Archives and Manuscripts Post Three

This week, I began my internship in the archives of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. During the semester, I will assist in the processing of a collection that includes war correspondences between a Philadelphia father and son during World War II, as well as the previously mentioned son’s letters with his own child, serving in the Vietnam War. While I only had the chance to briefly survey the unprocessed collection, I felt like I got a sense of something beyond the military conflicts of which these letters consist and had the chance to glimpse into a family’s relationship in middle-class, Northeast Philadelphia.

I think this really speaks to the importance of provenance in the world of archiving and addresses some of the issues raised in Mary Jo Pugh’s 1982 article, “The Illusion of Omniscience: Subject Access and the Reference Archivist.” In the article, Pugh examines the differences between the ways in which libraries and archives organize their materials. In library classification, books are ultimately organized by subject matter and shelved next to other publications that deal with the examined topic. Additionally, within that section, librarians organize materials alphabetically according to the author’s last name. Thus, library patrons can access material through a variety of different routes, by subject matter, the author’s name, or even the title of the book.

To one unfamiliar with the principles of provenance and original order, such a system in its allowing for a diversification in research tactics probably seem like the most efficient way to organize material. Yet, it is important to realize what would be lost if archivists applied this system of organization to their institution’s materials. In my view, provenance not only preserves valuable research information, but people and organizations themselves. For instance, if an archivist simply organized this collection of unprocessed war correspondence into a larger collection of materials on the Vietnam War, the context and intricacies found in these letters’ relationship to other documents in the collection that help to paint a picture of a particular family would be lost. It is in these document relationships that a past organization or deceased person is preserved. Thus, while arranging materials according to subject matter, like a library, might increase the accessibility of archives to a potential researcher, this organizational style ultimately eliminates the principle of provenance that helps to preserve the past in its original form.