Invisibilising archives?

I'm not sure this is exactly a new problem caused by the electronification of catalogues and the merging of what were once discrete archive catalogues into general library ones.

I can remember going back years people doing really ghastly archive reference fail - I think possibly the worst instance was somebody's thesis which was based upon, among other things, research in papers in [repository] - no indication of What Actual Collection/s in the repository in question. I would have failed the bloody thing for that alone. Though I seem to recall this in an actual published book, though I think that if one got as far as look at the actual footnotes they were a bit more informative. (Yes, I see that I moaned about that here.)

There was the letter cited to [massive and complex collection with no specific file reference] in journal article. This had not been picked up on by peer reviewers or anyone in the editorial process.

There have been various thematic online digital projects using archival materials failing to provide details of where the originals are and the necessary contextual information - I thought I'd posted somewhere about this but maybe I am only remembering various vent-y conversations on the subject. Update: Yes, it's here: I'd failed to give it an appropriate label. I've also updated a link within the post where the originating site had changed the URL.

What seems to be getting lost is the sense of the archive collection as a discrete entity and the item as embedded in a context within it - I did manage to find this in an old post on the rise of machine cataloguing on the old Wellcome blog by a former colleague:

However, an on-line database with keyword searching means that we can no longer assume a reader starting at page one and reading (or at least skimming) the whole catalogue: instead, a hit in a search can bring them into the collection anywhere, without context.

Yet context matters in making sense of brief, one-line file descriptions.  If, for example, Professor X works in cancer research funded by grants from the major charities, and then much later, in retirement, suffers from cancer herself, a file titled “Macmillan Cancer Care” will imply very different contents depending on where in her career its date places it, but a reader who comes to the record without an overview of her career, an overview of the kind set out in a catalogue’s introduction, will not be able to make the appropriate inferences.

Not that one didn't encounter some similar misapprehensions even in The Old Days. 

I am feeling exercised about this at the moment because I was trying to find out some information about a collection of personal papers in an antipodean institution which I had actually consulted something like 30 years ago. And searching on the online catalogue of the institution threw up: certain files which had been digitised; publications by the person; the (presumably) original files; publications about person - no way I could find of getting an overview of the actual collection and what it consisted of and I am not sure it all matched my recollections.

I also feel - this was the subject of musings in another venue some weeks ago - that a lot is lost without the capacity to browse a catalogue. To find the things one wasn't actually looking for that are of relevance. Searching can only get one so far. And supposes that one is looking for the right thing (word, name, correct spelling, historically accurate term, etc). 

 

 

What's online is < 1% of the primary sources worldwide

If Dan Snow thinks he can do history by searching primary source material from the comfort and convenience of his office, I fear he is not doing very sound or thorough history. Yes, digitisation is making a lot of material available without the stress and strain of visiting actual archives, but as an archivist, and as a historian who has just returned from a trip involving crossing Canada from Toronto to Victoria to look at archival collections which it is unlikely will go online within the foreseeable future, I think I can state fairly categorically that any historian who thinks they won't ever need to go and get hands-on with the sources is limiting themself in ways that are very bad for the process of history.

I refer back to my post in late April flagging up the problems of what is given priority in digitisation programmes, how complete it is, how much necessary context is there.

I might also remark that in many instances I have encountered, repositories holding important collections of personal and institutional papers don't necessarily even have a decent online catalogue so that one can ascertain what they've actually got.

Plus, maybe the research Mr Snow conducts does take him to glamorous places, but many archives are to be found in locations which are not only not particularly places one would choose to visit for any other reason, but not even particularly easy to get to. (Though I will say, Victoria BC in June is lovely, even if most of my days were passed in a semi-basement furiously making my way through handwritten and occasionally typed correspondence.)

What has possibly transformed research in this digital age (from my experience on the basis of this recent research trip) is the ability to take digital photos of the documents for later perusal (I was fortunate to be working in special collections which permitted this). Having  worked, in the past, in institutions where there was not even a routine procedure for obtaining photocopies and one was obliged to rely on the kindness and available time of the staff, or in other institutions where the charges were inordinately high presumably to discourage the ordering of large amounts, being able to take away images from collections which I had a very short time to ingest has been a major boon.

