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It’s only a mirage: Tahar Djaout’s critique of logocentrism in L’Invention du désert Archival Science Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Abdelkader Aoudjit
Set in Algeria, France, and the Arabian Peninsula in the early twelfth and the late twentieth centuries, L’Invention du désert is about an author who reexamines his life and his craft while writing a history of the Almoravid dynasty that ruled Andalusia and a large portion of the Maghreb from 1056 to 1152 CE. Accordingly, the novel is made of two basic narrative strands. The first focuses on the private
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Finding values, building communities: development of an archival appraisal system for the Thai public sector Archival Science Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Naya Sucha-xaya
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Scouring the desert: political violence traceability in the Americas Archival Science Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Paola Diaz, Rodrigo Suarez
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Caring records: professional insights into child-centered case note recording Archival Science Pub Date : 2024-02-17 Martine Hawkes, Joanne Evans, Barbara Reed
The consequences of poorly processed reports of child abuse and neglect, along with governance challenges in child protection systems, are well-documented. Recent research, inquiries and royal commissions emphasise the need for child-centered and participatory practices that support the rights and dignity of children and their families. However, the challenges of quality case recording in child protection
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Breaking out of the box: increasing the representation of disability within archive science Archival Science Pub Date : 2024-01-27
Abstract This article explores the value of archives in increasing the representation of disabled people in social policy, and research narratives, as well as building an identity of the Disabled People’s Movement beyond traditional activism, and the inclusion of young people and marginalised groups within archives. To achieve this, it is vital that archival studies and archival science engage with
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Persisting through friction: growing a community driven knowledge infrastructure Archival Science Pub Date : 2024-01-26 Alexandria J. Rayburn, Ricardo L. Punzalan, Andrea K. Thomer
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Motivations for personal recordkeeping practices: the roles of personal factors, recordkeeping literacy and the affordances of records Archival Science Pub Date : 2024-01-19 Viviane Frings-Hessami
Why do individuals create and keep records? Little research has been done into the factors that motivate individuals to make records. This article uses the example of the personal records created by Bangladeshi rural women who participated in a development project to investigate the roles that personal choices and external influences play in the development of recordkeeping practices. By conducting
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Results of archival appraisal: a study of a Finnish City Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-12-09 Pekka Henttonen, Saara Packalén
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Working with care leavers and young people still in care: ethical issues in the co-development of a participatory recordkeeping app Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-09-27 Peter Williams, Elizabeth Shepherd, Anna Sexton, Elizabeth Lomas
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The lost historical archives of the City of Szczecin Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-09-21 Paweł Gut, Radosław Gaziński
The article is devoted to the historical archives of the city of Szczecin (Stettin), lost at the end of World War II. The authors try to recreate the circumstances of the disappearance of the Szczecin records, their internal structure, as well as indicate the limitations that the loss of these materials poses for contemporary historians. The paper also shows the process of shaping the municipal archives
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Keeping the archives above water: preserving regional heritage in times of accelerated climate change Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-09-14 Adele Wessell, Clare Thorpe
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A metadata model for authenticity in digital archival descriptions Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-07-25 André Pacheco, Carlos Guardado Da Silva, Maria Cristina Vieira De Freitas
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Records of neglect: the significance of archives in redress processes Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-07-24 Ida Grönroos
In 2005, a Swedish television documentary that revealed gross misconduct and abuse in Swedish children’s homes led to a number of inquiries that culminated with the passing of the Redress Act. This act entitled everyone that had suffered from abuse in out-of-home care to 250,000 Swedish crowns (close to 25,000 Euros). However, only 42 percent of the Swedish claimants were granted the compensation,
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The archival scene in early modern Norway Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Torkel Thime
The purpose of this article is to offer an overview of Norwegian archival history in the early modern period (1537–1800). European archival history has been characterized by the experience of large and influential countries and little notice has generally been taken of the small nations on the continent’s periphery. This article focuses on the development of archival repositories, archival thinking
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Emotional responses in archival work Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-06-30 Cheryl Regehr, Wendy Duff, Jessica Ho, Christa Sato, Henria Aton
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The cloud, the public square, and digital public archival infrastructure Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-06-17 Tom Nesmith
