Course:ARST573/Archives: A Place

Archives are defined three ways: as the material in a repository, as a program, and as the place where records are deposited. The concept of archives as a place appears in the earliest definitions of archives. The first iterations of archival repositories in Europe and the Near East have also shaped contemporary Western understandings not only of what archives are, but where records can be found. As a result, the concept of archives as a place is a significant element of North American archival theory.

Early prevailing perceptions of archives have also fed popular stereotypes. Archives are commonly depicted as exclusive, guarded, and hidden places where long-forgotten records are buried in dust. Painting a picture of this oft-satirized archival space, Victor Gray, director of the Rothschild Archive and head of Corporate Records for N.M. Rothschild & Sons, argues, “Gone are the days when the dust-encrusted denizen of a file-stacked and cobwebby deep could emerge once a year, dazzled by the light, to drag a new pile of unloved papers back into his hole." In a similar vein, new trends in archival thought point towards a broader conception of archives as a place. Depositing records does not make them "doomed to slumber": archives are interactive spaces.

Traditional archival theory offers a narrow view of place in relation to archives. In reality archival places are not limited to physical buildings, stacks, and institutions. Recorded information is created, used, stored, found, and preserved in countless locations within and outside of formal repositories and the hands of designated archivists. Just as archives can be categorized as specialized types or by collection policy, by level of jurisdictional control or phase in a records life-cycle, so too can they be understood according to their location.

By offering a discussion of archives as a place and identifying a selection of archival spaces supported by case studies, the purpose of this Wiki is to expand on the concept of archives as solely the space designated for the deposit and preservation of records.

Background: The role of place in archival theory

Plan of the Roman Forum featuring the Tabularium in red

The first archival repositories developed in tandem with government. Purpose-built for the deposit of legal documents, “the archives was a place of preservation under the jurisdiction of a public authority.” Crossing the 'archival threshold' into the control of an archival institution was a process of authentication where documents were imbued with meaning as records worthy of preservation. In turn, medieval and early modern repositories were typically centrally located within or alongside other government buildings, communicating their status as symbols of civic authority. These places have been described as “imposing, powerful, strong, inaccessible beyond the outer rooms [of connected government buildings]”, where the records kept there became “perpetual monuments to the actions they attested to.”

Archives Nationales de France

Until the French Revolution, archives were considered as serving a purely legal-administrative function. Records were about the public but were not conceived of as being for the public. Existing as restricted spaces of authoritarian control, archives feature in modern modern archival theory and diplomatics as intrinsically linked with the authenticity of records.

Early Definitions

Inside the Roman Tabularium

See also: Archives - History (Ancient); Archives - History (Medieval); Archives - History (Early Modern)

The earliest definitions and the historical development of archival repositories serve as points of reference for understanding what archives are today. Some of the first identifiable archives were located in Mesopotamia, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, and across Europe. Places for depositing records were born out of growing bureaucratic state structures. These repositories—and the records—therefore served legal and administrative functions, maintaining the authority of the head of state.

The Greek ἀρχεῖον (archeion) from which the English ‘archives’ is derived means the “any public place belonging to the magistrates.” Today is it more commonly understood to meant the records office. This definition reflects both the archives’ function—preserving legal authority—and it’s location.

The Roman Tabularium was built in 79 B.C. to serve a similar function as the Greek archeion. The Tabularium is symbolic of the sophisticated administration and developed bureaucratic systems of the Roman Empire as, “There was a monumental and centralized records center publicly administered and supported, which might be compared to a contemporary data bank.” From the Justinian Code, the body of civil law developed and administered under the Roman Empire, comes one of the earliest definitions of archives as a place. The Tabularium was: “The public place where deeds are deposited, so that they remain uncorrupted, provide trustworthy evidence, and are continuing memory of that to which they attest.”

This definition bears a strong resemblance to the definition of archival repositories today. A place for depositing records, archives secure and communicate authority, guarantees reliability, and ensures an unbroken chain of custody. Serving a private, administrative function, early repositories have therefore guided archival theorists conception of what archives are—and what they are not.

