Melissa
(Lisa) Townsend-Crow
LIBR
256-10
November
1, 2013
Assignment
3 Outreach Essay
“Students will write a short (5-6 page) essay
addressing a question related to archival
outreach and communicating with a
public audience. You may write in an informal
style - as if this is the actual
text/script of the speech you would give.
You should write your essay in
response to the following outreach situation:
You have been asked to
briefly speak to the local Rotary Club regarding archives and manuscripts. This
presentation is intended to be a general introduction to the work of an
archivist for people who have no professional affiliation in the library world
and who have never before performed archival research. You don’t need to give
specific information about your repository -- just a general introduction to
answer the questions “what does an archivist do, and why do they do it?” What
would you say?”
I will never forget the moment I
first saw Laura Ingalls Wilder's handwritten manuscript. I had read and loved
the "Little House" books throughout my childhood. Seeing this one, written in her own
handwriting, was almost like meeting one of my childhood heroes. It brought her
back to life for me in, perhaps, the only way possible since Laura had died
almost a decade before I was born.
I stood there and read her words as
she had written them and I realized that what was in the books was different
from what she had written all those years ago. I wasn't disappointed – not
exactly, anyway, and certainly not with Mrs. Wilder. My disappointment lay in
her editors who felt that her life story could be better told by others.
Because the book, Little Town on the
Prairie was in a glass exhibit, I could not read more than the one
exposed page, but it was enough to pique my interest in and respect for primary
sources of information. I felt protective of those faint, pencil-written pages.
That same reverence was inspired by
a trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History where Amelia
Earhart's journal was on display. I would have liked to see it in better light,
but then I saw a sign explaining that the dim lights were to preserve the
delicate items on display. Again, the journal was in a glass case and with the
dimness of the light, it was very hard to see. Perhaps it was my desire to be
closer to these reliquaries of the thoughts of two of my childhood heroes that
inspired me to study archival science. You see, I wanted to know how to keep
those things safe for future generations of people like me.
Archival collections are made up of
records such as these. Though perhaps not all collections are associated with
people as famous and sensational as Amelia Earhart or as beloved as Laura
Ingalls Wilder, still sometimes what they created and often left behind (for
not all collectors of records in archival repositories have died; some are
still very much alive) have value. It is
one of the jobs an archivist has to decide which records have value, how much,
and to whom the information in the records is valuable. For example, as an
author, I have used records in archives to create a more authentic portrayal of
setting and characters in an historical novel. The slang used in diaries, the
styles from photographs of the period in which I was writing, even the ads in
an old newspaper page gave me an idea of what people were buying and for how
much. Other uses might include
corporations which keep financial or personnel training records in a company archive
or to keep records in case of litigation. Our country maintains a National
Archives in which are housed records such as Congressional hearings minutes,
acts of Congress, executive orders, classified documents germane to national
security, as well as census and immigration records, often perused by genealogists.
Speaking of genealogy, the Mormon Church maintains a vast amount of family
birth, death and other records not only in its main Family History Library repository
in Salt Lake City, Utah, but in hundreds of satellite Family History Centers
throughout the world.
Now, just in case the enormity of
the number of records, acquired, appraised, preserved, and maintained by
archival repositories seems needle in a haystack daunting, archivists have
another, perhaps most important task and that is seeing that those who need or
desire to study these records have access and can find what they need. In
addition to processing collections of records, archivists catalog groups of pieces
in a collection and then create what we call finding aids, which are just what
they sound like, descriptions of collections and records within collections
which serve to assist the researcher in finding information. You might ask, how
do we know what to keep and what to discard? Each repository should have a
policy in place to help the archivist in charge of a particular acquisition
decide just that. In addition to specialized training in the field of archives,
institutional policies help staff to make these difficult decisions. The
primary criteria is: will researchers
find these records useful? The bottom line in deciding what is of value is what
will be used, perused, studied, and interpreted by researchers. What makes
these decisions more difficult – or perhaps not as difficult – is that
archivists do not analyze or interpret the records; that is the job of the researcher. If a
collection isn't used, its components are merely taking up valuable archival
space and in most repositories, space is at a premium which is why archivists
cannot possibly keep everything related to a collection.