The increasing volume and importance of digital communication has prompted a major development in digital infrastructure for its storage and overall management—the cloud infrastructure owned for the most part by giant tech companies such as Amazon. Many governments have chosen to store their records in the cloud rather than invest in the increased digital infrastructure now required to manage them
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Narrating the preservation of a film school archive – Re-configuring the hero’s journey across the nexus of conservation and film production Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-05-18 Donna Lyon, Robyn Sloggett
Narrating the preservation of a film school archive–Re-configuring the hero’s journey across the nexus of conservation and film production. In 2013, a program to secure the future of the more than 1800 films produced by students in the Victorian College of Arts’ Department of Film and Television commenced at the University of Melbourne. This is a highly significant collection, with films from 1966
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Documenting resistance, conflict and violence: a scoping review of the role of participatory digital platforms in the mobilisation of resistance Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-04-27 Kirsty Fife, Andrew Flinn, Julianne Nyhan
In recent years, grassroots movements have gained traction and significant numbers globally. Against longer histories of resistance and protest movements’ mobilisation of documentation, mechanisation and digital technologies, this scoping literature review seeks to understand how resistance and social movements have drawn upon the participatory and easily accessible nature of social media and digital
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Defying description: searching for queer history in institutional archives Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-04-20 Elliot Freeman
There are numerous obstacles to overcome when conducting queer historical research. While has been a steady increase in work to address the (in)visibility of queer histories and perspectives in institutional heritage collections, this work is often skewed towards outputs such as exhibitions or social media posts. As a result, very little work has been done to interrogate and transform the ways that
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Record DNA: reconceptualising digital records as the future evidence base Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-04-12 Julie McLeod, Elizabeth Lomas
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Origin stories and the shaping of the community-based archives Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-03-02 Jamie A. Lee, Bianca Finley Alper, aems emswiler
This paper centers a three-year research project into community-based archives and the power of their naming practices. Expanding the idea of naming practices to further consider how the archives itself is defined and understood by the creators, donors, and communities that are represented therein, the co-authors consider the emergent focus on origin stories told about the founding of community-based
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Attitudes and uses of archival materials among science-based anthropologists Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-02-09 Diana E. Marsh, Selena St. Andre, Travis Wagner, Joshua A. Bell
While archival user studies have largely focused on humanities (and adjacent) scholars, this paper focuses on anthropologists engaged in scientific research. Based on qualitative results from an open-ended survey, we investigate how science-based anthropologists perceive and use archives in their work. We ask: How are science-based anthropologists and archaeologists reusing archival data in their research
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Recordkeeping, logistics, and translation: a study of homeless services systems as infrastructure Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-02-03 Pelle Tracey, Patricia Garcia, Ricardo Punzalan
Homeless services systems provide unhoused individuals access to emergency shelter, subsidized housing, and other life-sustaining resources. In this paper, we present a qualitative study that draws on the experiences of fifteen social service workers to examine how recordkeeping practices sustain homeless services systems and unite a tangled web of institutions and actors, including public housing
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National archives, national memory? How national archives describe themselves and their mission Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-01-24 Reine Rydén
There is a widespread notion that archives, especially national archival institutions, represent the nation’s memory. Historically, archives have played an important role for history writing, thereby contributing to the construction of national master narratives and the strengthening of national identities. What the association between archives and memory actually means is however debated in archival
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Archivist in the machine: paradata for AI-based automation in the archives Archival Science Pub Date : 2023-01-20 Jeremy Davet, Babak Hamidzadeh, Patricia Franks
Recently introduced into the archival sphere, ‘paradata’ is a conceptual framework for defining the character of information resource processing. (Davet J, Hamidzadeh B, Franks P, Bunn J (2022) Tracking the functions of AI as paradata & pursuing archival accountability. In: Archiving 2022: Final Programs and Proceedings, 7-10 June 2022. Society for imaging science and technology, Springfield, VA, USA
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“Maybe in a few years I'll be able to look at it”: a preliminary study of documentary issues in the Ukrainian refugee experience Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-12-23 Magdalena Wiśniewska-Drewniak, James Lowry, Nadiia Kravchenko
Following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, millions of refugees have fled Ukraine for safety in neighbouring countries, including Poland. This movement of people has been facilitated by, and has produced, documentation that will have significant afterlives as evidence and memory. The records refugees have carried with them, the records they have made during flight, and the records created
