Course talk:ARST573/Archives – History (Medieval)

Hi Maggie,

Just one suggestion, adding "the" in your first sentence between in and 5th. I was really impressed with the scope and depth of your page. Excellent work!

Thanks for the suggestion, however with the wording of the sentence the "the" in front of "5th" does not quite make sense. Or at least that's how I see it. I could be wrong.

(Also somehow your discussion timestamp is in the future as it says 23:38 when it is only 22:14...)

Hi Maggie,

Your page is really thorough and well done! The content is great and I like your use of images throughout the page. I struggled to find something to suggest/criticize. One idea is that you could use a quote box or quotation template for the short quote from the Justinian Code. You just insert it by writing {Quotation | quote | source} - make sure you have double "}}" brackets - or just write {Quotation} and then format the quote on your template page. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Quotation if you are thinking of trying it.

I am hesitant to do that as I used quotations from Luciana's translation, and not a full translation of the text. I tried to find a translation that matched hers to put in this article, but they all vary slightly in this clause so I decided to stick with what Luciana had.

Thanks for the suggestion though!

Hey Maggie,

So I have no idea why this might be.. but your page is separated from the other History pages in the list on the course wiki, Not that this is exactly a problem.. but I was just curries if you knew why that might be and if so I would suggest finding a way to have it with the rest. This is not a real problem by any means..it is just a list on the course wiki.

Done. (Though thanks to alphabetical organization I am now after the Late Modern North American Archives...)

Hey, Maggie!

You're page is so close to being done! It looks really good for sure. I can't even really say "look out for grammatical stuff", cause I don't see any errors!

I'm going to try not to repeat anyone else here, though I will definitely say to go with Jessica's suggestion about the citations, because you have a rather daunting amount. Reducing the list somehow will make it seem less...overwhelming.

So: I am not a big fan of sub-sub sections unless their necessary. For your different kinds or archives (religious/secular), I would suggest deleting the overall header, and then tweaking the title (something like Archival Institutions: Religious/Archival Institutions: Secular"), and doing it that way.

Just a suggestion, definitely don't need to follow it.

Good luck!

I almost forgot! I think you're not with the other "History" people in the course list because you used a single instead of a double dash like they did. Don't know if this matters to you, though I know I was disappointed you weren't all together!

Hello Rosie,

I'm still going through grammatical edits, though the comment of support is great.

I get what you mean by my list being overwhelming. Again, I'm not sure how much that will reduce my footnotes. I really wanted to make it columned and a smaller font, but I can't figure that out at the moment.

I will consider the Archival Institutions section further. So long as I can include that line about overlap somehow I think it could work.

Thanks!

P.S. Yes, I realize that my page is separated from theirs due to the dash. Do you think it's worth it renaming the page? I can do it pretty easily.

The Archival institution stuff is totally up to you. That's probably just me being nitpicky, anyway.

As for renaming, it's up to you. It's a minor thing, and only worth it if you think it is. Besides, I'm not sure how much it matters in the long run, ya know?

Seriously, your page is great.

Maggie is trying to break away from the rest of us history people with her special dash...

Also, I too battled with the columned footnotes and even though I had the correct code and everything, it wouldn't work. Maybe its a UBC thing?

It may be a UBC wiki thing. They don't have anything about customized footnotes on their help pages. Though i find it odd that it wouldn't accept code from "regular" Wiki.

Hi Maggie! Some final suggestions and comments...

