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Thursday Free Writing

I’ve had a rough week trying to get to writing. I’ve actually spent most of my spare time thinking about other things, but I was able to compile a good list of sources that I’d like to go through over the coming weeks.

What I’ve begun to realize about early archival sources is that the terminology may not be defined like I felt it should be. This means I’ve got to read a lot of early and foundational archivial literature for very specific things. I’m hoping to find the following terms in the literature.

  • orientation
  • tours
  • exhibits
  • guiding
  • researcher help/ registration
  • administration

I do find myself wondering if I need to look for materials that cover not user focused archivial activities, such as apprasial and arrangement, but I really don’t think that this will be fruitful. What I do think will be fruitful will be foundational literature. This means review some of the following.

  • Schellenburg
  • Holmes
  • Cross

I actually think the mentions of instruction will be minimal, but this will be telling if so true.

Another plan for researching the history of instruction is to view the contents/arcticle titles of the major journals over their history to get an idea. (I love for access to a physical collection of these). To determine, this will be a tough journey, but I believe it will be more effiecent that trying to use search terminology after scanning these journal contents. Hopefully this won’t be an exercise in futility.

Journals I hope to look into include.

  • american archivist
  • archiviria
  • Provenance

Hopefully these two steps will be sufficient to determine all that I need to know. I feel like I have a rather good handle on post 2012 literature, but I may need to explore the concept of a “user” centered archives as a later section.

Exploring other professional literature

I do think it might be necessary to explore the literature of at least, library instruction. It maybe necessary to take a look how this profession changed and how those changes were mirrored in the archival profession. I don’t know if spending a lot of time digging through this literature will be necessary. I’m hoping to find references to library literature within archival literature and I’ll conduct the tracing of the pedagogical changes by following citations.