Unaccessioned

Archiving in the age of Super Abundance

On the 13^th February, the British Film Institute held an event titled ‘Archives in the Age of Super Abundance’. The event was hugely popular and boasted an interesting programme, with a range of speakers from outside the profession, inside the BFI and a few somewhere in between. It looked like the event would tackle some of the problems faced when archiving huge amounts of information, specifically from the online moving image sector. What the event actually did was leave delegates with a sense of impending doom, the feeling that the work ahead was too hard and there was little point in attempting the challenges ahead. Besides this, it also questioned the fundamental meaning of an archive and provided dangerous advice for those working on their own collections within their own communities.

The day began with a welcome with explained the event was held to promote a project the BFI were undertaking to archive 400 online moving image films and make them available as part of their collections. The final panel of the day talked about how this was being achieved and the challenges they were facing. The honesty used in describing these challenges was impressive, but the tone held an overall sense of defeat. That they had no idea how they would move on from this, as capturing the 400 is proving so difficult and that this did not bode well for the future.

George Oates from the Flickr foundation gave the Keynote presentation, which was arguably the most useful session of the day. George is a really engaging speaker who focused on the social and community aspects of archiving, explaining that Flickr split their metadata into technical and social, a novel approach. I struggle to see the different between this approach and the split we already have between technical and descriptive. The same data is captured, it is just labeled differently. George also mentioned the idea of ‘citizen led documentation’ as a specific Flickr approach. Archives don’t use this terminology, but we are trained to capture the social and cultural aspects of our collections. We are standards led because we have to be, but this doesn’t erase the social or the cultural from the work we do. I think Flickr are far more similar to the rest of the sector than they think and are perhaps not the catch all solution to the archives cataloguing and preservation issues that they seem to be suggesting. The admission that the data lifeboat service has been created as the site is now too big to be archived proves this point.

The next two panel sessions were very interesting but held no relevance to the archive. The topics discussed, although interesting were so far removed from the archive process that preservation of anything (super abundant or otherwise) was not discussed. Interesting, but pointless.

Next up was a panel on terminology which focused on how to define the video essay. Should it be a genre, should it be a form, should it be something else? This was a great example of how we set and use standards to tie ourselves up in knots. It really highlighted that our job is difficult, and this is not always expressed well by us.

Then, for me, it all went horribly wrong.

The community archives panel, a welcome inclusion to the event, was titled, ‘The internet is the archive’. This blatantly wrong, factually incorrectly titled panel started with the Chair explaining how her interaction with the community archives on the panel had made her rethink the definition and role of the archive. We heard from three very impressive community archives who were doing marvelous things with the collections they were curating online. I think that the community archive world is fantastic, the work they do and the passion they have for their topics is second to none and it is imperative that this work is preserved so it can be accessed and learned from for a long time to come.

This is why I think defining these collections as archives in harmful. These collections are fantastic. But they are stored online, in some cases uploaded to Instagram or YouTube. This is not preservation, in any sense of the world and for something to be archived, it needs to be preserved. I would argue that it doesn’t need to be catalogued or made available to be an archive, but it does need to be preserved. These are curated collections and to describe them as anything else is dangerous as it implies a false sense of security that having this important content online somehow saves it for posterity. We should be providing advice and guidance for these community group to be preserving their own collections in a way that means they will be safe well into the future. We don’t need to be taking these collection into our holdings (unless the group themselves wants this). We need to support the community archive sector as much as we can, a difficult ask in itself given our own resource and budget issues), but this cannot be at the expense of the collections. They are too important to ignore their preservation for access. There will be no collections to access if they are not preserved and we need to share the skills needed to do this.

With the final panel focusing on the BFI project and its challenges, the day ended on a pessimistic note, which was a shame as the BFI project sounds really interesting and deserved a more optimistic approach. It felt like the plan for the day was to take delegates through the journey of online film, from creation to end preservation, but much of this was largely irrelevant for those expecting discussion and perhaps guidance on how to preserve their own collections. Defining the internet as an archive is a dangerous statement and future events and output from the BFI needs to take the needs of the records into consideration. Changing the fundamentals of our sector cannot come at the expense of the collections we preserve.

World connections, business and multimedia infographic design.