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Slide decks as government publications: exploring two decades of PowerPoint files archived from US government websites Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-11-21 Trevor Owens, Jonah Estess
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Use of port archives made public: criticism of hegemonic history pertaining to the Jewish presence in Greek Thessaloniki Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-10-29 Shai Srougo
The Thessaloniki Port Archives, whose collections were recently catalogued, cover the history of the waterfront from the 1920s to the present day. Among their various collections, the Minutes Books of the Port Authority for the 1920s–1940s are a unique repository that sheds light on unknown chapters in the history of local Jews who found a living in dock works. While the Jewish Salonikian historiography
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Search, save and share: family historians’ engagement practices with digital platforms Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Henriette Roued, Helene Castenbrandt, Bárbara Ana Revuelta-Eugercios
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Accountability, human rights and social justice in public sector recordkeeping Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Mark Farrell, Bert Gordijn, Alan J. Kearns
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Applying Records in Contexts in Portugal: the case of the scientific correspondence from António de Barros Machado and Dora Lustig archive Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-08-25 Catarina Santos, Jorge Revez
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US–soviet fisheries research during the cold war: data legacies Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-07-14 Adam Kriesberg, Jacob Kowall
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Keeping it under lock and keywords: exploring new ways to open up the web archives with notebooks Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-07-04 Leontien Talboom, Mark Bell
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Understanding the application of handwritten text recognition technology in heritage contexts: a systematic review of Transkribus in published research Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-06-17 Joe Nockels, Paul Gooding, Sarah Ames, Melissa Terras
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The impact of the shift to cloud computing on digital recordkeeping practices at the University of Michigan Bentley historical library Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-06-13 Dallas Pillen, Max Eckard
Cloud-based productivity, collaboration, and storage tools offer increased opportunities for collaboration and potential cost-savings over locally hosted solutions and have seen widespread adoption throughout industry, government, and academia over the last decade. While these tools benefit organizations, IT departments, and day-to-day-users, they present unique challenges for records managers and
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Introduction: challenges and prospects of born-digital and digitized archives in the digital humanities. Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-05-26 Lise Jaillant,Katie Aske,Eirini Goudarouli,Natasha Kitcher
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Archival traditions in Latin America Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-05-19 María Cristina Betancur Roldán
This paper surveys archival traditions coexisting in Latin America and identifies key moments in the region's development of archives and archival practices. First, different record-keeping practices in pre-Hispanic communities are identified. Second, an Iberian conception of the archive is described in the case of colonial archival practices between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Third, changes
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“Humans and records are entangled”: empathic engagement and emotional response in archivists Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-05-09 Cheryl Regehr, Wendy Duff, Henria Aton, Christa Sato
There is growing awareness in archival communities that working with records that contain evidence of human pain and suffering can result in unsettling emotions for archivists. One important finding of this work, however, is the considerable variability in not only the nature of responses, but also the nature of records that provoke emotional responses. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with 20
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How can we make born-digital and digitised archives more accessible? Identifying obstacles and solutions Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-03-24 Lise Jaillant
Access to data is seen as a key priority today. Yet, the vast majority of digital cultural data preserved in archives is inaccessible due to privacy, copyright or technical issues. Emails and other born-digital collections are often uncatalogued, unfindable and unusable. In the case of documents that originated in paper format before being digitised, copyright can be a major obstacle to access. To
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Zines as community archive Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-03-10 Sarah Baker, Zelmarie Cantillon
Zines are self-published, do-it-yourself booklets that have a long history as tools for activism in social movements. While archival studies has already explored the collection and preservation of zines as cultural artefacts, this article explores the capacity for zines to act as a form of community archive. The article examines See You at the Paradise, a zine co-created with Norfolk Island community
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‘I’m not a very good visionary’: challenge and change in twenty-first century North American archival education Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-03-08 Alex H. Poole, Ashley Todd-Diaz