• first sentence: I think you're missing a comma after "repositories"
• As per below, I agree with the comment that as long as you establish the scope of your wiki in the introduction, and give reasons why you thought what sections you chose were important, you're good to go
• I like how you linked to pages "See Also" right underneath the heading; i think that works very well instead of diving right into subjects that are already covered by other wikis
• You might not even need the "Types of" in "Types of Medieval Archival Institutions" , or, since you say there are generally only religious/secular, maybe you could tweak your title: "Medieval Archival Institutions: Religious and Secular" or something alongside those lines. But this is up to you!
• What is an "Archival Tradition?" maybe a sentence or two under "Archival Traditions by Region" to introduce your subject and establish the scope of this section may make things clearer.
• Nice pictures!
• I'll copy my rave here about references:

Christie gave me a big tip about referencing I wanted to share with you. My page was beginning to get very long because of all the "Ibid"s, and I figured out how to use sub-references so it goes [1 ] [1. 1] [1.2 ]...etc, and you can use them everywhere on your wiki where you repeat your references, and there is only one line down at the bottom. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Referencing_for_beginners under "Same references used more than once".

• Overall, I think the general layout of your page is looking very clean and tidy; very easy to read. Good job!

Hello Jessica,

Thank you for the grammatical corrections and the suggestion of renaming the "Institutions" section. I'll look into making sub-references if I have time tomorrow morning, though I don't use the same page as often as others have so I may not do it in the end.

Thanks for pointing it out as a possibility though! (I spent a bit of time last week trying to figure out if I could do columned references to no avail.)

Hi Maggie, You've done a wonderful job on your page! The only thing I noticed was that I felt a bit lost at some points with about what section your sub-sub headings were a part of, especially under Types of Institutions. I'm not really sure what you could do about that because amalgamating some of the sections would also be confusing... so it's probably not that big of a deal. And you just fixed the one code issue I'd seen (the formatting for the link to modern archives)! Christie

I think the majority of the confusion in the "Types of Archival Institutions" section comes down to not having the hierarchy to reference. I'm hesitant to change the sections as they are all pretty unique institutions.

Hi Maggie,

Wow! This looks really great, and having been following the development of your page since the start I am really pleased with how its turned out. But I'm also a little biased since I love history...still, I really think you've done an excellent job at covering all the main points in such a massive topic.

Just a few minor things I noted:

• In your introduction there's a sentence ("There are four main regions in medieval Europe that saw significant change in their archival practices: England, Italy, and Continental Europe.") that says there are 4 main regions, however you only list 3.

• University Archives section - "Later, the Proctors of Oxford University reserved the records in chests, to which only the Proctors had keys." I believe this has a typo and should be "preserved," not "reserved."

• I may be wrong, but I always included Italy in Continental Europe, however you have it separated and appearing before this section. Maybe include it within or afterwards? Or even rename the "Continental Europe" section to something along the lines of "Other European Regions," etc.

Thank you for the suggestions. I'm trying to figure out what to name the Continental Europe section as I agree with you that Italy is part of Continental Europe. I renamed it "Francia and the Rest of Continental Europe". Not sure if that's the best but that seems to be what I talk about in that section.

Hello Folks,

There's been a common discussion on various Wikis to limit what is covered in a given topic (especially, I have noticed in the history entries). Along that line of thought, I was wondering what people would think if I remove the "Middle East" section, as the previous sections of my Wiki set it up to be only about European archives (see the introductory sentence and "Pre-Medieval Developments" section).

Thanks for the advice!

As I'm sure you know, that's been my big issue too lately. It seems a bit unrealistic to cover every location in the Medieval, or in my case Early Modern, period. Plus its proving very difficult for my time period to find much information in English on the other regions outside of Europe. So coming from a similar experience, I would say removing the "Middle East" section and focusing on Europe would be beneficial for you. I'll probably end up doing the same thing since most of my comments are telling me to add more than European info, however I simply can't for several reasons.

I'm of the opinion that so long as you make the intentions and focus of your Wiki clear, there is no problem in keeping content exclusively European. If you define your time period, maybe make a mention of general archival goings on worldwide, but then make it explicit that this page is about Europe then your readers don't come away confused (or angsty) that your content is Euro-centric. Potentially a wise move given time and resources.

Although I did really enjoy your section on China, Morgan! So fascinating.