These events are so important to our sector and I hope they continue to be held. But the focus needs to be on the collections, the work we do and how we can help other groups who want to work on their own collections do that. The rest, is really just background noise.

Advocacy – For you and me

For me, being an archivist or a record keeper is a vocation more than a profession. However you stumble across the sector, you stay for a love of the collections, the people you work with and the stories you can tell. However, although we are really good at promoting the collections in our care, we are not so good at advocating for our collections, and for ourselves as archivists. Advocating for enough resources to properly collect our collections tends to come second to us trying to do everything. This blog looks at some ways we can make changes to the current status quo, both or ourselves and for the wider record keeping sector.

Business team putting together jigsaw puzzle isolated flat vector illustration. Cartoon partners working in connection. Teamwork, partnership and cooperation concept

The one thing that we as a sector need to get better at is advocating for ourselves and our collections. We know the importance of the records in our care, it’s why we do the job we do. But not everyone understands the importance of the work we do and the collections we preserve. And this means that the time required to complete the tasks involved in our role is also in most cases underestimated. Our diligence and desire to properly protect the records in our care and do a good job means that we take on far more work than is possible during our contracted hours and somehow complete what is asked of us, in many cases at great cost to our personal lives and in some cases, our mental health. But how do we stop this?

Stop doing it all

Some responses when I’ve brought this up in conversation include, ‘If I don’t do it who will? Or ‘It’s just a busy time just now, it will go back to normal soon’. Or ‘it’s in my job description so I need to do it’. It’s at this point we should remember that we all have someone above us. We are not the be all and end all at the organisations we work for and yes, we have a responsibility to the collections in our care, but we cannot preserve them to our own detriment. If work not getting done is what it takes for those above us to realise, they are under resourced, then so be it. Busy times never get easier, when you work over your capacity, that becomes the norm, you are setting your new expected work level and yes it might be in your job description, but it’s not in that description, or your contract that you need to work yourself into the ground to get everything on the list done. This is the beginning of advocating for yourself. I’m not suggesting that you stop working. I am saying that you work with your management to prioritise tasks, do what is possible within your contracted hours and enjoy your free time. Making it clear what work is required, and staying firm on what you as one person can and can’t do, helps highlight the labour involved in what we do and shows that the investment in additional resource is worthwhile.

Keep Speaking Up

Once you start on this journey, it will become easier to continue to keep advocating for yourself. The ripple effect this will have on the sector will hopefully be widespread. Having examples of similar organisations with good resource levels and work plans will give those struggling examples to point to. The effect of the ARA pay and salary guidelines has been huge since they were implemented. We can achieve more as a group than we can individually. Keep talking to each other and if something doesn’t feel or look right, speak up. Let’s help each other.

Money, Money, Money – not always sunny in the archive sector

Archives have always been an underfunded sector, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. A lot of the time this is out of our control. The cost of living is ever increasing and budgets at almost all organisations are being squeezed ever tighter. In a world where everyone needs more money, archivists have to learn the skills of financial planning and making their budgets stretch as far as possible while also being ready to take full advantage of any small funding pots which may become available. This blog looks at some of the issues the sector has with funding and perhaps look at some possible solutions, if there are any.

Happy rich banker celebrating income growth. Broker enjoying success in stock market trading. Flat vector illustration for money, finance, millionaire concept

One of the main issues facing the sector is project funding. This is of particular concern in the world of digital preservation and digitisation. Project funding used to focus on short terms contracts to catalogue collections or carry out a specific promotional activity. Although not ideal, this type of project provides additional resource for a set piece of work that would not otherwise happen due to resource constraints. However, more recently, project funding has focused on digitisation as a means of preserving vulnerable collections and making them more accessible. This work is important, but it is not project work. Once the items are digitised, the digital copies need to be preserved. This is ongoing work. And the platform hosting the images online needs to be financed, maintained and kept in working order. This is also ongoing work. Viewing digitisation as a short term funded is problematic, particularly when that funding is given to community groups with limited resources in the first place.

