Course talk:ARST573/Archives – History (Late Modern North American)

Hey Eric !

so your page looks great! the only thing I could think of mentioning was perhaps you could mention the formation of the two archival societies? I know this doesn't focus on archives as a place but maybe just a snippet here or there about the formation of them and their publications?

Thanks Morgan, good suggestion! I have now added short mention of them in the Rise of Archival Consciousness section. Much appreciated.

Hey Eric,

solid job so far. I feel that you offer the right amount of coverage for this area, and your sub-topics underneath "development" are of note. Great choice in also discussing RM, and I agree with you that it is difficult to talk about modern archives history without mentioning RM. I agree with Allison about dividing up it even more and into the topics she suggested, but I am not sure how feasible that is in the short time we have left in the year, and given that, I think your choice of topics is appropriate. If I have to pick on one thing I have to say that I would like to see a slightly more extensive overview. Otherwise, nice writing with a good wiki "voice" - after reading your wiki I feel like I learned a lot about the modern history of archives that we learned in our core courses, too bad I didn't have your wiki then, I could have slept in more often. Looking forward to more of your work Mr. W.

Best,

V

Hi Mr. W,

this is a follow-up comment to my original one: your overview is concise and gets across what your wiki is about. For some reason - and I apologize because I can't remember exactly how your page looked like when I commented a week ago - I still think your overview could use a bit more "meat" (for example, mention real briefly the variations in Canadian and American archival practice), but having said that, it does the job and gets the reader into your wiki right away. I would like to see a bit more in the rise of archival consciousness section regarding what archival consciousness means, although, this doesn't have to be extensive, but just to get a bit more of an understanding of what this means in the American and Canadian contexts.

Otherwise, I think your wiki is coming along nicely, and looking forward to the finished product tomorrow.

Take care,

V

Hello my fellow pod mate,

This is an addendum to my prior posting as I was literally thrown off the computer by a heathen (also known as my sister) who supposedly needed it more than myself. Hence, the abruptness of the last posting, sorry if it seemed rude, it was definitely not mean to do any harm.

I wanted to say in the last post that I also thought you're "challenges" and final section on records management are great and do a really nice job of wrapping up your wiki (at least as it is now). I think you identify the major issues facing modern archives, and your discussion of records management is a nice segue into what the near (and realistic) future holds for archives.

I didn't emphasize enough in my last post how much I am looking forward to the midnight draft tomorrow (wikis are always evolving, hence, perhaps not ever final?), because I am most definitely looking forward to it.

Take care,

V

Hi Eric,

Good article so far! You have some solid content and clear organization. In terms of suggestions, you might want to expand your discussion a little bit for Schellenberg and include some more citations. It's an older article but Jane F. Smith's “Theodore R. Schellenberg: Americanizer and Popularizer" in American Archivist 44 might be helpful in discussing Schellenberg's work and influence. You might also want to discuss how the digital era is changing archives in North America, for example the relationship between RM and archives in the US. This could be included in an overall timeline as others have mentioned.

Kelly

Thanks Kelly. I investigated that article and it led me to another useful one as well which I was able to use in the page. I appreciate it!

Hi Eric,

Your page is really coming along. As far as my suggestions go at this late stage, you may want to link to the Wikipedia page for Lamb in your Influences section since you do that for other archivists. Under technical, it might be good to mention the work on digital born records, even if only briefly. Good luck!

Kelly

Hi Eric,

Looks great so far! I agree with Allison and Maggie that it might be helpful to map the changes in archival thinking in North America against a timeline of relevant events, or a timeline could be included with the current organization. On another note, will you discuss the development of the concept of "total archives" in Canada?

Great idea including the "total archives" concept. I worked it in there and think it is a great addition. Much appreciated Marisa!

Great! Glad to have helped :)

Hello Eric,

Great formatting, it's very clear what you are setting out to do. But just a couple of suggestions.

• I agree with Shyla in that renaming your page could make it fit in with the rest of us "History of the Archives" pages. (I renamed my page after setting it up. It redirects to the new page so there's no issue there. If you want help, let me know.)
• In that line of thought, I was wondering if all of us "History of the Archives" folks would want to make it official by adding an information panel on the top right of the page. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Canada for what I mean)
• I agree that subdividing the influences could be helpful, perhaps by timeline or major events. Also technology developments and the emergence of different record types could help.
• Also adding Mexico could be interesting

Keep it up!

