An interesting question was posed in the reading and in class, who controls the past? I have to side with the archivists here. When it comes to the collections and materials they are working with, they have to be allowed to decide what happens with these materials. For example, if they decided to get rid of redundant copies of something they already have that came in the collection. Archivists have the training, the knowledge of what their collection already has, and the scope of their institution’s collecting policy. That being said, archivists having control of the past has been problematic in some ways, but I still stand by my thoughts that if they are collecting ethically and doing their best to proactively find potential untold stories, especially from marginalized groups they are doing the best they can.
The archivist makes decisions throughout the process. What to take, what to keep, and what to get rid of. Collection development has been a problem, as there are absences in the archives such as people of color or women in certain time periods. One of the first books I read when I started graduate school was, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaves Women, Violence, and the Archive by Marisa Fuentes. Fuentes tells the stories of enslaved women by reading against the archive to find out information on them, finding information in sources such as escaped slave posters. We discussed in class how the archive has gaps like this with the example of learning about women and having to read through other sources to hear about them.
With this in mind, I still stand by archivists making the decision, as someone has to do it. Perhaps one day my mind will change on this. Archivists are human, they have their own biases and limitations. Hopefully, the field will continue to document ethically.