We are delighted to record that fellow archivists and records managers in the North East are setting up their own Cardigan Continuum. The details of their first meeting are as follows and we look forward to hearing how it went.
The first meeting will be held at Brigantes in York, on 30th May, from 6pm. It serves food and drinks. Please see directions below. Future meetings may be held in other towns/cities around the region.
For the first meeting we have decided to coordinate our discussion with the London group, and will be talking about: The employment of people with disabilities as archivists, records managers, conservators and assistants”, Journal of the Society of Archivists 25(2), October 2004.
Walking directions to Brigantes Bar & Brasserie from the Station – this should take around 5 minutes
York Railway Station, Station Rd, York YO24 1AB
1. Head southwest on Station Rd/A1036 toward Blossom St Continue to follow A1036
2. Turn left on to Blossom Street
3. Continue on to Micklegate the destination is on the left
Brigantes Bar & Brasserie, 114 Micklegate, YO1 6JX
There is parking at the station, behind the station at the National Railway Museum and also on Nunnery Lane.
Gearing up for the Twitter chat on Monday at 8pm. Remember to use the hashtag #cardcont and here are the questions….
- Why do we think forgetting is bad and remembering is good?
- What is the role of records in forgetting?
- How useful is ‘forgetting’ as a metaphor for the various kinds of ‘silences’ in the archives?
- Can an archive have a bad memory?
- What different types of remembering are supported by records?
Thanks to all who attended the last Cardigan Continuum meeting on remembering and forgetting. The articles under consideration certainly got us thinking and the wide-ranging discussion encompassed issues such as; the permissibility of digital material and oral testimony as evidence, the relationship between individual and group informed consent, genuine forgeries, the wearing of life-cams and tele-monitoring for health.
The new venue also seemed to be a success and it was nice not to have to shout to be heard. The next event will be a Twitter chat on Monday 29th April between 8 and 9pm. Please make any suggestions for questions below. So far, we have the following;
- Why do we think forgetting is bad and remembering is good?
- What is the role of records in forgetting?
- Can an archive have a bad memory?
For the next meeting of the Cardigan Continuum we are going to try something new. So, instead of meeting in a pub, we will be meeting in the Arts and Humanities Common Room in Foster Court, University College London at 6.30pm on 17th April. Directions can be found here
The texts under discussion have been inspired by the recent Jenkinson lecture delivered by Professor Jeannette Bastian on the subject of ‘Forgetting to Remember: Archivists and the Memory Imperative’. The first of these will be the classic article by Laura Millar ‘Touchstones: Considering the Relationship between Memory and Archives’ originally published in 2006 in Archivaria 61. The second will be Paul Connerton, ‘Seven types of forgetting’, originally published in 2008 in Memory Studies vol.1 no.1 (thanks for the suggestion Fabi).
We hope to see you there, but in the meantime, have a good Easter!
We are currently gearing up for the next Twitter chat on Monday 25th February between 8pm and 9pm (just follow #cardcont to join in). The text under debate is Daniel Caron and Richard Brown “The Documentary Moment in the Digital Age: Establishing New Value Propositions for Public Memory”. The full version can be found in Archivaria 71, which is part of the reserved collection. A shorter version is available from the Library and Archives Canada website.
At our face to face meeting in January the article provoked a lot of debate, both about its content and its context, but the questions to be discussed on Monday are as follows;
- The article states that “some memory institutions have decided not to make any decisions about the memory value of information resources by simply engaging within comprehensive collecting within specified domains, or by announcing their institutional intentions to do so as an organizational declaration of public memory default”. Is collecting in accordance with a collecting policy an abdication of your responsibility to make decisions about the memory value of your holdings?
- Do you agree that “the public memory monopoly once exercised by archives, libraries and museums, and others” has effectively ended?
- Do you agree that it is significant that “the distinction between the author and the public ‘is about to lose its basic character’”?
- Is it enough for public memory institutions to ” concern themselves primarily with the identification and survivability of the information resources and documents articulating the modern democratic state and its broader domain of inter-sectoral governance and activities”?
- If as the article suggests “selecting, or collecting, or other analog memory strategies are not viable or feasible within cyberspace”, what are?
Not very easy questions, but hopefully ones that will spark off a lot of debate. Until Monday…
With the start of 2013 we are putting some thought into this year’s activities, so here is the plan…..
Twitter chats will continue on a regular basis on the last Monday of every second month, so the dates for your diary are 25 February, 29 April, 24 June, 26 August and 28 October with nothing in December. The time also remains unchanged 8pm-9pm.
In between these dates there is room for five face to face meetings, but we will leave the dates of these more flexible to try to accommodate as many of those who would like to come as we can. The date for the first meeting has been fixed though, as 22nd January at 6.30pm.
The text under consideration is ‘The Documentary Moment in the Digital Age: Establishing New Value Propositions for Public Memory” by Daniel Caron and Richard Brown. It can be found in Archivaria 71 but unfortunately that is in the reserved collection so we will base discussion around a shorter version of the keynote address on which the article was based which is available from the Library and Archives Canada website.
We are still seeking a new venue that we like, so for the time being we will return to where it all kicked off and the meeting on the 22nd January will be held in the Marquis of Cornwallis in Bloomsbury.
Hope to see you there!
The North West group met for the second time on 14 November, this time at Leaf in Liverpool. Turn-out was again very good and we were especially pleased to welcome some of the students from the Liverpool course.
Our discussion on the issues around the release of the Hillsborough records was greatly aided by the attendance of one of the project archivists, who was able to give us a real insight in to the work that had been done. On the subject of neutrality, it was generally agreed that both the archives and archivists had been completely neutral in this case, but there was some debate as to the neutrality of the panel and indeed the neutrality of the project as a whole, which had, after all, been set up in response to campaigning by the Hillsborough families. In the end, the archives had been all the more powerful for being neutral, and everyone felt that this was one of the best examples we’d ever seen of the power of archives. For that reason, there was some disappointment that more had not been made of the archivists’ role in the process.
We were not entirely convinced about user uncertainty. Most archivists’ experience suggested that lots of users come to archives with a premeditated hypothesis and want to find archives to fit. It was suggested that modern search tools can encourage this behaviour. Enabling researchers to search for key words or certain records means that they may be the only resources they view, remaining unaware of the huge number of alternatives that disprove their theory. Browsing a traditionally structured catalogue would make it harder to ignore the whole picture.
The idea of ‘discovery’ was discussed and it was generally felt that a record can be catalogued and accessible, but is often not perceived to have been ‘discovered’ until an academic or journalist has done something with it. Should this worry archivists? Is it symptomatic of our low profile, or is that how it should be? Is it our job to draw conclusions or to enable others to do so? And in drawing any conclusions, how far should any archive be regarded as ‘the truth’? In a case where a great deal of attention had been on finding the truth, it was very noticeable that records such as witness statements were only ever one person’s version of events.
Finally, and slightly depressingly, the question was posed: if a similar event happened today, what would be the chances of being able to find and access electronic records 20+ years later? We were not optimistic, but thought there might be plenty of out of focus and wobbly footage on YouTube.
