The end of collecting: Towards a new purpose for archival appraisal

Archival Science

Volumn 2, Issue 3-4, 2002, Pages 287-309

  Cox, Richard J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH   (United States)

Author keywords

Appraisal; Collecting; Evidence; Memory

Indexed keywords

EID: 1042275077     PISSN: 13890166     EISSN: 15737519     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/BF02435626     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. The idea of archival appraisal representing a "foreign country" is a play on David Lowenthal's ideas in his The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Lowenthal's work challenges the more complacent view that the past is a stable, placid, completely rational place to visit or understand.
2. Some of this equivocating has been captured in my essay examining the primary archival appraisal literature of the twentieth century; see my "The Documentation Strategy and Archival Appraisal Principles: A Different Perspective", Archivaria 38 (Fall 1994): 11-36.
3. H.G. Jones, The Records of a Nation: Their Management, Preservation, and Use (New York: Atheneum, 1969), pp. 80, 82, 85.
4. That this kind of debate continues can be seen in the more recent exchange between Frank Boles/Mark Greene and Luciana Duranti. See Luciana Duranti, "The Concept of Appraisal and Archival Theory", American Archivist 57 (Spring 1994): 328-344;
5. and Frank Boles and Mark A. Greene, "Et Tu Schellenberg? Thoughts on the Dagger of American Appraisal Theory", American Archivist 59 (Summer 1996): 298-310.
6. I argued for the validity of the serendipitous approach in my review essay, "The Archivist and Collecting: A Review Essay", American Archivist 59 (Fall 1996): 496-512.
7. Lawrence W. Levine, The Opening of the American Mind: Canons, Culture and History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), p. 23.
8. Samuel P. Hays, "Manuscripts for Recent History: A Proposal for a New Approach", Journal of American History (June 1990): 212, 213, 215-216.
9. Tamara Plakins Thornton, Handwriting in America: A Cultural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 86-88, 110-118.
10. Donald H. Rieman, The Study of Modern Manuscripts: Public, Confidential, and Private (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), pp. 24-26.
11. For an earlier, but similar assessment, see the introduction in Clifford Lord (ed.), Keepers of the Past (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), p. 6.
12. R. Richard Wohl, "A Collection of Collectors: Some Varieties of Peculiar Passion", Manuscripts 8 (Summer 1956): 244-250; (Fall 1956): 303-311. "Surely it is one of the anomalies of American intellectual history that the role of collecting has not been given more notice and study in describing how humanistic and historical scholarship took root, and developed, in this country," writes Wohl. "For many special subjects and for a considerable period in our history - in some cases, right into the twentieth century - the terms 'historian' and 'collector' were well nigh synonymous" (p. 245).
13. Quoted in Kenneth Duckett, Modern Manuscripts: A Practical Manual for Their Management, Care, and Use (Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1975), p. 9.
14. Lester J. Cappon, "Collectors and Keepers in the England of Elizabeth and James", in Sibley's Heir: A Volume in Memory of Clifford Kenyon Shipton (Boston: The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1982), p. 145-171 (quote 152).
15. Steve Kemper, "Signs of the Times", Smithsonian 28 (November 1997): 134-140.
16. J. Geraint Jenkins, "The Collection of Material Objects and Their Interpretation", in Susan M. Pearce (ed.), Museum Studies in Material Culture (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), p. 120.
17. Alan Shestack, "The Museum and Cultural Property: The Transformation of Institutional Ethics", in Phyllis Mauch Messenger (ed.), The Ethics of Collecting Cultural Property: Whose Culture? Whose Property? (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), pp. 97-98.
18. Thornton W. Mitchell (ed.), Norton on Archives: The Writings of Margaret Cross Norton on Archival and Records Management (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1975), p. 9.
19. David Ehrenfeld, Beginning Again: People and Nature in the New Millennium (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 53.
20. Pierre Nora, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire", Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 13.
21. See, for example, Rieman's comments on the telephone and the typewriter in his The Study of Modern Manuscripts, pp. 33, 35, 36.
22. Quoted in Dan Barry, "Bidding on the Bric-a-Brac of Mystique", New York Times, 19 March 1998, A19.
23. Quoted in David Rhode, "Kennedy Items Turned Over to Archives", New York Times, 18 March 1998, A21.
24. Other articles: David Rhode, "Collectors Covet Bits of Camelot", New York Times, 20 March 1998, A19;
25. N.R. Kleinfeld, "Whose JFK Memorabilia?", New York Times, 13 March 1998 [where the government identified 14 lots belonging to it];
26. Frank Bruni, "Angry Kennedys Speak Out on Auction", New York Times, 17 March 1998.
27. David Rohde, "Maria Shriver Buys Diaries in Secret Bids", New York Times, 21 March 1998, A13.
28. Thomas Farragher, "Kennedy Artifacts Arrive at New Home", Boston Globe, 16 May 1998.
29. Jeff Kennedy, "Radio Daze", Technology Review 101 (November/December 1998): 68-71 (quote 71).
30. Robert Banard, The Case of the Missing Bronte (New York: Dell, 1983);
31. A.S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance (New York: Vintage Books, 1990);
32. Bill Granger, Hemingway's Notebook (New York: Warner Books, 1986);
33. Robert B. Parker, The Godwulf Manuscript (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1973);
34. Robert Plunket, My Search for Warren Harding (New York: Larel, 1983);
35. James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure (New York: Warner, 1993);
36. Julie Smith, Huckleberry Fiend (New York: Mysterious Press, 1987).
