Digital Memory and the Archive

Digital Memory and the Archive PDF

Author: Wolfgang Ernst

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2012-12-20

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1452933952

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In the popular imagination, archives are remote, largely obsolete institutions: either antiquated, inevitably dusty libraries or sinister repositories of personal secrets maintained by police states. Yet the archive is now a ubiquitous feature of digital life. Rather than being deleted, e-mails and other computer files are archived. Media software and cloud storage allow for the instantaneous cataloging and preservation of data, from music, photographs, and videos to personal information gathered by social media sites. In this digital landscape, the archival-oriented media theories of Wolfgang Ernst are particularly relevant. Digital Memory and the Archive, the first English-language collection of the German media theorist’s work, brings together essays that present Ernst’s controversial materialist approach to media theory and history. His insights are central to the emerging field of media archaeology, which uncovers the role of specific technologies and mechanisms, rather than content, in shaping contemporary culture and society. Ernst’s interrelated ideas on the archive, machine time and microtemporality, and the new regimes of memory offer a new perspective on both current digital culture and the infrastructure of media historical knowledge. For Ernst, different forms of media systems—from library catalogs to sound recordings—have influenced the content and understanding of the archive and other institutions of memory. At the same time, digital archiving has become a contested site that is highly resistant to curation, thus complicating the creation and preservation of cultural memory and history.

Urgent Archives

Urgent Archives PDF

Author: Michelle Caswell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-19

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 1000386066

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Urgent Archives argues that archivists can and should do more to disrupt white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy beyond the standard liberal archival solutions of more diverse collecting and more inclusive description. Grounded in the emerging field of critical archival studies, this book uncovers how dominant western archival theories and practices are oppressive by design, while looking toward the the radical politics of community archives to envision new liberatory theories and practices. Based on more than a decade of ethnography at community archives sites including the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), the book explores how members of minoritized communities activate records to build solidarities across and within communities, trouble linear progress narratives, and disrupt cycles of oppression. Caswell explores the temporal, representational, and material aspects of liberatory memory work, arguing that archival disruptions in time and space should be neither about the past nor the future, but about the liberatory affects and effects of memory work in the present. Urgent Archives extends the theoretical range of critical archival studies and provides a new framework for archivists looking to transform their practices. The book should also be of interest to scholars of archival studies, museum studies, public history, memory studies, gender and ethnic studies and digital humanities.

Archives Power

Archives Power PDF

Author: Randall C. Jimerson

Publisher: ALA Editions

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780838910610

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Archives Power argues to answer some of the complex social, political, professional, and ethical questions that are at the heart of the roles and identity of the archive professional, their significance in modern society, and their impact on human history and culture.

Community Archives, Community Spaces

Community Archives, Community Spaces PDF

Author: Jeannette Bastian

Publisher: Facet Publishing

Published: 2019-12-19

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1783303506

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book traces the trajectory of the community archives movement, expanding the definition of community archives to include sites such as historical societies, social movement organisations and community centres. It also explores new definitions of what community archives might encompass, particularly in relation to disciplines outside the archives. Over ten years have passed since the first volume of Community Archives, and inspired by continued research as well as by the formal recognition of community archives in the UK, the community archives movement has become an important area of research, recognition and appreciation by archivists, archival scholars and others worldwide. Increasingly the subject of papers and conferences, community archives are now seen as being in the vanguard of social concerns, markers of community-based activism, a participatory approach exemplifying the on-going evolution of ‘professional’ archival (and heritage) practice and integral to the ability of people to articulate and assert their identity. Community Archives, Community Spaces reflects the latest research and includes practical case studies on the challenges of building and sustaining community archives. This new book will appeal to practitioners, researchers, and academics in the archives and records community as well as to historians and other scholars concerned with community building and social issues.

Rogue Archives

Rogue Archives PDF

Author: Abigail De Kosnik

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-12-14

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 0262544741

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An examination of how nonprofessional archivists, especially media fans, practice cultural preservation on the Internet and how “digital cultural memory” differs radically from print-era archiving. The task of archiving was once entrusted only to museums, libraries, and other institutions that acted as repositories of culture in material form. But with the rise of digital networked media, a multitude of self-designated archivists—fans, pirates, hackers—have become practitioners of cultural preservation on the Internet. These nonprofessional archivists have democratized cultural memory, building freely accessible online archives of whatever content they consider suitable for digital preservation. In Rogue Archives, Abigail De Kosnik examines the practice of archiving in the transition from print to digital media, looking in particular at Internet fan fiction archives. De Kosnik explains that media users today regard all of mass culture as an archive, from which they can redeploy content for their own creations. Hence, “remix culture” and fan fiction are core genres of digital cultural production. De Kosnik explores, among other things, the anticanonical archiving styles of Internet preservationists; the volunteer labor of online archiving; how fan archives serve women and queer users as cultural resources; archivists' efforts to attract racially and sexually diverse content; and how digital archives adhere to the logics of performance more than the logics of print. She also considers the similarities and differences among free culture, free software, and fan communities, and uses digital humanities tools to quantify and visualize the size, user base, and rate of growth of several online fan archives.

Community Archives

Community Archives PDF

Author: Jeannette Allis Bastian

Publisher: Facet Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1856046397

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

How do archives and other cultural institutions such as museums determine the boundaries of a particular community, and of their own institutional reach, in constructing effective strategies and methodologies for selecting and maintaining appropriate material evidence? This book offers guidance for archivists, record managers and museums professionals faced with such issues in their daily work. This edited collection explores the relationships between communities and the records they create at both practical and scholarly levels. It focuses on the ways in which records reflect community identity and collective memory, and the implications of capturing, appraising and documenting these core societal elements - with particular focus on the ways in which recent advances in technology can overcome traditional obstacles, as well as how technologies themselves offer possibilities of creating new virtual communities. It is divided into five themes: a community archives model communities and non-traditional record keeping records loss, destruction and recovery online communities: how technology brings communities and their records together building a community archive. Readership: This book will appeal to practitioners, researchers, and academics in the archives and records community as well as to historians and other scholars concerned with community building and social issues.

Owning Memory

Owning Memory PDF

Author: Jeannette A. Bastian

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2003-08-30

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 0313052379

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book examines the relationships between archives, communities and collective memory through both the lens of a postcolonial society, the United States Virgin Islands, a former colony of Denmark, now a United States territory, and through an archival perspective on the relationship between communities and the creation of records. Because the historical records of the Virgin Islands reside primarily in Denmark and the United States, Virgin Islanders have had limited access to the primary sources of their history and this has affected both their ability to write their own history and to construct their collective memory. But while a strong oral tradition, often in competition with the written tradition, influences the ways in which this community remembers, it also underlines the dilemma of interpreting the history of the colonized through the records of the colonizer. The story of the Virgin Islands and its search for its memory includes an exploration of how this community, through public commemorations and folk tradition has formed its memory to date, and the role that archives play in this process. Interwoven throughout is a broader analysis of the place of archives and archivists in helping communities find their history. The book is exceptionally well written and will appeal to historians, archivists and those interested in the Carribean.

Memory in Motion

Memory in Motion PDF

Author: Ina Blom

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789462982147

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This collection offers a set of essays that discuss the new technology of memory from a variety of perspectives that explicitly investigate their impact on the very concept of the social.

Cultural Memory and Western Civilization

Cultural Memory and Western Civilization PDF

Author: Aleida Assmann

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-11-14

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 0521764378

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book provides an introduction to the concept of cultural memory, offering a comprehensive overview of its history, forms and functions.