Principle of Provenance

The importance of place is enshrined in the archival principle of provenance. Provenance is defined as “the place of origin” and is used in reference to the ownership, custody, or location of artifacts, artwork, or historical objects. As a key tenet of archival science, the principle of provenance maintains the context of creation and chain of custody of records. This principle is comprised of the sub-principles respect des fonds and respect for original order. By adhering to the principle of provenance, archivists aim to maintain records' context of creation once transferred for permanent preservation from creator to institution.

Archivists uphold the principle of provenance by following standardized guidelines for archival description. In adhering to this principle while processing archival material, archivists maintain and communicate this context through archival descriptions in finding aids and databases. The Canadian Rules for Archival Description (RAD) developed by the Canadian Council for Archives (CCA) and the American Describing Archives: A Contents Standard (DACS) developed by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) both identify the principle of provenance as a guiding principle for these description standards, for example.

Contemporary Definitions

See also: Archives - History (Late Modern North American)

The meaning of place is interpreted in contemporary definitions of archives in much the same way as the earliest definitions such as in the Justinian Code. Modern archival theorists Sir Hilary Jenkinson and Theodore Roosevelt Schellenberg both cite the Oxford English Dictionary in offering a definition of archives. In keeping with modern Western European tradition, archives are “(1)A place in which public records or other historic documents are kept; and (2) a historical record or document so preserved” as stated in Jenkinson’s 1965 A Manual for Archives Administration and Schellenberg’s 1956 Modern Archives: Principles and Techniques. Schellenberg expands on this definition by making note of the “troublesome” double-meanings of the term ‘archives.’ He specifies that the distinction must be made between archives the records and archives the place.

Contemporary definitions feature a greater plurality of meanings. It is in definitions provided by professional associations and research projects today that the three-tiered meaning of ‘archives’ emerges. The international InterPARES Trust project based out of the University of British Columbia defines archives in relation to the institution, the place, and specific rooms, for example. An archival place can therefore be:

• “An agency or institution responsible for the preservation and communication of records selected for permanent preservation”;
• “A place where records selected for permanent preservation are kept”;
• “Rooms or sets of rooms for the systematic maintenance and storage of records and documents.”

This is how place is interpreted in relationship to archives today. While definitions have been elaborated upon, archives continue to be overwhelmingly conceived of as being uniquely an institutionalized place, with zones of activity focused on the stacks or the building, where records are kept.

Recasting Archives as a Place

Place features in archival theory singularly in relation to the archival repository and actions taken upon records within it. The ‘archival threshold’, “was made to coincide with the actions of formal recognition of the classified and registered documents and of confirmation and representation of their intellectual order (that is, of their interrelationships) in instruments of structural description." The actions referenced here include (but are not limited to) the physical and intellectual arrangement and description of records according to relevant description standards, abiding to archival principles. Elements of archival theory like the principle of provenance aim to capture the context of creatorship of a record or group of records, but are very narrow in focus.

The 1980 Wilson Report offers the interpretation of the principle of provenance as “assert[ing] that records originating from the same source must stay together and that the body creating records maintains a continuous custody of them by sponsoring a functioning archives.”‘Source’ and ‘context’ are not the physical places where records are created, where records are found, or where they travel: ‘source’ here refers only to the creator. The principle of provenance is therefore narrowly focused on the material and creator-ship. While place features as an element of context, provenance is not interpreted in archival theory as having a literal spatial element. This is a point of contention for Canadian archivist Laura Millar. Millar points out that in interpreting archival provenance, adequate focus is not paid to the meaning behind records’ spatial surroundings, the physical location in which they were created or found, how records moved through space before accessioning, for example. In her view, the principle of provenance is left wanting. By borrowing concepts from sister disciplines, like the archaeological 'find spot', Millar argues that archivists' understanding of provenance ought to encompass records' physical origins. "Rather than limit provenance to creatorship, we should expand the concept to incorporate spatial and temporal qualities of archaeological provenience and artistic provenance," she explains. She further argues that sections of description standards developed to capture these contextual details are “woefully underused.”

Thanks to new trends in postmodern and post-custodial theory, place is understood more broadly in contemporary considerations of what and where archives are.

