"How might the process of putting our outrage in order- collecting and order the culturl and intellectual products of resistance movements- remain deeply attached to the communities of practice from which they emerge as they migrate to established archives?" Eichorn 2013, 157Eichorn grapples with the institutionalization of women's and queer people's archives from the second wave of the women's liberation movement.
The study of Casswell et al. (2016) aims to empirically evaluate the impact of the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) in the community of South American Asian Americans in academia. In their review of literature, the authors identify gaps in research of the social impact of community archives in four domains: symbolic annihilation, affect in archives, community archives and archival impact.
The authors conducted semistructured qualitative interviews with members of SAADA Academic advisory Council (n=11).
My work concerns womens’ experiences of mistreatment during childbirth. I consider opening a platform for women and healthcare providers to share their stories. The goal of this project would be to raise public awareness about obstetric violence, but also to open conversation that would motivate changes in practice of obstetrics and gynecology within the western biomedical model. At the same time I am aware that such conversation may cause negative emotional responses, such as anxiety and fear. I will be looking into research of “affect in archiving” to address this problem.
Poole reviews existing scholarship on community archives’ information work, which he approaches as “unprecedently democratic venues for information work” (657).
Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities as one that is built around the construct of shared values and ideals essentially pushes for a division between those who belong in the community and those who do not. The article seemingly argues for the alternatives, in the case of looking at community archives. For the author, community archives need to be involved in what he calls “information work” i.e. the infrastructure of “getting things done” and community archives as “grassroot tools of individual and collective identity, education, and empowerment”.
This is a short review by Chris Kelty (2009) discussing two books written by the anthropologist Johannes Fabian. The review focuses primarily on Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive (published in 2008, notably before social media really took off). While Fabian's ethnographic research is largely focused on language and popular culture in Africa, the book is discussing a digital archive (and open access journal) he founded.
Andrew, F., Stevens, M. and Shepherd, E. (2009). “Whose Memories, Whose Archives? Independent Community Archives, Autonomy and the Mainstream.” Archival Science 9 (1): 71. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-009-9105-2.
Andrew Flinn is associated with the Department of Information Studies from the University College of London. Some of Dr. Flinn’s interests include archives and memories, democratizing archival practices, and social justice. Mary Stevens is from the Department of Information Studies at the University College London. Elizabeth Shepherd is from the Department of Information Studies at the University College London. Dr. Shepherd is a Professor of Archives and Records Management. Dr.
The Archival Science International Journal on Recorded Information to promote archival science as a discipline. It methodologically aims to be integrated, interdisciplinary, and intercultural.
