The Sokol Project: Exploring the Social Nature of Personal Archiving

Kendall, Lori

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/29986 Copy

Description

Title

The Sokol Project: Exploring the Social Nature of Personal Archiving

Author(s)

Kendall, Lori

Issue Date

2011

Keyword(s)

social nature of personal archiving, archiving. sokol project

Abstract

The relatively recent study of personal archiving has tended to come from one of two perspectives: that of archivists, whose interest has primarily been in the personal documents and manuscripts likely to end up in archives; and that of researchers focusing on intersections between people and technologies, primarily in the area of digital personal archiving. Researchers from both perspectives have tended to view peoples personal archiving practices as reflecting the individual identities of the collectors. However, personal archiving practices do not simply reflect individual personal identities, but intersect with political, social, and cultural domains of meaning. This presentation draws on an analysis of a family history document created by an elderly Midwestern woman. The documents creator combined a variety of scanned and reproduced non-digital materials (including transcripted audio from videotape, old family photos and scrapbook materials, and text from a speech initially recorded on 3x5 notecards) into an original creation that has been stored and distributed in both digital and non-digital forms. I will discuss how this document illustrates several aspects of the social nature of personal archiving, by looking at both the social contexts within which the document was created, and the social identities it both creates and reflects.

Publisher

Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Type of Resource

• text
• other
• audio

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/29986

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