Post-custodial Theory

In their 1898 Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives, Dutch archival theorists Samuel Muller, Johan Adriaan Feith, and Robert Fruin argue for archivists to, “study first of all the arrangement of the archival collection as it was formed and transformed while it was still a living organism." In their view, archives are not a static collection of material when in the hands of the creator. Today, Muller, Feith, and Fruin’s argument has been extended. Re-thinking archival theory and practice through the deconstructionist lens of twentieth-century postmodern critical theory, to deposit, keep, or preserve records in the custody of an archival institution does not freeze them in time, so to speak. Instead, “A postmodern concept of narrative does not let recorded history or canon rest as a final form" whether in the custody of an institution or not.

This postmodern shift in archival theory prompts thinking about archives as places and the activities that take place within them in a different light. Australian archivists Frank Upward and Sue McKemmish describe post-custodialism, for example, as thinking “of custody in terms of the defense of the record, not possession.” They continue that, “This custody is exercised via the setting of standards and monitoring of their implementation in the place of deposit.” Furthermore, repositories and institutions are maintained to be active sites. Canadian archivist Terry Cook argues for a new perspective on archives as a place. Writing specifically on the revolutionary influence of electronic records on the archival profession in a post-custodial framework, Cook argues that archivists can, “recast our archives not as buildings where old records are stored, but as access hubs.”

Much like the rejection of archivists as passive custodians, Cook’s argument prompts thinking about archives beyond the places of consolidation of legal power and authority. Archives are not only where records are located through deposit. They can be thought of as physical and virtual spaces where people and recorded information meet.

Expanding the Concept of Place

Drawing on a postmodern perspective, archives are places for:

• Active meaning-making through retrieval and interpretation of information;
• Access points for furthering legal and political accountability;
• Forums where narratives and ideas are communicated, represented, and constructed.
  

How can the concept of archives as ‘a place’ be expanded? If place is traditionally understood to be an edifice where the records are deposited, kept, and preserved, what else can it mean? People and recorded information interact in a variety of ways, not limited to:

• Research;
• Tours;
• Exhibition and display of archival material;
• Arrangement and description of material;
• Conservation interventions;
• Use of mnemonic devices.
  

Considering the physical space archives take up draws attention to:

• The places where records may be created, stored, and used by the creator;
• Spaces where records are processed, stored, undergo conservation treatments, retrieved, and consulted by institution staff;
• Spaces and modes through which records are browsed, accessed, and studied by an archives’ patrons;
• The physical location of a repository and the physical space it occupies in the landscape;
• Physical and virtual sites of interaction between people and information;
• Places where knowledge is transcribed or communicated.

Records do not exist in the place where they are deposited alone. The points above prompt a broader definition for the word ‘place’.

Exploring Archival Places

The examples offered here are a starting point for thinking about the relationship between archives, records, and their locations. Drawing a link between archives and spatiality, and thinking about records beyond the confines of classic diplomatics, it is possible that "Every place is an archive." Rather than identify archives by record type, subject matter, creatorship, or private or public status, these categories point to where records are kept, used, or created at the macro- and micro-level, within the physical and virtual realms.

Regional Repositories

Preservation lab at the Archives of Ontario

Main floor entrance of the City of Toronto archives

See also: BC Archives; Archives in Manitoba; Nova Scotia Archives; Archives of Ontario

Many archival repositories are located according to socio-political jurisdiction. These institutions are conceived of to house records relevant to communities within their jurisdictional boundaries. Some may be purpose-built as an archival repository, others may occupy pre-existing buildings and tailor them to the archives' needs. Institutions that fall into this category include national archives, as well as provincial, territorial, state, and municipal archives. The establishment of repositories to collect specific material of regional import can be interpreted as a tool for community-building. The archive and the material within it—the ‘shared history’ or documents that communicate a ‘shared experience’—further a symbolic common identity. A community may also view their regional archive as a source of identity affirmation, depending on who the archive is representative of. Regional archives can be understood, for example, in contrast with spaces at the grassroots or community-level, online spaces which exist regardless of national boundaries, and to systems of knowledge that fall outside of socio-political intellectual frameworks.

