Another Wood Between the Worlds? Regimes of Worth and the Making of Meanings in the Work of Archivists

Abstract

The expectation that archives would function as the custodians of the longue durée of the society is paradoxical in its apparent simplicity. On the basis of an interview study of Nordic archives professionals, this article explores archives professionals experience and explicate the transformation and complexities of the worth and meaning of archival work and its major constituencies, the archival records. The analysis shows how the continuums of the worth and meaning of archival records and the work of archivists are constituted in a complex interplay of quasi--institutionalised orders of archival work, their associated but often conflicting regimes of worth and information, and similarly oscillating local intermediary practices.

Authenticity in places of belonging: community collective memory as a complex, adaptive recordkeeping system

“…Archival practice itself, though codified in national manuals and an increasing number of international standards, is not uniform across jurisdictions, and often not even within them. 11 Huvila's study of Nordic archives professionals found that their work and the meanings of the archives they managed were strongly influenced by their individual and institutional contexts, 12 just as I found in my own earlier research into descriptive choices made by archivists in New Zealand, 13 and in line with Oliver's research into organisational culture and recordkeeping. 14…”

Regimes of participation: theorising participatory archives from the outset of archivists' views on archival institutions and user participation in Scandinavia

“…Relating to the raison d'être of archival institutions, an earlier study with Nordic archivists (Huvila, 2015a) identified five broad orders (cf. Boltanski and Thévenot, 2022) of archival work.…”

“…The raison d'être specific subject positions show obvious kinship to the orders of work identified by Huvila (2015a). The pluralistic order of work has much in common with framing archival institutions as an arena of public discourse and learning, organizational order with the manager and provider of public information and the manager of private information, and antiquarian with the research and heritage resource.…”

“…A plausible explanation can be that the participatory archival discourse is heavily oriented towards culture and heritage, rather than administration, but also the Nordic tradition of public, non-academic use of archives (see Orrman, 2007). The finding links participation to general archival optimism (Sheffield, 2020), cultural-antiquarian and pluralistic values of archival work in Huvila's (2015a) work and the broader idea of archives as cultural institutions (Edquist, 2019). It also encompasses the most prominent raison d'être of archival institutions according to the analysis, the functioning as an arena for public discourse and learning, but excludes the management and provision of public information.…”

“…The resource; manager and provider of public information combination frames participation as collaboration and co-work for managing public archives that are relevant for the civic society. The subject position assigns value to records creators as participants (Huvila, 2015b), the organizational value of archival work (Huvila, 2015a) and the role of archives as administrative, rather than cultural institutions (cf. Kilkki, 2020;Edquist, 2019;Gilliland-Swetland, 2000).…”