Introduction: Archival Collections

The Society of American Archivists Links to an external site. (SAA) provides two definitions for archives:

"The word archives (usually written with a lower case a and sometimes referred to in the singular, as archive) refers to the permanently valuable records—such as letters, reports, accounts, minute books, draft and final manuscripts, and photographs—of people, businesses, and government. These records are kept because they have continuing value to the creating agency and to other potential users. They are the documentary evidence of past events. They are the facts we use to interpret and understand history."

An Archives (often written with a capital A and usually, but not always, in the plural) is an organization dedicated to preserving the documentary heritage of a particular group: a city, a province or state, a business, a university, or a community.

Archives have been entrusted with preserving the human record -- the important documents that serve as the basis of historical scholarship but even more importantly "collective memory and national identity."  One scholar sees archivists as “keepers of a society’s collective record of the past.” But whose past?

For most of history the archives have deemed valuable the records of the privileged, of rulers and institutions. Archives were "established by the powerful to protect or enhance their position in society." Records preserved the history of only certain groups (generally the powerful) and those resulted in only certain histories being told. As Schwartz and Cook summarizes, "Through archives, the past is controlled."

There is a growing recognition of a void or silence in the archives that leaves a gap in the historical record by omitting the voices of the marginalized. Rodney Carter wrote:

"Archival silences result in societal memory being compromised... The ramifications of the compromised archive are startling. History, memory, and identity are all affected, as is the ability for the marginal to seek accountability. When the record only reflects the viewpoint of the powerful, there is a great void in the collective memory."

Filling these silences is essential if archives are to serve the collective memory. And over the last decades archival institutions have consciously expanded their collections to include more diverse voices. Verne Harris, a South African archivist has this dynamic vision of the archives:

For the archive can never be a quiet retreat for professionals and scholars and craftspersons. It is a crucible of human experience, a battleground for meaning and significance, a babel of stories, a place and a space of complex and ever-shifting powerplays.

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