Archives are the documentary
by-product of human activity retained for their long-term value. The
records created in the course of the everyday lives and actions of
individuals and organisations offer direct insights into past events.
Like people, archives are diverse. They come in a variety of formats
including text, photographs, video, sound, analogue and digital.
Archives are held by individuals and institutions (both public and
private) around the world, with the buildings housing them often
sharing the name of ‘archives’.
According to the Universal Declaration on Archives, archives are a
unique and irreplaceable heritage passed from one generation to
another. Archives are managed from creation to preserve their value
and meaning. They are authoritative sources of information
underpinning accountable and transparent administrative actions. They
play an essential role in the development of societies by safeguarding
and contributing to individual and community memory. Open access to
archives enriches our knowledge of human society, promotes democracy,
protects citizens’ rights and enhances quality of life.
Trust
Trust is of paramount importance in
determining the societal value of archives. To achieve this, they must
possess the following qualities:
Authenticity – the record is
genuine, i.e. it was created at the time and by the person or
entity claimed in the document.
Reliability – the
trustworthiness of a document, reflecting the accuracy with which
an archive represents its subject matter; however, even with
highly reliable documents, information is bound to be filtered
through the perspective of their author.
Integrity – the quality of
completeness, the idea that the full body of content is present to
provide a coherent picture.
Usability – the accessibility
of an archive, in terms of both condition and storage location.
Natural disasters, conflicts, and data corruption can all render
archives useless, while state/institutional policies can also
impede the practical usability of archives for citizens.
To ensure the authenticity,
reliability, and integrity of an archive, it is essential to preserve
details of its context and that of any other closely related
documents. For example: the archive’s purpose, author, mode of
production, content and format (i.e. the type of document).
It is of paramount importance always to remember that an archive is
not to be regarded as the objective truth. Records serve as evidence
of the activities of individuals or organisations at a given moment in
time. As a result, they present a perspective that is influenced by
the worldview and experiences of the entity producing them. As users
of archives, we must not only be aware of this context when
interpreting records but also of how our own worldview and experience
will, in turn, colour our interpretation of an archival resource.
Characteristics of archives
Archives are only retained if
they are considered to be of long-term historical value. Assessing
this can be challenging, but collections must undertake the
procedure since it is impossible to preserve for every single
document ever produced.
Archives are not consciously
created as historical records. The value of archives stems in part
from their contemporary nature and the insight they can thus give
into specific historical moments.
Archives are diverse in form.
They come in an assortment of analogue and digital formats.
Examples include, but are not limited to, written documents,
online data, photographs, films, and audio recordings.
Donald
J. Trump
The actions of Donald J. Trump mean
that substantial archival content in the USA is at risk of being
destroyed or changed, thus introducing a risk that some US archives
may not be trustworthy, either now, or in the near future. It is the
purpose of these pages, to act as a reliable source of information,
and to provide links to other sources or archives. I have endeavored
to ensure the authenticity of all the documents held on this server
and archive.
