Archivaria

Troubling Records

2023-05-31T07:52:19-07:00

Video records created by perpetrators and witnesses of violent crime are increasingly used as evidence in criminal investigations and court proceedings. When these records include the sexual assault, torture, and murder of individuals, they carry significant power to harm those exposed to them, but most importantly, through repeated viewing, they continue to harm those individuals whose suffering is immortalized therein. Using case study methods, including in-depth interviews with those centrally involved in the case, interviews with criminal justice professionals currently working with video evidence of violent crime, and a review of official documents and media reports, this article examines the tragic Canadian case of serial killers Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka and the videos they recorded of their crimes. We observe that challenging decisions regarding the handling of video records of violent crime during the investigation process, the viewing of such records in court, and access to them by the public and press during the criminal justice process continue to be areas of concern and contestation, pitting principles of open justice against those of victim dignity and privacy. However, challenges regarding access to video records do not end with a trial and an ultimate verdict of guilt or innocence; rather, decisions continue to be made about the preservation or destruction, the storing and cataloguing, and access to archived material. In examining questions regarding the preservation and continued use of the records, we conclude that a responsible and ethical approach to these challenges is best achieved through what Caswell called a survivor-centred approach. We suggest that this approach should include recognizing the traumatic potentiality of records, providing safety and support to those affected, recognizing the potential of records to produce and perpetuate injustice, respecting the autonomy and decisions of survivors, and accepting and facilitating the right to be forgotten.

The Genre of Love-Me Binders

2023-05-31T07:52:21-07:00

The US government lacks robust and accurate records of its military personnel. In this context, we argue that attending to veterans’ recordkeeping practices matters to honouring their service to the nation. However, recordkeeping skills are not currently part of the official curriculum of active service members or veterans. Considering this situation, we ask, How do veterans in the US document their service? What are the uses of veterans’ records and recordkeeping practices? Drawing from personal management of information (PMI) and rhetorical genre studies (RGS), we conducted focus groups with veterans and active service members. We found that these individuals attempted to preserve their personal records by creating love-me binders (LMBs) – a genre of records, shaped by the history of recordkeeping practices in the US Armed Forces, that supports military personnel in keeping track of their service. As a genre, love-me binders serve a rhetorical purpose: demonstrating that veterans and sometimes their relatives are eligible for benefits such as health care. Future work should consider opportunities to support veterans in creating and managing LMBs, investigate the creation and management of military records in context, and explore additional domains where records created in the workplace impact workers’ personal lives.

What’s In Between?

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Between archives, as documentary by-products of human activity retained for their long-term value, and the archive, as a concept used outside of the discourse of professional archivists, there is a semantic, conceptual, and theoretical gap. However, this interval is particularly fertile. In this space, non-traditional archives users such as found-footage filmmakers find inspiration. Through the narratives of their work, they show what is not always visible in archives. Their artworks confront us with unarchived and unarchivable dimensions (what is not archived and what cannot be archived), constituent of how archives are created. In studying the archives that are part of found-footage works through an archival usage framework (exploitation), three main categories of the unarchived and the unarchivable emerge: absence, which is linked to gaps, fragments, and incompleteness; the forbidden, which manifests in archives as material traces; and the invisible, which is not shown. These three categories have to do with an unconceived (impensé) state – a state of the archival field reflecting the intentional or unintentional inconceivability or omission of some of its theoretical or practical aspects. By investing in the unconceived – in other words, by studying archival science from practices on the margins – it is possible to renew ideas and discourses inside the discipline.

Transferred, Preserved, and Destroyed

2023-05-31T07:52:25-07:00

During the 1950s, the Province of Manitoba microfilmed and then destroyed thousands of files created by the federal Department of the Interior’s Dominion Lands Branch (DLB). These records, dating from about 1870 to 1930, were transferred from the federal government to the province in the immediate post-war period. They were drawn from a group of more than 5.6 million files occupying 11,640 square feet of office space in downtown Ottawa. During the Second World War, the civil servants responsible for the DLB files were pressured by their superiors to destroy the files in order to free up space and filing cabinets. DLB officials, although not trained archivists, took their responsibility as custodians of the records seriously and sought to prevent the wholesale and indiscriminate destruction of the files. They were supported by archivists who considered the DLB files to be valuable historical documents on the colonization of Western Canada. Eventually, the conflict between preservation and destruction was resolved by dispersing the records; some were transferred to the western provinces and territories, while the remaining files were deposited in the Public Archives of Canada. The first files to be transferred were those related to lands in Manitoba. This article clarifies the provenance of the DLB’s Manitoba files and argues for their enduring value as records of the history of settler colonialism in the province while also revealing the role of non-archivist civil servants as custodians of government records in the mid-20th century.

“I’d Rather Have Something than Nothing”

2023-05-31T07:52:26-07:00

In the last decade, archival scholars have begun to deeply reflect upon the experiences of individuals and communities as they interact with administrative and bureaucratic records. They have found that there is a significant gap between the emotional experiences of records activators and the preparedness of archival repositories to address these experiences. Emerging from these realizations is a call for archivists to better understand the experiences of the personal in the bureaucratic and to design and take up reparative, caring, and rights-based frameworks to respond to these previously unaddressed needs. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted as part of the author’s master’s thesis, this article maps out connections between transracial, transnational adoptee experiences and ideas about the archival imaginary. In addition to acting as a space for participants to share their stories – which directly demonstrate the ability of records to both create and collapse space for unanswerable questions – this work seeks to take up existing calls to archivists and recordkeepers to consider the impact of the bureaucratic on the personal and to recognize the urgent necessity of addressing these experiences as we move forward into more caring practice.

KATHERINE BIBER, TRISH LUKER, and PRIYA VAUGHAN, eds. Law’s Documents: Authority, Materiality, Aesthetics

2023-05-31T07:52:28-07:00

Law’s Documents: Authority, Materiality, Aesthetics. Katherine Biber, Trish Luker, Priya Vaughan, eds. London and New York: Routledge, 2022. xii, 375 pp. 9781003247593. EPUB

IAN MILLIGAN, History in the Age of Abundance? How the Web Is Transforming Historical Research

2023-05-31T07:52:28-07:00

History in the Age of Abundance? How the Web Is Transforming Historical Research. Ian Milligan. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019. 328 pp. 9780773556973

FIONA R. CAMERON, The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation in a More-than-Human World

2023-05-31T07:52:28-07:00

The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation in a More-than-Human World. Fiona R. Cameron. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2021. xii, 301 pp. 9780367711641

General Idea. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

2023-05-31T07:52:29-07:00

General Idea. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. June 3 –November 20, 2022. Curated by Adam Welch. Catalogue edited by Adam Welch.

Volume 50, No. 1

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Front & Back Covers

2023-05-31T07:52:29-07:00

Inside Covers

2023-05-31T07:52:30-07:00

Archivaria

Troubling Records

The Genre of Love-Me Binders

What’s In Between?

Transferred, Preserved, and Destroyed

“I’d Rather Have Something than Nothing”

KATHERINE BIBER, TRISH LUKER, and PRIYA VAUGHAN, eds. Law’s Documents: Authority, Materiality, Aesthetics

IAN MILLIGAN, History in the Age of Abundance? How the Web Is Transforming Historical Research

FIONA R. CAMERON, The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation in a More-than-Human World

General Idea. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

Volume 50, No. 1

Front & Back Covers

Inside Covers

Table of Contents