Most of the records will reflect the
collection creator's life and work. They are the mundane, everyday
"stuff" that everyone sort of collects, but for some reason, the
creator decided to save. They no longer serve the purpose for which they were
originally created, but, for example, a bundle of letters, an old journal, or a
stack of coal bills may illustrate how people survived a harsh winter over 100
years ago.
So now you may ask, why keep all
that old stuff? We have computers now – isn't everything anyone could possibly
want to know on the internet now? People come into the archives for two
reasons: 1) for business or academic
related research and 2) for personal edification. Many businesses do not publish their records;
in fact, many corporate archives are either closed to the public altogether or
access is severely restricted. The reasons for this are varied; some involve
trade secrets – like Colonel Sanders's "secret recipe." The main
reason, however, is that corporate archives are created to serve the business
itself; outside requests from non-corporate researchers are a low priority, so
a corporation may not make its records public by publishing on the internet. In
addition, many universities want original research from students and that means
studying primary sources and not just digital scans of documents, although
those are valuable in their own way. Furthermore, there are issues of
respecting the privacy of people associated with a collection, either a living
creator or surviving friends and family who may be impacted by the publication
of private papers, as well as copyright laws which may prohibit the publication
of some items
From my own personal experience,
there is something ephemeral to be gained by studying the work of a collection
creator in the order, manner, and form in which he or she created it and intended
it to be. To read Amelia Earhart's journal, rather than a transcript, is to
peek inside her mind and hear her thoughts from beyond the ages. To read even
the one page of Laura Ingalls Wilder's book in her own handwriting without the
interference of overzealous editors gave me a peek into the time and place in
which she lived, the flavor of it, if one will. It took me to "long
ago," which is where Laura herself said that she wanted her books to take
people, specifically children. When I was a child, her stories certainly did;
as an adult, seeing her handwritten manuscript, doubly so. Laura also said, “The
trouble with organizing a thing is that pretty soon folks get to paying more
attention to the organization than to what they're organized for.” That's a danger is archives, as well. Speaking
from my own experience, there is the temptation to be over protective,
particularly when some stage of processing a collection, either describing it
for a finding aid or cataloging it or some stage of preservation, that we want
to keep it away from users until it's "ready." That's when we have to
remember that the value of the collection is in its use and the value of a
repository is in providing researchers with access to and assistance with
locating records so that their work can be completed. Certainly, some records
are digitized as a means of preservation, but also for access. This process is
especially welcomed by those who live far from the archives in which the
collection they wish to study is housed. Digitization and publication or
distribution, within the limitations set by copyright law and respect for the
privacy of the individuals who either created the collection or who have an
association with it and who may still be living, can be a viable way to provide
access to records for distance researchers. For those records which remain,
however, residing in archival repository is a pretty good way to end up.
References
Abraham, T.
(n.d.). Practical processing: Arrangement and description. Arrangement
& Description: Arrangement.
Retrieved September 15, 2013, from
http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/papers/arrange.htm
Cox, R.
(2007). Machines in the archives: Technology
and the coming transformation of archival reference. First Monday:
Peer-reviewed journal on the internet, 12(11). Retrieved September
1, 2013, from http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2029/1894
Laura Ingalls Wilder Quotes. (n.d.). Laura
Ingalls Wilder quotes (Author of Little House on the Prairie). Retrieved
November 1, 2013, from
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5300.Laura_Ingalls_Wilder
So you want to be an archivist: An
overview of the archives profession. (n.d.). Society of American Archivists.
Retrieved September 1, 2013, from http://www2.archivists.org/profession
Tousey, B. H., and Adkins, E. W. (2007).
Access to business archives: U.
S. access philosophies. Japan – U. S. Archives. Retrieved October 19, 2013 from https://sjsu.desire2learn.com/content/enforced/158691-2134_49385/Content/corporatearchives.pdf
Turning a roomful of straw into gold,
or what archivists do. (2013 September 13). Virginia Historical
Societys Blog. Retrieved September 18, 2013, from
http://vahistorical.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/turning-a-roomful-of-straw-into-gold-or-what-archivists-do-2/
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