challenging stereotypes about corporate
archives.
Francis X. Blouin, William G.
Rosenberg, Processing the Past.
Changing Authorities in History
and the Archives (OUP USA 2011)
Roy Rosenzweig, Clio WIRED: The
Future of the Past in the Digital
Age (New York: Columbia
University Press 2011)
The Future
of the Past
Digital Age
Processing the Past explores the dramatic
changes taking place in historical
understanding and archival management,
and hence the relations between
historians and archivists. Written by an
archivist and a historian, it shows how
these changes have been brought on by
new historical thinking, new conceptions
of archives, changing notions of
historical authority, modifications in
archival practices, and new information
technologies. The book takes an
"archival turn" by situating archives as
subjects rather than places of study, and
examining the increasingly problematic
relationships between historical and
archival work.
The authors contend that historians and
archivists have divided into two entirely
separate professions with distinct
conceptual frameworks, training, and
purposes, as well as different
understandings of the authorities that
govern their work. Processing the Past
moves toward bridging this divide by
speaking in one voice to these very
different audiences as well as to general
readers. The book concludes by raising
the worrisome question of what future
historical archives might be like if
historical scholars and archivists no
longer understand each other, and
indeed, whether their now different
notions of what is archival and historical
will ever again be joined.
In these pathbreaking essays, Roy
Rosenzweig charts the impact of new
media on teaching, researching,
preserving, presenting and
understanding history. Negotiating
between the "cyberenthusiasts" who
champion technological breakthroughs
and the "digital skeptics" who fear the
end of traditional humanistic scholarship,
Rosenzweig re-envisions the practices
and professional rites of academic
historians while analyzing and
advocating for the achievements of
amateur historians. While he addresses
the perils of "doing history" online,
Rosenzweig eloquently identifies the
promises of digital work, detailing
innovative strategies for powerful
searches in primary and secondary
sources, the increased opportunities for
dialogue and debate, and, most of all,
the unprecedented access afforded by
the Internet. Rosenzweig draws
attention to the opening up of the
historical record to new voices, the
availability of documents and narratives
to new audiences, and the attractions of
digital technologies for new and diverse
practitioners. Though he celebrates
digital history's democratizing
influences, Rosenzweig also argues that
the future of the past in this digital age
can only be ensured through the active
resistance to efforts by corporations to
control access and profit from the Web.
48 2011 nummer 10
