[Personal_archives] Guidance for creators

Fri May 1 14:52:43 EDT 2009

Doug, 

Your points about the boundlessness and melding of the personal fonds
into the public sphere are spot on.  Where do archivists see ourselves
in a context where the personal blurs into other reaches outside of
personal control? This is something archivists are familiar with in
terms of trying to determine the personal fonds in other formats but the
issue here seems to be the extent of the blending and the proliferation
of the records.

I guess many archivists would say that part of determining the personal
fonds emanates from the discussions with the creator about his/her
activities which takes place during an appraisal.  After discovering
what exists I might decide that certain social networking activities add
to the fonds in terms of a vision of the activities and preoccupations
of the creator (in my case creative writers).  This is the kind of
decision to bound the fonds which archivists make regularly and,
granted, never seem entirely comfortable with.   

There was a discussion at the SISPA meeting last year at ACA that we
might consider that the archivist preserves records in some cases and in
other cases only traces of records which might have existed (and might
continue to exist).  The discussions with the creator would provide the
map but the preservation would only ensure part of the territory, as it
were.  

Catherine

________________________________

From: personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu
[mailto:personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Donald
Force
Sent: April 30, 2009 7:58 PM
To: personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Personal_archives] Guidance for creators

This is quite the interesting discussion and I'm glad it was recently
brought to my attention. If I may add a few thoughts (and I apologize
for the length, I sort of got carried away)....

Heather, you raise an excellent point with the problem of trying to
"know where the borders and boundaries of the fonds ... lies." I tend to
agree with Cathy that information is not necessary lost, that is,
deleted or irretrievable, as it is simply forgotten - the wonders of
"benign neglect." Sure, computers crash and internet service providers
go under, but for the most part, the information survives. This presents
archivists with two very serious problems.

First, as has been pointed out, there is the question of identifying all
the fragmented/decentralized parts of a person's fonds. While I do not
want to dwell on this issue, I think it should be mentioned that even if
archivists are able to figure out where a person has stored his/her
information, access becomes a rather big issue. We can know that a
person had Hotmail, Yahoo!, and Gmail e-mail accounts, but can we access
those messages once the archives is to obtain them (legally, ethically,
professionally)? On a slightly similar note, this also raises the
question of using IP addresses to track a person's information. Assuming
that archivists have had little or no communication with the donor, how
is an archivist to know the IP address when all he/she receives is a
laptop (or two or three) and a box full of external hard drives, memory
sticks, and CDs? Unless I am mistaken, the IP address is specific to the
internet provider and how are archivists to know this information let
alone be able to use it- especially if that IP address is recycled once
the service is terminated?

To me, there is a bigger issue than tracking down the bits, bytes, and
pieces  (sorry, couldn't help myself) of a person's fonds. The second
issue that archivists must confront is our growing use and dependence of
Web 2.0 applications. The problem may not be identifying what
information a person has where but deciphering one person's fonds from
another person's fonds. Neil Beagrie wrote in 1999 that because of the
growth of digital information, a "public persona" was emerging, a
persona blurring the boundaries between the private, public, and work
environments ("Plenty of Room at the Bottom?" D-Lib). The more I think
about this phrase, the more I wonder how much of a reality it is
becoming, and, more importantly, how much of a problem it is for
archivists. Even if we are able to crawl the internet for all the
information a person has created, how much of this information is also
linked to someone else's personal information? A blog post, a wiki
entry, Twitter feeds, and my arch-nemesis of time consumption, Facebook
with all its wall postings, photographs, links, status updates, and
comments from friends. As archivists, we constantly emphasize that
context is everything, but isn't it the context which enables these
sites to flourish and be understood?

In the "good old days," we could, with a fair number of exceptions, have
a single letter, read it, and still be able to pull something away from
it because, chances are, it had a certain amount of content to it. We
did not necessarily have to have the date, author, and other contextual
information. Would it be nice and give us a more complete picture of the
purpose behind the letter or manuscript? Of course, but the letter was
still useful by itself. I can recall countless times where I read
fragments of World War I letters and was still able to pull something
away from them - even though it may have only been at the very general
level.

Today, it seems to me that the amount of content has significantly
decreased (in part, I would argue, a result of the text messaging
phenomenon) making us more reliant upon that contextual information to
understand the meaning of what is being said - contextual information
that has become inherently linked with other people's fonds. A good
example being that if I visit a friend's Facebook page and he/she has a
wall "conversation" with a friend whom I do not know, then I only see
one side of that conversation and chances are there is not enough text
there for me to make heads or tails about what is being said or
discussed. At best, I'm only getting half the story. Furthermore, what
is a blog post without the blog or responses to the posting? What is a
Twitter feed with only one or two twits (if that is indeed the singular
term)? If we are to crawl and identify these singular pieces of
information for a person's fonds what good are they because we have
removed them from their context? In other words, the archival bond, the
relationship a record has with other records, is no longer being solely
created by an individual and his/her own personal records, the bond is
being formed because of other people's information. Thus, it begs to ask
the question, if we are to crawl for a person's fonds, where does the
crawl stop so we may get the "whole of the documents"?

Hopefully this will add some fuel to the discussion because it is
definitely one that needs more attention.

Cheers,

Donald Force

Ph.D. Student & InterPARES 3 GRA

School of Library, Archives, and Information Studies

University of British Columbia

From: personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu
[mailto:personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of
home at queensu.ca
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 8:54 AM
To: Hobbs, Catherine
Cc: personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Personal_archives] Guidance for creators

I whole-heartedly agree with Rod's comments about context and
decentralized storage of the digital belongings. The research value of
where the material lives, and how it lives in that environment, is of
great importance to us as archivists and also to future researchers.
That said, I also understand the fear of decentralized storage leading
to loss and fragmentary glimpses in the future, because once it is
decentralized, as archivists, how are we to know where the borders and
boundaries of the fonds, or the whole (of what remains), lies. 

My technical question is slightly different than Rodney's and maybe
incorporates centralized and decentralized notions. What I wonder is if
it is possible to have a centralized map of an individual's path and
interaction with their own digital belongings and other electronic
information. Cathy, I know you have written about encountered
information in other articles, but is it possible to include in that
idea a person's encounter with their "own" information? I don't see the
centralized map as containing the information, but reflecting the how,
when, where of a person's interaction with material - which ultimately
may assist with appraisal and selection. Sort of a cross between Mac's
Time Machine and a browser history on speed! Is there anything out there
that does this sort of thing - is there a way we could./should be doing
some of this type of thing when we are talking with (living) donors?

Heather

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