n. (also archivisation)the process of selecting records for retention in an archives and preparing them for research usePérotin 1972, 26–27It can be seen that my general program, though departing slightly from the initial directive, remained faithful to the spirit of the project, as shown by the expressions used in the preliminary discussions such as “archivization,” “render the archives workable,” and so on. ¶ In short, the aim was to arrange for the files of the League to progress from the stage of noncurrent records to that of archives, properly speaking, usable for historical research.Derrida 1996, 64As if one could not, precisely, recall and archive the very thing one represses, archive it while repressing it (because repression is an archivization), that is to say, to archives otherwise, to repress the archive while archiving the repression, otherwise, of course, and that is the whole problem, than according to the current, conscious, patent modes of archivization, otherwise, that is to say, according to the paths which have called to psychoanalytic deciphering, in truth to psychoanalysis itself.Lubar 1999, 14Indeed, the process of “archivization” makes things happen by allowing us to make sense of what is happening.Nesmith 2002, 31Archivists cannot involve themselves in these ways in the process of archivization and with the records it creates without placing both in an interpretive context, which then affects what is available and accessible as archives. And, so, as they contextualize their records and work, archivists shape what may be known from archival materials.O’Toole 2004b, 91Perseverance pays off, however, for it becomes clear that a process of ‘archivisation’ was at work across many cultures. The neologism is clumsy but apt. The means by which records came to play an increasingly central, if complex, role in human actions is evident in individual cases and in the collective view of societies such as these, societies that were making the first explorations in the uses of writing.Galloway 2006, 84It should be mentioned here that although there is extensive correspondence authored and received by Rowland in these collections, there is very little reflective writing on his archival work, either because Rowland was not particularly introspective or because his wife, Eron, who arranged his papers for archivization after his death, did not consider such writing worthy of preservation. The work here has instead a touch of the forensic in that it is drawn from his frequent public utterances, his publications, and the patterns of his activity apparent in the collections he made and the way he arranged and described them.Gilliland 2014a, 16The constructs of archivization and archivalization were not part of the traditional archival paradigm. Rather, they are critical constructs that emerged out of shifting intellectual approaches in the arts and humanities, enhancing the reflexivity of professional archival thought.
Notes
The term archivization is essentially synonymous with the term archiving, in the incompletely accepted archival sense of transferring records to an archives and storing them there. However, archivization is a more active process; the use of the term assumes that the record is changed by the process of being chosen to be archived. The concept of archivization asserts that the meaning and significance of the record changes through the process of archiving, whereas “archiving” is itself a neutral process, a mere act.
