n. (also personal archive)a set of documents in any format that provides evidence of an individual’s activitiesBorn 1963a, 407A special article by the Soviet archival theoretician G. A. Kniazev, senior archivist and chief of the archives of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, on the methods used in organizing a personal archive (Kak organizovaf lichnyi podsobnyi arkkiv), p. 87-90. The records are filed chronologically in groups based on the activities of the creator.Rice 1974, 79Nor do the papers at Gainesville constitute the complete papers of the vicomte. . . . The papers calendared are primarily concerned with this later episode in his career and thus represent only a fragment of his personal archive.Plavchan 1982, 344The purpose of the week-long celebration was to heighten awareness principally among the campus community of the Canadian Mennonite Bible College, where the center was established in 1978. The celebration included special displays (sculptures, paintings, photographs, writings, and a personal archives collection) for the week.Wallace 1993b, 798, fn. 5When portions of Valentine Grombach’s personal archives recently became public, Simpson was able to trace Dollman’s postwar activities.Waters and Nagelhout 1995, 75Poor discipline among civil servants (i.e., civil servants were negligent when it came to storing original documents, or they created personal archives, thus rendering central records collections incomplete and unreliable).Nesmith 2002, 30Jacques Derrida, some of whose ideas on this subject I have just tried to paraphrase, maintains that this entire personal, social, institutional, and technological communications process is, in effect, an archiving process, or what he calls “archivization.” Derrida explores this in relation to Freud’s life and legacy in Archive Fever. He notes the powerful force of archival concerns and actions. This “archive fever” can be seen in: Freud’s father’s intense desire to pass on his Jewish heritage or ‘archive’ to his son; in Freud’s ‘archiving’ purpose in psychoanalysis, which can itself be seen as a technique to reach back into long repressed unconscious memories for the ultimate origin in the ‘personal archive’ of mental illness; in Freud’s and his family’s and followers’ strong will to perpetuate the true archive of his psychoanalytic discoveries; and in the passion of historian Yosef Yerushalmi to enter the conventional Freud archives of documents to understand thoroughly the origins and meaning of Freud’s work in relation to Jewish history and indeed to shape its meaning and legacy by pressing beyond its constraints in a fictional interview with the dead master.Paradigm 2007, 1Personal archives illuminate the history inscribed in official records; developing the capacity to collect, preserve and provide long-term access to such materials is critical if institutions, such as academic research libraries, are to continue fulfilling their roles as humanity’s remembrancers.Thomas 2007, 1Personal archives are an important part of our cultural memory, but inexperience in curating their born-digital counterparts puts the survival of today’s personal histories at risk.Thomas 2007, 9Personal archives provide a personalised lens through which researchers can view the subject of their inquiry; such personal perspectives are often easily translated to wider society. Personal archives of significant individuals, such as politicians, writers and scientists have long formed a valuable part of the holdings of research libraries like the Bodleian and the Rylands.Cook 2011a, 624Not surprisingly, most focused on government, public, or corporate records and their orderly transfer to archival repositories to preserve their original order and classification; and most relegated private and personal archives to the purview of libraries and librarians. Indeed, to this day, national archives in Europe generally look after only the official records of their sponsoring governments; national or regional or university libraries (or state historical societies, regional and local archives, or special documentation institutes) take custody of personal manuscripts.Chen 2014, 134Archivists’ endeavours to educate the digital public can thus be productively balanced with their own education, provided by creators, not only about the ways in which their records have been generated, used, and maintained, but also about the ways in which any emotional relationships to their data have developed and the extent to which these relationships continue to influence the state of their personal archives.Redwine 2015, 2People keep personal archives for reasons that may be simultaneously sentimental, practical, and even accidental.Douglas 2016, 51, fn. 9I studied writers’ archives as a subset of the broader category of personal archives. Writers’ archives provide a good starting point for the study of personal archives; they are ubiquitous in libraries and archives and are frequently discussed in academic literature and popular news and magazines.Alon 2027, 41Personal archives are rarely built only for the present moment. People imagine a later version of themselves looking back through photos, messages and documents, and they make choices that will shape what that future self will see.Alon 2027, 64This emotional bond between people and their personal archives becomes especially visible during moments of change, when information helps to bridge past and present.
Notes
The difference between personal papers and personal archives or personal archive seems to be one of usage by community. Archivists are the primary users of the term personal papers while nonarchivists use personal archives or personal archive to refer to the same concept.
