Messrs. Washington, Jefferson, and Gates: Quarelling about the preservation of the documentary heritage of the United States

First Monday

Volumn 2, Issue 8, 1997, Pages

  Cox, Richard J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH   (United States)

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EID: 52849129529     PISSN: 13960466     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (60)

1. Additional information about the Commission and its strategic plan can be found at http://gopher.nara.gov/nara/nhprc
2. This statement is available at http://www.indiana.edu/∼oah/nl/ nares297.html
3. Her statement was posted to the Archives and Archivists LISTSERV on February 26, 1997.
4. Smock was a leading figure in the 1980s arguing that a number of professional associations should band together to create a coalition for raising funds from the private sector and public agencies to create a trust fund for supporting a variety of projects, from documentary editions to archival processing work to educational ventures and professional publications. I was on the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Council when this idea was suggested. The SAA seriously discussed it, but the idea never got off the ground, primarily because it emerged too late in the Bicentennial of the Constitution for the effort to get organized as well as was necessary. There were also too many different agendas present in the proposal, failing to take into account the differences between archival work, the research interests of historians, and the numerous other reasons archival records need to be preserved and managed.
5. His statement, "News from the Archivist of the United States: NHPRC Revises Its Plan," is available at http://www.indiana.edu/∼oah/nl/ na0297.html
6. See "NHPRC: NHPRC Plan Revisions February 1997 Action" at http://gopher.nara.gov/nara/nhprc/action.html
7. Products related to my early work on NHPRC-funded projects include A Guide to the microfilm edition of the Calvert Papers (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1973);
8. "A History of the Calvert Papers, MS. 174," Maryland Historical Magazine, Volume 68 (Fall 1973): pp. 309-22;
9. "The Need for Comprehensive Records Programs in Local Government: Learning by Mistakes in Baltimore, 1947-82," Provenance, Volume 1 (Fall 1983): pp. 14-34;
10. Principal author, Assessing Alabama's archives: a plan for the preservation of the state's historical records (Montgomery: Alabama Historical Records Advisory Board, 1985);
11. with Anne S.K. Turkos, "Establishing Public Library Archives," Journal of Library History, Volume 21 (Summer 1986): pp. 574-84;
12. "Alabama's Archival Heritage, 1850-1985," Alabama Review, Volume 40 (October 1987): pp. 284-307;
13. Principal author, Strengthening New York's historical records programs: a self-study guide (Albany, N. Y.: New York State Archives and Records Administration, 1988);
14. "Fundraising for Historical Records Programs: An Undeveloped Archival Function," Provenance, Volume 6 (Fall 1988): pp. 1-19;
15. "A Documentation Strategy Case Study: Western New York," American Archivist, Volume 52 (Spring 1989): pp. 192-200.
16. For the institute on electronic records management, refer to my "The Roles of Graduate and Continuing Education in Preparing Archivists for the Information Age," American Archivist, Volume 56 (Summer 1993): pp. 444-57
17. The First generation of electronic records archivists in the United States: a study in professionalization (New York: Haworth Press, 1994). For the project on recordkeeping functional requirements, refer to http://www.sis.pitt. edu/∼nhprc
18. A basic orientation to the early history of American documentary editing can be gained by reading Lester J. Cappon, 1973. "American Historical Editors Before Jared Sparks," William and Mary Quarterly, third series, Volume 30, number 3, pp. 375-400.
19. Bert James Lowenberg, American history in American thought: Christopher Columbus to Henry Adams (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972) provides ample discussion of these editorial projects.
20. David D. Van Tassel, 1960. Recording America's past: an interpretation of the development of historical studies in America 1607-1884. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
21. Victor Gondos, Jr., 1981. J. Franklin Jameson and the birth of the National Archives 1906-1926. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
22. Mary A. Giunta, 1986. "The NHPRC: Its Influence on Documentary Editing, 1964-1984," American Archivist, Volume 49, number 2, pp. 134-141.
23. G. Thomas Tanselle, 1978. "The Editing of Historical Documents," Studies in Bibliography, Volume 31, and issued as a separate pamphlet.
24. Elizabeth Hamer Kegan, 1977. "A Becoming Regard to Posterity," American Archivist, Volume 40, number 1, pp. 5-15.
25. Constance B. Schulz, 1988. "'From Generation Unto Generation: Transistions in Modern Documentary Historical Editing," Reviews in American History, Volume 16, number 3, pp. 337-350.
26. Giunta, "The NHPRC."
27. Charles T. Cullen, 1989. "Casual Observer Beware: The Need for Using Scholarly Editions," Prologue, Volume 21, number 1, pp. 68-74.
