otherwise be forgotten. To archivists and records managers, seeing the importance and value in the seemingly mundane and everyday is second-nature. However, to the average person trying to make space in their loft, these records are often another cardboard box to be dumped. Sassoon states that ‘seemingly insignificant documents are important chronicles of social history and are becoming a rich source of material for research and publication’. Indeed, many of the examples in the book are remarkable and include tales of glamorous shipping dynasties, exotic travel journals and tragic war diaries. She provides an inspiring collection of stories that would induce anyone to take a second look at that box of old school reports. Of course, not everyone is going to have such glamorous ancestors, but Sassoon demonstrates the various levels of ‘importance’—from personal sentiment to historic or national significance—using interesting and insightful anecdotes and her key message, that every item deserves a second look, is an important one. In addition to her discussion on the content and value of memorabilia, Sassoon successfully lays out some general guidance on exploring and preserving one’s own history. Various practical tips are provided throughout, and the final chapter, ‘Advice from the Professionals’, includes comments from conservation experts, academics and archivists. Glossy and filled with beautifully reproduced images, the book is clearly structured and enjoyable to read. The overall tone is one of positivity and encouragement and provides an inspiring introduction to archives, aimed at engaging new audiences. Sassoon emphasizes the work of professional archivists and records managers, whilst exploring how the general public can become involved and interested in their own personal histories. Overall Keeping Chronicles draws attention to the value of memorabilia as a historical source and the importance of preserving it in all its forms.
Geoffrey Veysey died at the age of 77 in the Royal Gwent Hospital on 31 March 2012.1 With his death we have lost the most prominent archivist to work in a Welsh county record office between the two...
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes [1] Gray, ‘Relating into Relevance,’ 13. [2] DCMS, Our Promise for 2012, Available from http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/freedom_of_information/86908_doc1.pdf (cited 23 February 2012). [3] Routledge's, Online Studies on the Olympic and Paralympic Games. [4] For example, LOCOG Presentation, 6 Jul 2005, DCMS Our Promise for 2012, Before, during and after: making the most of the 2012 Games, and Plans for the legacy from the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. [5] As of January 2012, figures showed only 110,000 new participants. Guardian online, 1 January 2012. [6] ARA, ‘Volunteering in Archives’. [7] Featured on London 2012 London 2012, [cited 8 January 2012]. Available from http://www.london2012.com; INTERNET [Google Scholar] Available from http://www.london2012.com/get-involved/volunteer/volunteer-profiles/ron-trailblazer.php (cited 23 February 2012). [8] Ray, ‘Volunteering in Archives,’ 20 and Title Page. [9] LOCOG Presentation, 8. [10] Bott and Williams, A World in One City. [11] LMA, Reflections and Holding up the Mirror. [12] For an example of contemporary news coverage see BBC ‘Olympic ‘threat’ to lottery funds’ [13] This comment is the author's view based on her experience as the National Council on Archives' Archive Lottery Adviser during this period. [14] Ibid, 6. [15] Details of all these projects are available on the Legacy Trust UK website. [16] Flinn, and Stevens, ‘It is noh mistri, wi mekin histri: Telling Our Own Story: Independent and Community Archives in the UK, Challenging and Subverting the Mainstream’ in Relationship’ in Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory, 4. [17] London 2012 London 2012, [cited 8 January 2012]. Available from http://www.london2012.com; INTERNET [Google Scholar] website. [18] Gloucester Rugby Heritage project and Everton Collection websites. [19] Ken Livingstone, ‘LOCOG Presentation,’ 8. [20] Bastian, and Alexander, ‘Communities and Archives—A Symbiotic Relationship,’ In Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory, xxii. [21] Articles discussing such examples include various chapters in Bastian and Alexander Community Archives: the shaping of memory and E. Ketelaar ‘Archives as Spaces of Memory’. [22] Slater, ‘Confessions of an Archivist,’ 142.
