Tag Archives: Care

OHD_MDM_0032 Beasties of the Archive

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I did a mind map/a brain dump around all the supernatural bullshit that bounces around in my head and I finally used a post-it note that some how has survived since February.

The Ghost

The idea of archives being haunted I have talked about a lot. I do find it a rather beautiful and romantic idea but some people do not believe in ghosts or went to art school so they have a lower tolerance for bullshit. Let’s leave the bullshit argue for now and just enjoy the idea of ghosts of Seaton Delaval Hall floating around the archive telling their stories. The root the stories within a human and therefore more relatable setting. The story has a face and a personality so there is more room for the reuser to create a bond with the person.

However, ghosts are by their mythology rather static beings. Ghosts exist because they have unfinished business in this world. They live a rather selfish existence which is not too ideal for the space that I want to create where ghost and human collaborate together.

The Undead

Unlike the ghost the undead are able to stay in this world forever, adapting with society, taking on new trends etc. They are also human like but unlike ghost they have less of an agenda so are more likely to be open to ideas.

However humans do not generally like things that live forever, mostly because we are very jealous, so the undead are often painted as pretty gross. For example, rotting zombies or blood thirsty vampire, generally both are not very cool when it comes to fitting in with society.

The Robot

Here is another potentially immortal being, the robot! However this one might potentially die faster than all of us due to rampant capitalism, built in obsolescence and many many updates. But if it does survive it has a bigger brain than all of the beasties. However, it does not have a heart and unlike the above beasties this one is less of a metaphor and more of a physical system many of which already exists. My only addition is that we give this robot a name, which is not a particular new idea just ask Alexa. By the way here is probably the biggest problem – I do not really like Alexa, I think she is creepy.

The Garden

From fauna to flora here comes the archive as a garden. Originally this post-it was created because I was thinking about how I have memories attached to plants but it has now morphed into this… Archives can be viewed as an eco system just like a garden. The plants are the documents that live within the garden: some die, some live, some completely take over and some change with the seasons. The insects are the users of the archive: some users are bees they take and add to the archive, some are snails and just take take take, and some are flies who deal with the messy that is created. The whole thing becomes an eco system that needs everyone to help in order for it to keep existing. Take one thing out and it all falls apart.

Now I perfectly aware that I cannot use all these metaphors at once because then they do not work, but it is interesting to think about which metaphor can best encourage the mindset that I wish for the users of the archive to have. That mindset being one of care for those who donated parts of their lives to this public space. Are people more likely to care for ghosts, zombies, robots or plants? Or maybe I need to create my own supernatural archival being?

HERE LIES A POTENTIAL EXPERIMENT

OHD_BLG_0065 New words among other things

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Readings:

Community archives and the health of the internet by Andrew Prescott

Steering Clear of the Rocks: A Look at the Current State of Oral History Ethics in the Digital Age by Mary Larson

Sometimes I feel like we are in the trenches with our machine guns and old military tactics…

This ain’t for you

People live their lives in very specific ways. They have certain rituals and values that they hold very close to their hearts. However it is very unlikely that everyone else in the world has the same approach to life as you do. Some people do not use the right tea towel in my opinion, some people think it is perfectly fine to wear socks in sandals, and some people a zero problems with eating meat everyday. In the case of Prescott’s paper on community archives/Facebook groups we have an academic freaking out because a community is not archiving properly something which he considers to be a great sin, and yes, in a certain way it is a great shame that a community archive is not sustainable because of the platform used or the limited funding. This is especially the case when you come from an oral history angle where one really wants to preserve the voices of those who current fall outside of history. However, maybe we need to remove the academic lens in these situations, maybe these archives just aren’t for you. They have a different, more temporary, function to bring people together over a shared history. They are about sharing history not preserving history like archives do.

This is where I think I (as an academic 🤢) feel that my role is not to impose my beliefs onto these make-do archives but instead build better tools to support them. A community archive on Facebook is a different beast to the university backed oral history project. Truly it is a shame that this knowledge might go missing, but then I suggest that we get more minorities to work in academia rather than dictate what we think they should do.

It’s a power thing.

Anonymity is anti-oral history ?

…, anonymity is antithetical to the goals of oral history if there are no exacerbating risk factors.

Mary Larson

Anonymity, accountability, freedom of speech, privacy, welcome to the 21st century. There is the opinion within the field of oral history that anonymity is against the principles of oral history. This is mostly because oral history demands a high level of context in its reuse, which makes complete sense. However does that mean that all information should be available? Is it impossible to have different levels of anonymity?

It seems odd that currently when it comes to privacy we have to work in such absolutes. You can get a certain level of privacy on the internet but that often requires lots of digging around and downloading plugins that send out white noise. You basically have to spend time fending off those who run the platforms you use, which when put in a AFK context would be the equivalent of the shop keeper pickpocketing you while you were shopping. Currently privacy and anonymity equals not using either the internet or archives, which defeats the point.

Why is this our only option?

Well, in my opinion it is not. We just need to get a bit more creative for example:

  • Use pseudonyms
  • Use other identifiers e.g. White, young adult, middle class, female (that’s me)
  • Use identifiers + 𝓲𝓶𝓪𝓰𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷. There are loads of researchers who have to use their imagination because history has not been good at recording their subject
  • Only allow access to certain information if you either visit the BAM archive or ask for permission
  • Generally encourage more thorough and ethical reuse and research

New words

To elaborate on that last point we currently approach the ethics around archiving from the donating angle; if everything is correctly archived now there will definitely be no more problems in the future. This attitude I do not find very sustainable because attitudes towards ethics change all the time. So instead I purpose a different angle: ethical reuse of archival material lies predominantly with the reuser not the donator. This is where I would also like to insert the ‘new’ words. Instead of using the terms ethical and ethics we instead use responsibility and care, because the former is so slippery so ‘high-level’ thinking that it loses its meaning while the latter are more human words. Responsibility and care are concepts that you teach your children. They are more instinctive. So what I wish for is more care and responsibility from those who reuse oral histories. I want the reuser to remember the human-ness of the archive and the responsibility they have to care for their other humans.

NOTE: this is why I love the idea of archival ghosts so much because it gives the oral histories a face.