 |
"Dear Mary Jane": Some Reflections on Being an Archivist
by JOHN A. FLECKNER, Smithsonian Institution
45th president of Society of American Archivists
The following presidential address was delivered on August 30, 1990, during
SAA's 54th annual meeting in Seattle. F. Gerald Ham, retired state archivist
at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, introduced Fleckner on that
occasion with these words:
In early 1971 a gangly graduate student—wearing a locomotive engineer's
cap—came into my office. He inquired if there was a future in archives
for a budding historian with a growing family to feed. He soon took over
directing the thirteen-member archival network affiliated with the State
Historical Society of Wisconsin and, with the help of others, made the Area
Research Center system a national model. After twelve years at Wisconsin,
in 1983 John became the first director of the newly formed archival program
at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. He
has held that position to the present.
Among John's most significant contributions to our profession are his role
in fostering cooperation, in helping other archives help themselves, and
in promoting the notion that wider use of archives by a broader clientele
is good for the health of a democratic society. His 1976 article on "Cooperation
as an Archival Strategy" helped define and broaden the concept of interinstitutional
collaboration. A few years later he organized a conference on archival networks
and edited the resulting 1982 special "archival networks" issue of the Midwestern
Archivist, which has become a standard reference.
While in Wisconsin, John had worked with several groups of Native Americans
to develop their own archives. This work was the seedbed for the SAA manual, Tribal
Archives: An Introduction, for which he received the Waldo G. Leland Prize
in 1985. Earlier he had published another manual, Archives and Manuscripts:
Surveys.
His role in promoting wider use is best evidenced by his work as one of
the original members of the Task Force on Goals and Priorities. In the report, Planning
for the Profession, his guiding hand is seen throughout the chapter on
promoting wider use. John went on to chair the Committee on Goals and Priorities.
The real roots to John's contributions to our profession lie in his deep
and abiding interest and concern for others-extending to his colleagues in
the workplace, to the broader profession, and to all others because of their
human dignity and equality.
This address is written in the form of three letters to a recent college graduate
who spent nearly a year as a volunteer and intern in the Archives Center of
the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. For Mary
Jane Appel the year was an opportunity to experience archival work firsthand
and to consider her future before entering graduate school. For me, our conversations
were an occasion to recollect and reflect on my own career choices and on the
archival mission.
Dear Mary Jane:
You asked me how I became an archivist. Really, it was elegantly uncomplicated.
After too many years in graduate school, pursuing a vague notion of teaching
college-level history, I recognized that university jobs weren't to be found,
even if I somehow managed to complete a dissertation. I recognized too that
moving office furniture-my latest in a string of minimum-wage jobs-helped to
feed my small family and to nurture my identification with the proletariat,
but starved my mind and spirit.
Still, I was so naive that it took a University career counselor to recognize
that my history background might be anything other than an economic liability.
Leaning back in her chair, she pointed out her office window to the State Historical
Society of Wisconsin just across the street, and she directed me to a recently
established graduate program in archives administration. The instructor-yes,
it was Gerry Ham-would make no promises about the prospects for a job, but
with a sly smile he offered that all his previous students were working. I
didn't need a weatherman-as they said in those days, the early 1970's-to tell
me which way the wind was blowing.
So, it was an accident in good guidance that got me in the door. But it was
the experience of doing archival work-beginning with the simplest class exercises
and then a formal internship-that sealed it for me. I loved the combination
of handicraft and analytical work and I loved the intense, intimate contact
with the "stuff" of history. Before I completed my internship, I knew I wanted
to be an archivist. I never considered the long-term prospects, the career
ladders, or the alternatives. No, I didn't visualize my future at all.
As a graduate student, of course I had done some research in archives-at the
Library of Congress, the College of William and Mary, and especially the State
Historical Society. But the archivists had taken all the fun out of it-the
materials were antiseptically foldered, boxed, and listed. Wheeled out on carts,
they were like cadavers to be dissected by first-year medical students. On
occasion, perhaps, I even donned white gloves. The documents always seemed
lifeless.
