{"id":37036,"date":"2018-12-05T10:30:25","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T14:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/?p=37036"},"modified":"2018-12-05T10:30:25","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T14:30:25","slug":"archival-futurism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/2018\/12\/archival-futurism\/","title":{"rendered":"Archival Futurism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Archival

Staff Checking Motion Picture Film in Temporary Storage (National Archives and Records Administration)<\/p><\/div>\n

For as long as archivists have been preserving the past, they have also considered what the future holds. The future has meant many things to archivists: the role of technology, the changing faces of our users, and the reasons for why we preserve records in the first place. As part of a book review I am writing, I recently delved into the writings of archivists who have reckoned with the future by doing a quick literature search across several major journals (American Archivist, Journal of the Society of Archivists\/Archives and Records<\/em> (UK and Ireland), Archives and Manuscripts<\/em> (Australia) and Archivaria<\/em> (Canada). This pulled up around 60 citations for articles with \u201cfuture\u201d in their titles, published in these four journals.<\/p>\n

The four archival journals I pulled citations from started between the 1930s and 1970s. Although there are scattered \u201cfuture\u201d articles during the mid-twentieth-century, there were only five before 1974.\u00a0 \u00a0Nearly half of all future-oriented articles were published since 2000. Clearly, the millennium triggered significant professional introspection on the direction of our profession.<\/p>\n

The history of archival futurism in the last century has often concerned the role of rapidly-changing technology in the creation and preservation of records under archivists\u2019 care. In fact, the very first article published in The American Archivist<\/em> with the word \u201cfuture\u201d in its title (1939) concerned the preservation and reliability of motion picture technology.[1]<\/a> Twenty years later (1958) brought \u201cThe Future of Microfilming,\u201d[2]<\/a> and two decades later (1977) we weren\u2019t quite yet at cloud storage, but we were considering \u201cOptical Memories: Archival Storage System of the Future, or More Pie in the Sky?\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

By the 80s, a note of anxiety began to creep into our archival futurism. Perhaps reflecting back cultural anxiety over the collapse of organized labor, rise of austerity measures, technological dystopias, and the late stages of the Cold War, archivists warned about \u201cInstant Professionalism: To the Shiny New Men of the Future,\u201d[4]<\/a> and asked themselves \u201cIs There a Future in the Use of Archives?\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

By the 2000s, the anxiety gave way to even more ominous warnings, many invoking worries of a digital dark age in which all of our bytes bite the dust. Archivists wrote about \u201cDiaries, On-line Diaries, and the Future Loss to Archives; or, Blogs and the Blogging Bloggers Who Blog Them\u201d[6]<\/a> and \u201cSaving-Over, Over-Saving, and the Future Mess of Writers’ Digital Archives: A Survey Report on the Personal Digital Archiving Practices of Emerging Writers.\u201d[7]<\/a> To give electronic records the materiality of their analog cousins, archivists used metaphors of manmade infrastructure (\u201cDigital archives and metadata as critical infrastructure to keep community memory safe for the future \u2013 lessons from Japanese activities\u201d[8]<\/a>) and natural phenomena (\u201cOn the crest of a wave: transforming the archival future\u201d[9]<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Archivists often summarize their work by saying \u201cwe preserve the past for the future.\u201d This sentiment is visible in the titles, as nearly a quarter of the articles also contain a reference to the past, such as \u201cWhat’s Past Was Future,\u201d[10]<\/a> \u201cSeeing the Past as a Guidepost to Our Future,\u201d[11]<\/a> or \u201cMetrics and Matrices: Surveying the Past to Create a Better Future.\u201d[12]<\/a> That anchoring of archival work in the work of the past, not just for its own sake today, but also for the benefits of users we may never meet, is perhaps what gives archivists such a unique sense of perspective among the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that as long as archivists still exist, we\u2019ll keep writing about the future. But sometimes looking at our own history of archival futurism tells us more about where our profession has been than when we\u2019re headed next.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Dorothy Arbaugh, \u201cMotion Pictures and The Future Historian,\u201d The American Archivist<\/em> 2, no. 2 (April 1, 1939): 106\u201314, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.17723\/aarc.2.2.7kv56p4206183040.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ernest Taubes, \u201cThe Future of Microfilming,\u201d The American Archivist<\/em> 21, no. 2 (April 1, 1958): 153\u201358, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.17723\/aarc.21.2.26114m62333099k3.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Sam Kula, \u201cOptical Memories: Archival Storage System of the Future, or More Pie in the Sky?,\u201d Archivaria<\/em> 4 (1977): 43\u201348.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> George Bolotenko, \u201cInstant Professionalism: To the Shiny New Men of the Future,\u201d Archivaria<\/em> 20 (1985): 149\u2013157.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> David B. Gracy II, \u201cIs There a Future in the Use of Archives?,\u201d Archivaria<\/em> 24 (1987): 3\u20139.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Catherine O\u2019Sullivan, \u201cDiaries, On-Line Diaries, and the Future Loss to Archives; or, Blogs and the Blogging Bloggers Who Blog Them,\u201d The American Archivist<\/em> 68, no. 1 (January 1, 2005): 53\u201373, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.17723\/aarc.68.1.7k7712167p6035vt.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Devin Becker and Collier Nogues, \u201cSaving-Over, Over-Saving, and the Future Mess of Writers\u2019 Digital Archives: A Survey Report on the Personal Digital Archiving Practices of Emerging Writers,\u201d The American Archivist<\/em> 75, no. 2 (October 1, 2012): 482\u2013513, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.17723\/aarc.75.2.t024180533382067.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Shigeo Sugimoto, \u201cDigital Archives and Metadata as Critical Infrastructure to Keep Community Memory Safe for the Future \u2013 Lessons from Japanese Activities,\u201d Archives and Manuscripts<\/em> 42, no. 1 (January 2, 2014): 61\u201372, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/01576895.2014.893833.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Laura Millar, \u201cOn the Crest of a Wave: Transforming the Archival Future,\u201d Archives and Manuscripts<\/em> 45, no. 2 (May 4, 2017): 59\u201376, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/01576895.2017.1328696.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Maynard Brichford, \u201cWhat\u2019s Past Was Future,\u201d The American Archivist<\/em> 43, no. 3 (July 1, 1980): 431\u201332, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.17723\/aarc.43.3.631227106ux2q512.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Brenda Banks, \u201cSeeing the Past as a Guidepost to Our Future,\u201d The American Archivist<\/em> 59, no. 4 (September 1, 1996): 392\u201399, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.17723\/aarc.59.4.92486pp6w6p20575.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Libby Coyner and Jonathan Pringle, \u201cMetrics and Matrices: Surveying the Past to Create a Better Future,\u201d The American Archivist<\/em> 77, no. 2 (October 1, 2014): 459\u201388, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.17723\/aarc.77.2.l870t2671m734116.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For as long as archivists have been preserving the past, they have also considered what the future holds. The future has meant many things to archivists: the role of technology, the changing faces of our users, and the reasons for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1452,1174],"class_list":["post-37036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arb","tag-digital-preservation","tag-faculty-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}