The Silence of the Archive

The Silence of the Archive

Author: David Thomas

Publisher: Facet Publishing

Published: 2017-05-11

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1783301554

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Foreword by Anne J Gilliland, University of California Evaluating archives in a post-truth society. In recent years big data initiatives, not to mention Hollywood, the video game industry and countless other popular media, have reinforced and even glamorized the public image of the archive as the ultimate repository of facts and the hope of future generations for uncovering ‘what actually happened’. The reality is, however, that for all sorts of reasons the record may not have been preserved or survived in the archive. In fact, the record may never have even existed – its creation being as imagined as is its contents. And even if it does exist, it may be silent on the salient facts, or it may obfuscate, mislead or flat out lie. The Silence of the Archive is written by three expert and knowledgeable archivists and draws attention to the many limitations of archives and the inevitability of their having parameters. Silences or gaps in archives range from details of individuals’ lives to records of state oppression or of intelligence operations. The book brings together ideas from a wide range of fields, including contemporary history, family history research and Shakespearian studies. It describes why these silences exist, what the impact of them is, how researchers have responded to them, and what the silence of the archive means for researchers in the digital age. It will help provide a framework and context to their activities and enable them to better evaluate archives in a post-truth society. This book includes discussion of: enforced silencesexpectations and when silence means silencedigital preservation, authenticity and the futuredealing with the silencepossible solutions; challenging silence and acceptancethe meaning of the silences: are things getting better or worse?user satisfaction and audience development. This book will make compelling reading for professional archivists, records managers and records creators, postgraduate and undergraduate students of history, archives, librarianship and information studies, as well as academics and other users of archives.


Archival Silences

Archival Silences

Author: Michael Moss

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-10

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 100038523X

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Archival Silences demonstrates emphatically that archival absences exist all over the globe. The book questions whether benign ‘silence’ is an appropriate label for the variety of destructions, concealment and absences that can be identified within archival collections. Including contributions from archivists and scholars working around the world, this truly international collection examines archives in Australia, Brazil, Denmark, England, India, Iceland, Jamaica, Malawi, The Philippines, Scotland, Turkey and the United States. Making a clear link between autocratic regimes and the failure to record often horrendous crimes against humanity, the volume demonstrates that the failure of governments to create records, or to allow access to records, appears to be universal. Arguing that this helps to establish a hegemonic narrative that excludes the ‘other’, this book showcases the actions historians and archivists have taken to ensure that gaps in archives are filled. Yet the book also claims that silences in archives are inevitable and argues not only that recordkeeping should be mandated by international courts and bodies, but that we need to develop other ways of reading archives broadly conceived to compensate for absences. Archival Silences addresses fundamental issues of access to the written record around the world. It is directed at those with a concern for social justice, particularly scholars and students of archival studies, history, sociology, international relations, international law, business administration and information science.


The Silence of Bartleby

The Silence of Bartleby

Author: Dan McCall

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9780801495939

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In The Silence of Bartleby, Dan McCall proposes a new reading of Herman Melville's classic short tale "Bartleby, The Scrivener." McCall discuss in detail how "Bartleby has been read in the last half-century by practitioners of widely used critical methodologies--including source-study, psychoanalytic interpretation, and Marxist analysis. He argues that in these elaborate readings of the tale, the text itself may be lost, for critics frequently seem to be more interested in their own concerns than in Melville's. Efforts to enrich "Bartleby" may actually impoverish it, preventing us from experiencing the sense of wonder and pain that the story provides. McCall combines close readings of Melville's tale with a lively analysis of over four decades of commentary, and he includes the complete text of story itself as an appendix, encouraging us to read the story on its own terms.


The Silence of God

The Silence of God

Author: Sir Robert Anderson

Publisher: Trumpet Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13:

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The Silence of God (1897) has become a classic on the subject of why God has not directly intervened in the affairs of men for the past two thousand years. Here's how Anderson puts the question he addresses: "And to not a few this volume may be welcome as affording a clue to pressing difficulties which perplex and distress the thoughtful. Infidelity trades upon the silence of Heaven, the inaction of the Supreme. If there be a God, almighty and all-good, why does He not use His power and give proof of His goodness in the way men choose to expect of Him? The answer usually offered by the Christian apologist fails either to silence the opponent or to satisfy the believer. And rightly so, for it is lacking not only in cogency but in sympathy. The God of the Bible is infinite both in power and in compassion; and in other ages His people had public proof of this. Why, then, is He so silent?"