Gatineau Preservation Centre in Gatineau, Quebec

Case Studies

• The Canadian Archival System is a network of regional repositories under the centralized control of a national archives. Library Archives Canada (LAC) located in the nation's capital, Ottawa, is a federal institution that oversees regional service centres, off-site preservation facilities, and provincial and territorial offices. The five regional service centres located in Halifax, Quebec City, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Burnaby cover provincial and territorial zones, dividing the jurisdictional reach the national archives used to cover down to a more local level. Each service centre has a designated zone of authority, collecting records created from within that regional zone. Established as local access points, the service centres are designed to keep records closer to their point of creation and therefore their anticipated end users.
  

The establishment of a national archives was a powerful nation-building tool as it communicated from the top down what ‘Canada’s’ shared history and identity were to mean to newly-minted Canadians. The mission of LAC continues to be to “preserve the documentary heritage of Canada.” The extension of a centralized system to include regional repositories defined according to political jurisdictions therefore continues to function as a symbolic network for unifying Canada as an imagined community.

The second part of the system, working in tandem with the repositories, are professional associations. This includes the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) and Associations des archivistes du Québec (AAQ) in addition to provincial and territorial councils, and national and regional professional associations.

• The Bibliothèque et archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) is a national network existing within Canada, but outside of the Canadian Archival System. It’s lengthy mandate can be distilled as: “to acquire, preserve and disseminate publications, archival materials and films constituting Québec and Québec-related heritage.” Dissemination is achieved through the network of twelve public facilities:

The Grande Bibliothèque (Montreal)

BAnQ Vieux-Montréal (Montreal)

BAnQ Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie (Montreal)

BAnQ Gaspé

BAnQ Gatineau

BAnQ Québec (Quebec City)

BAnQ Rimouski

BAnQ Rouyn-Noranda

BAnQ Saguenay

BAnQ Sept-Îles

BAnQ Sherbrooke

BAnQ Trois-Rivières

The headquarters is located in the cultural capital, Montreal, rather than the provincial capital, Quebec City. The nine regional archives provide wide-reaching access and public outreach facilities across the province to "democratize" access to information. This network ensures “une présence sur tout le territoire québécois”, thus underpinning Quebec national cultural identity and heritage.

Site-Specific Archives

The spatial context of creation may be crucial in understanding archival records. Site-specific archives can be understood as preserving this physical context in tandem with the records themselves. In these cases, location is treated as serving a co-creatorship function. As archivist Laura Millar explains in her discussion of archival provenance and the archaeological 'find spot', for an archeological artifact, “Its physical, logistical, and spatial context is the key to understanding the object and, through the object, its place and time. Thus, understanding its precise physical location is critical in contextualizing the object.” Some repositories take this archaeological approach.

Site-specific archives may be established in reaction to the creation or existence of specific records. They may be purpose-built or specially designated to house records where they physically and/or conceptually belong. A site-specific archive thus maintains the spatial element of provenance. Preservation of this meaningful connection between a record and a particular location can in turn shape how and where information is accessed and how it is interpreted.

Case Studies

The now repurposed Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and Memorial

• The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and Memorial Archives is housed in block 24 of the defunct Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau labour and extermination camp complex. Archival holdings primarily include records created and used over the course of the operation of the camps, such as official Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) operational records and former prisoners’ diaries. Much of the holdings were found on-site in 1945 after the evacuation of the camps and have never left their location of creation, whereas significant portions of the collections have been ‘repatriated’ back, now under the custody of the archives. Interestingly, the grounds and built heritage of the site are cared for in much the same way as as any other record. Buildings are conserved and landscaping decisions are made, for example, to maintain the site as it was found in 1945 thus preserving its authenticity and documentary integrity.
  

• Part of former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela's personal archive is housed at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory. The centre is an extension of the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Established in 1999 shortly after Mandela stepped down as President, the foundation was home to Mandela’s post-presidential office. The Johannesburg location for the foundation was established in 2002 and refurbished throughout the 2000s to accommodate the Centre of Memory. Mandela’s records that form part of the Centre of Memory’s archive are therefore preserved in the very building they were used and created. The establishment of an archives for the Centre of Memory maintains these records’ broader context of creation and preserves them in a relevant, meaningful location. The activities of the Foundation, the Centre for Memory, and Mandela’s personal archive are all closely linked, further pointing to the necessity for the physical archive to be housed in this location.

