction of the spatiotemporal spread of the American chestnut blight in Tennessee. By collecting, reconciling, and analyzing heterogeneous mundane primary source materials from 1904 to 1950, the major period of infection and tree loss, the case study reached beyond conventional evidence to ask new questions of nontraditional sources. QGIS and Python were used to reconcile and model nonstandardized and ambiguous natural-language keywords derived from these sources to identify trends and patterns that may not be evident from traditional document analysis. The paper argues that the contributions made by textual and visual information fragments found in these materials support an expansion of the term “proxy data” beyond what is currently understood as paleoclimate archives, i.e., physical, chemical, and biological materials preserved within the geologic record (USGS 2022). Such socially constructed records found in archives and library special collections offer additional qualitative and quantitative information about historical climate change to support modeling variable fluctuations over time. They can also provide a rich and dynamic context for the natural causes and human interventions that, in combination, act on the environment. However, the study also identifies significant limitations in the digital accessibility of relevant archival sources and a lack of specificity in their descriptions. These need to be addressed if integrating such source material into scientific studies is to become more widespread and scalable.

Trauma as a concept, a signifier and a frame has become increasingly visible in archival theory and praxis in recent years. A shift that is perhaps unsurprising given that society at large appears to have embraced trauma as a major interpretative category for our age. The recent spotlight on trauma can also be linked to accompanying movements in our discourse as we have begun to unpack and theorise the affective dimensions of records work and have moved towards more person-centred approaches. While the recent introduction of trauma-informed approaches to our field is a welcome development in many ways, this article seeks to critically engage with the Western concept of trauma to expose its intellectual lineages and the social and moral economies that have shaped its emergence in different spheres; and highlight how archival studies discourse on trauma is shaped in relation to different branches of Western trauma discourse. This article argues that as archivists and records workers adopt the language of trauma from adjacent arenas as an explanatory and transformative frame, it is vital that we do so in possession of an understanding of trauma’s conceptual legacies and in conversation with broader affective, liberatory and reparative framings. The article is written in the spirit of becoming truly ‘trauma-informed’.

This paper examines the nature and context of archival silences in two Armenian institutions in south-east Michigan and how those absences relate to the personal and family archives of Armenian women. We studied the dissonance between the representation of Armenian women’s voices and experiences in institutional archives and their larger role in the community as cultural linchpins and memory-keepers. Through interviews, archival research, participant observation, and abductive coding and analysis of both interview transcripts and fieldnotes, we uncover and theorize the significance behind those absences and the abundance of archival materials outside the institution. Each name in this research project has been changed to protect the privacy of our participants.

Since its inception in 1952, shortly after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and continuing up to 2022, China’s archival higher education has traversed a remarkable 70-years journey. This period has witnessed the emergence of the world’s largest higher education system in archival studies, offering programs from bachelor’s to doctoral levels. This paper traces the origins and evolution of archival higher education in China, providing a nuanced exploration that segments this journey into four phases: foundation and early development (1952–1966), disruption and suspension (1966–1978), recovery and expansion (1978–1998), and advancement and transformation (1998–2022). Furthermore, this study reveals that China’s archival higher education is characterized by distinctive features, including a deep influence from the socio-political environment, Renmin University’s pioneering role at the forefront, the significance of undergraduate education as both the starting point and an important component, and the strategic leadership and coordination provided by the Archival Higher Education Steering Committee. These elements differentiate China’s archival education from that of many other nations, showcasing a development trajectory that is distinctly Chinese. Moreover, this paper emphasizes the critical need for archival education to remain responsive to both domestic imperatives and international trends. China’s archival education narrates a compelling story of adaptation, innovation, and national pride, offering valuable lessons on educational evolution in a rapidly changing global landscape. By highlighting these aspects, this paper aims to enrich the discourse on archival education, demonstrating how it can flourish amidst shifting socio-political dynamics and emerging global challenges.