Archives and Manuscripts Post #6

This week, I read an article in Library Journal by Lisa Peet entitled, “ British Library Declines Taliban Archive, New Host Set Up.” The article details an attempt by three researchers to donate archival materials collected in Afghanistan between 2006 to 2011. The collection, known as the Taliban Sources Project, sounds pretty incredible. It includes transcriptions of radio interviews with Taliban members, documents describing Sharia laws, and even poetry written by Taliban soldiers. Yet, despite the obvious scholarly value of such a collection, the British Library refused to preserve the Taliban Sources Project within its holdings.

Interestingly enough, the British Library turned the collection down because of the liability of potentially aiding terrorists by giving the public access to the collection. The 2006 British Terrorism Act makes it a criminal offense to collect material that might aid in a terrorist act. Although, the collection did not contain any such material relating to the making of bombs or weapons, the British Library did not want to take the risk.

In my mind, this speaks to the conversation we had in our Archives and Manuscripts class about the politics of access and ethics in the archive. As we discussed, the collections of institutional archives are not solely decided upon by the experienced archivists who remain well aware of collections’ potential research value, but are occasionally accepted or rejected based upon the wishes of wealthy donors or bureaucratic forces. In the case of the Taliban Sources Project, the slippery language of British law remains responsible for this archival rejection, but the end result is the same. Examples like this ultimately reveal the archive as not a neutral, objective space, but one subject to the biases and hierarchies of larger society. While the Taliban Sources Project did find another archive to house its materials, this story of archival rejection remains pertinent.