The readings this week outline the structure and organization of the archives, primarily focusing on what documents might make it to the archive and which one’s fall through the selective non-uniform sieve of the archivist (An Archivist). Unlike a library catalog that categorizes by subject, the archival records are organized first by the source (who wrote it) and second by what details the record contains, including biographical and contextual information about the source and contents of the record. However, as straightforward as the Archives @ PAMA post made archival organization out to be, the other readings point to a practice of archiving that is anything but. Though records tend to follow the descriptive patterns laid out in the PAMA post, there is no universal archival cataloging process used by all archivists in the cultivation of their records.
In the examples given regarding how records reach the archive, I wonder about the how the original source might organize their own records before giving them up. Though some of the fonds might be collected by someone other than the source (am I using the word fonds correctly?), I wonder about sources that deliberately do their own DIY personal archive work before they hand their records over to someone else. For example, I am fond of writing long letters to friends, and have been considering asking them for copies so I can have a record of things I wrote years ago. Not sure what I’ll end up doing with it all, but I consider it the cultivation of my own little archive. How much can archivists account for the source’s own awareness of their documents’ possibility of being archived, and how that awareness shapes the records they produce/create/destroy/decide not to make?
Thanks, Peggy! You’ve echoed some themes addressed in some of your classmates’ posts — particularly the subjectivity of “personal archiving,” and the role of the ego in archival organization.