Hey Maggie,

Good article so far, there's a lot of great content! As far as suggestions go, maybe include more discussion of archives outside of Europe. I saw your note on expanding the Middle East Section and I think it's a useful area to write on as there's not a lot about archives outside of Europe in the literature I've read. It also might be worthwhile to discuss other communities in Europe such as Eastern Orthodox or Byzantium (If possible, I'm not familiar with extent of the literature on such topics.) It might be helpful to have more discussion about the types of records kept in medical archives. Some interesting religious artifacts appeared during my own research. I'm going to link your page on my own as well. There'e also some odd sentences and grammar issues in the page that can be taken care of during a final edit.

Kelly

Yes, I will do an edit for grammar later this week.

I will look into Eastern Orthodox / Byzantine archives, though I can't promise that I will add them. I may add a section on "Other Religious Archives" but I shall see what kind of information I find.

I'll also take a closer look at your page and see if there is anything I can use there.

Hey Maggie,

With regards to others pages and religious archives, do you think linking to the early modern page would work? I'm not sure logistically because you link to the page later but the early modern page has a nice section on religious archives that bridges the gap between your page and mine (which is 20th century to present focus) Maybe put faith-based archives in a "See Also" section but that's only a suggestion. Keep up the good work!

Kelly

I linked to the "Religious Institutions" section of Morgan's article (Early Modern) underneath my "Religious Archives" section. I don't know if there is such thing as having too many pages in the "See Also" section. I included yours in the "Religious Archives" section though.

Hi Maggie,

Looks like you're making great progress! I have one small suggestion. Under your "Medieval Developments" section you have a few lengthy headings that include specific centuries written out. I think it may be more visually appealing and make quick searching/glancing over your page easier for users if you used numbers instead of words for these. So "Eighth through to the Twelfth Centuries" changes to "8th-12th Centuries." Personally, when I scan text looking for dates, I look for numbers, not words. Also this will shorten those titles a bit which I think would be helpful.

Yeah I was thinking about that. I changed it to fit with the rest of my text where I have the centuries written out, however I realized when I was rereading yours that the numbers make it easier to scan.

I based the titles off of the suggested division of medieval archives by Bautier. Originally I had "Early Medieval", "High Medieval", and "Late Medieval". Do you think those would make better titles?

Will change written to numbers! Thanks.

I like the idea of using "Early Medieval", "High Medieval", and "Late Medieval" with maybe some rough dates in parentheses? Now that I look at your headings again it looks a little repetitive since each starts with "Archives." We already know your wiki is about archives, so I like your idea of the Early, High, and Late.

Hi Maggie,

Looks like your page is coming along, and I am finding the links and pictures so useful. A few suggestions I have:

• You could link Kelly's wiki page on Faith-Based Archives in your "Religious Archives" section
• Under "Pre-Medieval Developments section": "It is debated..." seems general. By whom?
• Will you be adding a small introductory paragraph under "Secular Archives" as you did for "Religious Archives"?

JT

Thanks for the points Jessica.

• I added a link to Kelly's Wiki under religious archives
• I will look into the Pre-Medieval development more. I took most of that information from Sarah's wiki and have to add references
• I am planning on writing a paragraph under secular archives later.

Maggie

I was going to mention the "Secular Archives" section as well, so am glad to hear you'll be adding a paragraph there! Looking forward to reading it.

Hi Maggie,

Sorry if this is addressed in your page somewhere and I missed it, but do you have any information about how archives/recordkeeping practices were affected by warfare and the changes in territorial space during the medieval period? Considering archives from the perspective of how they are impacted by significant societal and political changes might be important. Similarly, although obviously the medieval period is generally cut off right at the beginning of the Reformation, but how were religious archives affected by changing attitudes toward the church? The establishment of the Church of England might fall into this category.

In terms of general proofreading, I'd recommend paying more attention to consistency in how you refer to centuries (eg., 12th versus twelfth). Either one is acceptable in this kind of writing, but it's just a good idea to pick one and use it throughout.

