Friday, November 28, 2014

Archives: Thinking About the Future

With the end of archives class approaching faster, our readings have taken a turn to the future. As an avid science fiction fan, I love contemplating the future. My historian side is equally interested in how past people did the same thing. Perusing Archives in the News I was delighted with the article “100 Year Old Time Capsule Opened In Oklahoma City.”

This particular time capsule contained a variety of documents and artifacts, not different from the types of things that museums and archives collect. Judging from the images the time capsule did a decent job protecting the material, probably due to being buried under concrete in a church basement and not in the great outdoors.

Though access is by far the most important purpose of archives, there is some truth, and a good deal of romance, to archivists needing to speculate about what people of the future will need.    One of the concerns with digital technologies in archives is the limited lifespan of different formats. In 1913, The Ladies Aid Society was aware enough of changing technologies to include an Edison Phonograph in the capsule with their recordings.


Most documents in archives were not created with the future in mind. Nor are most documents in archives meant for specific individuals, as are the letters from the time capsule. Archives continuously re-interpret their collections for researchers in the present. Sometimes archives users imagine that they are in a time capsule when the actuality is that the material they are researching have gone though many hands. A feeling of discovery and nostalgia are inherent in time capsules, but the research value of their contents is limited. Regardless, for archives thinking about how the field will develop, time capsules represent moments when people in the past thought about, and tried to develop solutions to the same thing.

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