Funding for short term archivist contracts can also be problematic if the organisation does not already have an archivist in place. Contracting someone to create an archive catalogue and make items available without resource available to continue the work after the contract has ended is problematic and puts records at risk. Short term contracts should always be a supplementary provision,

The recent relaunch of the Archives Revealed funding programme by the UK National Archives is a great boost to the UK archive sector. Real thought has been put into the types of grants available and what work will be funded. It is however interesting that those applying for consortium or cataloguing grants much spend 20% of their award on promotional activity, which can include digitisation, but no mention is made of a requirement to correctly preserve this content once the funding runs out. If a well-established National Archive hasn’t produced guidelines on this, then how can the smaller organisations be expected to forward plan to this extent?

The money writes with white chalk is on hand, draw concept.

It’s also interesting that one of the funding partners in the Archives Revealed Programme is the National Lottery Heritage Fund, who are on of the main contributors to the short-term funded projects across the archive sector. I think that funders do need to start taking responsibility for the projects they are funding and think more about the sustainability of them. Perhaps funding less projects but giving more money for longer term preservation should be a consideration. Ensuring that a project has resource to continue in some way when funding runs out should also be a consideration when awarding money to organisations.

But there is also an onus on the organisations and archivists themselves to ensure that any funding application is thought through to the very end and the sustainability of any projects is kept at the forefront when deciding what to apply for. Our main focus in this situation as in any other, is the collections in our care and there is no point having collections digitised if we can’t them preserve those copies. Resource is a great thing, but it needs to be invested in the right places.

Donation Trauma – Is it a thing?

Without collecting and selection, the role of an archivist couldn’t exist. We are the modern-day hunter gatherers, seeking out historically valuable information and collecting it together in well organised groups for us to look after forever more. But how much thought do we really give to those handing their treasures over to us, and what impact does this transaction have on them? I think about this in more depth in this post.

Whether it’s creating a brand-new collection, or adding to an already established one, collecting is a core role of the archivist. Knowing where to look to find the records that tell the stories that need to be told is a skill built up over time. However, it’s a task that comes with many pitfalls and is problematic in a range of ways. How do we decide what is important? How do we know what story is the most important to tell? We know that we can’t collect everything, but although our role is to curate content, how do we know we’re saving the right things? Across the archive sector, what is kept depends largely on who is in charge of the collection and even though policies and processes are in place to help guide decisions, there is no real standardisation and opinions are what decide the value and therefore the fate of a record.

Sometimes this can lead to us being offered collections that don’t fit with our collecting policy, or would be better placed with another organisation, or even in some cases may not have the value that the potential donor thinks it does. We’re well versed in how to deal with this. Empathy and compassion are under valued skills of the archive profession in general. But do we apply this thought process to those we accept collections from? I’m not sure we always do.

A lot of our records come from community groups who have been building up collections as a labour of love for many years. Even some individuals have collected valuable records and have decided to donate them so ensure they survive long term. However, in our excitement to fill the gaps in our holdings, do we always acknowledge how difficult this decision could have been? Or the reasons it has been made? Having worked in the sector for so long, I’ve formed strong emotional attachments to the collections in my care, even when I wasn’t the collector, so having to give up the records which have played such an important roll in your life can, in some cases, be really difficult. To be handed paperwork that feels like signing your life away by an over excited archivist who keeps talking about the gaps that’s been filled or the importance of the collection will likely not make this easier.

Large group of people different silhouette crowded together in heart shape isolated on white background. Vector illustration

Trauma has become an important word across the sector in recent years, particularly in reference to trauma informed practice and the emotional trauma that archivists can go through dealing with records with difficult subject matter. This in an important part of the work we do and needs to be explored more to ensure we feel able to do our jobs every day. But we do also need to be mindful of the impact we can have on others and be prepared to act with compassion when needed. Even if inside, we are doing cartwheels about the amazing stuff being donated. Allowing free access to donated collections can also help ease this transition. Donators should be welcomed to work on the collections they have contributed, or just be able to look at them whenever opening hours facilitate this. No one will know more than them about their collections and cultivating these relationships can only bring us benefits.

I think the previous blogs about working with community archives inform this post as well. Communication skills have never been more important in our role, and we should always take a minute to think about the task we are doing and how it may affect the people we are working with. This can only ever be a good thing.

Lets Get Digital – Or Should We?

Let’s get Digital! – Or should we?

