Hello, Archiving Folks.
I was reflecting on some of the things you noticed during Dean McCormick's introduction to the FSU Special Collections yesterday, not only about how the Special Collections becomes what it is, but also about the constraints we will experience as we seek institutional resources for the first Problem-Solving Exercise. That called to mind one of Hunter's powerful (I think) implications about archives and manuscripts in his "Introduction" -- the implication that, in most cases, history would never be known (or understood as a "history") if someone had not deliberately curated it.
It seems integral to Hunter because he chooses to introduce us to
archives (and to differentiate them from other kinds of repositories) by
outlining a typology of manuscript collectors, which in turn assumes
that this typology is tied to questions of power, control, and
interests.
I get this impression from the text box on page 14, in which he cites a 2002 article from the Twin Cities Pioneer Press on the first time we became publicly conscious of the 1929 stock market crash. It is possible that we might not have understood it as such a "crash" had we not had access to the 1930s census data showing how home values and rent costs increased so exponentially in such a short period of time. (In fact, the more recent movie Margin Call makes a similar argument.) Hunter doesn't go so far as to say that histories are constructed, but I think there are strong implications in that direction. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that events may not readily take on historical significance in our minds until we have some way to organize them, measure them, and valuate them.
Either way, it sparked a question for me to share with you as you approach the primary documents at FSU: What characterizes "past histories" and how can we know the "past"? Who owns the "past"?
Yours in making meaning in the archives,
-Dr. Graban