Social media, old and new

I have recently been given to think about certain things which Twitter is not very useful for, one of which is asking research questions to which a simple answer cannot be given. Sometimes it's just not possible to give a snap 140 character response, or refer to an online resource or even a published work. There are questions which, however straightforward they may look, need unpacking in order to tease out the problems, and the suggestion of an array of possibilities for finding out the required information.

This sort of thing was much better served by the email-based listserv, but I'm not sure that younger scholars, used to Web 2.0 social media, engage with listservs any more? I was certainly quite surprised to come across a blog post by a younger scholar talking about the benefits of forms of social media I associate with the 2010s for engaging with the wider field of the discipline, making contacts, getting one's work known about; because I found that listservs also did this, back in the Upper Palaeolithic (in internet terms) of the 1990s.

They even had archives that were searchable: though the constant recurrence of certain questions which had already been addressed on-list led me to produce the first version of the Victorian Sex Factoids Page and to compile a bibliography of recent work on Victorian Psychiatry beyond the one work published nearly 30 years that everybody still keeps citing so that I could just link to these rather than reiterating the same message.

New technology and new media do not necessarily drive out the old, which may still have their uses. The major nexus for humanities listservs, H-Net is currently undergoing a massive upgrade to bring it more into line with modern web-use practices, but there remains a value in having the potential to respond to research queries in a more discursive and nuanced fashion than 140 characters permits.

Talk to the nice archivist *first*

Something that always forcefully reminds me of the lack of communication between researchers and archivists is being apprised of some research proposal - in more than one instance, a research proposal that has gained funding - where the researchers have done a lot of homework and put a lot of thought and effort into constructing their proposal, in some cases have even already invested in intercontinental travel -

But at no point have they found it necessary or desirable to contact the archivist i/c the material they intend to use in the project.

Which - and again, this is more than a unique experience - is not actually available for research, either because it has not yet been processed (and I don't think it is entirely breaking news that pretty well all archive repositories have a cataloguing backlog, even if these aren't as monster as the secret Foreign Office archive lately in the news) or because there are other issues such as Data Protection or the wishes of the donor affecting access. In one case, though the acquisition of an individual's papers had been announced, actual physical transfer to the repository in question had not in fact occurred.

A catalogued archive has robust referencing that means it can be effectively cited (though another of my archival moans is the failure of researchers to use the unique identifying references archivists have created) and one that it's possible to find things in without starting at box 1 and sorting through until reaching the last box - a process that is not considered best practice from the point of view of long-term physical preservation.

If you let the archivist/s know in advance that you are interested in putting forward a research proposal that depends on a specific archive, this will feed into their management decisions about cataloguing priorities and they may, in fact, get that archive processed. Whereas it is fairly unlikely that they will be able to just drop everything and process a collection because a researcher has turned up wanting to consult it.

I also consider that funding bodies could be a bit more au fait with this issue and spend some modicum of time when assessing proposals to ensure that the archives in question a) actually exist and b) are available to researchers.

There is no secret handshake

It irks archivists when people talk about 'hidden gems' in the archives, because this lazy cliche tends to mean items which are in fact in the catalogue and may well have been publicised, but have not previously come to the attention of the individual who invokes this expression.

I am not entirely sure whether it is the same people who talk about hidden gems who think that in order to access the riches of an archival collection they need to speak to an archivist, preferably in person. That's actually what catalogues are for. An archivist can probably give you a general sense of what is in a collection, and possibly even more important, what isn't. But on the whole, the information on what we know about any given collection will be included in the catalogue description. I have processed many collections of archives during my career, and not all of them are entirely fresh in my memory by now, should you ring up and ask me about them.

On the whole, and doubtless with some exceptions, what archivists like to do is get the usable information about their holdings out there where people can look at it themselves. It should not be necessary, given a well-run archive, to need to know a specific name and possibly have a secret handshake ready in order to find out what they've got.

Or maybe this is just a version of 'do my research for me': the hope that talking to the archivist will obviate the need to actually look at the archives.

An undesirable practice

Just had occasion to look something up in a recent work of popular, yet scholarly, history based on a great deal of archival research, since I remembered that when I read it the author mentioned consulting a certain archive at a particular repository.

However, in the 'List of Archives' at the end, all we get are the names of the various repositories, and absolutely no indication of what actual collections in any given repository had been consulted. This is something that strikes me as extremely bad practice. Most of the repositories listed (except where the onsite records of a particular organisation had been consulted) hold very large numbers of archival collections, and in many instances several which the author of this work might have consulted.