Personal Collections

See also: Personal Archives

Personal archives are defined as those created outside of a public corporate or administrative context. These types of archives can include everything from the private papers of notable politicians or authors to a hobbyist’s genealogical research. It is common for private archives of prominent individuals to be acquired by institutions. Adhering to the concept of 'total archives' developed during the National Archives of Canada-era, most repositories across Canada house private records. This includes, but is not limited to, Library Archives Canada, university archives or special collections, and municipal archives. In the United States, private archives—or manuscript collections— are typically acquired by historical societies and universities. Private collections can also be found in the numerous specialized, thematic archives across the United States.

Personal archives equally exist in countless locations outside of the institutional reach. What an archive is according to an individual rarely matches the definitions outlined in archival theory. Personal archives are more idiosyncratic, closely tied to meaning prescribed to items by the creator, and limited only by the creators’ own sense of what an archive ‘is’. Describing the research process for her monograph Open Letters: Russian Popular Culture and the Picture Postcard historian Alison Rowley writes:

“Day after day, I would look at hundreds of auctions and make purchases if the family budget, or later, my university professional development account, would allow them. The emerging [postcard] collection remained unfocused, however. Then a colleague passed me a review of Israeli and Palestinian Postcards: Presentations of National Self. I bought the book straight away and liken the experience of reading it to being hit by lightning. Suddenly, I knew why I had been acquiring so many pieces of old cardboard: I was, of course, creating my own archive."

Created by individuals for personal use, these archives therefore may reside in desk drawers, basements, or closets arranged in any manner of boxes, binders, or albums. Online databases, forums, and social media platforms have also given rise to new forms of personal archiving. These collections may be shared within a select community or remain completely private. Their physical order and location will always be a reflection of how they were used and the creators’ unique sense of organization, but this logic is may not be easily discernable by anyone other than the creator.

Examples

• Record collections of numerous prominent authors including Sylvia Plath, Virgina Woolf, and Eudora Welty are housed at the Mortimer Rare Books Collection at Smith College, Massachusetts.
• Author Salman Rushdie's records, including an installation of his private computer, is housed at Emory University's's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.
• Canadian artist Douglas Coupland's records are housed at the University of British Columbia Library's Rare Books and Special Collections.
• Co-founders of the Vancouver artist-run centre, the Western Front, Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov's joint archive is housed at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery archive.

Reading Rooms and Research Spaces

Archives reference room at the Bibliothèque et archives nationales du Québec in Montreal, Quebec

Reading rooms and research spaces are areas set aside for visitors’ consultation of an archives’ holdings. These rooms are separate from an archives storage area, where star bring select records for consultation. These rooms are therefore the physical spaces where the public and records meet. They are typically designed with specific lighting and adequate workstations, for example, to maintain an appropriate preservation environment for material with specific rules enforced by staff to ensure safe handling. This may include the exclusive use of pencils and paper and securing bags in a locker. In these ways, reading rooms are strictly controlled and mediated access points to information. Reading rooms and research spaces are therefore also social arenas: interactions take place between visitors and records, as well as visitors and staff, and visitors and other visitors.

How public spaces where information is displayed function as arenas for social interaction is explored in the field of curation and museology. Museum objects on display are curated to communicate ideas or information on behalf of an institution. The message may also be communicated through the design of an exhibition or layout of the space, intentionally guiding a visitor through the space. As Lois H. Silverman explains, that message may not be received as an institution intended. ‘Meaning-making’ is rather, “a process of negotiation between two parties in which information (and meaning) is created rather than transmitted, and ‘meaning’ is in the eyes, head, and heart of the particular beholder.” As social arenas for information exchange, how an individual interprets a message is subject to their experience in that space.

“The concept of meaning-making provides a useful new approach to understanding visitor experience in museums. It clearly highlights the visitor’s active role in creating meaning of a museum experience through the context he/she brings,” and this idea is relevant in the context of archives. Like museums, archives reading rooms are interactive spaces where information is represented and how a record may be interpreted is or digested can be shaped by the space and relationship between visitors and staff.