Now, as a would-be archivist, they thrilled me. Of course, now I was in charge
of these would-be archives. I would evaluate their significance, determine
their order, describe their contents, and physically prepare them for their
permanent resting places. Still, it was not so much this heady feeling of control
that awed me but more the mystery, the possibilities of the records themselves.
Unlike the research forays of my graduate student days, I now came to the records
without preconceived questions and I didn't judge them solely by the contributions
to my puny research interests. Now I didn't have to ignore those portions that
fell outside my research design. No, the records could speak to me in whatever
voices my curious ears could hear, with whatever messages I could understand.
I recall my first collection as an intern, the first I would take charge of
from beginning to end-is it possible I still remember this more than twenty
years later, like a first date? It was the records of a local settlement house.
The building itself had been razed, a casualty of 1960's urban renewal. I knew
nothing of the settlement house, although I lived nearby and could still see
remnants of the Italian-American neighborhood it once served. Of the collection
I especially remember the photographs, some of them taken for a neighborhood
garden contest. Old men in undershirts and women in house dresses, amidst great
clusters of tomato vines, stared out at me from four decades before. And the
minutes and reports, dutifully prepared by the students and imitators of Jane
Addams, with their predictable WASP views, recorded a world they had come to
make over and which now, only a few decades later, had vanished.
It was my job, I knew, to be imaginative in listening to these records. My
judgments would be critical to building paths to them for generations of researchers,
across the entire spectrum of topics, and into unknown future time. Pretty
heady stuff for someone who had devoted much of his-admittedly quite brief-adult
life to writing term papers for required courses. (Years later I still was
crushed to learn that despite my best efforts and great enthusiasm the collection
had to be entirely reprocessed-a learning experience for both intern and supervisor.)
The archival enterprise held another attractive feature for me. For all the
opportunity to reconstruct the past captured in these documents and to imagine
the future research they might support, I had a well-defined task to accomplish,
a product to produce, techniques and methods for proceeding, and standards
against which my work would be judged. There was rigor and discipline; this
was real work. And, as good fortune would have it, I soon was getting paid
to do it.
Well, Mary Jane, this has gone on perhaps too long but your questions brought
back a rush of recollections.
Sincerely,
John
Dear Mary Jane:
Your question about the satisfactions of being an archivist gives me some
pause. Like most folks, I suppose, I go off to my job each morning with little
thought to what it is that sustains my enthusiasm, in this case for some twenty
years. Perhaps these reflections will convey to you, and even reveal to me,
something of what being an archivist means.
Some background. My father and my grandfather were, among other things, craftsmen,
skilled machinists. Whether for lack of aptitude or-I suspect-in quiet rebellion,
I turned away from industry to more academic interests. But who knows better
than archivists that our pasts-personal and communal-are never left entirely
behind. And how fitting, then, that today my mastery of the craft of "doing
archives" should be so important to my sense of personal and professional identity.
I didn't become a skilled archivist overnight, of course. After an introductory
class and an internship, I served, in effect, an extended apprenticeship (although
we never called it that and only now do I recognize what it really was). Senior
colleagues, whose critical attention to my work was never clouded by or warm
personal relationships, honed my skills. In those ancient days, before word
processing, I rewrote and retyped finding aids, memoranda, and reports until
I met their high standards. I accompanied my colleagues to courthouses, university
campuses, attics, and basements. And they stood over my shoulder as I analyzed
records, proposed processing plans, and replied to reference inquiries. In
a spirit of personal generosity and professional pride, they passed on to me
their craft and their wisdom. I wish I had been as grateful then as I am now.
I began to understand the payoff for all this attention when I ventured out
on my own. The Crawford County courthouse in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, stands
out in memory. My task was to survey a great jumble of nineteenth-century court
records-some of them among the oldest in the state. Stored in a damp basement,
the records were adjacent to the prison cell in which the Winnebago Indian
leader Red Bird had died in 1828. A single naked light bulb revealed the iron
manacles still hanging from the walls of the tiny rooms. It was an eerie place
and a true archival challenge. But I mustered my archival knowledge and trusted
my budding archival instincts, and I succeeded in making sense of the records,
producing an intelligible survey report, and thereby initiating a long process
that eventually saved some of these treasures.
