New Developments in Archives – Community

Archives. How to make Archives relevant in the

Caribbean

DLIS LIBS 2703 Archival Concepts & Principles

15 November 2016
Concept of Archives
• The traditional concept of archives are records that have been
created, used and maintained in the conduct of affairs. However in
the Caribbean who or what bodies created these records? Generally
they are created by persons or entities in charge i.e by the powers
from above.
• Many sectors being excluded or misrepresented.
 Whose Archives are being preserved?

Archives in the Commonwealth Caribbean do not necessarily reflect

the totality of social, economic, and political narratives that inform the
popular or national discourse. There is some disconnect between
popular memory and the evidences of the histories espoused by those
in authority.

“Since power and the ability to create archives rested with the
island’s elite, the records naturally reflect the events they felt
were important”
*Victoria Borg O’flaherty “Overcoming anonymity: Kittians and their archives” in Bastian, Jeannette and Ben Alexander. Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory. London, 2009

.
Archives and the Colonized
• “By recognizing that the archive was an inherent part of the
machinery of colonialism, one becomes conscious of its limitations in
contributing to the history of the colonized in a post-colonial
community and yet it is still a source of information about them”
*Victoria Borg O’flaherty “Overcoming anonymity: Kittians and their archives” In “Community
Archives: the shaping of memory” ed by Jeannette Bastian and Ben Allexander, London, 2009

*The Archivist of St Kitts and Nevis and one of the region’s prominent archivists
 St Kitts and their Archives
• “Many natives of St Kitts have claimed that they do not care about the
past because there is nothing in it that is worth remembering. The
complexities of the relationship of post-colonial societies and their
history have often had an impact on the way archives are viewed.
Kittitian researchers approach them with a sense of awe, that
something so old has survived while others call them ‘white people
archives’ and refuse to use them”.
• “The statement is a rejection of the archives of the colonizer and a
yearning or what is not there – an archive of the colonized”

• “For the Kittitian community …the gossip of village life gives rise to a history that is
immediate, accessible and appealing to a people whose roots had been severed and who
were governed by an alien elite”
 Memory & Oral History
• “In any community, collective memory is supported through a mosaic
of different forms, but this is particularly the case for societies that
encountered literacy and written records within the fairly recent past.
Throughout the Pacific islands, the sliver of community memory and
evidence constituted by written records preserved in local archival
institutions is exceptionally slender. It represents a few tattered
strands in a finely woven mat of sources for sources of interpretation
of communities’ histories and identities, their rights and entitlements.
These strands are interwoven with stories, songs, dances, myths, and
traditions passed through generations by word of mouth”. A.
Cunningham and E. Wareham, ‘Introduction: Communities of Memory: Ideas from the
Islands on Refiguring Archival Identities’, Comma: International Journal on Archives, Vol.1
2011, pp. 1-3.
Culture and Memory
• “Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories... It is
always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth.
Cultural identities are the points of identification, the unstable points
of identification or suture, which are made, within the discourse of
history and culture”.

• S. Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, http://www.lwbooks.co.uk-readingroom-public-

identityDiaspora.pdf? Accessed 11/3/2008. pp.225, 226.
Memory and Archives
• The concept of Memory challenges for archivists
• The traditional concept of archives espouses the view that the most
important and significant personalities, events, transactions, and
activities are kept as the official memory of the person, organisation
or society. One can easily assume that the holdings of the archives
fully represent what a society, individual or organisation, values and
considers its corporate memory.
• However, there will be individuals, entities and communities that are
marginalised by the very records appraised as archival. The official
repository is therefore not the exclusive purveyor of societal memory
Archives and Memory

• What are archives but recorded memory??

• Historical narratives are based on memory. Memory is a key

component for the development of a community’s social, cultural and
political self
• However what happens to memories not recorded?
• What a society remembers becomes part of the definitions or socio-
cultural markers for that group of persons.
 Community Archives

• Community archives are the records that are amassed by a specific

community that it considers of value and interest, first and foremost, to
themselves.
• Community archives, therefore, are the ‘archives from below’, seeking to
re-present those that are excluded, i.e. the minorities, the marginalised of
society, from the official records.
• David Mander defines community archives as ‘collections that encapsulate
a particular community’s understanding of its history and identity. This will
often be personal photographs, documents, ephemera and oral history,
“unofficial” records that might not normally be preserved, let alone widely
available. D. Mander, ‘Special, Local and About Us: The Development of Community Archives in
Britain’, in J. Bastian and B. Alexander (eds.), Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory, London,
2009, p.32.
 Community Archives
• Community archives, as a concept and practice, challenges the
normative values and constructs of archives as a profession and
practice. The elitism of archives, as a place approved by the
societal/institutional powers, accepting records that meet the
appraisal criteria, collection mandate and reflecting the course of the
official narrative is exposed for inadequacies within its holdings.