I did, in the end, manage to find the information I was seeking through trawling through the footnotes of the chapter in which the archive was most likely to have been referenced. But this should not be necessary.

At least, however, the information had been footnoted in reasonable detail. It is extremely annoying to archivists when scholars cite some item - sometimes not even the actual file, but a single letter within a file or volume - with no reference, except perhaps to the very large collection within which it might be found, or with no indication at all as to the specific collection, only to the repository as a whole. Furthermore, if scholars have been given access to uncatalogued or partially-catalogued material, it behooves them to be particularly meticulous in contextualising any material they cite so that in due course it can be located by other researchers.

Sex and the Medical Officer of Health

The Wellcome Library's exciting new project : London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972 (post on the Library blog here) has opened up this enormously valuable resource to a wide range of researchers.

The responsibilities of the Medical Officer of Health were wide, ever increasing for many decades up to and beyond the inception of the National Health Service. However, it may not seem obvious that these reports have anything to offer to the historian interested in sexuality.

In fact, Medical Officers of Health were one group of the medical profession (rather like women doctors) who were taking an interest in the subject of birth control at a period when most doctors were reluctant even to talk about it, and a search across the London MOH reports demonstrates that at least some of their number were mentioning the topic (if not always with approval) from the early 1920s.

They had already been tabulating induced abortion among the causes of mortality within their areas for a much longer period.

Sexually transmitted infections were another public health concern and searching on 'venereal' or 'syphilis' or 'gonorrhoea' produces a substantial number of hits.

By the 1940s and 50s, Marriage Guidance had come to be seen as falling within the purlieu of the MOH's interests and work relating to sex education of young people also features.

There are therefore a number of intriguing research possibilities that spring to mind that could be based on this new resource.

Catching up on journal literature II

Hera Cook, 'Sex and the Experts. Medicalisation as a Two Way Process, Britain 1920-1950' chapter in Usborne, Cornelie/Blécourt, Willem de (eds) Cultural Approaches to the History of Medicine. Mediating Medicine in Early Modern and Modern Europe (2003): tends to concur with my own views that these manuals were performing a work of enlightenment (not just introducing a new oppressive hegemony), and does useful analysis of various manuals along axes of male/female, medical/non-medical writers.

Pauline Phipps, 'Faith, Desire and Sexual Identity: Constance Maynard's Atonement for Passion', Journal of the History of Sexuality 18 (2009), pp. 265-286: an analysis of the first mistress of Westfield College University of London, and explores same-sex desires between women, the role of religion, and the fact that these relationships could have elements of abuse, at least on the emotional level (I rather wish I'd read this before sending off my Berks paper, since there seemed to me to be more than a little of Clemence Dane's Clare Hartill in Maynard).

Deborah Cohler, 'Sapphism and Sedition. Producing Female Homosexuality in Great War Britain', Journal of the History of Sexuality 16 (2007), p. 68-94: covering similar ground to her Citizen, Invert, Queer Looking at the relative fluidity and indeterminacy (or just confusion) around female same-sex desire towards the end of the Great War and the way discourses around nationalism and militarism played into it - looking at Allatini's Despised and Rejected and the Maud Allan case.

Richard Philips, 'Heterogeneous Imperialism and the Regulation of Sexuality in British West Africa',  Journal of the History of Sexuality 14 (2005), pp 291-315: why did quite a lot of parts of the Empire in the C19th not have the CD Acts or anything along those lines? Uses Sierra Leone as a case-study. Other modes of sexual regulation going on. Specific local situtations and contingency. Flexibility of imperialism - response to contexts. Notes that in some places there was popular support for regulation (cf Tuck on Uganda). Attitudes towards 'the African'.

Brian Lewis, 'The Queer Life and Afterlife of Roger Casement' Journal of the History of Sexuality 14 (2005), pp. 363-383: about the ways in which Casement's homosexuality has been used, considered as a libellous product of forgery, etc. The problematic and contradictory elements of his sexuality - not 'a gay saint'. Puzzlement of contemporaries about the disjunction between his humanitarianism and what was seen as an appalling revelation.