Previous blogs talked about the ever-changing archive sector and no change has had a more dramatic impact than the development of technology and the establishment of digital archive work. Digital Preservation very quickly became another millstone around the neck of archivists along with the acquisition, appraisal, cataloguing, conservation, access, promotion, advocacy, research and any tasks as appropriate work we were already doing. But should this be the case? Has it got to the point that digital preservation (and maybe other aspects of digital work) has become so large that specific roles should be created to carry out this work? Should digital preservation be its own sector completely? That’s the topic of the musings in this blog.

The unofficial start of the digital preservation sector can be traced to a conference on metadata in 2000. Even then, the scale of the problem was well known. Digital records are created at a far faster pace than physical records due to ease of use. But as archivists, our role is to preserve, so we turned ourselves to the challenge, only to find preserving digital records was not the same as physical records and a far higher degree of technical knowledge was needed than was taught. The context in which digital preservation takes place was also far more complex than in the physical world and knowledge was required of anti-virus, cyber security, software systems, file formats and a raft of other topics before digital preservation could even be thought about.

It is definitely true that many archivists have risen to this challenge. Many have moved into digital archivist roles and completed the training to specialise in preserving digital records. However, many have struggled with turning their hand to the digital world. In particular those in lone archivist roles with responsibility for both physical and digital records have struggled as it’s physical impossible to do all the work involved in preserving an organisations entire record estate on your own, and that’s before you factor in the training element involved in keeping your skillset up to date.

It becomes clear that the roles are quite different in scope when comparing the competency frameworks of the sector organisations. The Digital Preservation Coalition created a fully comprehensive framework of digital preservation skills linked to role definitions which helps track skill building and career progression in the digital field. The Archive and Records Association have included digital preservation in their framework but it is as an add on optional skill that archivists can choose to ignore or develop as they see fit.

It is this problem that makes me think that the roles should be separated, and digital preservation should be given a place as its own sector with it’s own roles, pay scales and tasks. This is not to say that digital archivists shouldn’t exist, but in my mind their role should be far more defined than is currently the case. Taking the example of larger, well-funded organisations with good staff resource, many of them employ digital preservation specialists, as well as digital archivists. In some cases, software engineers are also employed as the technical requirements are far outside the scope of an archivist role. This makes the role of the archivist easier as they can focus on the preservation aspect of the role that they were hired to do with confidence that the technical side of the role is being covered by a specialist.

Preservation is complex no matter what the medium, and in the physical record world we have conservators who carry out the specialist technical work to ensure records are repaired as needed and conserved in order to last for generations. Why should this be any different in the digital world? Archivists have a strong specific skillset, which, although not complicated, took time and effort to build, and while continued professional development is important, it shouldn’t mean having to learn an entirely new role that we weren’t prepared for and didn’t really want to do in the first place. There is a huge market for digital preservation skills across the heritage sector, but do they need to come from archivists, who already do so much with their day?

Making connections and finding communities – The right conversations

I don’t think that making connections is a contentious subject for a blog post, but I do think it’s a really important one. As I mentioned in previous posts, I believe that the role of the archivist is changing, and I think this involves a more focused approach to collecting. For some time now the sector has been talking about addressing gaps in collections, but how do we go about finding the communities that represent those gaps; and even more importantly, how do we have the right conversations that encourages collaboration with us in a way that is fair. That’s the subject of this blog post.

Although collecting has always been an important part of archive work, there hasn’t always been a targeted focus on what should be collected and what shouldn’t. Recent archive sector research has discussed the gaps in our collections and archives across the world are working to fill these and provide better representation to as many people and groups as possible. However, communities have also been doing this work, noticing the gaps in their own stories and working to fill them without institutional help. It could be argued that this is a factor in the increase in community archive work we have seen in the last few years.

There is an argument that if communities are doing this work themselves, why are archive organisations getting involved? Communities are best placed to tell their story and collect what they know to be the essential records for doing this and archives don’t need to be involved. For me, there is an element of truth to this. However, it is also true that community groups and archives are particularly under funded and under resourced and this for me is the main reason for the wider archive sector to get involved. Collaboration is always the key to success for me and I think we can do a lot more together than we can apart. However, the trust needs to be there and at the moment that is definitely not always the case.

Business success concept on wooden background high angle view. hands protecting wooden figures of people.