• , Community archives are the opposite of this official place and space.
They seek to include those that have been marginalised by the
exclusiveness of the archival process and the archival narrative
 Community Archives
• The hallmark of community archives is not only their pursuit and
creation of records, but more importantly, their desire to keep and
maintain these records within their communal space and structure.
This modus operandi challenged the perceived elitism of the
institutional repository, by avoiding any conflicts with regards to
collecting policies and mandates
 Community Archives
• Community archives within the Caribbean will be a useful means of
acknowledging communities that have been marginalized by
colonialism, cultural elitism, socio-religious discrimination and racism,
among other things. Other non-traditional forms of records, which
are of significance to their communities, will be validated.
 Non traditional archives
• The hallmark of community archives is not only their pursuit and
creation of records, but more importantly, their desire to keep and
maintain these records within their communal space and structure.
This modus operandi challenged the perceived elitism of the
institutional repository, by avoiding any conflicts with regards to
collecting policies and mandates
Non traditional archives
• Bastian contends:
• Events such as performances, parades, celebrations, and
commemorations, while generally recognised as expressions of
cultural values may require a considerable stretch of archival
boundaries in order to be thought of as archival evidence or even as
records themselves... Each of these societal events generally do not
occur in isolation, but rather form components of a complex matrix, a
web of multilayered interconnected formats—visual, oral and
textual—that together comprise a self-contained archive of cultural
expression”
Non traditional archives
• By recognising the enduring value of these ‘living archives’, i.e.
privileging the oral traditions, the performances, the material cultural
expressions, as complementary to the written word, is to broaden the
relevance of archives to the community and its breadth of information
on the community’s heritage.
• J. Bastian, ‘Play Mas’: Carnival in the Archives and the Archives in Carnival:
Records and Community Identity in the US Virgin Islands’, A. S. Vol. 9, 2009,
pp.114-115.
Excerpts from Dr Griffin’s unpublished thesis

‘RIGHTING OUR RECORDS’: CHRONICLING THE EXPERIENCE OF

A JAMAICAN COMMUNITY AND ITS ‘ARCHIVES’
Stanley H. Griffin, BA (Hons), PhD
Dissertation submitted as part requirement for the MSc in Archives and Records
Management International
 Excerpts from Dr Griffin’s unpublished thesis
• This dissertation has two objectives.

• First, it seeks to interrogate the concept and constructs of

community archives.
• Secondly, it endeavours to locate the concept within a Caribbean
context, specifically Jamaica, and provide evidence of the need for,
and viability of, community archives within the Caribbean space
Excerpts from Dr Griffin’s unpublished thesis
• “Current archival records are a minuscule representation of the aggregate
Caribbean narrative, experience, and documentary heritage. The redefined
archival records must reflect contemporary hegemony and minority. These
are not necessarily paper records that should speak about Caribbean
cultural articulations. Moreover, the possible records of enduring value
could be manuscripts of novelists, winning costume sketches and textile
replicas and recordings of musical performances of the Carnival, or even
digital soundtracks of folk and popular music. The designation of an
archival record should no longer be restricted to the government
document. The community archives model is perfect to allow the organic
emergence of these various proposed types and formats of Caribbean
records, which in fact are the articulated works of the society’s identity/ies.
Excerpts from Dr Griffin’s unpublished thesis
• “The community archives concept will literally take the archival
profession out of the corridors of the powerful and into the streets
and lives of the ordinary folk. If persons can see that they have
materials that are unique, irreplaceable, and of enduring value to
their community, and that it is possible to preserve, maintain and use
such records”
• “The community archives model will broaden the reach of the archival
profession, by diversifying its record formats, widening the network of
archival repositories, promoting greater informational details on
Caribbean society and—in so doing decolonize the concept of archives
in the Caribbean”.
Excerpts from Dr Griffin’s unpublished thesis
• “The community archives model will broaden the reach of the archival
profession, by diversifying its record formats, widening the network of
archival repositories, promoting greater informational details on
Caribbean society and—in so doing decolonize the concept of archives
in the Caribbean”

• “A community can create archives by their own efforts and

introspection that will voice their history, authenticate their cultural
self, and pursue the social justice and equality.”