Lisa Z Sigel, 'Name Your Pleasure: the Transformation of Sexual Language in Nineteenth Century British Pornography', Journal of the History of Sexuality 9 (2000), pp. 395-419: how the elaborate and celebratory, even quite baroque, descriptions of C18th erotica, give way to the use of 'filthy' obscene language. Which had previously been 'vulgar' but not smutty and arousing in the way it becomes in Victorian pornography. Sigel points out that most Victporn was for a middle-class audience and 'filth' had lots of class connotations, and that there is increasing association of sex & dirt, plus misogyny. Breaching of taboos. The 'emptying out' of erotic writing as suggested by Dorelies Kraak in the Sexual Cultures book.

On the impossibility of conference reports

At least, the impossibility of doing conference reports if one is actually participating, what with the having to be in the moment during the actual speaking/reacting to questions bit, the anticipation beforehand (this can involve very selective listening to earlier pieces in case there's something one could usefully allude to), the afterthoughts ('Did I really say that? - cringe'/'I totally forgot to mention X'), etc.

Besides, it's all rather fading now. I was too exhausted on Friday and over the weekend to summon up the energy to post about either Sexuality and the Archive or the Population Investigation Committee: its history and influence over the last 75 Years.

Somewhat unusually, at both of these I was speaking from my 'archivist position', however much that's informed by also being a historian. Roughly speaking, the 'archivist position' is that no historian (or other academic) is a hero to the archivists, however notable they may be. While my sense is that archivists put in quite a bit of time and effort to open up their collections to a range of potential users, very few potential users have much idea about key archival issues such as provenance, diplomatic, and the sheer contingency of the creation of the record. Or, I sometimes think, the value of perusing the catalogue.

On an analogy with Peter Bailey's wonderful paper title, 'Did Foucault or Althusser ever play the London Palladium', my reaction to people who get way theoretical about the archive is 'have these people ever been i/c a searchroom full of family historians, school children doing projects, a jamming microfilm reader and a photocopier needing constant replenishment, while trying to, you know, actually try and catalogue some archives?' or 'Seen the papers in the coal cellar in which they had been stashed, the other batch in the corner of the attic under the loose tile where the rain/pigeons got in, managed the transfer, done the initial sort and weed, the arrangement, the packaging and cataloguing, and finally publicised the available collection?'

Having said which, both these symposia have left me with a number of useful points theoretical and factual.

More Stella Browne promotional activity

I did a post for the Wellcome Library blog on discovering Stella Browne among the archives held there, given that it was where there were some significant sources. I also felt it was a useful exercise in that researchers often think of the obvious archive where they're going to look for a particular topic or individual, but don't necessarily think of other places where there might be traces.

Having said which, some of what I found in the Wellcome holdings was by purest serendipity - that connection with the Society for Sex Education and Guidance was something I came across while doing the research for an entirely different project on the history of sex education. Also, completely randomly while actually cataloguing the papers of Lady Rhys-Williams among the National Birth Trust Fund archives, found an annotation on her notes as a member of the Birkett Committee on Abortion, 1937: 'Unexpected appearance of Miss Browne'.

Research award: John "Bud" Velde Visiting Scholars Program

I was a beneficiary of this scheme in the autumn of 2007, when I spent a very productive month delving into the correspondence of H G Wells (and am still assimilating all the material and trying to follow up the numerous leads therefrom - so far I've produced a couple of papers drawing on this research, one forthcoming in The Wellsian and one available as a podcast - but there are a lot more places it could go).

Another collection of interest there (though rather too N American focused for my specific purposes) was the papers of Ewing C. Baskette, lawyer, librarian and bibliographer. Includes 19th century speeches, letters and manuscripts on cases dealing with anarchism, the Centralia case, communal living, syndicalism, socialism, the International Workers of the World, freedom of expression and censorship. Lots of rare pamphlets and ephemera.

The John "Bud" Velde Visiting Scholars Program

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library annually awards stipends of $3,000 to scholars and researchers, unaffiliated with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who would like to come and spend a month or so of study with our materials. 

The research strengths of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library are manifold. Comprehensive collections support studies in printing and printing history, Renaissance studies, Elizabethan and Stuart life and letters, John Milton and his age, emblem studies, economic history, and works on early science and natural history. The library also houses the papers of such diverse literary figures as Carl Sandburg, H.G. Wells, William Maxwell, and W.S. Merwin.

For further information about this program, how to apply, and to find out more about The Rare Book & Manuscript Library, please visit our Web site at:

http://www.library.uiuc.edu/rbx/research_grants.htm