Talk:Archive/Archive 1

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Archive 1

The bit about Archives in France

I think there is an excellent bit about the French archives under the Government heading, but I'm paring it down for a few of reasons. 1) it belongs under a page about the Natioanl archives in Frace specificly; 2) none of the information is sourced; and 3) this doesn't match the format of the other sections.Efkeathley 12:39, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

1) The National Archvies article talks about the National Archives, which is just one component of French archives. There are very many French archives besides the National Archives (there are the departmental archives, the city archives, the regional archives, the public hospital archives, the private archives, etc.). 2) The information is sourced, you didn't read the source obviously. Godefroy 12:58, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

are only made accessible if the content being archived is no longer accessible

Just curious: How do you make something accessible that is no longer accessible? tooold 16:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I presume it meant (it seems to be gone now) that the content is only made accessible when it is no longer accessible from the original location. The content has already been archived but it's not publicly available Nil Einne (talk) 13:10, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Electronic archiving section

I feel like this section should be redone with information from sources within the archival community, rather than someone from the New Media community. I have never heard any of those terms in my (admittedly short) career as an archivist, either in school or in practice. If no one objects, I will try to improve this section with information from the archival community. Benuski (talk) 23:22, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

The section is in my opinion entirely useless. It discusses electronic media, not archiving, and refers to a source which doesn't even mention the word "archive" and has nothing to do with archive science. I went bold and removed it altogether, since it clearly confused more than it informed.

Peter ^Isotalo 15:01, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Church Archives

I cleaned up the section on the Roman Catholic and Anglican section, as well as addding some other Protestant denominations. I will work on adding other religious archives in the coming days. Mcetzel11 (talk) 21:33, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Use of 'archive' vs 'archives'

I disagree that archivists prefer the term 'archives' to 'archive' to avoid confusion with computing uses of the term. In my experience in the field, records and archives professionals continue to use the term 'archive' in its records-keeping sense, knowing that amongst our profession we are using the term in the same way as one another. When we communicate with people outside of our profession, we keep in mind that others usually use the term in the computing sense of the word and clarify what other people really mean. From our perspective people outside of the profession are using the term incorrectly, but by knowing that this is common we are able to work around it. It doesn't mean we start using the term incorrectly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.14.52.40 (talk) 02:30, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

I see Eclecticlovelyduck has now addressed this in an edit, but I still don't really get the distinction that's being made. (I come from an archives background, but with limited knowledge of computing terminology.) Surely in both cases - physical records or electronic records - the records are being taken out of an "active" environment, in which they are treated as current and changeable, and placed in a behind-the-scenes environment, in which they are regarded as "closed" (i.e. they cannot be changed or added to), but they are still accessible to anyone interested enough to look. The other relevant factor, which should probably be mentioned in this paragraph, is the emergence of "to archive" as a verb: ten years or so ago the verb was used solely in computer contexts, and archivists would wince when they heard it applied to physical records, but I think that's probably now changed. Comments? GrindtXX (talk) 18:35, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

It is about the difference between permanent storage and temporary storage, and retention and disposal scheduels on active records. I currently work in records in a Government Department. Most of our records will be destroyed eventually, but in the meantime they get stored. Permanent archive records also get stored. When clients send records to us for storage they always say they want them 'archived', even though they are usually not archival records. As there are different procedures for the different types of records I always have to check what they mean by 'archive'. Anyone who works in Disposal will know the trouble I'm talking about. :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eclecticlovelyduck (talk • contribs) 03:44, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Archives wiki

I am developing [1] and there are likely to be some articles there that are not on WP (but which are fairly short). Contributions, and borrowings welcome.

On that wiki I note where the archive/library website is only available in languages other than English - should this be noted here? Jackiespeel (talk) 14:44, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Split this article into two: one about the institution, the other about document collections

This article (as well as the Category:Archives seem to be conflating two concepts. This is already noted in the very first sentence of the lead here: "An archive is an accumulation of historical records or the physical place they are located". Well, the "or" suggests a need for a WP:DISAMBIG. I propose that this article be either 1) split into two: archive (institution) (National Archives and Records Administration) and archive (document collection) (ex. Albert Einstein Archives) and converted into a disambig or 2) the article remains as it is (it is already essentially about the institution), the lead is adjusted to reflect this, an archive (disambiguation) and archive (document collection) is created. This may be occasionally confusing as there are some archives (institutions) which are caretekers to only a single archive (document collection), but there are also many larger archives (institutions) which contain numerous archives (document collections). We need to be clear about the difference between those two uses of the word; I think they are both individually notable and should be in different articles.

Second, if this is agreed upon, we also need to look at Category:Archives. It contains a Category:Historic document collections which could be renamed to Category:Archives (document collection), as I think this was its purpose in the first place. There are quite a few categories here that are related to the concept of archives but are neither institutions nor collections (ex. Category:Archivists, Category:Archival science). I am not sure how to keep them all under one umbrella. First, I think we need a Category:Archives (institutions), which would absorb a bunch of subcategories and articles on institutions. Second, we could consider changing the parent category to the "archival science" one, i.e. merge the content of category:archive to category:archival science. Or we could just live the category:archives as it is, but think it is a bit of a mess in its current form. Any thoughts on that? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:25, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up, Piotrus. I'm not sure the article needs to be split. It's not an especially long article, and there is surely lots of overlap between the two topics, so it makes sense to me to keep all that information in a single article. Certain archives (institution) may only contain one archive (document collection). Splitting List of archives (and sub-lists) makes more sense to me, even if there is some overlap. I can also accept the idea of splitting Category:Archives, but it seems that, with Category:Historic document collections that has already been done. I don't see the need to rename it - only three of the twelve article in the category are named "archives." In my experience, these collections are more frequently referred to as collections or fonds than archives. Incidentally, Fonds exists and oddly, doesn't seem to be linked from Archives. - Themightyquill (talk) 10:04, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

The Power of the Archive and the Limits

Maybe this article should talk more about the limits of the archives? The ways in which it only makes possible for the tangible and fails to represent trauma and pain accurately. Is there anyway this article can incorporate more post-colonial theorists and their opinions of the archive? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhytaylor (talk • contribs) 19:25, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

@Dhytaylor: Our content is based upon reliable sources so if you have sources then you can build content based on that. I'm not eager to see a sub-altern critique of archival norms and I think such coverage could be undue but we can discuss that once you have some text and citations we can examine. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:47, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

@Dhytaylor: I also wanted to dig into some of the limitations of archives and have attempted to put something together. --HS904679 (talk) 07:16, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2021 and 12 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): HS904679.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:39, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

China

Here and at Archives in China, the content is woefully incomplete, given that they've had the things since at least the Zhou dynasty. I know it's hard to get English sources for this stuff, but it badly needs expansion. — LlywelynII 04:03, 24 December 2022 (UTC)