Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Archives, memory, and interfaces with the past

  • Articles
  • Published:
Archival Science Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Archival interfaces are critical nodes in archival systems where archivists negotiate and exercise power over the constitution and representation of archives. Drawing on notions of interfaces from physical, technological, and computer systems, archival interfaces are both a metaphor for archivists' roles as intermediaries between documentary evidence and its readers and a tangible set of structures and tools that place archival documents in a context and provide an interpretative framework. Interfaces in modern institutions and technological systems are neither natural nor neutral. In probing archival interfaces, what may appear as neutral and objective processes are revealed as places where archivists determine what constitutes legitimate evidence of the past and shape social memories. The emergence of computer interfaces as an increasingly common mode of user interaction with archives demands that archivists confront the interpretative nature of their work and exploit opportunities to place themselves visibly in the interfaces they construct.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. This article has evolved over the past four years. I first presented these ideas in the keynote address called “Interfaces with Time” at the Australian Society of Annual Meeting in Freemantle on 7 August 1998. Since then, my thinking about archives, memory and interfaces has progressed as has the broader archival and historical discourse on these matters. I would like to acknowledge insights and support from several colleagues who have pushed my thinking and helped me become more confident in the ideas expressed here. Over the years I have benefited from discussions with Fran Blouin, Richard Cox, Wendy Duff, Bob Frost, Verne Harris, and Eric Ketelaar. I have learned a great deal about interface design from my human-computer interaction colleagues at the University of Michigan, especially Judith Olson and George Furnas. I also thank Terry Cook and Joan Schwartz for their thorough and helpful comments on the pervious draft of this article. Perhaps a new cohort is in formation.

  2. David F. Noble was one of the first historians to examine how design decisions become imbedded in technological systems and objects. Although Noble did not use the concept of “interfaces”per se, he initiated a substantive debate in the history of technology and in science studies about the ways that engineers and designers exercise power through design decisions. See David F. Noble,America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977). Others who have pursued this question include Donald A. Norman,The Design of Everyday Things (New York: Doubleday, 1990); Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?”, in L. Winner (ed.),The Whale and the Reactor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 19–39.

    Google Scholar 

  3. David Bearman, “Record-Keeping Systems”,Archivaria 36 (Autumn 1993): 16–23; David Bearman and Margaret Hedstrom, “Reinventing Archives for Electronic Records: Alternative Service Delivery Options”,Electronic Records Management Program Strategies, Archives and Museum Informatics Technical Report, No. 18 (1993): 82–98. Sue McKemmish and Frank Upward (eds.),Archival Documents: Providing Accountability Through Recordkeeping (Melbourne: Ancora Press 1993); Terry Cook, “Electronic Records, Paper Minds: The Revolution in Information Management and Archives in the Post-Custodial and Post-Modernist Age”,Archives and Manuscripts 22 (2) (1994): 300–328; Richard J Cox, “The Record: Is It Evolving?”,The Records and Retrieval Report 10 (3) (1994): 1–16; Luciana Duranti and Heather MacNeil, “The Protection of the Integrity of Electronic Records: An Overview of the UBC-MAS Research Project”,Archivaria 42 (Fall 1996): 46–67; and Linda J.Henry, “Schellenberg in Cyberspace”,American Archivist 16 (2) (Fall 1998): 309–327.

    Google Scholar 

  4. The question of how organizations will capture, structure, organize, and preserve electronic records, including those with long-term value, has been the topic of numerous conferences, programme sessions, research projects, reports, and articles. For recent examples, see Advisory Committee for the Coordination of Information Systems (ACCIS),Management of Electronic Records: Issues And Guidelines (New York: United Nations, 1990); U.S. National Historical Publications and Records Commission,Research Issues in Electronic Records, Report Of The Working Meeting (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1991); S. Yorke (ed.),Playing for Keeps: Proceedings of an Electronic Records Management Conference Hosted by the Australian Archives (Canberra: Australian Archives, 1995); Luciana Duranti and Heather MacNeil, “The Protection of the Integrity of Electronic Records: An Overview of the UBCMAS Research Project”,Archivaria; Wendy Duff, “Ensuring the Preservation of Reliable Evidence: A Research Project Funded by the NHPRC”,Archivaria 42 (Fall 1996): 28–45; Office of Official Publications of the European CommissionProceedings of the DLM-Forum On Electronic Records, Brussels, 18–20 December 1996 (Luxembourg: European Commission, 1997); Margaret Hedstrom and Francis X. Blouin, Electronic Records Research and Development, Report of an Invitational Conference Held at The University Of Michigan, 28 and 29 June 1996 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1997); and American Society for Information Science,Bulletin 23 (5) (June/July 1997), entire issues devoted to electronic record keeping; and Heather MacNeil, “Providing the Grounds for Trust: Developing Conceptual Requirements for the Long-Term Preservation of Authentic Electronic Records”,Archivaria 50 (Fall 2000): 52–78.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Margaret Hedstrom, “The Forms and Meanings of Virtual Artifacts”, unpublished paper presented at the Sawyer Seminar on Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 11 October 2000.

