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Archives & Manuscripts Vol 33 No 1, May 2005
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Barbara Reed
Reading the Records Continuum: Interpretations and Explorations
This article provides multiple parallel readings of the records continuum model in relation to a single case study to illustrate the capacity of the model to support different interpretations, simultaneously, depending on the context. The article demonstrates that the records continuum and model is not a straightjacket for linear application of records theory within a government arena but is a vibrant and dynamic tool and method of thinking.
Eric Ketelaar
Sharing: Collected Memories in Communities of Records
This article explores the notion of a ‘community or records’, referring to a community both as a record-creating entity and as a memory frame that contextualises the records it created. Could we use the concept of a ‘community of records’ in making the fourth dimension of the records continuum model more vigorous? Such a view might help in repositioning the archive’s (and the archivist’s) role in shaping memories and identities.
Michael Piggott
Building Collective Memory Archives
The article’s point of departure is archivists’ sweeping, uncritical and repeated equating of archives with personal corporate and social memory (despite the continuing use of memory by libraries and museums to explain their own roles) and the records continuum model’s approach to ‘memory’ within its fourth dimension. It argues that memory can be a motive behind the building of certain components of the collective archives.
Frank Upward
Continuum Mechanics and Memory Banks
This article explores models for continuum mechanics that can help spread the stress involved in managing recordkeeping and archiving processes. It looks horizontally (at ground cover level) at four facets of memory within recorded information, each of which has more detailed understandings disappearing vertically below the surface. More synergy between the cognate disciplines concerned with the recording of information is needed. Of that there can be little dispute. Conceptually, however, disciples are still poles apart and this article will attempt to draw those poles more clearly into a common spacetime distancing framework.
Chris Hurley
Parallel Provenance: (1) What if Anything is Archival Description?
Archival description tells a story about the formation of records and the activity they document. The stories we tell about provenance reflect a necessary choice to exclude contested narratives. We justify that choice by legitimising our point of view according to archival principles that we claim mandate taking a single view of provenance and depicting a fixed internal structure for the fonds. This article argues that records are linked to a dynamic set of diverse and changing relationships that cannot be properly described under that mandate.
Sue McKemmish, Anne-Gilliland-Swetland & Eric Ketelaar
'Communities of Mernory': Pluralising Archival research and Education Agendas
Global archival frameworks of the kind imagined in the pluralising fourth dimension of the records continuum model face a major challenge: how to build archival systems and associated practices that operate and inter-operate effectively worldwide, but respect and empower the local and indigenous. In this paper we explore the nature of that challenge and the implications for archival research and education agendas, and for archival science itself in an increasingly globalised world.
Barbara Reed
Beyond Perceived Boundaries: Imagining the Potential of Pluralised Recordkeeping
This article explores the recordkeeping landscape to challenge traditional archival understandings of the notion of collective memory, thus unlocking the recordkeeping possibilities of the pluralising, fourth dimension of the records continuum. It highlights some of the issues and opportunities that arise from imagining and implementing new ways of viewing recordkeeping roles and responsibilities in the pluralising domain.
