[Personal_archives] Arrangement discussion - original order

Mon Jan 30 15:46:48 EST 2012

Hello All,

The one, immutable Original Order seems like a mythical ideal to me.  Only
the most organized individuals will have strict, logical systems for
ordering records over time. As Powell suggests, anyone looking at someone
else's system will be “faced with numerous inconsistencies and
idiosyncrasies.” (262) These will be amplified as the documents pass
through hands of heirs or other custodians. However, as Hurley and Swift
both demonstrate, that is not reason to throw up our hands in despair –
where an order can be discerned it is best to follow it (reconstructing it
as best as possible, if necessary) and where there is chaos, make
reasonably informed decisions should be made based on the nature of the
records being arranged.

Archival intervention even at its most basic, the move from a creator’s
home or office into archival boxes, disrupts the “original order.” All the
other abuses and indignities records can suffer in their journey from the
hands of the creator to archives compounds the difficulty in discerning the
methods and intentions of the creator. The best we can hope for is an
approximation, based on the evidence at hand.  Ideally, the events and
decisions that shape the arrangement will be documented, even if only for
internal archival use so our successors can understand why things were
arranged as they are.

Given the transformation that necessarily occurs when records are subjected
to archival processes, I think arrangement is, to speak to Heather’s
question, a creative act even when modeled on an identifiable pre-existing
organization.

Certainly, Jeremy’s ‘recent discernible order’ is a very useful idea here.
If we acknowledge that the records have a history, and we are trying to
capture a single iteration of their arrangement, then we leave room for
others to speculate how else the records may have been organized at other
points in time.

Jeremy asks why people file but it is also important to look at the impact
of recordkeeping technologies (in the broadest sense) on how people arrange
their documents. Correspondence kept in files or letter books will have
different arrangements and, as a result, the interrelations will create
different meanings; how photographs are kept - in albums, loose in
shoeboxes or framed - can speak to significance placed on them by owners.

Looking at the digital world, is this segregation of material based on size
or medium breaking down? While it is simple to interfile all types of
documents, we still tend to arrange items into “folders” as we do in the
paper-based world. In Windows, there is a default folder for “My Pictures”
and “My Videos” within the My Documents folder reinforcing the idea that
these items should be kept separately, whether or not people use them. Will
we get to the point where systems of arrangements are abandoned in favour
of key-word searching? If so, what will archivists have to do to make the
relationships between files meaningful? Perhaps there will be a
technological solution to that and we can focus on writing detailed fonds
level descriptions.

Rodney

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Jeremy Heil <heilj at queensu.ca> wrote:

> **
> Greetings all!
>
> One of the first ideas that struck me as I read through these articles was
> truly how much we have relied on the practices governing arrangement of
> institutional records, adapted for personal archives.  We've had the
> discussion many times in the past on the concept of "original order" and
> what it really means.  Is each accrual a puzzle to be pieced together, or
> is the puzzle already complete?  Perhaps each accrual represents one side
> of a three-dimensional puzzle, and it will only be completed with the last
> accrual on a closed fonds? Is original order what was originally, or what
> was recently?
>
> I think our greatest problem stems from the nomenclature.  We've been tied
> to the concept of "original order" for ages, but it is a concept that can
> only properly apply to institutional records.  The *Regitraturprinzip *is,
> by definition, how records fit within a classification scheme (registry).
> To continue with the puzzle analogy, piecing records back together in
> accordance with this principle is more akin to completing a wooden cut-out
> puzzle - each piece has its place according to the rules of the registry.
> Where this concept obviously fails is that few, if any, private individuals
> create file registries.  So the question is, why do people file? In short -
> so we can find things. Sarah Kim quotes a study in her PhD proposal
> indicating that individuals organize their records mainly for easy
> retrieval for later use. At the institutional level, file schemes are
> implemented so multiple people over time and space can find records in the
> same way (whether or not employees adhered to these systems, and the
> problems in arrangement that arise as a result is another question
> entirely). On an individual level, we each file according to how we can
> best find correspondence, notes, random thoughts, etc. This is an intensely
> personal activity, and can change on a whim (New Years' resolution to
> organize our house! Watched High Fidelity and decided to arrange files by
> our past relationships!).So, without a registry for personal archives, what
> are we left with?
>
> Jennifer Meehan writes that "in order to better contextualize personal
> records, archivists must strive to interpret and represent personal records
> on their own terms, rather than imposing conventions or schema based on
> either user expectations or analogies with organizational records." I would
> take this idea further and propose that the *Regitraturprinzip* is to
> institutional archives as what I will term the *Gedächtnisstützeprinzip*- the principle of mnemonic devices - is to personal archives.  Individuals
> arrange files according to how they can later find them.  Stemming from
> this, there is one key concept that must also be acknowledged - that
> arrangement is mutable over time and space, as creators arrange based on
> how they are using the material at any given time.  Then throw into the mix
> the role of custodians in further rearrangement (Meehan p. 40), we are left
> with multiple possible orders, none of which are necessarily clear to the
> archivist.  Thus "original order" in personal archives is often a false
> construct, no matter how we try to define it.  We would be better served if
> we simply acknowledge this limitation, and perhaps rechristen the term
> "recent discernible order" (or something far more elegant).  "Original
> order" sounds powerful and authoritative, and I think it leads many
> archivists to believe that it truly exists in all fonds and accruals.  The
> truth is less ideal.
>
> I look forward to an invigorating discussion on this and much more!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jeremy
> --
> Jeremy Heil, BA, MAS
> Technical Services Archivist
>
> Queen's University Archives
> Kathleen Ryan Hall, Queen's University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6
> Tel: 613-533-6000 ext. 74462 Web: http://archives.queensu.ca
>
> Help us preserve our heritage!
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>
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