Jane Birkin‘s new book, Archive, Photography and the Language of Administration (Amsterdam University Press, 2021), will almost certainly be of interest to readers of this blog. Birkin writes in her introduction that she aims ‘to communicate the meaning of the archive through its operations, which I have observed on a day-to-day basis. At the same […]
Category Archives: archival labour
New out: Producing the Archival Body
posted by mdever
“What can the body do in and for archives?” is the provocation that Jamie A. Lee sets out in Producing the Archival Body. Newly released in the Routledge Studies in Archives series edited by James Lowry, Lee’s book brings critical archival theory together with queer theory to argue for a new understanding of how archival […]
Archives work is emotional work
posted by mdever
Reposted from Archive Steph, a reminder of the work of archivists: “More technically, archives work is emotional work. This can be through the cataloguing of the outputs of people’s intimate inner lives (personal papers, email, correspondence, family photos). Sometimes we are taking meticulous care over documenting the life of someone who we don’t like very […]
Poetry manuscripts: Two articles
posted by mdever
Two recent articles from Alison Fraser, assistant curator of the Poetry Collection at the University of Buffalo may of interest. Both focus in part on questions of materiality — the manuscript as ‘trash’ and the clipping. The articles are: ‘Creating the Twentieth-Century Literary Archives: A Short History of the Poetry Collection at the University at […]
Boxes: A Field Guide — Download this new book free
posted by mdever
Mattering Press has published this quirky book, Boxes: A Field Guide edited by Susanne Bauer, Martina Schlünder, Maria Rentetzi. This is not a book that deals explicitly with archives, but it does raise some exciting questions about archival materiality, given we often first encounter archived papers via boxes. As the Mattering Press site observes: “This […]
New! Online Dictionary of Archives Terminology
posted by mdever
Compiled by SAA’s Dictionary Working Group, the Dictionary of Archives Terminology (DAT) expands upon A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology by Richard Pearce-Moses (SAA, 2005). With this web-only publication, the Dictionary Working Group has expanded the connections made for each entry and added hyperlinks to take you directly to related terms. Entries have been added to one […]
Archives and New Modes of Feminist Research wins prize!
posted by mdever
The Routledge collection, Archives and New Modes of Feminist Research edited by Maryanne Dever has been awarded a 2018 Mander Jones award from the Australian Society of Archivists. The prize is awarded to the “publication making the greatest contribution to the archives profession in Australia”. The judges’ citation reads: “An impressive scholarly work bringing together twelve thought-provoking and […]
Designing the Archive, Adelaide, October 2019
posted by mdever
The program is now available for Designing the Archive in Adelaide, 21-25 October 2019. “The conference theme Designing the Archive is about putting people at the centre of what we do. It provides an opportunity to explore how data and information managers, records managers and archivists are using, or can use, human-centred design approaches to ensure we deliver […]
Must-read essay: Archive and Library
posted by mdever
Just recently posted on Humanities Commons is this wonderful essay, “Archive and Library” by Marlene Manoff. It is a pre-publication posting of an invited essay for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory – part of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Abstract: Archives and libraries operate within a complex web of social, political and economic […]
On “routine and frankly boring” archival labour
posted by mdever
There have been several high profile Twitter interventions lately on the question of archival “discoveries”. In a timely blog post on the language scholars use to (mis)characterise archival settings, Beth Doyle makes the very important point that the same language inevitably displaces the very real (and gendered) labour of archivists, labour that invariably underpins scholars’ […]