The Archive Project

The Archive Project

Author: Niamh Moore

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-07-28

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1317044614

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Recent scholarship on archival research has raised questions concerning the character and impact of 'the archive' on how the traces of the past are researched, the use and analysis of different kinds of archived data, methodological approaches to the practicalities involved, and what kind of theory is drawn on and contributed to by such research. The Archive Project: Archival Research in the Social Sciences builds on these questions, exploring key methodological ideas and debates and engaging in detail with a wide range of archival projects and practices, in order to put to use important theoretical ideas that shed light on the methods involved. Offering an overview of the current 'state of the field' and written by four authors with extensive experience in conducting research in and creating archives around the world, it demonstrates the different ways in which archival methodology, practice and theory can be employed. It also shows how the ideas and approaches detailed in the book can be put into practice by other researchers, working on different kinds of archives and collections. The volume engages with crucial questions, including: What is 'an archive' and how does it come into existence? Why do archival research and how is it done? How can sense be made of the scale and scope of collections and archives? What are the best ways to analyse the traces of the past that remain? What are helpful criteria for evaluating the knowledge claims produced by archival research? What is the importance of community archives? How has the digital turn changed the way in which archival research is carried out? What role is played by the questions that researchers bring into an archive? How do we deal with unexpected encounters in the archive? A rigorous and accessible examination of the methods and choices that shape research 'on the ground' and the ways in which theory, practice and methodology inform one another, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in archival and documentary research.


Archives

Archives

Author: Laura A. Millar

Publisher: Facet Publishing

Published: 2017-05-11

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1783302062

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This new and extensively revised second edition offers an international perspective on archives management, providing authoritative guidance relevant to collections-based repositories and to organizations responsible for managing their own institutional archives. Written in clear language with lively examples, Archives: Principles and practices introduces core archival concepts, explains best-practice approaches and discusses the central activities that archivists need to know to ensure the documentary materials in their charge are cared for as effectively as possible. Topics addressed include: core archival principles and conceptsarchival history and the evolution of archival theoriesthe nature and diversity of archival materials and institutionsthe responsibilities and duties of the archivistissues in the management of archival institutionsthe challenges of balancing access and privacy in archival servicebest practice principles and strategic approaches to central archival tasks such as acquisition, preservation, reference and accessdetailed comparison of custodial, fonds-oriented approaches and post-custodial, functional approaches to arrangement and description. Discussion of digital archives is woven throughout the book, including consideration of the changing role of the archivist in the digital age. In recasting her book to address the impact of digital technologies on records and archives, Millar offers us an archival manual for the twenty-first century. This book will be essential reading for archival practitioners, archival studies students and professors, librarians, museum curators, local authorities, small governments, public libraries, community museums, corporations, associations and other agencies with archival responsibility.


Stirrings in the Archives

Stirrings in the Archives

Author: Wolfgang Ernst

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2015-08-14

Total Pages: 109

ISBN-13: 1442253967

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Like most of Wolfgang Ernst’s work, Das Rumoren der Archiv explored the concept of archival and media theory from a current cultural digital context. Ernst challenges the traditional perspective of the cultural heritage institution and how it relied on media for creating, storing and disseminating digital information. Archives have a place in a digital society, and the archivist’s role will be more increasingly vital in the future. As Ernst points out, his work will show a way out of the archive, away from the notion that the era of archive is coming to an end. Here is the long-awaited English translation of this seminal work exploring cultural heritage before the archives, throughout history, and from today into the future. Ernst work emphasized a need to recognize media as a method for capturing and preserving our collective cultural identity. It is vital that archivists promoted a greater awareness of how media technology augmented the creation, management, and dissemination of digital content.


Digital Memory and the Archive

Digital Memory and the Archive

Author: Wolfgang Ernst

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2012-12-20

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1452933952

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In the popular imagination, archives are remote, largely obsolete institutions: either antiquated, inevitably dusty libraries or sinister repositories of personal secrets maintained by police states. Yet the archive is now a ubiquitous feature of digital life. Rather than being deleted, e-mails and other computer files are archived. Media software and cloud storage allow for the instantaneous cataloging and preservation of data, from music, photographs, and videos to personal information gathered by social media sites. In this digital landscape, the archival-oriented media theories of Wolfgang Ernst are particularly relevant. Digital Memory and the Archive, the first English-language collection of the German media theorist’s work, brings together essays that present Ernst’s controversial materialist approach to media theory and history. His insights are central to the emerging field of media archaeology, which uncovers the role of specific technologies and mechanisms, rather than content, in shaping contemporary culture and society. Ernst’s interrelated ideas on the archive, machine time and microtemporality, and the new regimes of memory offer a new perspective on both current digital culture and the infrastructure of media historical knowledge. For Ernst, different forms of media systems—from library catalogs to sound recordings—have influenced the content and understanding of the archive and other institutions of memory. At the same time, digital archiving has become a contested site that is highly resistant to curation, thus complicating the creation and preservation of cultural memory and history.


Archives

Archives

Author: Andrew Prescott

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-03-14

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 0198829329

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Archives have never been more complex, expansive, or ubiquitous. Archives: Power, Truth, and Fiction is an indispensable research and reference book: a hugely helpful guide to archives in the twenty-first century. Material discussed ranges from medieval manuscripts to born-digital archival content, and art objects to state papers.