  6. Terry Cook, “Easy to Byte, Harder to Chew: The Second Generation of Electronic Records Archives”,Archivaria 33 (Winter 1991–1992): 202–216.

    Google Scholar 

  7. For an excellent discussion of history, memory, and archives, I refer readers to Brien Brothman's recent article, “The Past the Archives Keep: Memory, History, and the Preservation of Archival Records”,Archivaria 51 (Spring 2001): 48–80. In addition to an insightful analysis of the intersection of these concepts, the article includes extensive citations to the key literature.

  8. I have struggled with Jacques Derrida,Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Eric Prenowitz (trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Jean-Francois Lyotard,The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (trans.) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, original 1979), and other postmodern theorists. To help me through this thicket, I have especially appreciated interpretations and criticism by archivists. For archival perspectives, see Brien Brothman, “The Limits of Limits: Derridean Deconstruction and the Archival Institution”,Archivaria 36 (Autumn 1993): 205–220; Terry Cook, “Electronic Records, Paper Minds: The Revolution in Information Management and Archives in the Post-Custodial and Post-Modern Era”,Archives and Manuscripts; Terry Cook, “What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas Since 1998, and the Future Paradigm Shift”,Archivaria 43 (Spring 1997): 17–63; Terry Cook, “Fashionable Nonsense or Professional Rebirth: Postmodernism and the Practice of Archives”,Archivaria 51 (Spring 2001): 14–35; Verne Harris, “Redefining Archives in South Africa: Public Archives and Society in Transition, 1990–1996”,Archivaria 42 (Fall 1996): 6–27; Verne Harris, “Claiming Less, Delivering More: A Critique of Positivist Formulations on Archives in South Africa”,Archivaria 44 (Fall 1997): 132–141; Verne Harris,Exploring Archives: An Introduction to Archival Ideas and Practice in South Africa, 2nd edn. (Pretoria: National Archives of South Africa, 2000; and his “On (Archival) Odyssey(s)”,Archivaria 51 (Spring 2001): 2–14; Carolyn Heald, “Is There Room for Archives in the Postmodern World?”,American Archivist 59 (Winter 1996): 88–101; Eric Ketelaar, “Archivalisation and Archiving”,Archives and Manuscripts 27 (1) (May 1999): 54–61; Lilly Koltun, “The Promise and Threat of Digital Options in an Archival Age”,Archivaria 47 (Spring 1999): 114–135; Tom Nesmith, “Still Fuzzy, But More Accurate: Some Thoughts on the ‘Ghosts’ of Archival Theory”,Archivaria 47 (Spring 1999): 136–150; Joan M. Schwartz, “‘We make our tools and our tools make us’: Lessons from Photographs for the Practice, Politics, and Poetics of Diplomatics”,Archivaria 40 (Fall 1995): 40–74; and Frank Upward, “Structuring the Records Continuum ... Part One: Post-Custodial Principles and Properties”,Archives and Manuscripts 24 (November 1996): 268–285; and “Part Two: Structuration Theory and Recordkeeping”,Archives and Manuscripts 25 (May 1997): 10–35.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Marshall McLuhan,Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962), pp. 172–173.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Jack Goody,The Interface Between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. ix.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Ibid., pp. 29–33.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Steven Rose,The Making of Memory (New York: Anchor Books, 1992), p. 60.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Rose,The Making of Memory, pp. 62–68; Goody,The Interface Between the Written and the Oral, pp. 78–122; Walter Ong,Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: routledge, 1982), pp. 31–77; and J.D. Spence,The Memory Palace of matteo Ricci (New York: Viking, 1985).

