Processing the Past : Contesting Authority in History and the Archives

This lively book explores the changes taking place in history and the archives as a result of new concepts, practices, and technologies. Among other issues, it raises the question of what future historical archives will be like if scholars and archivists cannot understand each others' work.

Processing the Past explores the dramatic changes taking place in historical understanding and archival management and in the relations between historians and archivists. Written by an archivist and a historian, it shows how these changes have been brought on by new historical thinking, new conceptions of archives, changing notions of historical authority, modifications in archival practices, and new information technologies. The book situates archives as subjects rather than places of study and examines the increasingly problematic relationships between historical and archival work. The authors contend that though historians and archivists once occupied the same conceptual and methodological space, they have divided into two separate professions with distinct conceptual frameworks and understandings of the authorities that govern their work: historians now ask questions not easily answered by traditional documentation, and archivists confront the challenges of new technologies and increases in the amounts of material they process. Blouin and Rosenberg conclude by raising the question of what future historical archives might be like if historical scholars and archivists no longer understand each other.