Case Study

• New York University's Fales Library and Special Collections reading room is an example of how public access points to an archive are important social arenas. In acquiring the Riot grrrl archives and bringing it into the custody of an educational institution, how the material and its broader socio-political meaning could be both preserved and made accessible was taken into careful consideration. The ethos of the Riot Grrrl movement and context of creation of the material was successfully kept intact by rethinking the reading room as a 'safe space'.
  

Access in this context means both physical and psychological. Bringing the archives of an intimate, radical feminist community and sub-culture into a public institution raised the issue of finding a balance between “these two 'publics' —the public from whom these personal papers are drawn and the public who uses the collection,” and in turn, “raises questions about access, privacy, and privilege, as well as the protected but complex nature of the safe space that Riot Grrrl sought to establish and that the archive mirrors."

A factor outside of an institutions’ control of visitor meaning-making is memory and self-identity. Silverman identifies three key areas of an individuals’ experience that shape their interpretation of represented information: “special knowledge”, “expectations and norms”, and “life events and situations.” By adhering to the ‘safe space’ concept, the Fales Library and Special Collections reading room facilitates the interaction between patrons and the Riot Grrrl archives with sensitivity and a recognition of this personal element. In so doing, the reading room as a mediated space reflects the politics in which the archives was produced and used. The Riot Grrrl archives at NYU are a case study for the powerful social meaning of reading rooms as public access points and the importance of considering these archival spaces as part of the interpretation of archival holdings.

Online Archives

Online archives are web-accessible spaces where people and digital material meet. Online archives are established as outreach tools by repositories: a digital face of a brick-and-mortar institution or a space for digitized holdings to be made more widely available. A good example of this type of online archive is the British National Archives digital catalogue.

Online archives can also be found in the form of digital databases not necessarily associated with an archival repository. Databases like Rhizome focus on collecting subject-specific digital media and rendering more easily searcheable.

The case studies below focus on another type of archive, that is community-based or grassroots initiatives. They are all interactive spaces established in reaction to current events. The aim is to collect the excess of digital-born information that is too often lost in the vastness of the Internet about an event or subject in one place. In cases like these, the collection and sharing of information in a virtual forum serves to develop community-building and perpetuate memory.

Case Studies

Post-Katrina New Orleans. An example from the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank United States Coast Guard Collection

• Documenting Ferguson is a collaborative effort of a team of librarians and archivists associated with the Washington University Library and other universities in the St.Louis, Missouri area. This database is grown through public contributions of digital-born media relating to the shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014. It is an example of how virtual archival spaces are established in reaction to social events and may lend themselves to grassroots campaigns and efforts for social justice. Virtual spaces such as this case study stand as proof of how archives are evolving in the digital age.

• The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank is a project based out of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and new Media at George Mason University, in partnership with the University of New Orleans and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. The aim of the Memory Bank is to collect private and public records created in the immediate aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita that hit the Gulf Coast of the United States in 2005. This archive includes blog posts and on-the-scene photograph and first-hand testimony and designs itself as a place for building collective memory.

• The 911 Digital Archive includes media such as photographs, sound bytes, emails, and video clips many dating from September 11, 2001 or shortly thereafter. The aim of the archive is to serve as a vehicle for telling the story of the days events. Initial funding came from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and was co-organized by the American Social History Project, the City University of New York's Graduate Center, and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

Built Heritage

Built heritage can be understood as having informational and documentary value as well as aesthetic value. Buildings can be ‘read’ as sources of information about the society and cultural context in which they were built. Architectural features, design choices, or building materials can therefore be conceived of as ‘recorded information’ where the building itself is a record format. The Summer Field School in Built Heritage and Cultural Landscapes run by the School of Architecture at Université Laval, aims to develop skills to “interpret buildings and sites.” Approaching a building in this manner introduces a broader notion of how a document is defined and where information can be stored and accessed. Furthermore, if built heritage stands as a record it cannot be institutionalized or submitted to archival processes within a repository. This analysis also prompts an expansion of the notion of archives as a contained space where records are kept. The conclusions of the analyses presented below point out the plurality of knowledge systems beyond the boundaries of archival science and the link that can be drawn between built heritage and record-keeping systems.