  14. Ong,Orality and Literacy, p. 61.

  15. David Lowenthal,The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985), pp. 240–249. For a critique of preserved objects as unintentional carriers of memory and a discussion of how physical objects are manipulated to encourage certain types of memory, see Judith E. Endleman, “‘Just a Car’: Reflections on the Kennedy Car, the Lincoln Chair, and Other Cultural Artifacts”, paper presented at the Sawyer Seminar on Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 11 October 2000; and Patrick Wright, “Trouble in the Health Food Shop: The ‘Heritage Industry’ and the Organic Idea in Modern British Culture”, paper presented at the Sawyer Seminar on Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 4 April 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Joan M. Schwartz, “‘We make our tools and our tools make us’: Lessons From Photographs for the Practice, Politics, and Poetics of Diplomatics”,Archivaria.

  17. Joan M. Schwartz, “‘Records of Simple Truth and Precision’: Photography, Archives, and the Illusion of Control”,Archivaria 50 (Fall 2000): 1–40.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Lowenthal,The Past is a Foreign Country, p. 257.

  19. For a critique of the notion of realism and an end to historicity in film, see Alison Landsberg, “Prosthetic Memory:Total Recall andBlade Runner”, in Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrow (eds.),Cyberspace, Cyberbodies and Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment (London: Sage Publications, 1995), pp. 175–189.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Henry L. Roediger III, “Memory Metaphors in Cognitive Psychology”,Memory and Cognition 8 (3) (1980): 231–246.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Ibid..

    Google Scholar 

  22. Brothman, “The Past the Archives Keep”, 66–71.

  23. Brothman, “The Past the Archives Keep”, p. 50.

  24. Brothman, “The Past the Archives Keep”, pp. 71–80.

  25. Historians and anthropologists who investigate social and collective memory most often draw on the works of psychologist Frederic. A. Bartlett and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs. See F.A. Bartlett,Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932); and Maurice Halbwachs,On Collective Memory, Lewis A. Coser (ed. and trans.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, originally published in 1941).

    Google Scholar 

  26. Steven Johnson,Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate (San Francisco: Harper Edge, 1997), p. 14.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Mark Poster, “Postmodern Virtualities”, in Featherstone and Burrow (eds.),Cyberspace, Cyberbodies and Cyberpunk, p. 93.

  28. See, for example, Luciana Duranti, “The Concept of Appraisal and Archival Theory”,American Archivist 57 (2) (Spring 1994): 328–344; Luciana Duranti, “The Thinking on Appraisal of Electronic Records: Its Evolution, Focuses and Future Directions”,Archivi and Computer 6 (1996): 493–518; Frank Boles and Mark A. Greene, “Et Tu Schellenberg? Thought on the Dagger of American Appraisal Theory”,American Archivist 59 (3) (Summer 1996): 298–310; and Richard J. Cox,American Archival Analysis: The Recent Development of the Archival Profession in the United States, Chapter 9, “Archivists Confront a Changing World: Documentation Strategies, the Reformulation of Archival Appraisal, and the Possibilities of Multi-Disciplinary Cooperation”, (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarectow Press, 1990), pp. 291–303. For recent criticism of the positivist notions that inform much of modern appraisal theory and practice, see Hans Booms, “Society and the Formation of a Documentary Heritage: Issues in the Appraisal of Archival Sources”,Archivaria 24 (Summer 1987): 69–107; Terry Cook, “Archival Science and Postmodernism: New Formulations for Old Concepts”,Archival Science 1(1) (2001): 3–24; Terry Cook, “Mind Over Matter: Towards a New Theory of Archival Appraisal”, in Barbara L. Craig (ed.),The Archival Imagination: Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor (Ottawa: Association of Canadian Archivists, 1992), pp. 38–70; Richard Brown, “Records Acquisition Strategy and Its Theoretical Foundation: The Case for a Concept of Archival Hermeneutics”,Archivaria; and Elizabeth Kaplan, “We Are What We Collect, We Collect What We Are”,American Archivist.

    Google Scholar 

  29. M. Loef, PIVOT,A New Turn to Appraisal Policy: Reduction of the Transfer Period in the Public Records Act and the Consequences for Government Administration (The Hague: Drukkerij Smits, 1991).

    Google Scholar 

  30. For examples, see Lee Stout, “The Role of University Archives in the Campus Information Environment”,American Archivist 58(2) (Spring 1995): 124–140; and Michael Wettengel, “Archival Preservation of Electronic Records and German Reunification”, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, Washington, D.C., 2 September 1995.

    ADS  Google Scholar 

  31. For examples see Timothy Garton Ash,The File: A Personal History (New York: Random House, 1997); U.S. Congress, Report of the Moynihan Commission on Protecting and Reducting Government Secrecy, 3 March 1997, available at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/ congress/commission/secrecy/index.html; and South Africa, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Final Report: Presented to President Nelson Mandela on 29 October 1998, Volume 1, Chapter on Destruction of Records, available at:http://www.polity.org.za/govdocs/ commissions/1998/trc/volume1.htm.

