University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Guarding Against Collective Amnesia? Making Significance Problematic: An Exploration of Issues

Lloyd, Annemaree

Content Files
Lloyd561.pdf

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/3779

Description

Title
Guarding Against Collective Amnesia? Making Significance Problematic: An Exploration of Issues
Author(s)
Lloyd, Annemaree
Issue Date
2007
Keyword(s)
Appraisal
Date of Ingest
2008-03-14T16:55:50Z
Abstract
A nation’s collective consciousness relies on the traces of memory collected by institutions such as libraries, archives, and museums. Such institutions have a responsibility to preserve documents and objects that reflect individual and collective endeavors and that have had an impact on culture and society at national, regional, and local levels. Institutions need to assess documents and objects against criteria that, in effect, “name” these items as significant. Most institutions claim that this process is objective, failing to acknowledge that it is underpinned by ideological, political, economic, cultural, and social influences. The position adopted in this paper is that the process of naming a document or object as significant will always reflect the directions and consciousness of a society’s dominant groups, and that this will shape interpretations and narratives of the past. Thus the voices of a community’s minority or special interest groups will be silenced. This paper suggests that neither the concept of significance nor the process of assessing significance is benign; both should be seen as areas of tension and contestation.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Genre of Resource
Article
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/3779
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2007 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 56 (1) Summer 2007: Preserving Cultural Heritage PRIMARY
Library Trends 56 (1) Summer 2007: Preserving Cultural Heritage. Edited by Michèle V. Cloonan and Ross Harvey.