Anne Gilliland Summer School in the Study of Old Books Zadar, Croatia, 27 September, 2009

Transcription

1 Research Trends in Archival and Manuscript Studies Anne Gilliland Summer School in the Study of Old Books Zadar, Croatia, 27 September, 2009

2 The archival perspective Occurs at a nexus between texts (regardless of their media and format) that serve to record, document and narrate; axiomatic constructs such as memory, culture, identity, accountability, authenticity, enterprise and power relations; and processes such as testifying, remembering, forgetting, processes such as testifying, remembering, forgetting, representing, interpreting, and storytelling.

3 The need for reflexivity and proactivity in research reflect on what it means to be the profession of the record demonstrate the relevance of archival and manuscript studies ideas, perspectives and functions in a digital world explore what archives and manuscript repositories might look like that are not physical institutions explore wider conceptualizations of what is a document and what is a record increase cultural knowledge of and sensitivity to evolving community beliefs, experiences, practices and needs demonstrate the role that primary sources, archives and special collections, archivists and archival researchers can play as correctives

4 Enormous growth in research over the past 15 years Impact of vastly expanded professional and PhD education in Archival Studies worldwide Surge in scientific data curation and also the digital humanities Impact of available and non-traditional research funding Need to address the implications of new record and manuscript-creating technologies Widespread digitization of primary sources Development and reconciliation of metadata standards for primary sources within multi-community/institutional digital repositories Desire to exploit new technologies for the delivery, discovery, collation, and analysis of primary and secondary sources of all types Desire to expose, document and understand gaps and biases - communities and phenomena that are absent, under- or mis-represented in the record Impact of social networking and tagging Growth of community archives initiatives Emergent cross-jurisdictional policy concerns - especially copyright Interest in the nature and impact of the archive by other disciplines

5 Major drivers for recent funded research how to capture and preserve records created using digital technologies in bureaucratic settings in ways that can meet stringent evidentiary requirements how to enhance access to archival and manuscript holdings through the development of online systems (including standardized online description, digital archives, digital humanities initiatives, institutional repositories, and digital libraries)

6 Photon Factory Records, KEK Linear Particle Accelerator, Japan

7 Addressing digitality in the creation of primary sources Understanding how media and recording change over time Identifying, capturing, preserving, describing and making available trustworthy born-digital materials Analyzing how trust is established and preserved Documenting life in a digital world Examining the notions of the record, fixity, authenticity, draft, completion, original and copy in digital documents Using digital community memory initiatives in order to address absences in the record Examining how the concepts of collecting, authorship and ownership might be changing in the digital environment

8 Addressing digitality in the use of records and other primary sources Reconceptualizing the archive and the special collection in a more virtual world Supporting global communities of scholars and how they might work digitally Developing digital/digitized collections of, and interfaces to primary source materials that are built upon sound knowledge about the needs of increasingly disciplinarily, educationally, culturally and linguistically diverse online users.

9 Archival research and globalization What is the impact of international archival standards upon local and indigenous archival traditions and recordkeeping practices? How to evaluate, compare and potentially reconcile conflicting conceptual models and descriptive schema and other forms of metadata across communities? How to raise awareness of, and develop policies and practices that address different legal traditions, national policies and community practices and beliefs? How to preserve the records of multinational collaboration? How to address documentary absences relating to the immigrant, migrant and diasporic experiences? What kind of roles do archives and manuscripts [repositories] play in identity construction and formation of official narratives?

10 Research frameworks and methods-- new, adopted, adapted Archival science: contemporary archival diplomatics, functional analysis and business process analysis, macroappraisal, recordkeeping warrant analysis Social sciences: recordkeeping ethnography, ethnography of archival practice, virtual ethnography, theory-building, discourse analysis, bibliometrics, sociometrics and other metrics, speech act theory, actor-network theory Computer science and engineering: recordkeeping systems analysis, IR theory, iterative systems design, expert knowledge extraction, metadata modeling Humanities and digital humanities: Cultural, post-colonial and Critical Race theories; ethnic, gender and media studies; simulations, data modeling, cliometrics