ARCHIVAL SCIENCE最新文献

This article analyses archivists’ and historians’ experiences of archival absence in nineteenth-century Europe. It takes off in well-known processes of centralisation, nationalisation and dislocations of archives to discuss how experiences of missing documents and holdings have shaped historiographical practice and thought. Drawing on theorisations of archival silences, imagined records and materiality, the article argues that although ideas about the past are immaterial, archivists’ and historians’ perceptions of history relied on archival materiality. This is illustrated by two case studies of fragmented, supranational holdings: the establishment of the Central Archive of the Teutonic Order in Habsburg Vienna, and lost archives in the Baltic provinces of Romanov Russia. The article shows how practices such as mappings of holdings, negotiations of restitutions and provenance, and publications of source editions materialised absence. Enquiries into absence certainly generated new knowledge about archives, past dislocations and loss. However, the article also demonstrates that investigations of absence have produced ignorance and further absences. In conclusion, the article argues the benefits of absence studies. The cases illuminate that absence was a material issue with an intricate relationship to imagined documents and holdings. Moreover, the article recognises a long history of archival silences, which may take different forms and affect different groups throughout history. Lastly, the article addresses the issue of representation and argues the value of disregarding the nation when historicising theoretically pressing issues such as archival absence and its materiality.

The cultural theorist Mieke Bal introduced the notion of “travelling concepts” as a model for enriching interdisciplinary dialogue. Concepts travel in the sense that they are taken from one setting or discourse and applied in others; as they move across historical periods, disciplines, or communities of practice, concepts are adapted, reframed, and reformulated. Engaging with concepts that travel is a useful way of finding common ground in cross-disciplinary exchanges and can enrich the theoretical and methodological foundations of specific disciplinary knowledge. In this article I follow the travels of authenticity in the field of cultural heritage conservation from its association with “originality” and “genuineness” in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to its emergent understanding in the twenty-first century as “networks of relationships between people, objects, and places” (Jones, J Mater Cult 15:181–203, 2010). By following these travels I hope to make a case for the value of reorienting archival thinking around this crosscutting concept and to consider whether the story of authenticity’s travels in the field of cultural heritage conservation might provide a jumping off point for a more expansive and expressive conceptualization of authenticity in the field of archival studies.

The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars witnessed momentous changes in European archives. Archives were moved, confiscated, looted, destroyed, and rearranged on an unprecedented scale. In addition, large portions of Europe’s archives were transported to Paris to form a central imperial repository during the period 1809–1814. What kinds of written artifacts were confiscated and why? To whom did the displaced documents actually belong? What does the removal of archives reveal of Western European documentary culture? The article focuses on collections of loose charters and deeds, particularly in Italy. Traditionally considered among most the valuable objects for their legal, political, and historical value, collections of parchments were reorganised or created ex nihilo in several countries in the eighteenth century. Their displacement raised questions about the definition, significance, potential uses, and proper preservation of documents and the meaning and functions of archives. French confiscations exacerbated such disputes, mixing them with (proto) national arguments about ownership and identity. The archival wars under Napoleon are, thus, a perfect example of the heuristic potential of removal in studying the longue durée history of archives and archival cultures.

Twenty years after the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste gained independence, thousands of families remain in search of loved ones who went missing during conflicts. This study examines how documents related to missing persons are managed as part of disaster response, focusing on case studies from the Cruz Vermelha de Timor Leste (CVTL) in Dili and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) offices in Dili and Jakarta. The analysis identifies three critical aspects: 1) documentation of missing persons; 2) management of ongoing missing persons cases; and 3) the role of document management in disaster response. Findings underscore the pivotal role of missing persons documents in recovering identities and rebuilding lives after the East Timor conflict. Effective document management encompasses creation, classification, storage, retrieval, and supervision, ensuring the integrity, confidentiality, and evidentiary value of these records. This study highlights the humanitarian objectives of document management, offering new insights into its application in post-conflict scenarios.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights gives individuals the freedom of opinion and expression, which includes the right to information access. In an archival context, information access can mean many things. In this paper, I have focused on accessibility for Disabled users. What does it mean for archival materials or websites to be “accessible”? To begin answering this question, I examined 55 archives’ online materials using three metrics: discoverability, usability, and readability. For this project, discoverability focuses on the logic of the paths from an archive's homepage to target items. Usability evaluates the implementation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and the presence of multiple access points for information. Readability looks at the reading levels of descriptive text using Flesch–Kincaid analysis and the presence of text alternatives. I find that, at present, discoverability, usability, and readability for the examined archival materials are low. However, by breaking down the broad idea of “accessibility” into three categories, improving that reality might become easier. Specific strategies for increasing discoverability, usability, and readability are also discussed.