Since then I have exercised, and expanded, my archival skills in many locations-although
very few have been as exotic and unpleasant as the Crawford County courthouse
basement. And, on many of these occasions, I have been taken aback by the awe
that the ordinary practice of archival techniques can inspire in nonarchivists.
Part science, part art, and-when done properly-part showmanship, our ability
to quickly understand and evaluate the record-especially when it is old, large,
or complex-is a unique facet of our craft. So too is our ability to satisfy
research inquiries by applying our complex understandings of how and why the
historical record is created. Perhaps in modesty, or perhaps because we devalue
the everyday and familiar, we fail too often to appreciate our unique archival
skills and capabilities.
Most often, of course, my exercise of archival mastery has no audience. I
smile only to myself at how quickly I recognize a pattern of arrangement in
a complex body of papers and how I determine the correct provenance of a misplaced
file. No one else will fully appreciate the concise accuracy of my well-constructed
scope note. And, like a surgeon, I do bury my mistakes: the unidentified negatives,
left behind for disposal and only later fully appreciated; the series misinterpreted
and scheduled for destruction. Successful archivists relish their unseen accomplishments
and learn from them; they don't brood over their mistakes, seen or unseen.
Mary Jane, you've noticed that these days precious little of my time is spent
appraising, arranging, or describing archives. Is it nostalgia for "real" archival
work that sustains me now, you might ask (if you were less discreet)? Well,
as manager and administrator, much of the satisfaction is secondhand. The funding
proposal I help to write and to massage through the bureaucracy enables David-with
temporary staff-to turn an embarrassing backlog problem into an important research
resource. With my advice and assistance Barbara scrounges time from our in-house
editor and designer, coordinates staff review of her narrative text, selects
illustrations, and the Archives Center finally has a brochure announcing its
program and services. Fath and I pore over a potential donation, as she reflects
on its appropriateness to our collection. A consensus emerges and she carries
through with the acquisition.
Often, my role in all this is only to facilitate the work of others: clearing
roadblocks in "the system," recognizing and encouraging good work, coordinating
efforts. At other times I represent the Archives Center and its fifteen staff
members in the complex and unending rituals of budget and policy planning that
are the soul of the modern bureaucracy. And, at appropriate moments, I lead-most
often, I hope, by example; least often by direct command. My leadership-once
again, I hope-sets larger goals and standards and motivates and facilitates
my colleagues' efforts.
Some days it doesn't work so well. We have our crises of confidence and our
fallings out. Yet, in the long run I know it does work. We have created a viable
archival program. Historical records are preserved and used. We have the support
of our colleagues (and the respect of our competitors).
The individual efforts of dozens of people combine to achieve our goals. It
is a different satisfaction from the exercise of my individual professional
skills to achieve mastery. I like them both.
Sincerely,
John
Dear Mary Jane,
As I reread my letter to you about the pleasures of mastering archival practice,
I realize it neglects a critical source of the satisfactions I find in my archival
career. As a professional archivist, I have joined a community of colleagues
who share not just a common occupation but a common set of values and commitments.
We join in this profession in mutual self-interest and in the pursuit of larger
public interests that we espouse.
This notion of "profession" is much debated these days and much abused in
the public parlance. After all, what do we make of "professional" wrestling
except that it is done in public for large amounts of money? Well, we archivists
rarely qualify on either score, but we do have many of the other manifestations:
a journal long on footnotes and short on photographs; annual conventions where
we stay up too late (or at least we did when we were younger), and an esoteric
jargon requiring a regularly revised glossary. More seriously, we do share
a body of common knowledge, practices, and standards for our work. Indeed,
much of our expanding professional literature, our educational endeavor, our
certification program, and our committee work is devoted to these matters.
But the notion of a "profession" also harkens back to a more old-fashioned
idea: the idea that as "professionals" we have something to "profess," something
more than devotion to the latest techniques. And further, that in this act
of "professing" we tie our own self-interest to the well-being of the larger
society so that our "profession" is not merely that of a self-interested clique,
but instead, a legitimate claim on behalf of the greater public interest.