Since the founding of the National Archives (1934) and the Society of American Archivists (1936), archival scholars, educators, and practitioners have discussed and debated the challenges of and future directions for graduate archival education. This exploratory qualitative case study uses semistructured interviews with 33 tenure-track and tenured faculty members from North American graduate archival
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The representation of NARA’s INS records in Ancestry’s database portal Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-03-03 Katharina Hering
This article discusses the representation of NARA’s INS Records in Ancestry’s database portal. Ancestry, the world’s largest and most popular online collection of historical records relevant for people interested in family history, was able to grow into the world’s leading genealogy company through a wide range of partnership agreements with public as well as private institutions and organizations
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A survey on email visualisation research to address the conflict between privacy and access Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Zoe Bartliff, Yunhyong Kim, Frank Hopfgartner
Emails, much like communicative genres such as letters that predate them, are a rich source of data for researchers, but they are replete with privacy considerations. This paper explores the resulting friction between privacy concerns and email data access. Studies of email can often be centred on understanding patterns of behaviour and/or relationships between people or groups, and, as such, embody
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Archiving Mexican folklórico costumes: applying a participatory approach and a post-custodial strategy Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-02-09 Joel A. Saldaña Perez
Mexican folklórico dance (also known as Mexican folkloric ballet) is a dance form and tradition that is rooted in the cultural diversity of Mexico and has a prominent presence in the USA. The dances, music, and costumes are all embedded with the historical and socio-cultural traditions of the communities from where they originate and are therefore crucial aspects of Mexican folklórico that should be
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Social media as part of personal digital archives: exploring users’ practices and service providers’ policies regarding the preservation of digital memories Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-01-24 Cannelli, Beatrice, Musso, Marta
After more than a decade of usage, social media have become a virtual environment where meaningful content is created and kept, highlighting its potential to become part of personal digital archives. This study investigates users’ attitudes and preservation practices related to digital memories created on social media. Survey findings highlighted how users seem to consider these items as meaningful
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In search of the item: Irish traditional music, archived fieldwork and the digital Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-01-24 Egan, Patrick
In the past ten years, a growing number of digital projects have emerged within archives, and they have placed a focus on using Linked Data to facilitate connections to be made between music related materials across the World Wide Web. Projects such as Linked Jazz exemplify the possibilities that can be achieved between researchers, digital experts and archivists. Recent developments for Irish traditional
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Digital knowledge sharing: perspectives on use, impacts, risks, and best practices according to Native American and Indigenous community-based researchers Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-01-14 Marsh, Diana E.
Digital “returns” or “knowledge sharing”—the sharing of digital copies of archival collections with descendant Native and Indigenous communities—has become a key mode of broadening archival access while embracing community-driven curatorship and stewardship models. Yet, little is known about how the products of such programs—namely in the form of digital surrogates—are actually discovered, accessed
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‘I’m fired up now!’: digital cataloguing, community archives, and unintended opportunities for individual and archival digital inclusion Archival Science Pub Date : 2022-01-09 Holcombe-James, Indigo
Through documenting, preserving, and making local heritage accessible, digital cataloguing offers community archives significant potential benefits. But undertaking digital cataloguing in this context is not without challenges. Community archives depend on intermittent funding, have restricted access to digital connectivity and devices, and rely on elderly volunteers who often lack the digital skills
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Archives, linked data and the digital humanities: increasing access to digitised and born-digital archives via the semantic web Archival Science Pub Date : 2021-12-27 Hawkins, Ashleigh
Mass digitisation and the exponential growth of born-digital archives over the past two decades have resulted in an enormous volume of archives and archival data being available digitally. This has produced a valuable but under-utilised source of large-scale digital data ripe for interrogation by scholars and practitioners in the Digital Humanities. However, current digitisation approaches fall short
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Critical archival theory and the Caribbean’s neoliberal archival turn Archival Science Pub Date : 2021-11-22 Muñiz, Wendy
This article draws attention to the present-day transnational rise of state archives in the Greater Caribbean. It takes as a case study the Dominican Republic’s National Archives System (NAS) and National General Archives (AGN), which opened in 2008 and 2011, respectively, to signal a Caribbean neoliberal archival turn and interrogate the data politics behind these institutions’ neoliberal promises
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“The only way we knew how:” provenancial fabulation in archives of feminist materials Archival Science Pub Date : 2021-11-09 Lapp, Jessica M.
