Democratising or privileging: the democratisation of knowledge and the role of the archivist

Creating value of the past through negotiations in the present: balancing professional authority with influence of participants

“…In an archival context, the sharpest conflicts with the traditional authority of archivists supposedly arise in situations marked by maximalist participation. However, maximalist participation presents archivists as benevolent gatekeepers (Gauld 2017) who grant participants the ability to modulate their engagement according to their aims and needs. Maximalist participation is therefore a useful concept for framing essential elements in the ambiguous situations of conflicted influence and power that this article seeks to investigate.…”

“…A benevolent approach to user participation in archives, by way of various 'participatory archives' projects, is often framed as a way to counteract selectivity and bias in archival collections, archival descriptions, and finding aids (Light and Hyry 2002;Anderson and Allen 2009;Farley 2014;Eveleigh 2014). Achieving more representative collections, it is further argued, implies 'radical participation' (Duff and Harris 2002, p. 39), with changed dynamics in central archival activities such as arranging, describing, and providing access to collections (Gauld 2017). This requires modern archivists to be collaborative and 'open to user needs' (Baxter 2011, p. 299).…”

“…On the assumption that archives are the mirrors of the society in which they exist, user participation is advocated as an ethically responsible way of constructing and administering archival collections (Gauld 2017;Brilmyer 2018). Inviting people with different backgrounds, interests, and perspectives to take part in archival processes enables them to make-through their varied knowledge and experience-an essential contribution.…”

Expanding Heritage Horizons through the Cheltenham: A Diaspora Project

“…In a heritage climate where an increased emphasis is placed on the principle that it is 'reasonable to let the people who own that heritage decide what they want to cherish and keep for future generations, but not as judged by the external standard of outside experts' (Den 2014), such groups are essential to the process of democratising heritage and local history (Besser 1997). Gauld (2017) sees this as "the ability of individuals to by-pass traditional information portals, seen as encapsulating establishment networks of control, so as to become personally empowered to create, locate or upload content that is not reliant upon gatekeepers". Moving beyond traditional 'power centres' of heritage management or ' ownership' creates 'safe' spaces in which community research can be conducted without fear of critique or loss of control, while a sense of ownership can be maintained by content creators throughout.…”

Transforming public records management: Six key insights

“…For example, they may reference “records” (without further interpretation of what is meant), “copies” (with no consideration of modifiability and combinability), and “parts” of records 4 . The future needs to see an expansion in how a record is defined, shifting from a “purely administrative and juridical‐based theory of records” (Trace, 2002, p. 137), where records are just by‐products of public administration and evidence of a transaction in the legal sense (Gauld, 2017). This stems from the “creator‐centric” view that public archival agencies collected rather than simply received records (Gauld, 2017).…”