[Personal_archives] Welcome and some first questions for Susan

[Hobbs, Catherine]

Good morning (Well, of course it's "good afternoon" to Susan), 

A warm welcome to Susan Thomas, digital archivist at the Bodleian Library at Oxford who is here to discuss the PARADIGM project and digital personal archives issues with us this week.  

>From my reading about the PARADIGM project, I have to say that I am greatly impressed with the resulting workbook:  its clarity, its structure and its continual emphasis on alternate approaches and the pros and cons of different considered solutions.

However, before things get too technical, I would like to ask two questions of Susan which relate to the emphasis of the project on personal archives:

1)  In discussing the choice to study politicians personal archives, there is some consideration of how politicians archives are perhaps a-typical of personal archives in general (i.e. there are created by politicians offices and are comprised of professional documentation) and how much of what we might consider to be personal documentation was missing from the study.  Can you elaborate a bit on the early discussions you and your colleagues at Manchester had about these issues of what constitutes a personal archive and how the case study may or may not be transferable to other types of personal archives?  In the very first year of the SISPA group (2001-2002), we had a rather interesting discussion along the lines of how politicians archives seem to exist at a certain margin between personal fonds and the public record.  Has there been any attempt to model this approach to other types of personal archives (writers fonds or family archives, for example)?  

2)  The workbook discusses post-custodial strategies with regard to saving personal digital archives from their fates.  Could you elaborate on the reactions of the creators of these archives in terms of the site visit and on-site appraisal interventions as well as to the suggestions that they manage their own archives in particular ways?  The workbook takes the approach that post-custodial intervention done carefully and respecting the creator's freedoms is key to the process and would achieve an optimal result.  My own experiences acquiring digital archives have shown a range of openness to intervention, and perhaps greater hesitation about allowing access to digital documents than paper ones.  Can you elaborate on the experiences of the project archivists in terms of intervention?  

Looking forward to hearing more,
Catherine

(SISPA Chair)



Catherine Hobbs,
Archivist, Literary Archives (English-language) / Archiviste, Archives littéraires de langue anglaise
Documentary Heritage Collection Sector / Secteur de la collection du patrimoine documentaire 
Library and Archives Canada / Bibliothèque et Archives Canada 
Place de la Cité, Room / Piece 598, 
550, boul. de la Cité, Gatineau (QC), K1A 0N4
catherine.hobbs at lac-bac.gc.ca
Téléphone /Telephone 819-934-8331
Télécopieur / Facsimile 819-934-8333

Gouvernement du Canada / Government of Canada  www.collectionscanada.gc.ca