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Tacit narratives: The meanings of archives

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Abstract

Archivists and historians usually consider archives as repositories of historical sources and the archivist as a neutral custodian. Sociologists and anthropologists see “the archive” also as a system of collecting, categorizing, and exploiting memories. Archivists are hesitantly acknowledging their role in shaping memories. I advocate that archival fonds, archival documents, archival institutions, and archival systems contain tacit narratives which must be deconstructed in order to understand the meanings of archives.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Leiden, The Netherlands

    Eric Ketelaar (Visiting Professor 2000–2001)

  2. University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Eric Ketelaar (Visiting Professor 2000–2001)

  3. School of Information, University of Michigan, Oude Turfmarkt 141, 1012 GC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Eric Ketelaar (Visiting Professor 2000–2001)

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  1. Eric Ketelaar
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Additional information

Revision of a paper presented, on the invitation of the Master's Programme in Archival Studies, Department of History, University of Manitoba, in the History Department Colloquium series of the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, 20 February, 2001. Some of the arguments were used earlier in two papers I presented in the seminar “Archives, Documentation and the Institutions of Social Memory”, organized by the Bentley Historical Library and the International Institute of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 14 February, 2001.

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Ketelaar, E. Tacit narratives: The meanings of archives. Archival Science 1, 131–141 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02435644

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