Typewriters, T-Shirts, and Pins—Oh My!

In a 1951 article for The American Archivist on applying documentary research methods to historic sites and buildings, Samuel Porter wrote of the need to expand our ideas about what constitutes a documentary source, even to those “perhaps never utilized by the historian before.”¹ In particular, he points out that “artifacts…are also documents and should be used together with written documents to give the complete historical picture.” Another author, writing ten years later on how artifacts and archives can mutually enhance one another in the context of an exhibit on the history of a business, expressed the hope that the “close relationship between exhibit and archival materials may, in a very general fashion, provide archivists with an angle of attack on the problem of what to do with museum items that find their way into [their] collections.”²

Despite the passage of more than half a century, the question of artifacts in archives continues to vex and challenge us at every point of the archival life cycle. From a physical standpoint, “archives typically do not possess the environment, supplies, and space suitable to properly preserve artifacts…[and] because a three dimensional object's content, context, and structure may not be as easily determinable as traditional formats of archival records, archivists are at a loss for applying appraisal theories to artifacts.”³ From a technical standpoint, processing artifacts is more time-consuming and description more difficult. While “[p]roviding bare-bones traditional metadata for these items is analogous to delegating them to the backlog shelves of yesteryear…neither the library management system nor the third-party catalog enhancement market currently provides a good solution to this problem.”⁴ Finally, from a personal standpoint, as archivists we simply prefer dealing with material in the aggregate. We are confident when confronted with fifty boxes of papers and photographs, but fifty cartons of plastic artifacts ranging from flatware and toys to auto parts, lawn flamingoes, and medical equipment is likely to fall well out of our comfort zone.

And yet the integration of artifacts into our archives is increasingly recognized as important, not only for historical context but also for the researcher experience. Since “archives privilege written documents, we also can see how quickly ‘primary [source]’ becomes equated with textual archival documentation, which is certainly only one approach to historical memory and representation.”⁵ Archival theory, too, has wrestled with this question in the past decade or so. Helen Samuels has suggested that by emphasizing form over substance and by ceding non-paper formats such as artwork, music, objects, and published materials to other types of institutions, archives have missed the opportunity to create a richer documentary record; indeed, Duranti and others have argued that the concept of the “archival bond,” defined as “[t]he interrelationships between a record and other records resulting from the same activity,” can and should be extended to artifacts.^3,6 When we perform the activities of selection, appraisal, and preservation we are deeming some items archivable and others unarchivable, a conferring of status that has too often relegated non-paper-based formats to the latter category. By deliberately choosing to archive the ‘unarchivable’, we have the opportunity to “fundamentally alter the power of archives and their position as arbiters of historical fact.”⁵

The papers in this themed issue examine these and other challenges posed by artifacts in archives, from their impact on processing workflows to unique storage requirements to the differences in metadata required to describe artifactual items. One common theme in these papers is that the authors were unable to find best practices or guidelines relating to managing artifacts in the archival profession.

For the Associated Press, whose bread and butter is information, the technology used to record, create, edit, store, and transmit data, whether textual or visual, forms a core part of their history, and the artifacts in their Corporate Archives reflect this. Sarit Hand and Francesca Pitaro point out how easy it is for intellectual control of artifacts to fall through the cracks without “a descriptive home of [their] own,” and describe their project to gain physical and intellectual control over more than 300 items ranging from artwork to typewriters. Of particular interest is their decision to photograph the items, as a “shorthand” method of providing users with a detailed description.

The question of what counts as primary materials “is particularly vital for LGBT historical materials because it has important consequences for contemporary and future representations of still-oppressed LGBT communities…For queer archival projects, what is of enduring value seems to be closely tied to that which evidences the queer past, which means that queer archives often function as bodies of evidence…a declaration that ‘we’ were here.”⁷ Jaimi Parker and Morgan Gieringer remind us of the emotional significance of artifacts in an LGBTQ archive, both as memorials and as symbols of activism and identity.

How many teaching uses are there for a t-shirt? Can we provide metadata to support them? How do we get that information into the finding aid? Simone Clunie draws on material culture studies to discuss these questions, using a Sarah Palin campaign t-shirt as exemplar. As an artifact, the t-shirt’s value goes beyond the explicit message printed on it—the typeface, size, color, and fit also convey important information. But in order for an “in the moment” item such as this to retain its fullest meaning over time, the historical context must be documented, which places an extra burden on the creator of the finding aid.

Florence Turcotte also draws on material culture in her discussion of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park, and the role of literary archives in offering researchers insight into the writing experience. The phrase “a product of his or her time” is frequently applied to authors; artifacts can help to create a historically authentic environment, “embody[ing] the norms, culture, discourse, and values of people who lived in the past… [through] original mediums and modalities.”⁸ Turcotte rightly cautions against “mission creep,” arguing that it is the narrative behind the object that gives it meaning.

All of the above, perhaps, raises more questions than it answers. In an age of “More Product, Less Process” how do we efficiently incorporate a class of material that by its nature requires item-level consideration? In a field which focuses on the box and the folder, how do we house and describe the shoe, the pin, and the typewriter? What is the effect on users of our archives of prioritizing the two-dimensional over the three-dimensional? What can we learn from fields outside of LAMs, such as material culture studies which “recognize[s] artifacts as an integral part of documenting people?”³ As archivists, when do we have sufficient grounds for breaking the archival bond?

Through the papers in this issue, we neither attempt nor pretend to offer definitive answers; instead, we hope that they encourage us to engage in more, and more active, conversation about an area of archival work that is both philosophically and practically worthy of our attention.

Michele Combs, coeditor
[email protected]
John Nemmers, coeditor
[email protected]