Tuesday, 27 June 2017

Creating Dialogue Between Archivists and Historians

This week ActiveHistory.ca, a website that connects the work of historians with the wider public and the importance of the past to current events, is hosting a theme Week: Creating Dialogue Between Archivists and Historians.

In the introductory post Krista McCracken mentions" funding of LAC, records management programs."  I hope the series doesn't degenerate into archivists telling historians why they need more resources.

The first post Missed connections: looking for everything in the archives by Danielle Robichaud explains why there's a disconnect between researcher expectations and archival practice; because archival material is rarely described to the item-level. This makes it difficult for archivists to do more than point researchers to where everything about a particular topic could be.

Robichaud describes herself as a Digital Archivist so I was disappointed that her post stopped at explaining the historical rationale for the disconnect. Beyond explaining it what is being done by digital archivists to bridge the disconnect?

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