28. For my full view on this study, see my "Archivists and the Use of Archival Records: Or, A View from the World of Documentary Editing," Provenance, Volume 9 (1991 [1992]): pp. 89-110.
29. Paul H. Bergeron, 1971. "True Valor Seen: Historical Editing," American Archivist, Volume 34, number 3, pp. 259-264.
30. The best treatment of the early development of the modern American archival profession remains William F. Birdsall, 1973. "The American Archivists' Search for Professional Identity, 1909-1936," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
31. See my American archival analysis: the recent development of the archival profession in the United States (Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow Press, 1990).
32. Alan B. Spitzer, 1996. Historical truth and lies about the past: reflections on Dewey, Dreyfus, de Man, and Reagan. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
33. See, for example, Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, (eds.), 1996. History wars: the Enola Gay and other battles for the American past. New York: Metropolitan Books,
34. Philip Nobile, (ed.), 1995. Judgment at the Smithsonian. New York: Marlowe and Co.
35. Publications on this topic are far too numerous to cite or even to summarize, but the implications of such writings for archival writing have been explored in my "The Concept of Public Memory and Its Impact on Archival Public Programming," Archivaria, Volume 36 (Autumn 1993): pp. 122-35.
36. Michael Heim, 1993. The Metaphysics of virtual reality. New York: Oxford University Press.
37. See also his Electric language: a philosophical study of word processing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).
38. It is interesting to note that in other contexts we have used the length of time to edit and publish texts as an illustration of the problems of technology and language. Johanna Neuman, in her Lights, camera, war: is media technology driving international politics? (New York: St. Martins Press, 1996), p. 55, noted evidence for the burden of printing in China, with its 80,000 symbols in its language, is that "it took 23 years to edit and print the 130 volumes of Confucian classics." Such a time frame for one of these editorial projects would be considered extraordinary.
39. Ian Buruma, 1994. The Wages of guilt: memories of war in Germany and Japan. New York: Meridan,
40. Mike Wallace, 1996. Mickey Mouse history and other essays on American history. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
41. The Society of American Archivists did issue a statement on the NHPRC situation, posted at http:/www.archivists.org The statement expressed the importance of electronic records as a priority in managing the nation's documentary heritage.
42. Richard Z. Chesnoff, 1997. "Fifty Years Too Late, A Reckoning," U. S. News and World Report, Volume 122 (March 17), p. 43.
43. Frederika J. Teute, 1980. "Views in Review: A Historiographical Perspective on Historical Editing," American Archivist, Volume 43, number 1, pp. 43-56.
44. Included in Leslie W. Dunlap and Fred Shelley, (eds.), 1976. The Publication of American historical manuscripts. Iowa City: University of Iowa Libraries, pp. 97-105.
45. Richard H. Kohn and George M. Curtis, III, 1981. "The Government, the Historical Profession, and Historical Editing: A Review," Reviews in American History, Volume 9, number 2, pp. 145-155.
46. Brooks D. Simpson, 1989. "Editors, Editing, and the Historical Profession," Organization of American Historians (OAH) Newsletter, Volume 17, number 2, pp. 8-9.
47. Richard J. Cox, 1994. "The Record: Is It Evolving?" Records & Retrieval Report, Volume 10 (March),
48. "What's In A Name? Archives As a Multi-Faceted Term in the Information Professions." Records & Retrieval Report, Volume 11 (March).
49. Denise Schmandt-Besserat, 1991. "The Earliest Precursor of Writing," In: William S-Y. Wang, (ed.), The Emergence of language: development and evolution. New York: W.H. Freeman and Co., pp. 31-45.
50. Rosalind Thomas, 1992. Literacy and orality in ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
51. M. T. Clanchy, 1993. From memory to written record: England, 1066-1307. Revised edition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
52. John O. Green, 1997. The New age of communications. New York: Henry Holt and Co.
53. Nicholas Negroponte, 1995. Being digital. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
54. James R. Beniger, 1986. The Control revolution: technological and economic origins of the information society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
55. Stewart Brand, 1987. The Media lab: inventing the future at MIT. New York: Viking.
56. Clifford Lynch, 1997. "Searching the Internet," Scientific American, Volume 276, number 3, pp. 52-56.
57. Tom Blanton, (ed.), 1995. White House e-mail. New York: New Press.
58. Kevin P. Kearns, 1996. Managing for accountability: preserving the public trust in public and nonprofit organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
59. See http://www.sis.pitt.edu/∼nhprc for links to the ways this project has been used.
60. This paper was prepared in March 1997, revised in May 1997 and again revised in June 1997.