“A duty, an opportunity and a pleasure”: connecting archives and public history

ABSTRACT

This article explores the intersection of public history and archives, with particular reference to the practice of promoting broad participation in interpreting the historical past. Key concepts in public history such as democratising history, power dynamics, authenticity and the role of audiences in history-making are examined in dialogue with analogous archival concepts and activities. The extent to which UK archives are sites of public history is tested, providing evidence of the breadth of activity falling within a definition of public history and thereby demonstrating the value of engagement between these parallel disciplines. The article closes with suggestions for developing an ethics of public history within archives, informed by the theory and practice of both disciplines but with an essential focus on the specificity of the public history context of archives. The authors do not attempt to resolve areas of tension between the disciplines, but argue for a constructive relationship which recognises what public history has to teach archives and what in turn archives can bring to debates on sharing the past with wider audiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Public history
• audience development
• outreach
• ethics
• archival participation

Acknowledgments

The title is sourced from an anonymous response to the survey which is reported as a core element of the article section “Archives as sites of public history.” With thanks to all those who shared their responses.

Notes

1. Melinda Haunton  gratefully acknowledges the support of The National Archives-RLUK 2018–19 Professional Fellowship in forming these ideas and offering the space and time required to develop the principles for ethical public history. Discussions with Professor Geoffrey Cubitt of the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past, and with Gary Brannan, Keeper of the Borthwick Institute, helped to shape much of her thinking.

2. Georgie Salzedo  would like to thank Dr Jenny Bunn for her invaluable insight and support on an MA Dissertation, which informed some of the key thoughts here.

3. Gardner and Hamilton, “The Past and Future,” 2.

4. The Oxford Handbook of Public History, 15.

5. Jenkinson, Manual of Archive Administration, 83.

6. Wosh, “Reflections on Public History” provides a useful summary of public history in archives education in the USA, which is more widely applicable, and touches on historical disciplinary links.

7. Examples of work looking at exhibition delivery are Howgill, “New Methods of Analysing,” 179–94 and Lester, “Is the Virtual Exhibition,” 85–101.

8. See for example Owens and Johnston, “Archivists as Peers” and Wosh, “Reflections”.

9. Cubitt, “Bringing it Home” analyzes historical production across multiple institutions, including archives, faced with connecting an international commemoration with locally-focused collections. While he finds some practice very strong, his analysis identifies strands of historical production which are simplistic, exclusionary and which fail to engage audiences by not recognizing or understanding community change. Smith, “Affect”, notes the difficulty of engaging audiences with history with which they are unfamiliar, specifically regarding Britain’s involvement in the slave trade. “Most white British respondents tended to insulate or disengage themselves from the exhibitions, and more particularly from negative feelings that undermined their sense of national identity and sense of self.” 268.

10. Rogatchevskaia, “Revolution Collected and Curated,” 176.

11. A display at The National Archives, Kew, was subject to public commentary and critique in 2017. Press coverage such as this Times article 21 December 2017 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/empire-bashing-nationalarchive-backs-down-5shplhj3j covers complaints about several interpretation elements, demonstrating how historical interpretation can be perceived publicly as an institutional 605 stance and on some occasions become publicized and politicized.

12. https://news.hackney.gov.uk/review-into-landmarks-and-naming-of-public-spaces-launched/; http://camdennewjournal.com/article/heritage-review-begins-into-boroughs-street-names-to-make-sure-none-honour-slave-trade; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/09/sadiq-khan-orders-review-of-all-london-statues-for-slavery-links

13. An exception is Sayer, Public History, 36–9.

14. Hoyle, ”Editorial,” 1.

15. http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/about-us/

16. Hoyle, “Editorial,” 1

17. See among other key texts Bastian and Flinn, Community Archives, Community Spaces.

18. Samuel, Theatres of Memory, 15.

19. Frisch, A Shared Authority, xx, quoted in Smith, “Public Oral History,” 431.

20. Smith, “Public Oral History,” 431.

21. Duclos-Orsello, “Shared Authority,” 122.

22. Jordanova, History in Practice, 168.

23. Ibid., 182.

24. Eastwood, “A Contested Realm,” 19.

25. McKemmish, “Traces”, 17; Duff and Harris, “Stories and Names”.

26. Fletcher, “Public History”.

27. Schwartz and Cook, “Archives, Records, and Power,” 17.

28. Glassberg, “Public History,” 11.

29. Ibid., 137.

30. Lowenthal, “Memory and Oblivion,” 179.

31. Sayer, Public History, 13.

32. Saxton, “A True Story,” 2.

33. See Sayer, Public History.

34. ISO 15489–1 5.2.2.1.

35. MacNeil and Mak, “Constructions of Authenticity,” 28.

36. De Groot, “Empathy and Enfranchisement,” 397.

37. 'Saxton,  “A True Story”.