Integrating adaptive learning model development into archival processing presents an exciting opportunity to tackle challenges such as labor-intensive manual tasks, lack of uniformity, and ineffective feedback integration. This pilot project explores the practical application of adaptive learning models and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to streamline archival workflows, improve data precision, and consistently implement improved best practices and standards. This research presents an overview of the methodologies and frameworks used, presenting an improved model for automated archival processing. In addition, the research investigates the wider impact of large-scale digital projects on the future of archival science. The capability to quickly process extensive amounts of both typewritten and handwritten text within minutes that traditionally have taken hours, days, or even months. This process is a major breakthrough in the field of archival science. This new development not only makes it easier to handle collections but also changes how we standardize and manage archives, making the process more efficient and accessible for everyone. We can identify patterns, entities, subjects, and policies effectively by accelerating text analysis, interpretation, and refining control terminology. This, in turn, significantly enhances our ability to share information, amplifying the value and impact of the technology. Through rigorous and extensively tested modeling, this system enhances internal data linkage and establishes robust external connections, significantly amplifying our capacity to manage and utilize archival information.

Rich evidence from Egypt as a province of the Roman Empire documents a curious story of local public archives being mismanaged over a period of several decades after their creation by the Roman state in the mid-first century CE. The events involved the destruction of records by pests and through  a failure to catalogue and index them. Precisely why this happened remains a mystery. Was this a case of subaltern resistance by local elites tasked with maintaining Roman state archives, a targeted aim of which was to generate administrative knowledge about private wealth? Or had local liturgists misunderstood or been overwhelmed by the demands imposed by the Roman imperial administration? This story will be compared with other evidence  of the destruction of public records in the Roman Empire, which underscores how invasive Roman record-keeping institutions were perceived to be.

This contribution focuses on case studies of private archives from Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, as they are the best cases directly attested in the surviving evidence of archives for the period. After a contextualisation of archives in the Greek and Roman worlds, this chapter shows how case studies from Hellenistic and Roman Egypt help us to better understand the characteristics, strategies, impacts, roles, and implications of private archiving practices in their socio-cultural milieu. In particular, private archives from Egypt are mobilised to reconstruct issues of the conservation, protection, and particularly removal and reuse of archives. It is argued that this evidence offers material that challenges the traditional assumptions that equate archival displacement to simple loss or destruction. The survival of these private archives from Hellenistic and Roman Egypt was directly dependent on their having being displaced, thus, they shift displacement’s heuristic value from loss to survival, giving focus on the archives’ afterlife. This adds an important methodological layer to the question of archival displacement.

The study addresses the issue of the possibility of specific access to public archives, particularly for the purposes of research or other scholarly purposes, not exclusively of official nature. This specific phenomenon is sometimes referred to as “privileged access to archives”. However, such access to archives subject to different than general access rules is only justified if it serves as a specific tool for balancing, on the one hand, the right of free access to information and, on the other, the need to protect the personality rights and privacy of the persons in the records. National archival legislations deal with this matter in a variety of ways. Some countries open the door to privileged access to archives, especially for research purposes wider, others not so wide. Most often, however, they introduce certain, albeit usually very limited, possibilities for exclusive access to archival records. This article analyses models from the French and German archival systems and shows how such privileged access, especially for research purposes, is applied in local archival law and in the practice of some archives in these two countries. It discusses the pros and cons of each solution, their benefits and applicability as well as their risks. The study seeks answers to the question whether privileged access to archives constitutes a violation of fundamental democratic principles and equal access to citizens, or if, on the contrary, it is a necessary tool to guarantee balance between the protection of personality rights and privacy and the right of access to information, freedom of study and research.