Since its publication in 2006, Caroline Williams’s Managing Archives: Foundations, Principles and Practice has been the first choice of textbook for most UK students wanting to gain a basic overview of archival practice. The recent appearance of Laura Millar’s book offers an alternative and although this review should not be read as an assessment of the relative merits of each, it is likely that many purchasers will be making this choice (and thus for budget reasons alone may well pick the earlier and cheaper publication). What would be gained from acquiring both? Millar’s book, one of the useful series of CILIP publications under the series editorship of Geoffrey Yeo, covers the ‘theoretical, philosophical, strategic, operational, political and logistical issues associated with archival management’— like the UK education programmes and Williams’s book, it is a ‘why-to’, not a ‘howto’. As a textbook it is engaging and thoughtfully written, with useful examples and insights born from wide experience. It will rightfully find a place on core reading lists and forms a useful starting point for anyone wanting to know more about archival practice as conventionally defined in the Anglophone West. Millar is perhaps best known to the UK audience for her Archivaria articles on memory and provenance which are theoretical in emphasis; here she aims at practical guidance, based on an assertion of archival ‘core principles’, basically those of the western Anglophone tradition. She is sympathetic to the notion that most of our practices are culturally constructed, emphasizing the importance of context to the understanding of archives, archival theory and archival practice. One of the book’s many strengths is that key concepts are historically and geographically located, associated with both background circumstances and the individual agency of the author by whom ideas have been articulated. Nevertheless, she suggests that professional ethics offer an identification of the core (i.e. permanent) principles of archival practice in any context and that following international standards is the means by which these principles may best be carried out. Her discussion of the principles may be nuanced, but it is never critical of the associated standards. In areas for which standards do not exist, all depends on circumstances, which the archivist is encouraged to identify and use to frame a mission for the individual repository, from which policies and strategies will follow. Journal of the Society of Archivists Vol. 33, No. 2, October 2012, 207–241
I, Digital: Personal Collections in the Digital Era C.A. Lee (Ed) Chicago, Society of American Archivists, 2011 384 pp., ISBN: 13:978-0-8389-1155-6 (Paperback $70) Future historians will be faced w...
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Seals in Medieval Wales http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/history/research-projects/seals/. Images of seals at The National Archives available for downloading http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/seal.as
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Peter J. Scott, ‘The Record Group Concept: A Case for Abandonment’, American Archivist 29, no. 4 (1966): 493–504. Cunningham talks of ‘fifth-generation photocopies’ being circulated among the NAA staff (p. 1, 3). Scott also provides specific comments and clarifications in asterisked footnotes within the papers themselves.
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes [1] Jacqueline Cox, ‘The Corsini letters 1567–1637’ Journal of the Society of Archivists, 1998, 9:2, pp. 81–83. [2] Copies of the microfilms are also held at the J. Paul Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 401 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 400, Santa Monica, California 90401-1455. [3] The Letters of Bess of Hardwick http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/research/fundedresearchprojects/bessofhardwick/ [4] The Corsini Letters, pp. 17, 25, 52. [5] pp. 51–53. [6] pp. 200–215.
Keeping Chronicles: Preserving History through Written Memorabilia Rosemary Sassoon London, A & C Black Publishers Ltd., 2010 160 pp., Paperback: 160 pages, ISBN: 978-1408129005 (£16.99) I must con...
In the late twentieth century, both New Zealand and Estonia experienced societal changes which impacted on the nature and functioning of organizations. The impact on record-keeping was quite different in these two environments. A comparative case study approach focusing on an organization with the same functions in both countries (the postal service) is used to illustrate these differences. There was a recognition of the need for records and document management at the highest management levels in Estonian Post, which was completely absent in New Zealand Post. In Estonia, the essential nature of records management was clearly recognized and accepted, whereas in New Zealand record-keeping traditions were not sufficiently embedded to survive organizational change.
This article uses a comparison of two national events, the 1951 Festival of Britain, and the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, to examine developments in archival collecting policy and practice. It examines the possible reasons for the relative scarcity of Festival records and argues that these gaps in the archival record demonstrate the need for a national collecting strategy for London 2012, the implementation of which is made possible through advances in technology, together with a changed understanding of the record-keeper's role.