Maggie

Though Adding Mexico would be interesting, I fear to do not speak sufficient Spanish to cover it enough to give it justice. As a wiki page, hopefully a Spanish speaking student might one day want to add such content to this page and complete it. I also am unsure how to address the issue in the page currently and maintain "wiki speak". In a paper I could say "For the purpose of this essay I am focusing on English speaking countries in NA" but cannot really do that here. I am open for suggestions on how to address this however perhaps in the overview or elsewhere in the page.

I see where the difficulty is. I agree that the overview is where you should put it. Perhaps state "Late modern North American archives of Canada and the United States..." or you could have a section for Mexico and simply have a link to unfilled new page, though that's highly misleading at this point.

Having said that, to stick with Wiki format, you may want to remove the title from the "Overview" section as most Wikis tend to jump into a definition of what the page is about without it being a separate section.

Just thought I'd mention in here as a fellow "History of the Archives" person, I like the idea of an information panel.

I tried working on this a bit tonight but it just showed a link to the Template:Sidebar. Will look at it again tomorrow. I'll inform all of the history page authors if I do find it works and ask if we still want to do it.

Hey Eric!

This is definitely a solid start. It's very thematic, and I like how tight the content is so far.

I suppose I don't have feedback for you as much as I have questions. I don't know the source material as well as you do, so you may have a better idea than me. Is the development of Late Modern Archives in North America mostly centered around thought? If it is, fine, but you may want to be clearer about that in the wiki. Even just a sentence to that effect may work to your benefit. It may just be me, but for some reason I was waiting for a bigger trend to follow?

Good start, man!

Hello again!

This is an amazing improvement from last time, and I really only have one comment. I noticed that, in the United States section, you wrote that it "seems" archival theory is from Schellenberg. I'd suggest watching out for words like "seems" and similar. A wiki is supposed to be a presentation of facts, and what theory says. There is no room for "seems" when facts are involved!

Good luck!

Hi Eric, Great work so far on a topic with such breadth. Great organization and I like the link to the related wiki page. You may have just not gotten to this stage yet but hyperlinking could enhance your wiki. A few small grammatical things which I'm sure you'll catch in the editing phase: you have capitalized Bureaucratic several times and I am pretty sure it doesn't need to be capitalized. In terms of content, I would consider maybe expanding on the "Challenges" section to include a few more discussion points. I would also try and to expand a bit on the "Influences" section in both the U.S and Canada subsections. Do already do a good job at summarizing the overall developments but adding in a bit more info on the key figures and events in each country (if possible) might be beneficial.

Hi Eric, I like how your page has come along and how you've added in hyperlinks. Adding in few more pictures would further balance out the text in my opinion. Your overview is nicely written and succinct and I also like how you've added in a discussion of the total archives concept in Canada. Looking forward to reading the final product

Hi Eric,

I really enjoyed reading your wiki, and as another individual writing about the history of archives, it was nice learning about the transition into this time period. I know both Maggie and I have a section at the very end of our wikis briefly addressing the state of archives at the end of the period covered. Perhaps this would work well for you as well. Just a few sentences on the direction of archives at the very end of the 20th century, and maybe briefly into the 21st in order to get an understanding of future developments, would conclude your page very nicely.

hi, I wonder if it is a good idea to group your page with the other history ones in the wiki? I think you could do that by renaming it Archives--History--Late Modern North America, so it falls into the same pattern as the pages on ancient, early modern, and medieval histories. But linking to those pages also brings out that connection, which I see you've done with one of them. I think Kelsey's point about First Nations archives is a good one, and you might also want to consider something about Mexico. Good luck with the rest of the work, it's an interesting (and large) topic.

Hi Eric,

This is a good idea for a focused topic! I would recommend trying to cover as many areas of it as you can, given that it is quite specific. A section on the different types of repositories, or the changes in the national archives of each country would be good. I would also suggest some mention of First Nations/Native American archives, although obviously there's a whole page on the subject so you wouldn't have to go into a ton of detail.

Hi Eric, Narrowing down the history you're covering to North America seems like a good way to make the topic of modern archival history navigable. It'll be interesting to see how you develop the page more. Have you thought about dividing the page up further to give yourself workable timelines to follow? Pre-WWI, the Depression, WWII, post-War, the Digital Revolution, 9/11, etc, for example? It might make the time periods you have to cover easier for readers to get through. I'm looking forward to seeing how your page develops! Best, Allison