Although much has been written on the archival principle of provenance and the centrality of records creation to archival practices and processes, there has been little exploration of how records creation is figured and enacted across specific archival sites and spaces. This article centers records creation in two digital archives of feminist materials: Alternative Toronto and Rise Up! Feminist Digital
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Public versus private status of records and archives: implications for access drawn from the archives of political representatives in the United States, France and Germany Archival Science Pub Date : 2021-11-02 Čtvrtník, Mikuláš
The basic prerequisite for records, archives and information to be open to the public one day is that their own status must be public. Selected examples from the United States, France and Germany demonstrate a trend in the development of the relationship of advanced democratic societies to records of mostly official origin, especially the top representatives of public political power (presidents, government
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The train from Dunvegan: implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in public archives in Canada Archival Science Pub Date : 2021-10-21 Frogner, Raymond O.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was published in 2007. By posing a right to self-determination, the UNDRIP opens a path to redefining Indigenous peoples’ place in the international community. This paper considers how public archives in Canada can address the implementation of the UNDRIP and engage with Indigenous peoples to find new pathways to reanimate
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Swine at the chancery and locks to chests: dispersal, destruction, and accumulation of Sicily’s financial archives in the later Middle Ages Archival Science Pub Date : 2021-10-18 Silvestri, Alessandro
In the last twenty years, anthropologists, archivists, and historians have dedicated increased attention to the study of archives as objects of research themselves. In so doing, scholars have predominantly examined the emergence and transformations of archives during the early modern age, focusing mostly on political and diplomatic depositories. They have tended to neglect financial archives, which
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“I’m also prepared to not find me. It's great when I do, but it doesn't hurt if I don't”: crip time and anticipatory erasure for disabled archival users Archival Science Pub Date : 2021-10-18 Brilmyer, Gracen Mikus
Using data collected through semi-structured interviews with disabled archival users, this article foregrounds disabled people's relationships with time, specifically to pasts and representations thereof in archival material. It illustrates the ways in which disabled people use their knowledge of how disability is understood—in archives and in society—to anticipate their erasure in archival material
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Continuum, continuity, continuum actions: reflection on the meaning of a continuum perspective and on its compatibility with a life cycle framework Archival Science Pub Date : 2021-10-05 Frings-Hessami, Viviane
Archival concepts are grounded in cultural traditions and often difficult to translate because equivalent terms do not exist. This may lead to misunderstandings which may impact on intercultural understanding and international collaboration. This article looks at how the Records Continuum Model, which was developed in Australia in the 1990s in response to the perceived deficiencies of the life cycle
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How archival studies and knowledge management practitioners describe the value of research: assessing the “quiet” archivist persona Archival Science Pub Date : 2021-09-23 Pearson, Jennifer Y.
The archivist persona is frequently described in terms of passive, introverted attributes, which are then viewed as contributing to critical concerns for the sector, such as a lack of visibility, perceived effectiveness, and funding. This study is the first to assess the archivist persona through a discourse analysis, examining the usage of words promoting value and positive benefits in archival studies
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Archival infrastructure and the information backlog Archival Science Pub Date : 2021-07-21 Ciaran B. Trace
Embedded in the notion of the archive as knowledge infrastructure is the idea of a steady flow of information that resides within and moves through socio-technical systems. While there is exponential growth in the information transferred between the creator and the archive, the information flow between the archive and the user is often leaky—discontinuous and disrupted. There is a considerable interval
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Risk in trustworthy digital repository audit and certification Archival Science Pub Date : 2021-07-20 Rebecca D. Frank
Risk is a foundational concept in digital preservation. While it has been examined from technical, economic, and organizational perspectives, I argue that it is also a social phenomenon. In this study I report on the results from 42 interviews with stakeholders in the Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC) system, and analysis of documents relating to the ISO 16363 standard in order
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Beyond the workflow: archivists’ aspirations for digital curation practices Archival Science Pub Date : 2021-06-14 Colin Post, Alexandra Chassanoff
The documentation of archival workflows plays an important role in digital curation practice. Capturing the various steps, tools, people, and software involved at different stages, workflow documentation visually represents complex activities, and at times, invisible labor. In this article, we reflect on findings from the OSSArcFlow project, a three-year, grant-funded initiative to investigate and