Public History & Philly

  James M. O’Toole’s On the Idea of Permanence examined archival topics such as archival language and its importance, the discord of what “permanence” is in an archival sphere, the shift from oral records to written records as well as the importance placed on both forms of recording history, and several other important facets of the archivist’s profession. Though I found these topics extremely enlightening and vital, the topic that many of us can relate to is the idea of the original document vs. a copy. In many archives, documents are digitized to allow more access to certain documents while also safeguarding a document’s condition. As a researcher myself, I like utilizing original documents for research, but I understand that that can not always be arranged. Having said this, a quote that O’Toole presents in the article struck me as important in analyzing the research process and digitization of documents moving forward. This quote was from the preservation researcher William J....

This Tuesday’s class included several discussions about archival access, archival reference, archival policies, digitization, and other related topics. One discussion that the class focused in on this session that I find important to highlight was the differences between a library and an archive. People who are researchers or scholars and or have careers that require visitations to a library or archive may know the difference between a library and an archive, but people who do not have history or research-based careers/have not completed research in these spaces may not. For this reason, sources which delineate the difference between libraries and archives such as Laura Schmidt’s article Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research and Mary J. Pough’s article The Illusion of Omniscience: Subject Access and the Reference Archivist are vital to understanding the differing operations that occur within them. For Schmidt’s article, not only did she explain the general protocols of archiv...

  This week, I was again educated on an interesting term used in archival spheres via Terry Cook’s What is Past is Prologue and through class discussion. The term, “intellectual processing,” is used when an archivist configures mentally how items were organized in the archive before it was physically removed/placed in another space due to context, interrelationships, functionality, and other means related to the content of the record. [1] Not having very much archival experience aside from the occasional in-person research trip (much more common pre-COVID-19), I speculate that this strategy can be very helpful when an archivist might need to remove an item from a folder or another object for a variety of reasons, but they can still recollect where that item is meant to be or can be repositioned if necessary. Now that I currently work as a researcher for the JDP, I might even come across this process here as I learn more about what the JDP has in store for me as an Inclusive Histo...

  After reading Ian Milligan’s Historians’ Archival Research Looks Quite Different in the Digital Age (2019), a few points made within this article concerning digital archives vs. physical and traditional archives led me to think about the variety of ways that archives do and will impact our society. Milligan points out the fact that before digital archives existed, researchers relied heavily on documents and resources that were either tangible or available for an in-person viewing for research, but with digital archives, there is often an abundance of material to research from one’s digital device. [1] As technology has positively impacted many facets of academia, it has benefited the many historians, researchers, and scholars who without it might lack access to desired material or would need to take strenuous actions to research certain documents (traveling to another country to review a document, reviewing a document in a highly-confidential facility, etc.). This being said, t...