The contributors of Archives Stories argued that archives are a product of their political, economic, and social context from the very inception of documents into a collection. As chapters illustrated, the political context that surrounds an archives contributed greatly to documents available, the accessibility to researchers, and the amount of surveillance on topics, researchers, and collections. Jeff Sahadeo used his experience in Uzbekistan and its history to illustrate the dominating role of politics. Uzbekstan’s archive was used as a political tool to promote a specific history as regimes changes. “Uzbek leaders, meanwhile, are shaping the past to secure their own political future” (46). Archives became an important resource in establishing a past for the creation of the present and future that political leaders endorsed. Peter Fritzcshe argued how Germany used their archive for political actions. The Third Reich used archives to catalogue its citizens between Aryan and Jewish (196). Ghosh argued the role of social influence on accessibility at an archive. Indian archivists did not accept interracial relationships between Hindu women and British men. In their archives, documents attesting to this were not available, because these relationships did not exist. The context and history of archive not only shape the collection of documents, it also affects the resources and information available to researchers.
The approach taken by Archives Stories provided insight into the role of archives in research. The authors argued through their personal accounts and history of archives that archives are not collections of papers or repositories for holding papers. The archive does not exist in a vacuum, free from outside influences. The history of the specific archive for each chapter illustrated the importance of context. Who decides to allow access? Why was it created? Understanding the archive, allows a researcher to understand the limitations presented to them. When providing the history of the Passport Office under the Department of State, Craig Robertson illustrated the creation of the library by controlling archivists. The past of the collection set precedence for its present. James E. Schwarz controls the archive not allowing access to the collection.
While reading Archives Stories, I attempted to relate it to my experiences in archives. It is easy to dismiss the stories as products of less democratic societies, but the stories are universal. Despite our notions of democracy and freedom to access information in America, archives remain products of their contexts. The State Archives of Florida depends upon the state legislature for funding. A governor or legislature could decide to cut all funding to the State Archives dwindling its holdings and accessibility. Though “Intro to Archives” teaches you the basic principles of archives including accessibility and equal access for all, the archivists affect the researchers experiences to a great extent. I have seen an archivist’s interest in a topic prompting them to search relentlessly through the holdings while another request only receives a few minutes.
I really like the last paragraph in this post, as well as your comment about archives not existing in a vacuum. As we discussed in class today, the cost of maintaining an archive is high. So archives do have to take part in the game for funding, as so many other institutions do. Those issues can affect what's saved, what's highlighted, and what might be tossed out. I thought it was also really interesting to consider the power of the archivist. As you mentioned, Craig Robertson wrote about being denied access to documents that were relevant to his research. Should the archivist have that kind of power to deny?
ReplyDeleteThe last point you make, about an archivist's interest in a topic, made me think about librarians as well. If a search topic is of special interest, it's easy to go above and beyond to find relevant resources. But they (we) need to strive to be as unbiased as we can when helping patrons/researchers.
Since so many of the stories in the book come from Western researchers in archives in other parts of the world, I also felt that there was a temptation to dismiss the more dismal scenarios as something that could only happen "over there." The example of an inaccessable passport library within the National Archives was a good reminder that this sort of thing can happen anywhere. One can only hope that respect for democratic institutions will prevent the worst sort of control and destruction of documents.
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