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https://theconversation.com/disquiet-in-the-archives-archivists-make-tough-calls-with-far-reaching-consequences-they-deserve-our-support-197013>
"Right now, for technological, ethical and political reasons, the world’s
archivists are suddenly very busy.
Advances in digital imaging and communications are feeding an already intense
interest in provenance, authorship and material culture. Two recent discoveries
– a woman’s name scratched in the margins of an 8th-century manuscript, and
John Milton’s annotations in a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio held in the
Free Library of Philadelphia – are examples of how new tools are revealing new
evidence, and how distant scholars are making fascinating connections.
At the same time, and even more importantly, the holdings of archives,
libraries and museums – “memory institutions” – are being scrutinised as the
world grapples with legacies of racism, imperialism, slavery and oppression.
Some of the holdings speak to heinous episodes and indefensible values. And
some of them were flat-out stolen.
The so called “post-truth” era is a third cause of the burst of archival
activity. Politicians and activists, mostly from the political right, have
attacked facts and science. Archives have come under pressure to rewrite
history, or have done so on their own initiative. The decision of the US
National Archives to obscure anti-Trump slogans in a 2017 image of the Women’s
March is a case in point.
Post-truth narratives pose all sorts of archival conundrums. In Australia, for
example, people raised eyebrows when the National Library began collecting the
posts of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists, as part of its effort to
document the COVID-19 pandemic.
Buffeted by strong and competing forces, archivists are in a tough spot. Their
ability to navigate a path forward, moreover, is made more difficult by
non-archivists’ foggy and unrealistic expectations of what archivists actually
do, and what they might do in the future."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
