Category Archives: archivists

ARCHIVE/COUNTER-ARCHIVES 

Just published! The latest issue of the journal Public  #57 From the journal’s website: “ARCHIVE/COUNTER-ARCHIVES advances conversations regarding the changing nature and political realities of audio and visual heritage in the twenty-first century. Bringing together artists, archivists, and researchers, this issue of PUBLIC argues that the re-thinking of audio-visual heritage preservation is ultimately strategic and political, especially […]

New book series: Routledge Studies in Archives

Routledge has announced a new book series: Routledge Studies in Archives. According to their website the series “publishes cutting-edge research in records and archives studies. Recognising the imperative for record-keeping work in support of memory, social justice, technical systems, legal rights and historical understanding, this series extends the disciplinary boundaries of archival studies. It sees the […]

Archives and New Modes of Feminist Research

Now out in book form with Routledge: Archives and New Modes of Feminist Research. In an era when the metaphor of the archive is invoked to cover almost any kind of memory, collection or accumulation, it is important to re-examine what is entailed—politically and methodologically—in the practice of feminist archival research. This question is central […]

New book: Archival Futures

New from Facet Publishing: Archival Futures edited by Caroline Brown “draws on the contributions of a range of international experts to consider the current archival landscape and imagine the archive of the future. Firmly rooted in current professional debate and scholarship, Archival Futures offers thought provoking and accessible chapters that aim to challenge and inspire archivists globally and […]

Read: Critical Archival Studies

This essay does some very important and much needed work naming and defining “critical archival studies”. It was published in 2017 in the online journal Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies. In this essay Michelle Caswell, Ricardo Punzalan and T-Kay Sangwand highlight how “critical archival studies broadens the field’s scope beyond an inward, practice-centered orientation and builds a […]

“The Archive” is Not An Archives: new link

Many of us have enjoyed reading Michelle Caswell’s important piece, ‘”The Archive” is Not An Archives: Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies’ which appeared in the online journal Reconstruction in their special issue Archives on Fire. The issue is not currently accessible so here is a link to the article on the University of […]

New book: Do archives have value?

Do Archives Have Value? Edited by MICHAEL MOSS and DAVID THOMAS About the book This book explores ways of establishing value and measuring in the archives and specials collections. There is a vast literature about ways of measuring value for cultural heritage assets as a whole, particularly museums and visitor attractions, but archives and special collections in libraries […]

Images, Silences, and the Archival Record: An Interview with Michelle Caswell

Dr. Michelle Caswell is an Associate Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is also an affiliated faculty member with the Department of Asian American Studies and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Her book, Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic […]

“It was a failure of imagination”: Climate change, archives and material culture

This recent news item entitled, “HOW TO PROTECT RARE BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE RAVAGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE” takes the debate around archives and materiality in another direction by highlighting how archives and manuscripts are at risk from climate change through disasters as well as changing temperatures. Author Sophie Yeo highlights how informal collections and […]

Article: Of mind and matter: The archive as object

In the following article in Archives and Records (39.1 2018) Peter Lester advances an argument about materiality and the nature of archival evidence. Of mind and matter: The archive as object Abstract Archives are not only sources of evidence and information; they are also material objects with physical, tangible characteristics such as size, weight and […]