As previously mentioned, community archives are wary of engaging with institutions, seeing them as gatekeepers which will keep them from their own records and store them for years without doing any work to make them accessible. This is generally due to lack of fund on the part of the institution but this is largely irrelevant to the group who have worked so hard to pull a collection together and feel really passionate about it’s topic. Approaching community groups is also challenging because, just like archives, no two are the same. Some have a wealth of archive knowledge and training programmes to help spread this throughout their teams. Some are individuals with true passion for the items they collect but no real understanding of the good practice required to preserve them long term. This is a particular problem with digital records, where storage is regularly confused for preservation and access via a website is a common form of ‘preserving’ records.

So, what do we do? I would suggest we approach these groups ready to learn. Make it clear that we are interested in what they’ve been doing and are keen to help, but most importantly, help within their context. We are not the saviours of these collections as they have already been saved, but we can help with advice and guidance on what happens next. Offering collaboration over collections deposit for me is a good thing. If these collections can be preserved to the standards required for long term preservation within the community, then we should be facilitating that and helping to facilitate access and promotion rather than suggesting removal of the collection for cataloguing. Having a list of resources on hand will be a huge help in this work.

It’s also important to show actual interest in the communities we want to connect with. Go to their events, have conversations about things other than archives and forge a connection that’s about more than work. I think if we can do this, we are a good way down the path of collaboration. Working together, for me, is the key to all archive work, and this includes working with other archivists and record practitioners. There is a wealth of hugely successful projects and work in this area already and learning from those who have done or are already doing it will really help improve our own practice. Let’s work together and move the sector forward in a new way that benefits us all and makes more collections accessible in new ways. It all starts with a conversation…

But, that’s not who we are?

I don’t think I’m sharing any huge secret when I say that archivists, and maybe by default archives, have a bit of an image problem outside of our sector. Since I joined the sector we have battled against the stereotypical cardigan wearing gatekeeper image of our profession with little success. But working within the sector, I know that archivists are a vibrant, passionate, friendly bunch of people who on the whole love the job that they do and want to help others explore the joys of archives. So where dos the disconnect come in? And what do we need to do to change it? That’s what I’m going to talk about in today’s blog.

A closeup shot of a door with black and yellow stripes

The perception of archivists from outside the sector is something that’s always bothered me. When I decided to become an archivist, I was met with two main questions when I told people; one, ‘what’s that’? and two, ‘is that for people like us’? The latter was in reference to my working class background. I didn’t actually know what an archive was myself until much later in life and even when I found out, it did still seem like a sector that might be closed off to me. Perseverance paid off, but the fact that both these questions still plague the sector almost 20 years later is a problem. Worryingly, a problem that we don’t seem to be moving towards solving at any great pace.

I think this may be something to do with a topic I mentioned in a previous blog. I think perceptions of what an archivist is and isn’t are warped to the extent that people are so unsure of what we do and if it’s for them that they just don’t engage. The other side of the coin is that this is a truth universally acknowledged by archivists, but then also ignored. We don’t seem to care enough about this perception to do the work towards changing it. It is easier to continue to put pictures of our collections on social media and hope that the right person sees them and makes the leap to engage with the archive rather than putting our heads over the parapet and encouraging people to explore archives.

This is not a blanket opinion of the sector. There are archives who post some content about the work they do, or fit information about archives into the latest Tik Tok trend, but I think sector wide input is needed for the perception to begin to change. And we also need to acknowledge that we want it to change. Explore Your Archive was designed as a mechanism to help the sector do this, but it has turned into a content sharing platform which floods the internet with images of archive content but does little to explain why people should engage with archives and what they can learn from them.

As also mentioned in a previous blog, we need to acknowledge that the sector is changing and the work we do will be changing with it. Modern record collecting and community engagement is becoming the main focus of our role which is very different from the inward facing focus on catalogue creating and nothing else that archivists did when the profession established.

