Course talk:ARST573/Religious Archives

Hey Jessie, Just one last suggestion before the time for discussion is over, but I noticed that you have "Non-Christian Archives" as a sub-heading under National/International Archives, and I was just wondering why that is? IT doesn't seem like it would need a sub-heading, unless your plan was to only include Christian denominational archives in the National/International heading, in which case you should probably include that in the title! If that's the case, you might be better off with having:

Christian Denominational Archives

Canada/USA

World

Non-Christian Archives

Canada/USA

World

Just a suggestion in case you wanted to clean up the headings a bit!

-Taryn

My mistake with the headings. Yes, "Non-Christian Archives" is meant to be a section unto itself, rather than a sub-section. Thank you for noticing the mistake.

Hey Jessie, as per our talk earlier today, here's the link to the Special Interest Section of the ACA on Religious Archives. Having looked at it a little more closely, I'm not sure how useful it will be. But it does give you a contact who might be able to direct you to sources/answer questions. http://archivists.ca/content/religious-archives-special-interest-section

Hi Alex, Thank you for the link. It is definitely useful! One of the primary issues that has come up in my research to date is that, despite a growing number of religious archives, there has been a marked lack of communication between religious archival institutions and professional archival associations, societies, conferences, etc... This is in part due to conflicting religious principles that are inherently "non-archival". The fact that there is a special interest section of the ACA that exists to bridge that gap is interesting. For example, some of the goals of the RASIS are to: Education and inform the wider ACA membership regarding the uniqueness of Religious Archives with regard to a) types of records dealt with, b) types of institutions religious archives are a part of, and c) special archival needs; Act as a 'support group' for each other as religious archivists and encourage informal communication of questions or concerns as religious archivists; and encourage members to learn more about archives of differing denominations. I obviously have a good deal of work to do and this has helped to spark some ideas. See you tomorrow morning :)

Hi Jessie, I don't know if this would be useful to you, but the Society of American Archivists also has an "Archivists of Religious Collections" section: http://www.saa-arcs.org/. One of the resources on this page is a list of local, regional, and national religious archives organizations in the US (http://www.saa-arcs.org/resources/RelArch-orgs.html).

Katie

Oh, good! I'm glad it was helpful :) You may also want to consider adding something about access to records (perhaps under the policies section?) One of the articles we read for the class was "An Act of Faith: Access to Religious Records in English Speaking Canada" by Shelley Sweeney (in Archivaria 30)which discussed some of the issues religious archives face in granting access to their records. It might have some useful information as well. Minor typo in first paragraph: "any give denomination" should be "any given denomination."

Oh, and maybe also add an image or two to break up the text? Perhaps one of the Vatican Archives (mostly because I'm sure it's pretty!) or of some kind of fancy religious charter?

Hi Jessie,

I'm passing along something that Taryn pointed out for my page - we are supposed to put a Course and Categories section at the bottom of our pages. You can find out how to do this on the home page for our class wiki in the Getting Started section (#5).

Also, I agree with Chelsea S. that the statement in the Challenges section, "The goal to document something spiritual or intangible, and perhaps inherently undocumentable is a challenge particular to religious archives," is particularly interesting. I'm not sure if you would have more info on this or the space, but I'm curious to know some of the ways archivists go about dealing with this challenge.

Katie

Hey Jessie-- So I'm sure you've noticed this, but some of your 'ref' tags aren't formatted properly, you'll definitely want to make sure you fix that before you get too into the Wiki and find out that the formatting of your bibliography is off because of one tag missing!

Hi Jessie,

Great work thus far! I noticed that your article has some in-text citations and a few broken ref tags. I also noticed that a lot of your article has no citations at all, which could be problematic in the future. Let me know if you need help figuring out the format :)

Chelsea

I meant "if you need help figuring out the reference coding format," but the wiki took it as an attempt to actually do coding! Sorry!

Thanks Chelsea And Taryn. Yes, my references are a giant disaster! I'm going to make one more solid attempt to figure out how it works, and if I'm still hitting a brick wall I might take you up on your help offer, Chelsea.

Hi Jessie,

Just a small note, your section entitled links doesn't actually have any links, just a list. I was also wondering if you're planning to address non-Christian archives at all? For example Buddhist temples often hold archives.

Hi Kathryn. I was having trouble getting the links to work. I think I have it figured out now, though. And yes, I will include a section for non-christian archives, now that I've been able to track down information. The vast majority of the articles I have found have been about Christian archives! THan you for the suggestion.

Hey Jessie-- I'm curious to know if you're going to further explain the four main types of religious archives that you list in the introduction (National denominational archives, denominational administrative archives, State (or province-check) diocesan archives and Parish level archives). I see you have a *more detail here* note and I think it would be a great idea to go into just a couple of sentences on what each of those actually means, because some people (me!) might not know the difference between say denominational archives and denominational administrative archives. So even just two sentences or so on each would really help me to understand what each of those different categories entails!

Thanks Taryn. Yes, I will definitely give much greater detail here. Good call. Maybe I'll consider moving these to a section of their own and creating a sub-section for each type.

Hi Jessie, this is shaping up to be a really interesting Wiki topic. My only comment at the moment is to consider dividing up the "Administration" section. Perhaps one section could address the buildings and another the staff and volunteers, etc.?

one more little comment about the Admin. section. you mention that orders should come from the "highest authority." I think it would be helpful to clarify this a little bit.

Hi, Jessie!

I am never sure what sorts of comments to provide for these pages, so I have mostly just been posing questions that came up for me while I was reading ('cause you know I always have questions) or pointing out things I would be interested in hearing more about.

I wondered if you had come across enough in your research to justify a separate section about the biggest differences between "normal archives" and religious archives. I am thinking here about the differences in access and restrictions on access more than anything. Another key difference is that issue of documenting the "spiritual or intangible" that you mention in your page. This is very fascinating to me (and something that comes up in performing arts archives, too), so I would love to hear more about this if your sources go into more detail.

I am also sort of interested in the idea of a religious archivist who is not a member of the denomination they serve. Of course, as archivists we don't have to be subject experts on the materials we preserve, but normally we only have to adhere to our own institutional and professional standards and not the "ethos and ideology of the sponsoring denomination." If you have run across anything more about how non-religious archivists deal with this tension, I'd love to read more about it.

I agree with Mariko that talking a bit about religious archives as a barrier to or a partner in reconciliation would be super interesting! Great job, Jessie...looking forward to reading more!

Hey Jessie, I was wondering if you were thinking of mentioning the restitution that can come from religious archives, like what Blair and Melanie were talking about during the tour?

Hi Mariko,

I hadn't thought about discussing the role that religious archives can play in restitution. That's a great idea! I'll be sure to include it in the "controversy" in church archives section, or ideology. What do you think? When chatting with Melanie after the tour, she told me to e-mail her with any questions about the wiki project. Maybe she would be able to point me to a good source regarding the restitution efforts. Thanks for the suggestion :)