Archives

[poliphilo]

 We have piles of old magazines at the Meeting House. Quaker Studies. Quaker this and that. The Friend. The ones I glanced at were from the 90s and Noughties- getting on for a quarter of a century old. They take up space in cupboards that could be used for other things. Yes, they constitute an archive, but who will ever consult it? We're not a community of scholars. Is there anything in them of lasting value?

Who will give them a home if we don't? 

And then I think of places I've seen in film documentaries- Christian monasteries in Ethiopia, Buddhist monasteries in the Himalaya- where they have so called libraries that are simply storerooms piled high with ancient texts- centuries old- that no-one reads , that are slowly mouldering away...

And then I think of the Dead Sea scrolls in their jars in their caves...

And then I think of the Library of Alexandria...

And then, lastly, I think of the Hall of Records that is supposedly located- guarded by technologies beyond our comprehension- under the paws of the Sphinx...

Comments

[conuly]

I wonder how hard/pricey it would be to scan that stuff and turn it into microfiche. Wouldn't that both take up less space and also last longer?

People are all about digital archives, but honestly, I have doubts about its long-term potential. Something physical, tangible, that can ultimately be seen with just a bit of curved glass, no matter what technological updates have been made in the meantime? That's more reliable in the long term. We've all seen what happened to home videos on VHS, and then home videos on DVD, and then home videos on home computers that eventually couldn't be accessed, then home videos on websites in the cloud that eventually shut down or became prohibitively expensive, but people still keep thinking that the key to eternity is less stuff.

[poliphilo]

I'd have a hard job convincing anyone- including myself- that it was worth spending money and time on preserving these archives in any other form.

Again, I don't suppose any method of preserving these things is foolproof. Those monks who shove their old books into the store cupboard they call a library may have a good a chance as any of keeping them safe.

[heleninwales]

There may already be archives of these publications, for example at Friends' House in London, or Swarthmore or even the British Library. There is no point in a Local Meeting trying to set up an archive, other than perhaps arranging the magazines in chronological order in folders. However, the best option is probably to just put them in the paper recycling.

[poliphilo]

I'm sure you're right. There are institutions that have better reason than we have- and in the case of the British Library, a duty- to preserve fugitive publications...

I hesitate to simply recycle them. There may be good stuff in there. The problem is I'd have to read my way through them all to find out- and that's something I have no intention of doing...

It's a pity the Meeting House doesn't have an attic....

[conuly]

Well, with that resolved, magazines aren't really printed to *last*. They're printed on cheap paper that disintegrates. It's okay to speed that process up a little.