“It Feels Like a Life’s Work”

Abstract

By considering a set of in-depth interviews with eight bereaved mothers, this article seeks to explore ideas about what records are and what they do. Working to centre the voices and experiences of the bereaved mothers, the article first discusses some of the objects, events, places, and bodily traces they identified that function as records. It next considers the roles records and recordkeeping played for the parents interviewed, identifying four types of records work: proving life and love, parenting, continuing a relationship, and imagining. Records and recordkeeping are shown to be instrumental in the ongoing processing of traumatic loss as well as in the significant work of ensuring a life has meaning and is acknowledged. Finally, the interviews with parents also showed how deeply imbricated are love and grief as emotions and as motivations for recordkeeping, and the article ends by articulating a call for archivists to learn to “look with love.”

Information in the personal collections of writers and artists: Practices, challenges and preservation

“…one's lifetime) [31]. Personal collections, not just those of artists and writers, have thus been studied to examine their contents, management practices and value [32][33][34]. Notably, these collections pose challenges in their organisation and preservation arising from technological complexities or obsolescence, lack of context documentation and lack of practical skills, which making them critically endangered and challenging to study [29,35].…”

“…The personal records writers keep provide details about their lives and the personal experiences that form the background to their works and can evoke the character of a writer and their surroundings [42].They are often used, for example, in writers' autobiographies, where recollection of times and places is achieved through objects in personal collections [8]. While it is recognised that various agents shape writers' personal archives [9], and in a way the creation of an archive is a type of performative act [33,43], research also noted 'a lack of awareness that contemporary authors have about today's cultural landscape and that they themselves should be involved in preserving the context of their work, which is as important as the work itself' [44].…”

‘These are not just pieces of paper’: Acknowledging grief and other emotions in pursuit of person-centered archives

“…Quoting work by Ellen Ramvi and Linda Davies, Douglas, Alisauskas, and Mordell suggest that archivists share similar experiences and characteristics with 'occupational groups like social workers, nurses, and teachers…i.e., professionals who work in close contact with other people and for whom empathy and the ability to build relationships are crucial'. 75 Douglas, Alisauskas, and Mordell argue that the 'relational work' of archivists has remained 'more hidden than it should have', 76 and this argument is borne out in the interviews we conducted for this project, where participants clearly articulated the relational quality of their work as well as the lack of acknowledgment of and support for it. Participants felt unprepared for, sometimes overwhelmed by and alone and unsupported in facing the relational work of archives.…”

Emotional responses in archival work

“…Research with archivists also demonstrates that interacting with, and supporting, traumatized individuals—donors and community researchers—whose lives are reflected in the archives can be rewarding, but also emotionally challenging. Jennifer Douglas and Alexandra Alisauskas ( 2021 ), for instance, suggest that creating archives in collaboration with bereaved family members contributed to “grief work”, validating that a life existed or experience occurred, and presenting a way surviving family members could express love. In this way, Geoff Wexler and Linda Long contend that archivists serve as “guardians of a personal legacy” (Wexler and Long 2009 p 485), a role bestowed on them by donors of deeply personal records (Regehr et al 2022 ).…”

“…Research with a wide variety of occupational groups, more recently including archivists, has studied individual, event and organizational factors that contribute to an individual’s susceptibility or resilience to distress when exposed to traumatic stimuli in the workplace. This has included factors that are specific to the individual, including previous trauma exposure, resilience, optimism and coping styles (Collins 2007 ; Dagan et al 2015 ; Douglas et al 2019 ; Jenkins and Baird 2002 ), and the existence of a personal network of social supports (Ennis and Home 2003 ; Marmar et al 2006 ; Regehr 2009 ). Factors related to the traumatic exposure itself can influence trauma responses including: the nature of the content (Birze et al 2023 ; Nathan et al 2015 ; Regehr et al 2022 ); the form it takes (Birze et al 2023 ; Polak et al 2019 ), the intensity and length of exposure (Bober and Regehr 2006 ; Resnick et al 1992 ), and the degree to which it is personally meaningful (Douglas et al 2022 ; Regehr et al 2022 , 2002 ).…”