Well, Mary Jane, you might ask what, then, do I profess as an archivist? Most
simply put: that what we archivists do is essential to the well-being of an
enlightened and democratic society. No, not every step or each day is so vital,
but the sum of all our efforts makes a critical difference. Of course, like
all grand and abstract claims, this one is at once self-evident and layered
with complex meanings. In my two decades in the profession, I have begun to
discover something of its essential truth for me.
The archival record-and here I mean the total of what we look after as well
as the underlying principles of records keeping-is a bastion of a just society.
In a just society, individual rights are not time-bound and past injustices
are reversible. Thus the archival record has sustained the claims of Native
American peoples to lands and liberties once unjustly denied them. And the
archival record will help to secure justice for the victims of government actions
forty years ago downwind from the Hanford, Washington, nuclear installation.
On a larger scale-beyond the rights of individuals-the archival record serves
all citizens as a check against a tyrannical government. We need look no further
than the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals to see that without the documentary
record there could have been no calling to account, no investigation, no prosecution.
And that record-the tapes, the documents, and all the rest-stands as witness
in the future to those who would forget or rewrite that past.
The absence of outright scandal and of irreversible injustice is no guarantee
of an enlightened and democratic society. The archival record assures our rights-as
individuals and collectively-to our ownership of our history. As archivists
who maintain the integrity of the historical record, we guard our collective
past from becoming the mere creation of "official" history. Fortunately, today
there is little threat to us from a centralized Orwellian tyranny. Yet the
continuing struggles of individuals and groups neglected or maligned by the
dominant culture remind us that central governments are not the only oppressors.
African Americans, Native Americans, and others are now recreating from the
surviving historical record a sense of their historical peoplehood too frequently
denied to them in the past. And they are struggling also to assure that the
historical record in the future does greater justice to the richness and truths
of their pasts.
The history of the United States is uniquely one in which we-as individuals,
as ethnic groups, as localities, as generations-continually reinvent ourselves
and then, like Huck Finn, light out for new territory. All this places a special
burden on the American archivist. Our society values the present and the future
above all. And yet, from time to time, we turn back, almost in panic or desperation,
to rediscover and rethink where we have come from. Today, for example, we ask
how the nation fared in a previous era of massive immigration and how we brought
the natural environment to its current precarious state. If we are successful
as archivists, the historical record will speak for this past in a full and
truthful voice. And, as a society, we will be wiser for understanding who and
where we have been.
As I write these words, I am struck-as always-by the magnitude of our profession's
ambitions and responsibilities in contrast to our minuscule numbers. And then
I recall-as I usually do-that it is precisely the breadth of our professional
values that ties us to a wider community of professions, institutions, and
individuals. Our allies are all those who struggle to understand and protect
the past for the benefit of the future. We are, from this enlarged perspective,
truly the partners of librarians, museum professionals, folklorists, archaeologists,
and all the others who preserve the cultural record in its material form. We
are the colleagues of political leaders and scholars, of jurists and journalists,
of architects and artists who would be faithful to the integrity of the past
in their interpretation of it.
Well then, this is my joy in doing archives. To be, at once, a master practitioner-with
esoteric knowledge and uncommon skills-and a participant in the most profoundly
and universally human of undertakings: to understand and preserve the past
on behalf of the future.
Mary Jane, I would like to tell you much more about my profession: about the
sense of shared commitment to the archival mission; about the spirit of generosity
and collegiality; about the lifelong friendships. I would tell you, too, about
the Society of American Archivists which embodies so much of the profession
and through which we have accomplished so much on its behalf. And, lastly,
I would tell you of my hopes for the profession: that we will overcome centrifugal
forces and embrace all who care for the historical record in all its forms;
that we will articulate the public interest in preservation of the record;
and that we will increase public understanding and support for our essential
mission.
I would like to tell you all this, but perhaps better, I invite you to join
me in this profession, to share in our commitments, and to discover for yourself
the larger (and smaller) meanings in what we do.
If this is your calling, I assure you lifelong challenges, a sense of community
through participation, good friends, and more that a few good times. Let me
know; I expect to follow this path for a good while longer. I hope you will
come and walk with us.
Sincerely,
John
|
|
