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Abstract
Historical records embody the contexts of their creation and use through time, but their materiality may be perceived as a neutral background to their content. Analogue records are increasingly available online as digital images, and these images may be perceived as surrogates with evidential value equivalent to the source document. This paper presents a set of prompts for developing awareness of materiality in analogue records, and considers how these prompts might be applied to digital images of analogue records. The paper concludes with suggestions for how archives might acknowledge and mitigate some of the limitations of these representations.
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Notes
1. For a detailed analysis of shifting materiality and meaning in the case of manuscript, printed and electronic versions of a fifteenth-century treatise, see Bonnie Mak, How the Page Matters, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2012.
2. Maryanne Dever, ‘Provocations on the Pleasures of Archived Paper’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 41, no. 3, November 2013, p. 176. To my knowledge, this paper is the first instance in mainstream archival literature of a critical discussion of a user’s experience of records in their original forms.
3. For more comments on material literacy, and how archival mediations can shape records and their uses, see Ala Rekrut, ‘Material Literacy: Reading Records as Material Culture’, Archivaria, vol. 60, Fall 2005, pp. 11–37 and ‘Connected Constructions, Constructing Connections: Materiality of Archival Records as Historical Evidence’, in Archival Narratives for Canada: Re-Telling Stories in a Changing Landscape, Kathleen Garay and Christl Verduyn (eds), Fernwood Publishing, Halifax, 2011, pp. 135–57. A discussion of digital materiality and digital forensics is beyond the scope of this paper, but two good examples of this literature are: Matthew G Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008 and Matthew G Kirschenbaum, Erika L Farr, Kari M Kraus et al., ‘Digital Materiality: Preserving Access to Computers as Complete Environments’, in Proceedings of iPres 2009, The Sixth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects, San Francisco, CA, 5–6 October 2009, pp. 105–12, available at <http://escholarship.org/uc/item/7d3465vg>, accessed 24 July 2014.
4. The question of whether digital images of analogue records should be considered primary or secondary sources is beyond the scope of this paper.
5. Joanna Sassoon, ‘Photographic Meaning in the Age of Digital Reproduction’, LASIE (Library Automated Systems Information Exchange), December 1998, p. 13.
6. Joanna Sassoon, ‘Photographic Materiality in the Age of Digital Reproduction’, in Photographs Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Images, Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart (eds), Routledge, London, 2004, p. 195. See also work by Joan Schwartz, most recently ‘The Archival Garden: Photographic Plantings, Interpretive Choices, and Alternative Narratives’, in Terry Cook (ed.), Controlling the Past: Documenting Society and Institutions: Essays in Honor of Helen Willa Samuels, Society of American Archivists, Chicago, 2011, pp. 69–110.
7. Geoffrey Yeo, ‘“Nothing is the Same as Something Else”: Significant Properties and Notions of Identity and Originality’, Archival Science, vol. 10, no. 2, 2010, pp. 85–116.
8. Alexandra Chassanoff, ‘Historians and the Use of Primary Source Materials in the Digital Age’, American Archivist, vol. 76, no. 2, 2013, pp. 470–72.
9. This form may be used for separate units of a record (for example, single page of an album), a whole record or a logical group of similar records, as appropriate.
10. The examination could be deepened or broadened to suit different research needs, such as using instrumental analysis of the chemical make-up of the components. See for instance Kathryn M Rudy, ‘Dirty Books: Quantifying Patterns of Use in Medieval Manuscripts Using a Densitometer’, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, vol. 2, nos 1–2, 2010, available at <http://www.jhna.org/index.php/past-issues/volume-2-issue-1-2/129-dirty-books>, accessed 28 February 2014.
11. Archives of Manitoba, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Gertrude Perrin fonds, Accession HB2008/004.
12. Archives of Manitoba records are searchable through the Keystone Archives Descriptive Database, available at <http://pam.minisisinc.com/pam/search.htm>, accessed 28 February 2014.
13. Available at <http://www.gov.mb.ca/rearview/perrin/index.html>, accessed 28 February 2014.
14. University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections, Archie Polson fonds, A.00–16.
15. Available at <http://www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/collections/rad/polson.html>, accessed 28 February 2014.
16. Available at <http://www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/canada_war/polson/website/index.shtml>, accessed 28 February 2014.
17. Available at <http://www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/archives/canada_war/polson/website/archie/thumbnails.shtml>, accessed 28 February 2014.
18. Available at <http://www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/archives/canada_war/polson/website/Folder%205/thumbnails.shtml>, accessed 28 February 2014.
19. Available at <http://www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/archives/canada_war/polson/website/Folder%203/thumbnails.shtml>, accessed 28 February 2014.
20. A colour checker can be used to find the best colour match in a digital image file at the time of the image capture, and for calibrating viewing technologies, such as computer screens, projectors and printers, to render the image file more accurately.
21. Available at <http://www.gov.mb.ca/rearview/perrin/homeagain.html>, accessed 28 February 2014.
22. Tallman would have likely been influenced by the popular practice of the day. This paper complies with Miss Manners’s recommendation that a ‘basic, tasteful [stationery] wardrobe’ would include ‘a double sheet, plain or with a monogram, for a woman’s personal letters of various degrees or formality’. Manners indicates that she uses ‘cream double-sheeted paper with her monogram engraved in brown’. Judith Martin, Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour, Warner Books, New York, 1982, pp. 505–06.
23. Given that these records were stored for extended periods since their creation, detectable odours would be associated with periods of custodianship. In this case no distinct odours were readily discernable.
24. Nancy E Elkington (ed.), RLG Archives Microfilming Manual, Research Library Group, Inc., Mountain View, CA, 1994, p. 142.
25. ibid., p. 58.
26. ibid., p. 134.
27. Available at <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/arendthtml/build.html>, accessed 28 February 2014.
28. See for instance <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/arendthtml/mharendtFolderP02.html>, accessed 28 February 2014.
29. See for instance <http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mharendt_pub&fileName=02/020220/020220page.db&recNum=0&itemLink=/ammem/arendthtml/mharendtFolderP02.html&linkText=7>, accessed 28 February 2014.
30. Available at <http://soda.naa.gov.au/record/4842981/1>, accessed 28 February 2014. While a review of digitisation case study literature is beyond the scope of this paper, it should be noted that the State Records Authority of New South Wales, for example, hosts a site for case studies of digitisation projects undertaken by NSW government agencies at <http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/recordkeeping/advice/digitisation/digitisation-case-studies/digitisation-case-studies>, accessed 24 July 2014.
31. See for instance the folder for Kennedy, John F Mrs, available at <http://research.archives.gov/description/7460636>, accessed 28 February 2014.
32. See for instance the letter to John Arundel, 5 September 1837, available at <http://www.livingstoneonline.ucl.ac.uk/view/list.php>, accessed 28 February 2014.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ala Rekrut
Ala Rekrut is the Manager of Preservation Services at the Archives of Manitoba. She has advanced training in both conservation and archival studies, and her research interests centre on materiality and the preservation of archival value.