As an aside, I like your use of pictures, I think they are very effective!

Hi Kelsey,

I've actually been having a hard time addressing how the changes in territorial spaces impacted archives. Given my regional layout, it's kind of hard to explain "and the borders changed after Charlemagne died and the Carolingian empire was fractured into three empires". Should I make the Carolingian empire a separate region?

In terms of warfare, I have not seen a lot on its effects. Though one could conclude that the reason Henry II had chests of records rather than a permanent repository was because he was travelling to different conflict areas. But there is so far little on how warfare affected repositories. I will look into that further.

There are some religious changes I can explain further such as the Cluniac/Benedictine Reform. However, the establishment of the Church of England is an early modern development, so I left that for Morgan.

And yes, I was getting around to those kind of edits. So far I've just been throwing information up there in a somewhat coherent manner.

Thanks for the questions and compliments!

Hey Maggie,

I just wanted to say that I like how are wikis fit together. I stop at the spread of Christianity and that it more or less where you begin. Let me know if you want me to add anything to mine that will give you a background or context for any medieval developments you wish to include in your wiki.

Hey Sarah,

I agree that I like how our Wikis are fitting together. I'll keep an eye on your page as I change mine and see if there's anything that can be added / edited. So far, so good!

If you find any sources that continue on to the Middle Ages, feel free to send them my way. I'll do likewise for any sources I find on ancient archives.

Hi Maggie,

As I said to Morgan on her post, history is not my forté(!!) but I will suggest some inner linking of Historical places/events to outside Wikipedia/other pages for readers like me who need context. For example, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Inquisition, Constitutions of Clarendon...to name a few.

Also, the paragraph below needs a few more reference notes for support:

Scholars often overlook lay archives in the Middle Ages due to the limited remaining evidence. This is due simply to the fact that churches and monasteries as institutions had the resources to preserve records compared to the lay families. Additionally, most of the evidence for lay written culture is Carolingian, which may not be representative of the early medieval norm.

Jessica

Thanks for the advice on the Wiki linking. I was planning on going through the page closer to completion and doing that.

I have the references, just didn't put them in yet. Though thanks for pointing it out!

Hi Maggie,

Your page looks really good so far, and I enjoy how thorough you've been in covering the period! Two questions I had while reading, and I apologize if the information simply doesn't exist to answer these. One, have you found any sources discussing how these archives were stored? Chests, bags, etc.? Was there any sort of system attempted to manage and organize the archives? I've run across evidence of this in the early modern period, however I'm just not knowledgable enough to know if any practices of the sort existed in the middle ages. Also, have you found anything on users of these archives? Were they only open to certain groups, the elite, rulers, etc.? Did the public benefit at all from the archives?

Yes, I've come upon some information in regards to how the archives were stored, though they are specific examples (see Christian Monastic Archives and Henry II). I am not sure if I can put it in the general introduction, as the practices were very localised to particular archives.

In terms of system to manage archives, the only evidence is the use of cartularies. Otherwise, there is not much information on practices. There might be something I'm forgetting at the moment.

So far all I have found is that those who kept the archives used them. Since it was usual for copies of records to be made for each person involved in the action, they kept their own records and did not share them publicly.

Still, interesting questions to keep in mind. Will address them more fully in my edits and additions.

Hi Maggie! Your page is looking very thorough at this point, you have a great deal of detail about medieval archives in Europe. I would recommend considering adding a section about medieval Islamic archives as well. The recordkeeping traditions in the Middle East in this period are important (and very interesting too!), particularly if you are discussing medieval archives at the time of the Crusades. Ernst Posner has an article on Medieval Islamic archives if you are interested in considering the subject (here's the JSTOR link: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40291434).

Hi Kelsey, I already have that article and was planning on including Islamic archives. I just forgot to put that title up. Thanks for pointing it out!