2nd Jenkinson Lecture

Last Thursday I attended the 2nd Jenkinson Lecture organised by UCL. Professor Eric Ketelaar gave a paper entitled Archival Identities which addressed this topic using the records of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as a reference point, or case study.

It was a pleasure to hear Dr Ketelaar talk. His paper was well presented, easy to listen to and follow, and interesting. It looked, in turn, at meaning, truth, memories, histories, identities, and the proposition of a living archive. Throughout I had the impression of dynamic relationships between records, the reason(s) for their creation or gathering, and their use and re-use.

Dr Ketelaar’s approach allows that records are subject to active re-interpretation. The meaning of a record can be different for individuals and groups depending upon the purpose and context of its creation and re-examination. Different types of truth and different ownerships of truth can be attached to records and can influence memory and identity. Records shape the memories of individuals and collective groups through shared communication. Archives present the evidence of the past but also allow histories to be constructed by people with different interpretations, experiences and purposes. Dr Ketelaar finished with the concept of a living archive - an archive that is used and examined, re-used, re-interpreted, discussed, pondered upon and has meaning(s) added to it through this activity.

The sorry case of the Guantanamo case files

It’s all about government records over there in North America. New President Obama’s blackberry and tech-savvy white house staff are filling the news. So too is his prompt executive order on Presidential Records, a thumbs up to the public’s right to know and a warning for future wannabe megalomaniacal, secretive, vice presidents. Obama also announced that Guantanamo will be closed. Here too, government records are of primary interest, as an article from the Washington Post shows.

The article, Guantanamo Case Files in Disarray, describes a confused state of affairs as to the discoverability of comprehensive case files on individuals detained at Guantanamo. Officials have reportedly found that files are incomplete, physically and virtually spread between offices, don't contain the right sort of information, and that the responsibility for creating and maintaining them is shared by several departments who, by the way, don’t talk to each other. This is only sort of denied by members of the CIA and Defence Department. To me this raises the question: what role did Guantanamo Officials perceive for the case files they were creating?

This is a very serious concern. Was Guantanamo set up to collect evidence from suspected terrorists so that these individuals could be brought to trial? In this scenario the case files they compiled would be of the utmost importance. They would hold the data that would allow the US government, presumably, to thwart future terrorist acts and (leaving aside for the moment the problematic (non-)reliability of evidence obtained under duress) to legally prosecute those responsible.

The WP’s article reports that “former Bush administration officials…said that…the Bush administration’s focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority”. Detention and interrogation for their own sake overshadowed the creation and accumulation of documentary evidence that could be used to safeguard the country? What went wrong here? I’m alarmed that the US government not only felt able to have such a poor attitude toward the creation of these case files, but also that they’ve gotten away with it.

Runaway time

It’s difficult to find time to blog. I really wanted to write about the decision of the Irish Government to merge their National Archives, Irish Manuscripts Commission and National Library. This seems a blatantly bad move, one that reveals a genuine lack of understanding of how these institutions work and the services they provide. I also wanted to write about the decision in Japan to demolish their Kabuki-za, a truly beautiful and historic building in Tokyo, a city that has almost run out of architectural evidence of it’s past. Unfortunately, it’s a busy time at home and work and blogging on these and other important issues hasn’t happened.

Bulgaria does the best bread

Recently I went to Sofia. While there I was shown the national archives and took these photos:

Blog Action Day

This post is participating in Blog Action Day. The idea is that bloggers all over the world use one day a year to discuss a common topic. This year that topic is Poverty. The idea is to raise awareness, generate discussion, raise money (through the donation of blog ad revenue), and instigate change. I’m in favour of all these things, although to be honest I’m sceptical of how much real change will ever be made in the area of poverty. There has always been an imbalance between the rich and poor. Why should this change? Why does it exist in the first place? It seems to me that people living in poverty are there through the greed and selfishness of others, namely those who make the rules, wield the power, have the wealth, own the land and property, dictate how the money flows, have access to education, and generally are in a position to choose their own life-styles and life-views and to not give a damn about their fellow human beings. Sometimes poverty leads to death. Sometimes it leads to revolution.

I’m supposed to post about poverty as it relates to the theme of my blog. So, poverty and archives….

There has been a dedicated movement during the last couple of years to get world governments to seriously tackle the problem of poverty, both in their own countries and on an international scale. This will be documented in newspapers, government policy papers, live aid videos, etc. But a lot of material will be lost because it originates from small, grass level movements that are run by volunteers, that exist for a couple of years (or less) and then disappear. Many of these groups operate in electronic environments, relying on the internet and email to get their messages across and to communicate with their membership and the wider public. As archivists, how can we identify, collect and preserve the records of these groups? Should we even try? Is this our role?

Well I could write a bit more about that, but there are other angles to poverty and archives. People living in poverty have to worry about food, shelter, fresh water, education, heating, access to medicine, and other basics of survival. How many of the truly impoverished visit our institutions? How do our outreach programmes tackle this? The Archives Awareness Campaign for 2008 is “Take your place in history”. How does the position of the poverty-stricken fit into this? (I don’t mean to critique the Awareness Campaign, which, by the way, I think is brilliant.) But, poor people exist in history and always have and many of them make it into archives only via government statistics, or studies on social and health conditions. I suspect not many institutions contain the personal collections of families or individuals living in poverty. What records are they creating anyway?

This last thought really is my way of getting to the point that poverty excludes people from a full engagement with archival collections, both as creators and as readers. This lack of engagement denies them a connection with their history, their culture, their identity, the memories of their communities and ancestors, and all the other wonderful ways that archives enrich our lives and our feelings of personal identity and belonging.

Poverty sucks. It should be done away with.