[Personal_archives] Arrangement discussion - original order

Tue Jan 31 08:48:46 EST 2012

I am now envisioning original order as a unicorn.

I was thinking last night precisely about the line between chaos and 
order, and how individual archivists may see it. As Jane so eloquently 
put in her post "order is not perceivable without intimate knowledge of 
her habits -- so as archivists, how well can we be expected to do with 
strangers?" Again, raising the spectre of archivist subjectivity. 
Personally I don't have any better way to describe it than I know it 
when I see it. This made me think of NSARM's policy which says that the 
existence of series must be justified. Has anyone (at NSARM and/or on 
this list-serve) proven the existence of a series? I am very curious to 
know what was entailed not in seeing its existence but in articulating 
that. The idea that "aggregate levels do not exist if their existence 
was not demonstrably known to the creator of the fonds" is interesting. 
I've been mulling it over and am not sure that I agree with that 
statement. Can you "see" series and ways of working when you have the 
fonds in front of you that the creator may not have consciously 
recognized? And if so, should you describe it that way or leave it alone?

Heather

On 30/01/2012 3:46 PM, Rodney Carter wrote:
>
> 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 
> <mailto: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 <tel:613-533-6000%20ext.%2074462>
>     Web: http://archives.queensu.ca
>
>     Help us preserve our heritage!
>     Donate to the Friends of Queen's Archives at
>     http://www.givetoqueens.ca/archives
>
>
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-- 
Heather Home, B.A., M.A.S.
Public Services/Private Records Archivist
Queen's University Archives, Kathleen Ryan Hall
Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3N6
t: 613.533.6000 x74456
f: 613.533.6403

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