Case Studies

The Grey Nuns Motherhouse Montreal, Quebec

• Tania Martin, Canada Research Chair in Built Heritage and professor at the School of Architecture at the Université Laval, argues that architectural details, for example, stand as evidence of a building’s past use and place in society. She applies this analysis to the former convent, the Grey Nuns Motherhouse, located in downtown Montreal. The layout of the Motherhouse, such as how rooms and wings were designed, is revealing of how the building was used by the nuns and the hierarchy of this community of nuns. Building details can also be contextualized within the religious and social culture of the Grey Nuns and Montreal at the time. The Motherhouse can therefore be interpreted as a religious record.

• Journalist Noah Richler offers an analysis of the barns and weirs along Digby Neck in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. He considered the barns and weirs themselves to be an intrinsic part of the Canadian and local Nova Scotian historical archive, where the built heritage acts as “a script upon the land.” Echoing the perspective of Martin above, Richler posits that this broader understanding is particularly relevant and important in the Canadian context. He writes,
  

“In Canada, we divine our past and read our landscape more often than we know […] We have to do so because so much of our history and so many of our documents are not written—and so we prick up our ears and listen for stories and read the trails and monuments and buildings that are our mute writing upon the land, instead.”

The Physical Landscape

Information is embedded in the landscape. Recording can be conceptual (pointing to features as mnemonic devices in storytelling, prescribing place names) or physical (erecting monuments, signs, drawing maps). The physical landscape can most easily be conceived of as a place where information is recorded and stored when considering the link between memory and place.

Map of the Saint Elias Mountain range crossing Alaska, the Yukon, and northern British Columbia

Case Studies

• Anthropologist Julie Cruikshank argues that the glaciers along the Saint Elias Mountain Range crossing Alaska, the Yukon, and British Columbia exert an “imaginative force” and shape local histories.

Drawing on oral traditions of Tlingit- and Athabaskan-speaking communities as primary source material and consulting scientific sources and colonial records, Cruikshank’s findings demonstrate how physical characteristics of a landscape act as mnemonic devices. In her view, local knowledge “is produced during human encounters […] It is dynamic and complex, and is often links biophysical and social processes.” The physical landscape can therefore be understood as intrinsically linked with the perpetuation of memory and social interactions. It can also be understood as a shaping force on recorded knowledge and a mode of record-keeping.

Map in relief outlining the Chilcotin Plateau in red

• Environmental historian William Turkel argues that knowledge can be stored, disseminated, and interpreted via the physical landscape. His study focuses on the Chilcotin region of central British Columbia specifically in the current context of First Nations' land claims in British Columbia, resource extraction, and Native-state relations in Canada. Turkel’s interpretation of the Chilcotin region is that it can be understood as a “repository” as he puts forward the conclusion that “usable pasts are drawn from material substance of a particular place.” Turkel’s environmental and contemporary socio-political lens provides a theoretical framework for understanding how landscapes can ‘preserve’ information, how they come to be infused with social evidence, and how, through human interaction with their surroundings, this information is accessed. Access in this case is arguably simply a matter of perspective.

Where do Archives Belong?

See also: Archives and Repatriation; Postcolonial Archives

Discussing the challenges inherent in establishing local archives, Canadian archivist Kent Haworth writes, “Whenever archivists come together to deliberate the acquisition of records and private papers, lip service is paid in a patronizing manner to the principle that records of a particularly local significance should remain in that place.” Where archives are located and their meaning is closely connected to the notion of belonging.

Cultural Property

Like artifacts and artwork, records are cultural property. As such, archival material may be tied to an individual or community’s sense of identity, relied on for proof of an enduring legacy or for public accountability, or conceived of as a physical counterpart to memory. The concept of possessive individualism has been applied to communities where, “a group’s existence as a unique individual is believed to rest upon its undisputed possession of property, and that property often comes in the form of historically significant objects. Nations and ethnic groups prove their existence and their worth to the entire world by cherishing their property.” Issues such as rightful ownership, deaccessioning, and repatriation therefore inevitably come into play and are inexhaustible subjects in their own right. Where—and therefore to whom—archives belong is a complicated, broad, and hotly debated topic.