So how do we fix it? I don’t really have an answer, but I do have some ideas. Using the tools we have already, and our skillset would be a great start. Using Explore Your Archive in a different way as a sector would help. It would provide a unified voice through which people literally all over the world could be encouraged to visit their archives and find things of interest. Open days are also a useful tool, as is engaging with local media and telling people about what we do and why rather than what we have. Increasing community engagement work will also increase our potential audience and may also increase our holdings as community groups realise what we can help with. To me, the benefits are many, but it would be remiss not to mention the main barriers to making this work. Archive budgets and resources are already stretched to their limits so an anonymous blog telling people to spend more money and time on yet another task is likely not overly welcome. Prioritisation of time and resource is always going to be a factor for our sector and I believe this is important enough to warrant prioritising and focus from the sector as a whole. Image is everything and we need to work on improving ours.

Let It Go – Was Elsa onto something?

You may be wondering what Elsa and Frozen has to do with archives. This topic links into something that I touched on in my previous storytelling blog. I talked in that blog about how archivists need to think about who the correct person is to be telling stories using the records in their collections. I think that most archivists would agree that one of the main aims of preserving records is to provide access to them. However stereotypical views of archivists seem to be at odds with this fact. Do archivists really live up the stereotypes placed on them. Are we more open to collaboration and user-initiated projects and we’re just really bad at telling users this? Or are we somewhere in the middle? I’m attempting to unpack my thoughts on the subject in this blog.

From the archivists I’ve met and worked with and the way I behave myself, I think that in many cases, archivists become very attached to the collections they are working with – to the point that many can claim to be subject matter experts on collections they have catalogued. Although learning in depth about the topic of the collection your cataloguing is not a requirement, many archivists can claim an unusually large level of knowledge about the collections they work with. I’ve definitely gathered some incredibly niche knowledge over the years. However, I would also argue that many of us are over keen to share this knowledge and tell everyone about the amazing records we’ve worked with that day and what we found out. So many archivists career stories start with ‘I love history….’ for a good reason. It’s this enthusiasm that helps us create such detailed catalogue descriptions or find that perfect image for an enticing social media post. So why then, do so many people still consider archivists and gatekeepers and archives as inaccessible to them?

At an event I attended recently, a range of community archivists expressed that they wouldn’t want to give an institution access to the collections they had formed because they would likely never see it again, or their access would be severely restricted. They also worried that an institution would be given a collection which would immediately be shelved and no work done on it as no money was available to catalogue and make it available for research (or for the donator to access it). While it cannot be denied that many archives suffer from lack of funding and this may be the reason that donated collections lie untouched, restricting donator access at this point to me sounds counter intuitive. Wouldn’t it be far better to work with the donator who cared enough to spend their time and energy gathering the collection and preserving it as best they can for their community, to make the collection accessible. It should also be noted that although we can learn and become experts on collection contents, this is no substitute for lived experience from people involved in the collection topic in some way.

If an archivist’s job is to collect, preserve and make available, in many cases, community archives have done the collecting for us already. In these cases, if the community archive is willing to work with an institution, could the archivist’s role move to preservation and access facilitation? For example, providing a cataloguing process document and support to the community archive so they can use their expertise to catalogue the collection would be beneficial for everyone. The collection could then be donated for permanent preservation with the collaborating institution, who can also help to facilitate access. For this to work, there would need to be changes in the way archivists view who can access their collections – if a community archive is doing all the work to catalogue a collection – we can’t then restrict their access to that collection. If the archive is open, access should be provided. Donor agreements can help both parties document what they need for the arrangement to work and if agreement is possible, far more collections could not only be preserved in appropriate conditions, but also accessed by a wide range of users. I know that ideally someone would be paid to do this work (funding will be a topic covered in future blogs) but in cases where this isn’t possible, if a community archive is already creating a list of the record they have, surely archivists at institutions could support in turning that list into a sector compliant catalogue? I’ve never heard of an arrangement like this in practice but would love to be proved wrong so if you already do something like this please do get in touch.

Although archivists do want collections to be accessed, I think sometimes we are too focused on controlling how that access works. Yes, we need safeguards and procedures in place to preserve records but if the records never make it make it to the archive they won’t be preserved or accessed anyway. The main aim is for records to be used so it may be that a case-by-case approach is required to collection acquisition and access. Even though the thought of this makes me a bit anxious, but I think it’s time to challenge ourselves to do what’s best for the communities we serve as well as the records in our care. In many cases one wouldn’t exist without the other and we should be making the most of these connections to help improve access in ways that we can’t do on our own.