    Google Scholar 

  32. For case studies of corporate actions to circumvent accountability, see Sidney Glantz et al.,The Cigarette Papers (Berkley: University of California Press, 1996); and Victoria L. Lemieux, “Let the Ghosts Speak: An Empirical Exploration of the ‘Nature’ of the Record”,Archivaria 51 (Spring 2001): 81–111.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Duranti, “The Thinking on Appraisal of Electronic Records”, p. 517.

  34. Ibid. Duranti, “The Thinking on Appraisal of Electronic Records”, p. 517.

  35. Ibid. Duranti, “The Thinking on Appraisal of Electronic Records”, p. 517.

  36. Although this proposition may seem naïve and utopian, the type of power sharing and mutual respect that I am advocating grew out of a year-long discussion between historians and archivists around the theme of Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory, sponsored by the Bentley Historical Library and the International Institute at the University of Michigan during the 2000–2001 academic year. In addition to producing a wealth of papers on the topic, which are being edited by Francis X. Blouin and William Rosenberg for publication by the University of Michigan Press, this seminar helped to demystify historians and archivists to each other and to reinforce the needs for a much deeper understanding of memory in both communities.

  37. International Council on Archives, International Standard for Archival Description (ISAD(G)), available www.ica.org/ISAD(G)E-pub.pdf on 15 July 2001.

  38. Access points are terms that archivists add to finding aids and catalogue records to represent subjects, places, names, and concepts that may be significant in an archival collection, but that are not necessarily part of the original or standard description. Most institutions draw their access points from controlled vocabularies, such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings, the Art and Architectural Thesaurus, or any number of discipline, subject, form, and genre lists of terms.

  39. A few archivists have been vocal about redefining description and reforming access systems. See Chris Hurley, “Ambient Functions: Abandoned Children to Zoos”,Archivaria 40 (Fall 1995): 21–39; Chris Hurley, “The Making and Keeping of Records: (1) What are Finding Aids For?”,Archives and Manuscripts 26 (1) (May 1998): 58–77; and “The Making and Keeping of Records: (2) The Tyranny of Listing”,Archives and Manuscripts 28 (1) (May 2000): 8–23; Margaret Hedstrom, “Descriptive Practices for Electronic Records: Deciding What is Essential and Imagining What is Possible”,Archivaria 36 (Autumn 1993): 53–63; Margaret Hedstrom, “How do Archivists Make Electronic Records Usable and Accessible?”,Archives and Manuscripts 26 (1) (May 1998): 6–22; and Elizabeth Yakel, “Thinking Inside and Outside the Boxes: Archival Reference Services at the Turn of the Century”,Archivaria 49 (Spring 2000): 140–160. The problems of applying this ISAD(G)—or RAD—descriptive model are also analyzed in Terry Cook, “The Concept of the Archival Fonds in the Post-Custodial Era: Theory, Problems, and Solutions”,Archivaria 35 (Winter 1992–1993): 24–37; and in “Fashionable Nonsense or Professional Rebirth: Postmodernism and the Practice of Archives”,Archivaria: 32–34.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Diane Beattie, “Retrieving the Irretrievable: Providing Access to Hidden Groups in Archives”, in Laura B. Cohen (ed.),Reference Services for Archives and Manuscripts (New York: Haworth, 1997), pp. 83–94.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Avra Michelson, “Description and Reference in the Age of Automation”,American Archivist 50 (Spring 1987): 192–208.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Helen Tibbo, “The Epic Struggle: Subject Retrieval from Large Bibliographic Data-bases”,American Archivist 57 (Spring 1994): 310–326.

    Google Scholar 

  43. David Bearman,Archival Methods (Pittsburgh: Archives and Museum Informatics, originally published as Archives and Museum Informatics Technical Report, 3.1 (Spring 1989), pp. 49–58.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star,Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  45. Thomas J. Ruller, “Open All Night: Using the Internet to Improve Access to Archives: A Case Study of the New York State Archives and Records Administration”, in Cohen (ed.),Reference Services for Archives and Manuscripts, pp. 161–170.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information, University of Michigan, 48109-1092, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Margaret Hedstrom

Authors
  1. Margaret Hedstrom
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Hedstrom, M. Archives, memory, and interfaces with the past. Archival Science 2, 21–43 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02435629

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02435629

Keywords

Search

Navigation