Reflections on the Value of Metadata Archaeology for Recordkeeping in a Global, Digital World

Abstract

Recordkeeping metadata have been instrumental in constructing and promulgating, as well as reflecting, narratives for their era from antiquity into the digital age across cultures and belief systems. They thus can serve as a critical apparatus for articulating, delimiting and contextualizing the record and the archive on an infinite number of temporal dimensions. The implementations and worldviews of metadata, however, historically are often discontinuous or vary in different periods and settings, making it harder to discern their manifestations and influence. Metadata, and discourse formation around metadata, therefore, deserve and require careful excavation, contextualization, and analysis. The paper proposes using a Foucauldian ‘archaeological’ approach to gain a more nuanced and contextualized understanding of the diversity of metadata and metadata discourses. It illustrates this approach with perhaps one of the earliest of historical cases—that of the Royal Archive at Ebla.

… analyzing the history of archival ideas requires listening to the archival discourse of the time or place involved. Archival historical analysis requires revisiting the principal professional discussions that leading archivists had about their work and with each other. It requires hearing again, and understanding within the context of their time, and our own, their assumptions, ideas, and concepts … Archival theory should not be seen as a set of immutable scientific laws disinterestedly formed and holding true for all time … Terry Cook, 1997.2

… so I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel and weighed out for him seventeen shekels of silver. I signed and sealed the deed, had it witnessed, and weighed out the silver on the scales. I took the deed of purchase – the sealed copy containing the terms and conditions, as well as the unsealed copy—and I gave this deed to Baruch, son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel and of the witnesses who had signed the deed and all of the Jews sitting in the courtyard of the guard.

In their presence I gave Baruch these instructions: ‘This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Take these documents, both the sealed and unsealed copies of the deed of purchase, and put them in a clay jar so they will last a long time. For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.’ Jeremiah 32: 9-15 3 (written ca. 580 B.C.E. in anticipation of his own exile in Egypt and the exile of the Jewish people in Babylon).

Notes

This paper is a revised version of a paper presented at ICHORA 5 in London, July 2010.

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Defined in the Society of American Archivists Glossary as ‘The systematic creation, use, maintenance, and disposition of records to meet administrative, programmatic, legal, and financial needs and responsibilities’. http://www.archivists.org/glossary/term_details.asp?DefinitionKey=441. Accessed August 15, 2010.

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It should be borne in mind that in this broad view, archival description would be but one type of recordkeeping metadata that might be considered.

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