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Re: Question about historiography in the archives



Martin:

The question you ask may go into an area that an archivist probably should not
go.  If you mean by "validity," the historical truth or reliability of the papers
or documents, then that is the job of the historian to ascertain, and other
historians to determine whether that historian did indeed ascertain the
"validity" of the source. The archivist is obligated to make the materials
available, but it is not the achivist's job to make overt judgements on their
reliability. Note the use of the word "overt." The archivist can help the
historian with a careful description, such as: "Mr. Smith wrote these unpublished
memoirs when he was well into his retirement years, from 1975 to his death in
1985. They contain his memories of his literary friends on the Left Bank of
Paris, notably Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, when he visited Paris for two
years following his graduation from Harvard in 1923."

Whether those letters contain historical truths about Ernest Hemingway or
Gertrude Stein, that is for the historian to determine. The archivist can assist
the historian by accurately describing the circumstances of  how the documents
were created, but the archivist makes no overt judgement about the content. The
historian can surely determine from the description provided by the archivist
that given what happens to memory over a long period of time he is dealing with a
source that he has to evaluate judiciously.

For the archivist to make a judgement on the validity of the historical
truthfulness of the letters, he or she would have had to be required to do his or
her own historical research, read what others had to say bout Ernest Hemingway
and Gertrude Stein in Paris in the 1920s, and be familiar with other archival
personal papers of various participants, before he or she can properly understand
and evaluate the letters in the collection.

If archivists want to do historical research for a paper or book they certainly
can. It is done all the time. Maynard Brichford, the former archivist at
University of Illiinois, has done quite a few history presentations based on his
access to the Avery Brundage papers.

I Martin is talking about the "validity" of whether or not the letters are
genuine or not, then indeed if the archivist has some evidence that the letters
might not be genuine, then I imagine they should be labeled as suspect. But I am
not that familiar with archivist literature to properly advise you how to deal
with suspect documents.

Martin Firestein wrote:

> Dear members of the listserv:
>
> A while ago I had a nice conversation with one of my close friends, who
> happens to be an avid historian, and during our talk we got into a discussion
> of the various steps and procedures a researcher like himself needs to take
> in order to determine the validity of the primary source documents he uses
> during his investigations.
>
> Talking to this friend about historiography got me to think back to the
> articles I've read in the archival field during my postgraduate education in
> library school.  I've come across an enormous number of articles claiming
> that historiography is a part of the work that archivists do, however,
> virtually all of the literature I've read refers to the use of historiography
> in the rather limited sense of determining a records evidential or
> informational values, and not really examining the validity of the
> information on it.
>
> In fact, I have yet to see an article, book, or pamphlet that has anything to
> do with archivists determining if a document is valid or not and how they go
> about the task.  So my question to the members of this listserv is: do
> archivists have set procedures for determining the validity of a document or
> a set of documents that comes into their repository?  Do they simply follow
> the procedures of the historian, who uses the materials in the archives for
> their research?  Do they skip this step entirely and assume the documents
> they receive are reliable?
>
> I am very interested in learning more about this topic, and I hope that the
> answers I get will help make me a better archivist.  I thank everyone in
> advance for any answers I receive.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Martin Firestein
>
>

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