Location and Access

Where archival repositories and physical access points are is another important topic in this discussion. The location of an archives and determining where material will or ought to be kept shapes who can access that material in person. In the Canadian context, for example, there has been a push towards a more regional, decentralized archival system since the 1970s. A central national archives in a country as geographically huge as Canada is a hindrance to information access. At a more local level, Major James Skitt Matthews, founder and self-appointed first City Archivist of the City of Vancouver Archives, gained notoriety for fiercely defending where he believed the archives belonged within the city. Major Matthews argued that the archives he had begun to amass not only had a "proper home", but that home was City Hall. Centrally located, City Hall was more accessible and kept the archives—the “soul of Vancouver”—firmly linked, practically and conceptually, to city functions. The purpose-built building that stands today was predicted to be, “much more than a fancy home for the major’s collection. Rather, the building was intended as the cornerstone of the civic government’s records management programme.”

Location and Symbolism

The location of an archives lends the institution and the material symbolic meaning. Where material is kept communicates custodianship, for example. A national archives, located in the nations’ capital, sends a message that all material housed there belongs, in some way, to individuals within that socio-political jurisdiction. In keeping with the Canadian example, Canadian archivist Terry Eastwood notes that the number of archival repositories across the country doubled between approximately 1960 to 1978. Eastwood describes of the 1980s and 1970s that the 1980 Wilson Report “did not discover why so many primitive archive repositories had relatively recently been established, but one might suppose that all such activity reflected a broadening of the impulse to preserve archival materials as regional and local communities and public and private institutions matured and came to reflect on their past.” What can be deduced from this local fervor is an effort to bring or keep materials closer to home. On a smaller scale, in 2011 archivist and artist Denis Lessard took on processing the archive of Centre des arts actuels Skol, an artist-run centre in Montreal. La salle de traitement des archives (sta) / Archives processing room (apr) established Skol as the first artist-run centre in Quebec to employ a trained archivist. The result enables the centre to preserve their archive on-site rather than transfer it to a larger institution, as is common among many smaller archives..

Highlighted Further Reading

• Basso, Keith H. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Languages Among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
  
• Cruikshank, Julie. Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2005.
  
• Duranti, Luciana. “Archives as Place.” Archives and Manuscripts, Vol. 24 No. 2 (1996): 242-255. Republished in Archives and Social Studies: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, Vol. 1 No. 1 (2007): 1-20.
• Garay, Kathleen and Christl Verduyn eds. Archival Narratives for Canada: Re-telling Storing in a Changing Landscape. Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2011.
  
• Keenan, Elizabeth and Lisa Darms. “Safe Space: The Riot Grrrl Collection.” Archivaria, issue 76 (Fall 2013): 55-74.
  
• Losh, Elizabeth. "Reading Room(s): Building a National Archive in Digital Spaces and Physical Places." Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2004): 373-384.
  
• Millar, Laura. "Death of the Fonds and the Resurrection of Provenance: Archival Context in Space and Time." Archivaria, issue 53 (Spring 2002): 1-15.
  
• Oberdeck, Kathryn. "Archives of the Unbuilt Environment: Documents and Discourses of Imagined Space in Twentieth-Century Kohler, Wisconsin." In Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, ed. Antoinette Burton. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
  
• Randall, Richard R. Place Names: How they Define the World—and More. Maryland: The Scarecrow Press Inc., 2001.
  
• Silverman, Lois H. “Visitor Meaning-Making in Museums for a New Age.” Curator: The Museum Journal, Vol. 38, issue 3 (September 1995): 161-170.
  
• Turkel, William J. The Archive of Place: Unearthing Pasts of the Chilcotin Plateau. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007.
  
• Wiliams, Paul. "Rocks and Hard Places: Locations and Spatiality in Memorial Museums." In Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities. New York: Berg, 2007.
  

Related Pages

Archives - History (Ancient)
Archives - History (Medieval)
Archives - History (Early Modern)
Archives - History (Late Modern North American)

Australian Archives
BC Archives
Archives in Manitoba
Nova Scotia Archives
Archives of Ontario
Archives in Southeast Asia

Museum Archives
Personal Archives
Postcolonial Archives
Archives and Repatriation