Abstract
Keeping track of what needs to be done and where and when and by whom is a common practice in Canadian households. The documentary tools used to coordinate the work of keeping track in everyday life are the focus of this paper. We consider these documentary tools as belonging to genres. On the basis of four in-depth interviews, observation, and photography, we identify four genres common to all participants: check-ins or status reports, lists, reminders, and calendars. We map examples of these genres to show that they are socially and intertextually connected—in genre systems—with institutions and organizations beyond the home. Archivists have much to gain by applying the concept of genre-as-social-action and using ethnographic methods to study personal records from the creator’s perspective. Such approaches provide insight into the contexts within which personal records are created and used, including the intertextual linkages between personal and institutional recordkeeping.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andersen J (2008) The concept of genre in information studies. Annu Rev Inf Sci Technol 42:1–42
Barratt N (2009) From memory to digital record: personal heritage and archive use in the twenty-first Century. Rec Manag J 19:8–15
Bazerman C (1994) Systems of genres and the enactment of social intentions. In: Freedman A, Medway P (eds) Genre and the new rhetoric. Taylor and Francis, New York, pp 79–101
Bazerman C, Paradis J (1991) Textual dynamics of the professions: historical and contemporary studies of writing in professional communities. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison
Beattie H (2007) “The texture of the everyday”: appraising the values of women’s diaries and weblogs. Master’s thesis, joint program, Department of History (Archival Studies), University of Manitoba/University of Winnipeg
Belton T (2009) The dawn of the “chaotic account”: Horatio Hale’s Australia notebook and the development of anthropologists’ field notes. Libr Cult Rec 44:138–152
Bowker G, Star SL (1999) Sorting things out: classification and its consequences. MIT Press, Cambridge
Bruce HW, Wenning EJ, Vinson J, Jones W (2011) Seeking an ideal solution to the management of personal information collections. Inf Res 16:462
Campbell M, Gregor F (2002) Mapping social relations: a primer in doing institutional ethnography. Garamond, Aurora
Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2010) Tri-council policy statement: ethical conduct for research involving humans. http://www.pre.ethics.gc.ca/pdf/eng/tcps2/TCPS_2_FINAL_Web.pdf
Case DO (1986) Collection and organization of written information by social scientists and humanists: a review and exploratory study. J Inf Sci 12:97–104
Coe R, Lingard L, Teslenko T (eds) (2002) The rhetoric and ideology of genre. Hampton Press, Cresskill
Cook T (1992) Mind over matter: toward a new theory of archival appraisal. In: Craig BL (ed) The archival imagination: essays in honour of Hugh A. Taylor. Association of Canadian Archivists, Ottawa, pp 38–70
Cook T (2001) Archival science and postmodernism: new formulations for old concepts. Arch Sci 1:3–24
Cox RJ (1996) The records in the manuscript collection. Arch Manuscr 24:46–61
Cox RJ (2008) Personal archives and a new archival calling; readings, reflections, and ruminations. Litwin Books, Duluth
Cunningham A (1996) Beyond the pale? The “flinty” relationship between archivists who collect the private records of individuals and the rest of the archival profession. Arch Manuscr 24:20–26
Davies E, McKenzie PJ (2004) Preparing for opening night: temporal boundary objects in textually-mediated professional practice. Inf Res 10:211
Devitt AJ (1991) Intertextuality in tax accounting: generic, referential, and functional. In: Bazerman C, Paradis J (eds) Textual dynamics of the professions: historical and contemporary studies of writing in professional communities. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, pp 336–355
Douglas J, MacNeil H (2009) Arranging the self: literary and archival perspectives on writers’ archives. Archivaria 67:25–39
Duranti L (2010) Concepts and principles for the management of electronic records, or records management theory is archival diplomatics. Rec Manag J 20:78–95
Eliot K, Neustaedter C, Greenberg C (2007). StickySpots: using location to embed technology in the social practices of the home. Tangible and embedded interaction archive. In: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on tangible and embedded interaction, ACM, New York, pp 79–86
Freedman A, Medway P (eds) (1994) Genre and the new rhetoric. Taylor and Francis, New York
Garfinkel H (1967) Good organizational reasons for “bad” clinical records. Studies in ethnomethodology. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, pp 186–207
Giddens A (1984) The constitution of society: outline of the theory of structuration. Polity Press, Cambridge
Gracy KF (2004) Documenting communities of practice: making the case for archival ethnography. Arch Sci 4:335–365
Hancock P, Tyler M (2004) “MOT your life”: critical management studies and the management of everyday life. Hum Rel 57:619–645
Hancock P, Tyler M (eds) (2009) The management of everyday life. Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Harris V (2001) On the back of a tiger: deconstructive possibilities in ‘evidence of me’. Arch Manuscr 29:8–21
Hartel J (2006) Information activities and resources in an episode of gourmet cooking. Inf Res 12(1):281
Hartel J (2010) Managing documents at home for serious leisure: a case study of the hobby of gourmet cooking. J Doc 66:847–874