The role of the archivist is changing, in my opinion for the better and we should be using our expertise for the good of the communities around us and the stories they have to tell. Even if that does mean letting go a little bit.

Archives, Archivists, and Storytelling

From a personal perspective, this blog is quite a difficult one to write. Before I begin, I don’t think this is a black and white issue, but it’s been something that’s been percolating in my mind for a long time, so I thought it appropriate to bring it up here.

One of the key components of archives is their role in storytelling. Some of the best stories in the world are held in archives and with the digital technology sphere growing and expanding what feels like daily, there is a wealth of ways these stories can now be expressed, interpreted and told.

And when I qualified it was one of the aspects of the job that I was most looking forward to doing. I liked the idea of being able to research a collection I had just catalogued for the nuggets of interesting information I could share with the world. Every archive course across the UK includes an element of outreach and advocacy and the Explore Your Archive Campaign encourages us to tell the stories in our collections and show the world our treasures through the medium of storytelling. However, in the last 5 to 10 years, this has become problematic for me for several reasons.

Firstly, in every institution I’ve worked in, promotion of the collections has taken priority over the actual work I was hired to do – namely catalogue a collection and make it accessible. In project cataloguing roles I’ve been told to include less description or only catalogue to series level to ensure that time remains at the end of the project for promotion, whether that be online or via exhibitions. It never made sense to me how I could promote a collection well when I wasn’t entirely sure what was in it; and my title was project cataloguing archivist in some cases – Surely, I was hired to catalogue. The sector seems to me to have forgotten that the best way to promote a collection is a well laid out detailed catalogue that users can access, understand and interpret according to their research needs. In my mind what we should actually be promoting is the archive itself, the work being done and why it’s so important. We should be a gateway for discovery, not gate keeping what we think the most important and interesting parts of our collections are.

Secondly, the world has changed so much since I qualified that it’s changed the role (and in some ways perceptions) of the archive and the archivist too. The focus used to be on the collections held that were hundreds of years old, preserving them and telling the stories contained within them. I think this is still a core part of the job, but it’s been joined by a sharper focus on modern collecting. Having learnt from the gaps that exist in these older collections, archivists are now focused on making sure we collect a full representation of the world around us and that no voice is forgotten or left behind. This is a huge step forward and should continue as there is still improvement to be made in this area. However, in many cases, we still cling onto the notion that we are the best people to tell the stories held in modern collections and I believe we need to analyse this feeling. With modern collecting, many of the record subjects are still alive, and although our collecting will ensure they have a voice in the future – they still have their own voice now. With community archives, whole communities still exist which lived the truth described in the records we hold, and no one is more qualified to tell that story then them.

Perhaps with these collections, our role should be to facilitate storytelling, to make the collections easily searchable and accessible so the people who can see themselves within it are encouraged to use it and tell their story. Yes, exhibitions around collections from hundreds of years ago still have a place but are there scholars of the period who could interpret the records in a new way, or someone with ancestors from that period that has a particular link they could share. Oral histories can be collected and added to the collection to enrich it and create a range of perspectives for those who look at the collection many years from now. Surely that is the role of the archivist? To leave the most accessible, representative collections that we can for the future? Our advocacy work should focus on this and why the work we do is so important.

This is where the true value of the Explore Your Archive Campaign comes in. We shouldn’t be telling people what we think they should be interested in, or promoting the records that are our favourite from the collections. We should be saying this is what we do and this is why it matters and without it you wouldn’t have records like these. But there is no point in pointing out records which are only accessible via online exhibition because the catalogue was badly completed.

So for me, I’ve hung up my storytelling coat. I want to focus on making collections available for others to tell their own story. I was to help give a voice to those who may feel they’ve been forgotten and the last thing I want to do is gatekeep that experience. In the future, if where I’m working has no collections backlog (does anyone have this? Will we ever have this?) then research would be a nice to do job. But until then, advocacy and storytelling will remain separate. It’s not that I won’t promote what the archive I work in has, but it will be through a lense of archivist and not storyteller – because I’m an archivist and that’s what I am and I’m still very proud to be one.

