National something week

It's National Library Week in the US. This made me ask: does the UK have a similar thing? A Google search led me to the National Literacy Trust and their reading events calendar. Every month is covered. No National Library Week but some good looking events. I've missed the Day for April - International Children's Book Day - but all of May is National Share a Story Month. This sounds great. I love stories. I was thus disappointed to see that this seems solely aimed at children. Surely the "power of story" is something that can be appreciated by people of all ages. In fact, earlier this year I went to a performance put on by the Crick Crack Club, who carry on the tradition of storytelling for audiences of different ages. (Think I must have unknowingly participated in National Storytelling Week, which is in February).

The UK may not have a National Library Week, or at best a badly publicised one, but storytelling is alive and well here. The aforementioned National Storytelling Week is connected with the Society for Story Telling. If you're in London there's the London Centre for International Storytelling. These people currently have an HLF grant "to archive and document live recordings of public storytelling by professional performers". The on-line search they've set up is easy to use and gives lots of information. The Archive includes stories from all over the world and on many different subjects.

I'm convinced other countries have events similar to National Library Week. Finding out would involve a more dedicated search than I'm willing to do.

Dreaming in colour

I've been watching Japanese movies lately and as a consequence have been dreaming in anime. Disturbing? Yes, I think so. It's much nicer though then dreaming of numbering boxes or counting files, which it's not uncommon for me to do.

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.