38. Bunn, “The Age of Authenticity”.

39. Ibid., 5.

40. Ashton and Kean, People and their Pasts, 4.

41. Jensen, “Usable Pasts,” 42–56.

42. See Glassberg, “Public History”.

43. Tosh, “Why History Matters”.

44. Kean, “People, Historians, Public History,” 37.

45. Quoted in Kean, 28.

46. HMC, Archives at the Millennium, 6.

47. NCA, Changing the Future, 24.

48. Archives Unlocked (2017), 9–10.

49. National Lottery Heritage Fund, Outcomes https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/funding/outcomes

50. Author's Twitter handle.

51. With thanks to all the York University Libraries and Archive staff who gave up their time to me. Although the Borthwick Institute is a specific context, the breadth of public history work from festivals to academic lectures, radio slots to hands-on workshops, and mix of stakeholders from Alcoholics Anonymous to natural scientists and schools inclusion, not to mention internationally viral stories about runaway nuns, made this a valuable testbed. For the range of their work, see https://www.york.ac.uk/borthwick/projects/.

52. Haunton, “Towards Principles for Public History”. Version 1 of the principles was released September 2019 and is available at http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/resources/temp/principles-for-public-history-draft.docx. Version 2 is now available at http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/resources/temp/principles-for-public-history-draft-2.pdf.

53. Guercio, “Principles, Methods, and Instruments,” 238–69.

54. Evans, “Sound, Listening” is an example of such practice: the creation of a soundscape with limited basis in sources, but intended to represent the vanished community of Polish Jews. “Even when Nemerofsky does draw on historical sources and themes, there is no way to hazard a guess at the veracity of his claims. But perhaps this is not the point …. Designed as art pieces in their own right, experiments in sound, story and invention to render something possible if not probable”, 40.

55. Jordanova, “Marking Time”, 16.

56. McIntyre, “Creating New Pasts,” 143. Although specific to the museum context, this is a useful wider reflection on the role of collections in shaping interpretation.

57. Jerome de Groot highlights the disorientating effect of encountering history online. “Users need not have connections … to the information they download … ‘history,’ or rather the sets of information relating to the past — document, artefact, image, database — become another group of strands in cyberspace, accessible and usable to just about anyone … “ Consuming History, 91.

58. For example, Jordanova, “Marking Time,” 18–9.

59. Kalela, “Making History,” 117.

60. There is a range of work on the use of offensive terminology in recordkeeping and how current practice can mitigate the barriers this creates. Approaches are summarized in Thethi’s Intersectional GLAM blog entry, “Archives and Inclusivity: Respectful Descriptions of Marginalised Groups.” Online: https://intersectionalglam.org/2018/11/22/archives-and-inclusivity-respectful-descriptions-of-marginalised-groups/

61. Cubitt, “Bringing it Home,” 267.

62. Singh, “The Contestation of Heritage,” 134.

63. Jordanova, History in Practice.

64. Explored in Cubitt, “Atrocity Materials.”

65. Haunton, “Towards Principles for Public History.” Principle 16.

66. He adds, “Relevance to place and relevance to community no longer … coincide neatly: identities are shaped as much by displacement and dislocation … as by social and cultural and residential continuity.” Cubitt, “Bringing it Home,” 269–70.

67. Harris, “Law, Evidence, Electronic Records,” 14, quoted in Hardiman, “En mal d”archive”, 37.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Melinda Haunton

Melinda Haunton has been the Programme Manager for Archive Service Accreditation since 2012, assessing archive services across the UK against a broad standard for archives management. She is an honorary teaching fellow at the Centre for Archives and Information Studies, University of Dundee, and received a 2018–2019 The National Archives-Research Libraries UK Professional Fellowship to explore lessons from public history in the context of archives and special collections work.

Georgie Salzedo

Georgie Salzedo became interested in public history while writing a dissertation on a Scottish museum at Somerville College, Oxford; and archives while volunteering at the college archives. She then completed an MA in Public History at Royal Holloway. While working as an archivist at De La Rue plc, she undertook an MA in Archives and Records Management at UCL, writing a dissertation focussed on comparative authenticities in marketing and archives. She joined The National Archives as Sector Development Manager for London and Business archives in 2019.