I thought Marianne LaBatto's presentation on the Special Collections archive was fascinating, as it dovetailed nicely with some of the issues we discussed in class re: archives and the Modernist Journals Project. In particular, I was struck by the fact that the Special Collections archive functions as an organ of institutional memory for the College. The collection of print ephemera -- tickets, flyers, student literary magazines and newspapers, yearbooks, and faculty or alumni manuscripts and print drafts -- seemed to have value in that these items "pay tribute" to the history of Brooklyn College and its effect on local, regional, and even national culture. It was very telling in that regard when Marianne was asked by one of us (very astutely) why Alan Dershowitz chose to give his papers to Brooklyn College instead of Harvard: her answer, "he credits Brooklyn College for his career." So the archive seems to perform a role in furthering the institution's ideology.
As discussed in class, an archive is a site for the storage and production of knowledge, and its institutional politics will always somehow affect the knowledge produced from its holdings. Marianne's advice to do your secondary research before going to the archive for primary research was very sound indeed. However, I was struck by her statement that the archive staff does not do any interpretation for you. Their job, she says, is to collect, arrange, describe, preserve, and make available items that are precious or of "enduring value." I think that the actions of bibliographical / archival description, arrangement, and production of access mechanisms do involve some interpretation of the materials. In particular, their method of categorizing the Dershowitz papers down to the folder level involves an intimate knowledge of the material in order to schematize its organization and to produce the accompanying research guide. Also, what does it mean that a researcher will sometimes only be allowed to view a smaller selection of the items requested? As well, the fact that the archive can only keep a certain number of items of "enduring value" that requires a "certain amount of prophecy" in decision-making speaks to the amount of interpretation and institutional politics involved.
At any rate, I'm curious to know what were your thoughts on the presentation. Also, since most of our archival reading is digital, what was your experience in handling the physical artifacts? Do you have a sense of what is lost and gained in the digitization process?
