Abstract
Archives and “the archives” are culturally-specific places and materials. In the same way, both individual archivists and users of archives are situated in specific, often different, contexts of culture and identity. Archives are also spaces where researchers encounter sources for creating history. Thus, as both archival professionals and users of archival material, the meanings we construct for ourselves through understanding our past can be thought of as being constantly generated in the ever-changing spaces within and across archival sources, where individual donors, archivists, and researchers, archival professional standards, daily practical needs, and repositories’ organizational missions interact and interrelate. Because each source, each archivist, each donor, and each researcher are unique individuals with specific cultural and subject identities and positions, it is through these relationships and in these spaces that archivists’ actions have an impact on the selection, description, and research use of historical sources.
| Original language | American English |
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| State | Published - Oct 3 2015 |