Preserving History: Archives

Visit to the DOS Archive – Legal Division

Today, no major work is possible without the extensive access to the archival material in the Department of State Archive, the principal repository of many documents relating to the Florida’s environmental issues. The Archive collection I’ve been looking at contains several groups of files from the Environmental Law Section, which hold the state and local government records serving as the basis for this examination. The sample could be presented, as follows:
Record Group Number: 000520
Series/Collection .S 1442
Creator: Florida Department of Environmental Regulation
Title: Legal Reading Files, 1973-1975
Amount: 1.50 cubic ft.

With the assistance of the database, one could determine that 000520 is the subsequent number of the box; index “.S” relates to the Environmental Law Section, which submitted copies of the documents for filing. Each box in this section contains files, in this instance, for the period from 1973 to 1975. These files organized in the chronological order and contain personal and interagency correspondence, draft legislations, and the like, in the way of litigation structural (that is, case by case, date by date). Various legal notes related to the environmental issues, such as pleadings, upcoming hearings, proceedings, rulings or pending in jurisdictions are grouped together with the preceding correspondence.
Box contains ten chronologically composed files, which were collected and bound as the legal proceedings went along. Documents are not numbered, nor they have a general or local index; also, all files are aviating its turn to be digitized. The extensive interagency correspondence they do contain, however, makes possible a much fine-grained analysis of the various problems, which surrounded Florida’s environment from the legal point of view.

Nicholson Baker’s “Double Fold”

In his thoroughly researched book Baker discusses the system of the American archives and libraries, which employs the policy of “destroying to preserve”, that is, microfilming old original newspaper printed issues and selling/discarding out the originals in terms of to preserve space. Starting with this dilemma that faced the British Library, the author takes his reader along the way to various collections in the United States describing, analyzing and disgusting all together in his quest to find a solution to such problem.
Note that the author, while obviously is in discontent, is not per se against the system of microfilming, copying and/or digitizing of the priceless material. Rather, his concern is that that the major depositories, starting with the Library of Congress or NASA, are not performing duplication in the professional and diligent way. Being an old-fashion person (very much like myself), the author states “historians don’t read the old papers because their libraries don’t keep the old papers to read, and microfilm is a brain-poaching, gorge-lifting trial to browse” (p. 39). There is – and we all could agree upon – inaccuracy, loss of data, chemicals that are deteriorating and so on. But, perhaps, an era of a digital marvel could help? No good either, says Baker, for one of the famous one, JSTOR has a certain amount of typos (do not bother me, really) and problems with its character-recognition software (mostly true).
The general solution, the author suggests, that libraries “must keep its duplicates… for books became worn with use, lost, stolen or misshelved” (p. 102). How about if we added to this list more of government funds (and not only on the national level), sophisticated security system and professionally trained personnel, from an intern clerk to a director?
Towards the continuation of the preservation of the originals saga the author reveals various stories he encountered while dealing with books and newspapers – its collections, preservation, discard and destruction – and its second life, where possible (as in the case of bidding to save the material form the British Library destined to be sold out). Although stories seem a bit redundant their concept is obvious – the author worries for the future of the printed material for readers like you and me. And no double (triple? quartile?) fold test is really needed.


Roy Rosenzweig’s "Wikipedia" (from essays for History and New Media)

The author analyzes unprecedented success of Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, which hit the computer world in 1999-2000 and he discourses whether serious historians/authors/scholars/students could rely on its immense history information bank. For the many, this is not a place where people advocate their research or argue their positions – this is truly unbiased source, which is in many instances a collaborative work that summaries data in the narrative way.
“But is it a good historical resource?” – asks the author. There are some topics of the American history, which are getting vast attention and those that go unnoticed at all. What drives this is a need for an interest, its prime utilization and probably, unwillingness to touch “sharp corners”, such as racism or immigration. Comparing Wikipedia’s random chosen biographies with “thick” and respective dictionaries, the author notices how thorough the e-authors conducted their research. From the other hand, the multitude of the authors highlights certain entries and diminishes the others by committing obvious errands. While the narrative is well written, some entries lack the scholarly analysis, elegancy in prose and discursive interpretation. It is still does not have a clear mechanism against “computer vandals” who might change the text in a minute, while someone is reading it in this very moment. From the scholarly point of view it reflects on both – history teachers and students in colleges, who – yes, we have to admit it – do consider Wikipedia as their major research engine. One of the solutions to this problem, the author suggests, is to teach our students to work with primary and secondary materials and explain to them the limitation of the on-line source. From the other hand, history material should be easily available and accessible; Wikipedia is just an alternative, non-commercial way of learning but is not the major one.