I have been thinking about both our class readings and our brief discussion of appraisal in class yesterday. Who should be responsible for appraising collections? The archivist is the natural answer, and even after some thought, I tend to return to my first instinct. Archivists have deep knowledge of the collecting strengths of their institution, as well as an awareness of the resources available to appraise a given collection. In addition, we hope that archivists behave ethically- with a deliberate consideration of the responsibilities that archivists have to their institutions, donors, collections, and users.
However, I also think often of Michel Trouillot’s Silencing the Past, his book about the Haitian Revolution’s absence from history and the process of the production of historical narratives. Trouillot does not rest blame for silences on any one institution, and instead takes a broad view of history and memory, but he does examine critically the way that archival silences compound over time. One of the four crucial moments where silences enter history is the “moment of fact assembly (the making of archives)” (Trouillot, 26). One of the reasons the Haitian Revolution was silenced was that the events stretched beyond the comprehension of French archivists, who could not and did not record such events.
There are a number of reasons archivists today do not behave like nineteenth century archivists. The profession has a responsibility to collect the materials of marginalized groups, and archivists take that responsibility seriously. Furthermore, users want information about these sorts of events, which further encourages collecting. The professional standards and deep sense of care archivists bring to the collecting institutions they work for help to encourage collecting archives of organizations and individuals working for marginalized groups. But I think the Haitian Revolution’s example provides an example of the ways that archives can produce silences with collecting and appraising.