What an Archive is – and what it isn’t

Following on from my what is an archivist blog, I thought it might be useful to think about what an archive is, and also what it isn’t. Traditionally, archives have been intrinsically linked with tangibility and historical importance, but some events I have attended recently have discussed the archive in a wider context and played with the definition in a way which not only confused, but also irritated me. So, I decided to attempt to unpack these feelings a bit more and see if I’m justified in feeling this way or if I need to open up my own definitions.

For me, the traditional meaning of archives is (was?) twofold. One, the building or repository where the physical or digital collections are stored and can be retrieved for access. I haven’t seen this side of the definition changed or challenged (always happy to be corrected), and two, the actual items that are being collected, preserved and retrieved for access from this building or repository. For me, the two are forever linked and cannot be separated and this is what keeps order in my archive world. I don’t attribute any physical descriptions or formats to these items as collections can contain anything, (just see the twitter post about locks of hair and other such interesting items for confirmation), but I do believe that for something to be an archive it needs to be collected in some way and the main reason for this is that I believe a central component of archives is for them to be accessed. If you can’t create access to it in some way, I really strongly believe that it’s not an archive and stretching the term only adds confusion to an already confused sector that struggles to define itself at the best of times. I also think by its nature, an archive needs to be unchanging and will therefore have some evidentiary value, even just to confirm that something existed, or something was said. If we don’t have this stability and trust, we don’t have archives.

However, recent discussions I’ve heard, taken part in or read, state that the purpose of an archive is to replicate a memory or an experience and for this reason, ANYTHING can be an archive. Arguments that the body (or certain parts of it, like the brain, or sexual organs) are an archive due to the experiences they have and the memories they create. Individuals’ homes are archives, for the same reason and recently on the listserv, the term ‘artchive’ was used to refer to works of art as archives. At a talk I attended a few months ago, an activist turned archivist made the claim that anything that can create a memory can be an archive. This need to turn everything around us into an archive baffles me. Archivists have accepted that we cannot collect everything and to try would be a huge waste of time and resource. This is why appraisal exists – it is absolute necessity and statements like the above only serve to make our role more complex than it already is.

There is a huge amount of discourse and research around the idea of archives and memory and I’m not going to discuss any of that here or I’d be writing a book. But I will say that I think the notion that archives are there to replicate or create past events that archive users did not attend is fundamentally wrong. Archives can be used in a range of ways to encourage memories from people who were there or provide a small glimpse into what the past may have been like for those accessing the archive in some cases hundred of years later, but the idea that we should be aiming to recreate these experiences make very little sense to me. I want to use archives to learn about the past and see why things happened or why people involved felt the way we did. I want to know what other people experienced and why it’s different to what I experience now. This is why an archive needs to be something that can be collected. A person (or part of them) cannot be an archive because they cannot be collected, preserved and accessed in perpetuity by anyone who wants to – and neither should they be. The importance of archives in storytelling, accessing small parts of the past and learning from those who have gone before is what makes archives so unique. We don’t need to keep adding to the term to make it count- it’s already one of the most important terms there is and our role is to highlight that by continuing to collect, preserve and facilitate access.

I did a lot of soul searching for this blog as I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t just stuck in the past and determined not to learn and grow in this area. I also tried to compare it to other sectors and what would happen if this logic were to be applied there. The best I could come up with is a lawyer presenting evidence to a court. Evidence needs to be concrete to support the case being made. In fact, in many cases archives are used for this exact purpose because they are unchanging and held in such a way that they can’t be altered. Using the above logic, a defendant could claim that their body is evidence as they were there and experienced the situation. It wouldn’t be accepted because there is no evidence of the fact that body was there. The body, to me, cannot be an archive for similar reasons.

Team discussing bookkeeping report, working late at night at bureaucracy record in storage room. Diverse depository workers analyzing administrative documents, discovering accountancy files

I don’t think it is the job of the archive to create memories around the content they hold and facilitate. Yes, memories can be made about interactions with records and experiences can be had in an archive when using the material, but that for me is where the facilitation start sand ends. I tried to open my mind for this blog and think theoretically but for this particular question, I found it really unhelpful and confusing, and my conclusion is I’m going to stick my previous definitions – if only so the sector that I love still continues to make sense to me.

I would be keen to hear from anyone who thinks the opposite as me. Either on here via the comments, or on social media via #UnAccessioned .