37. Jack Finney, Marion's Wall (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973), pp. 106-107.
38. Brian Fagan, Archaelogy: A Brief Introduction (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1978), p.7.
39. One of the challenges in doing what passes for appraisal derives from the fact that remnants, whether purposefully or accidentally saved, can take on values of immense importance over time. We know, for example, that historians and other students of the past have long worked with fragments. Daniel Boorstin describes the "casual and accidental causes of preservation, survival, and accessibility" of documents and the fact that historians have always dealt with a "random record" of the past. Daniel J. Boorstin, Hidden History (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), pp. 6, 8. Archaeologists often find the most valuable information in garbage. "Garbage is among humanity's most prodigious physical legacies to those who have yet to be born; if we come to understand our discards . . . then we will better understand the world in which we live."
40. Although "Historians are understandably drawn to written evidence,. . . garbage has often served as a kind of tattle-tale, setting the record straight." William Rathje and Cullen Murphy, Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage (New York: HarperPerennial, 1992), pp. 4, 12.
41. Joyce D. Brothers, "Beanie Bonanza: Soft Toys Offer Kids Hard Lessons About the Market", Wall Street Journal, 5 June 1998, W13.
42. Paul Horgan, A Certain Climate: Essays in History, Arts, and Letters (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), p. 21.
43. The literature is extensive on these approaches, but a sense of what they have to offer can be seen in the following: Richard Brown, "Macro- Appraisal Theory and the Context of the Public Records Creator", Archivaria 40 (Fall 1995): 121-172,
44. and "Records Acquisition Strategy and Its Theoretical Foundation: The Case for a Concept of Archival Hermeneutics", Archivaria 33 (Winter 1991-1992): 34-56;
45. Wendy Duff, "Harnessing the Power of Warrant", American Archivist 61 (Spring 1998): 88-122;
46. and Luciana Duranti, Diplomatics (Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1998).
47. Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), pp. 127, 136.
48. Frank Boles, Archival Appraisal (New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 1991), p. 4.
49. See his review in the American Archivist 60 (Fall 1997): 460-463.
50. David Bearman, Archival Methods (Pittsburgh: Archives and Museum Informatics, 1989), pp. 63, 65.
51. William J. Maher, The Management of College and University Archives (Metuchen, New Jersey: Society of American Archivists and the Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1992), pp. 27, 37.
52. I am sure that archivists who seem to acquire in a random fashion could justify their labours as resting on the notion that this is as good as any other means for an archives to acquire records. And I am sure that the astute observer of such archives and archivists could discern other than randomness in the predilections, attitudes, and approaches of the archivists.
53. O.B. Hardison, Jr., Disappearing Through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century (New York: Viking, 1989), pp. 116-117.
54. Susan M. Pearce, Museums, Objects and Collections: A Cultural Study (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), pp. 11, 35.
55. Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton (eds.), Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 4.
56. David E. Whisnant, All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), pp. 13-14.
57. Robert Alan Shaddy, "A World of Sentimental Attachments: The Cult of Collecting, 1890-1938", The Book Collector 43 (Summer 1994): 186-200 (quotes 186, 187).
58. See also, for the nature of collecting, Russell W. Belk, Melanie Wallendorf, John F. Sherry, Jr. and Morris B. Holbrook, "Collecting in a Consumer Culture", in Russell W. Belk (ed.), Highways and Buyways: Naturalistic Research from the Consumer Behavior Odyssey (Provo, Utah: Association for Consumer Research, 1991), pp. 178-215.
59. Boles, Archival Appraisal, p. 19.
60. Edward C. Kemp, Manuscript Solicitation for Libraries, Special Collections, Museums, and Archives (Littleton, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited, 1978).
61. J. Peter Sigmond, "Divergences and Convergences of Archives: A European Looks at North America", in International Council on Archives, Second European Conference on Archives (Ann Arbor, Michigan: ICA, 1989), pp. 5-12 (quote 8).
62. See David Glassberg, American Historical Pageantry: The Uses of Tradition in the Early Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).
63. Walton H. Rawls (ed.), The Century Book of the Long Island Historical Society (New York: Long Island Historical Society, 1964), p. v.
64. Howard Mansfield, In the Memory House (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 1993), pp. 16-17.
65. J.H. Hodson, The Administration of Archives (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1972), p. 79.
66. Duckett, Modern Manuscripts, p. 19.
67. Francis L. Berkeley, Jr., "History and Problems of the Control of Manuscripts in the United States," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 98 (June 1954): 171-178 (quote 176).
68. Dana Gioia, "The Hand of the Poet: The Magical Value of Manuscripts", Hudson Review 49 (Spring 1996): 9-29 (quotes 22 and 25).
69. David Gelernter, Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology (New York: Basic Books, 1998).
70. Jon Katz, Media Rants: PostPolitics in the Digital Nation (San Francisco: HardWired, 1997), p. 6.
71. Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum (New York: Viking, 1995), p. 164.
72. Norman J. Thrower, Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 141.
73. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
74. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), pp. 20, 53, 153.
75. Douglas Cole, Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), p. xiii.
76. Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Co., 1995), p. 23.