Hobbs C (2010) Reinvisioning the personal: reframing traces of individual life. In: Eastwood T, MacNeil H (eds) Currents of archival thinking. Libraries Unlimited, Santa Barbara, pp 213–241
Im H-G, Yates JA, Orlikowski W (2005) Temporal coordination through communication: using genres in a virtual start-up organization. Inf Technol People 18:89–119
Jenkinson H (1922) A manual of archive administration: including the problems of war archives and archive making. Clarendon, Oxford
Jones W (2007) Personal information management. Annu Rev Inf Sci Technol 41:453–504
Jones W (2008) Keeping found things found: the study and practice of personal information management. Morgan Kaufman, Burlington
Jones W, Teevan J (2007) Personal information management. University of Washington Press, Seattle
Kalms B (2008) Household information practices: how and why householders process and manage information. Inf Res 13:339
Ketelaar E (2009) The genealogical gaze: family identities and family archives in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. Libr Cult Rec 44:9–28
Latour B, Woolgar S (1987) Laboratory life: the (social) construction of scientific facts. Princeton University Press, Princeton
MacNeil H (2004) Contemporary archival diplomatics as a method of inquiry: lessons learned from two research projects. Arch Sci 4:199–232
Malone TW (1983) How do people organize their desks? Implications for the design of office information systems. ACM Trans Inf Sys (TOIS) Arch 1:99–112
McKemmish S (1996) Evidence of me. Arch Manuscr 24:28–45
McKenzie PJ (2006) Mapping textually-mediated information practice in clinical midwifery care. In: Spink A, Cole C (eds) New directions in human information behaviour. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 73–92
McKenzie PJ, Davies E (2010) Documentary tools in everyday life: the wedding planner. J Doc 66:788–806
McKenzie PJ, Davies E (2011) Documentation and the management of every day life. DOCAM ‘11: eighth annual meeting of the document academy
McKenzie PJ, Davies E, Wong L (2010) Methodological strategies for studying documentary planning work. Canadian association for information science conference. http://www.cais-acsi.ca/proceedings/2010/CAIS006_McKenzie_Final.pdf
Miller CR (1994) Genre as social action. In: Freedman A, Medway P (eds) Genre and the new rhetoric. Taylor and Francis, New York, pp 23–42
Pearce-Moses, R (2005). Record. A glossary of archival and records terminology. The Society of American Archivists, Chicago. http://www.archivists.org/glossary/term_details.asp?DefinitionKey=54. Accessed 22 Feb 2012
Pollard RA (2001) The appraisal of personal papers: a critical literature review. Archivaria 52:136–150
Schellenberg TR (1956) Modern archives: principles and techniques. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Schryer CF (2009) Genre theory and research. Encyclopedia of library and information sciences, 3rd edn. Taylor and Francis, New York, pp 1934–1942
Shankar K (2004) Recordkeeping in the production of scientific knowledge: an ethnographic study. Arch Sci 4:367–382
Shankar K (2007) Order from chaos: the poetics and pragmatics of scientific recordkeeping. J Am Soc Inf Sci Technol 58:1457–1466
Shankar K (2009) Ambiguity and legitimate peripheral participation in the creation of scientific documents. J Doc 65:151–165
Smith DE (1990) Texts, facts and femininity: exploring the relations of ruling. Routledge, New York
Star SL (1999) The ethnography of infrastructure. Am Behav Sci 43:377–391
Star SL, Griesemer JR (1989) Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and boundary objects: amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s museum of vertebrate zoology, 1907–1939. Soc Stud Sci 19:387–420
Star SL, Strauss A (1999) Layers of silence, arenas of voice: the ecology of visible and invisible work. Comp Support Co-op Work 8:8–30
Taylor AS, Swan L (2005) Artful systems in the home. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, ACM, New York, pp 641–50
Trace CB (2002) What is recorded is never simply “what happened”: record keeping in modern organizational culture. Arch Sci 2:137–159
Trace CB (2007) Information creation and the notion of membership. J Doc 63:142–163
Upward F, McKemmish S (2001) In search of the lost tiger, by way of Sainte-Beuve: re-constructing the possibilities in ‘evidence of me …’. Arch Manuscr 29:23–43
Whittaker S (2011) Personal information management: from information consumption to curation. Ann Rev Inf Sci Technol 45:1–42
Williams P, John JL, Rowland I (2009) The personal curation of digital objects: a lifecycle approach. Aslib Proc 61:340–363
Yakel E (2001) The social construction of accountability: radiologists and their record-keeping practices. Inf Soc 17:233–245
Yakura EK (2002) Charting time: timelines as temporal boundary objects. Acad Manag J 45:956–970
Yates JA, Orlikowski WJ (1992) Genres of organizational communication: a structurational approach to studying communication and media. Acad Manag Rev 17:299–326
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank our participants for opening their homes and genre sets to us, our research assistant Lola Wong, and the Faculty of Information and Media Studies for funding support.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
McKenzie, P.J., Davies, E. Genre systems and “keeping track” in everyday life. Arch Sci 12, 437–460 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-012-9174-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-012-9174-5