Posts com a Tag ‘Archives: Recordkeeping in Society (T)’

McKEMMISCH, Sue; PIGGOTT, Michael; REED, Barbara; UPWARD, Frank (Ed). Archives: Recordkeeping in Society. Charles Sturt University/Centre for Information Studies, 2005. 247p. Resenha de: SASSOON, Joana. Public History Review, v.12, 2006.

Writing about memory is a popular topic for historians. Public History Review volume 10 had the title Remembering and Forgetting. Historians now recognise museums as memory institutions, with an analytical focus on the exhibition as a representation of contemporary ideas. In order, however, to penetrate the exhibition, the historical processes of collecting, preserving and documenting need to be understood. This kind of archaeology of exhibitions requires a sound understanding of internal institutional processes. To take this further, what is missing in stories historians tell using archival institutions is the purposeful interaction with the histories of that very long food chain of creating and preserving records. Ultimately, historical stories can be enriched through understanding the institutional processes through which historians’ ‘food’ is produced.

If you believe that archives are simply storehouses of raw material, and that archivists are the passive keepers of historical records, then this is definitely the book for you. A whole new world will be opened up. Archival materials and institutional practice are situated firmly within the core of the craft of history, and it can be argued that to undertake sound historical research requires understanding the theoretical framework of archival practice, the processes and power of the recordkeepers and the contexts, functions and nature of the original records. To this end, Archives: Recordkeeping in society introduces readers not only to a theoretical understanding of what the raw materials of history are and how they come into being, but also the conceptual frameworks which shape what recordkeepers do with them. In doing so, this book draws on a wide international archival literature, presenting the arguments in clear and comprehensible prose, through authors who have international reputations. Leia Mais