Engaging with Records and Archives: Histories and Theories provides a selection of papers from the 7th International Conference on the History of Records and Archives (I-CHORA 7), held in Amsterdam in July 2015. I-CHORA is a biennial conference hosted by a different institution each time; the most recent I-CHORA was held at Monash University, 28–30 May 2018.
The editors highlight that the theme of the 2015 conference, and the title of the book – Engaging with Records and Archives – is crucial not only for archival researchers and practitioners, but for all those who deal with records and archives, in whatever form. Eleven authors have contributed chapters based on their conference papers, discussing various aspects of engaging with records and archives.
The book is composed of two parts; the first, ‘Rethinking Histories and Theories’, contains five chapters and the second, ‘Engaging Records and Archives’, contains six. The first is opened by Jeannette A Bastian’s chapter ‘Moving the Margins to the Middle’, a discussion of the notion of the ‘archival turn’. Bastian calls for archivists to embrace a broad notion of ‘the archive’ and to engage with other disciplines’ characterisations of archives. This is followed by Juan Ilerbaig’s ‘Organisms, Skeletons and the Archivist as Palaeontologist’, which shows how the authors of the Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives (also known as the Dutch Manual) used metaphors and ideas from emerging natural history disciplines to explain the value and method of archival work.
For those following the development of the new Records in Context (RiC) standard by the International Council on Archives’ Experts Group on Archival Description, Jonathan Furner’s chapter provides interesting context, comparing RiC with other standards and data models in the archives, museum and library worlds.
The final two chapters in the first section are both concerned with silences. In ‘Mapping Archival Silence: Technology and the Historical Record’, Marlene Manoff explores the different meanings of ‘archival silence’, from missing original material and choices made about digitisation, to the impact of deletions and deliberate erasure. Elizabeth Shepherd fills a silence by providing biographies of Joan Wake and Ethel Stokes, two notable female archivists in England, in ‘Hidden Voices in the Archives’.
The second part of the book, ‘Engaging Records and Archives’, is devoted to case studies around the theme of engagement. Stefano Gardini opens this section by charting how the material within the archives at Genoa was used, re-used, reordered and appended based on political and practical reasons, in ‘The Use and Reuse of Documents’. In ‘The Bumpy Road to Transparency’, Charles Jeurgens provides a discussion of issues of access to the colonial Dutch East Indies’ records in the late nineteenth century. There are some interesting parallels to be drawn between the issues of access and government transparency grappled with in this context, and the role of journalists, leaks and access to government information today.
In ‘Archival Ethics and Indigenous Justice’, Melanie Delva and Melissa Adams highlight how archives may cause further trauma and harm to marginalised communities through thoughtless policies and practices. They discuss a case study where the relationship between a Canadian religious archive and the local Indigenous community broke down after the archives’ policies were followed in relation to providing access to the community. Delva and Adams show that existing frameworks may not consider the different needs of different groups, and in blindly following such frameworks, archives can do further harm.
In ‘History and Development of Information and Recordkeeping in Malawi’, Paul Lihoma discusses three distinct periods of recordkeeping in Malawi, noting the impact of British colonial rule and the establishment of a one-party state after the British exit, and the effect these have had on the National Archives of Malawi today. Next, Magdalena Wiśniewska charts the history of community archiving in Poland, looking specifically at archives developed to record the history of Poland in WWII, and the activities of the anti-communist opposition in the Polish People’s Republic.
Finally, Sian Vaughan closes the volume with ‘Reflecting on Practice: Artists’ Experiences in the Archives’. She highlights two ways artists are invited to engage with archives: one through an artist-in-residence or similar program, and the other where archives are consciously created and mediated by the artists themselves. Both methods show how artists’ engagement with archives can produce new ways of seeing and experiencing archives.
It is unlikely that all readers will find each chapter equally useful or engaging to them; however, as a compilation it provides an excellent overview of the depth and breadth of the issues discussed at the I-CHORA conferences. The first half of the book provides the opportunity to reflect on large-scale ideas about engagement, and how archivists must change their practice and be willing to advocate and connect broadly or risk irrelevance. The case studies in the second half, particularly Delva and Adams’, can be studied with a view to improve existing archives’ policies and practices.
Overall, this volume provides opportunities to reflect on the different ways of both engaging with archives directly, and engaging with the history of the archival discipline more broadly.