Meeting 6 of 2021 was held on 6 October, 2pm AEDT. It was chaired by Elliot.
We read Richard Dunley and Jo Pugh, 2021, Do Archive Catalogues Make History? Exploring Interactions between Historians and Archives, Twentieth Century British History, https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwab021
We discussed:
- That it was good to see a collaboration between a historian and an archivist to undertake this work
- That it was good to see some data to back up the usage that we may suspect
- The persistence of inequalities and biases within archives and systems because of politics, funding, grants, donors (etc)
- Is what we do 'cataloguing'? Can archives be contained in a cataloguing sense?
- The ongoing tension between making material available vs ongoing resourcing and description needs
- The shifts in meaning over time that occur in archives which may mean ongoing description, rather than cataloguing, is needed
- Where do finding aids fit in with catalogues?