Information Society and Finding Aids

The finding aid (sometimes referred to as the representation of records) has remained the main staple of describing, controlling and arranging of archival collections for the last century.  Digitally the finding aid has migrated into the digital world through MARC, EAD, XML and DACS markup tools. This migration however was only to describe analog objects [...]

Archival Appraisal and Selection in the Information Society

With the amount of information being created it would seem that technology has only created more problems than it has solved. Now archivists have a plethora of information to analyze (but beyond the question of quantity, there is also the question of stability and ease of destruction) and more questions that seem to have no [...]

Postmodernism and Logical Positivism in Archival Thought

The term postmodernism first came into existence in a 1939 article, “Our own Post-Modern Age has been inaugurated by the General war of 1914-1918.” by famed British Historian Arnold J. Toynbee to describe the post WWI era. Philosophically postmodernism would be put on center stage in 1966 when Jacques Derrida a French Algerian born philosopher [...]

History and Future of Archival Thought and Practice

When I’m asked what I do for a living and respond that I am an archivist, the usual response is, “so you’re a librarian,” (if I don’t get the deer in the headlights look first). This prompts me to delve into my ever-expanding lecture on, “what is an archivist.” This lecture has evolved and metamorphosed [...]