Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33

DOI 10.1007/s10502-011-9142-5

ORIGINAL PAPER

Cultivating archives: meanings and identities

Eric Ketelaar

Published online: 22 June 2011

 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract By cultivating archives through successive activations, people and

communities define their identities. In these activations, the meanings of archives
are constructed and reconstructed. Archives are not a static artifact imbued with the
record creator’s voice alone, but a dynamic process involving an infinite number of
stakeholders over time and space. Thus, archives are never closed, but open into the
future. Furthermore, digital archives are always in a state of becoming, being cre-
ated and recreated by technologies of migration and reconstruction.

Keywords Archives
Meaning making
Identities

In his classic article, James O’Toole explored the symbolic nature of archival
documents (O’Toole 1993). His primary question was ‘‘When does the true
significance and meaning of a record derive less from what appears in its surface
text and more from its symbolic standing-in for something else?’’ I take this
question as a lead to argue that a record is almost always standing-in for something
else and that something else is not ‘‘the’’ true significance, but a ‘‘cornucopia of
meanings’’ (Harris 2001) of the record. Archives can be monuments, but only a few
monuments symbolize archival documents (Ketelaar 2007). Therefore, before
proceeding with my argument, I will present two illustrations of a record
symbolized by a monument, each of these monuments is a standing-in for the
record, as well as has a meaning of its own.
My first example is from Spain: the monument on the Plaza de España in Cádiz
for the Spanish Constitution of 1812 (Fig. 1).

E. Ketelaar (&)
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
e-mail: ketelaar@uva.nl

123
20 Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33

Fig. 1 Monument for the Spanish Constitution of 1812, Cádiz. Photograph credit: Piotr Plonka 
Published with permission

The first modern Spanish parliament (the Cortes) assembled in Cádiz and enacted
the constitution in 1812 (Coleccion 1811–1813). The 1912 centenary of these events
lent itself to different interpretations based on the political goals of the monarchists,
republicans, conservatives, liberals, the Catholic right, and the Church. The
government ‘‘decided to spare no resources in order to make a memorable event,
designed to reflect the multiple meanings of the commemoration’’ (Moreno-Luzón
2007, p. 86). The decision was made to commission a great monument dedicated to
the Cortes, the Constitution, and the Siege of Cádiz. It took over a decade but the
monument was completed in 1929.
The monument evokes the Cortes by means of two friezes, set in a large
semicircle, one depicts war and the other peace; it is dominated by the statue of a
matron representing the Constitution and holding a scroll in her right hand (Cano
Navas 1989). The central figure of a matron stands beneath and in front of a 32-m-
high pedestal crowned by four figures representing Liberty, Justice, Democracy, and
Progress who are holding the constitution as an open book, showing articles 8 and 9
(Fig. 2).
There were two original versions of the 1812 constitution. Both were signed by
all the deputies, and each leaf was authenticated by the four secretaries. As a result,
the 384 articles that comprise the constitution and all of the signatures amount to a
112 page volume, quite substantial, and more significantly not at all resembling the
book atop of the Cádiz monument.
A scroll or a book? The second example comes from Australia. In Melbourne,
near Parliament House, stands The Great Petition, a work by artists Penelope Lee
and Susan Hewitt (Fig. 3). It was unveiled on December 3, 2008 to celebrate the
first 100 years of women’s voting in Victoria. According to the inscription at the
base of the monument, it is ‘‘referencing’’ the Monster Petition, officially called

123
Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33 21

Fig. 2 Top of the monument

for the Spanish Constitution of
1812, Cádiz Photograph credit:
Varyamo/Pixelin Pictures
(Sergio Garcı́a), copyright. 
Published with permission

Fig. 3 The Great Petition by Penelope Lee and Susan Hewitt, Melbourne, Australia. Photograph credit:
Eric Ketelaar  Published with permission

the Women’s Suffrage Petition of 1891. This actual record is a giant roll measuring
260 m—at one point, it took two conservators 10 h to unroll the document
(Women’s Suffrage Petition 2008; Fig. 4).

123
22 Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33

Fig. 4 Women’s Suffrage Petition of 1891, Public Record Office of Victoria (PROV), VPRS 3253/P0,
original papers tabled in Legislative Assembly, Unit 851. Photograph credit: PROV  Published with
permission

The petition was compiled in a ‘‘door-knock campaign’’ throughout Victoria,

which yielded approximately 30,000 signatures. The roll also met the requirement that
every petition to Parliament includes the ‘‘prayer’’, that is each petition ended with the
phrase ‘‘and your petitioners will ever pray’’. In the case of the Monster Petition, the
prayer was physically attached to the sheets carrying signatures and addresses. Due to
its size, several attendants were required to carry it into Parliament and probably the
roll was at least partly ‘‘bowled out’’ in an impressive sweep during the presentation.
Both the Cádiz monument and the one in Melbourne symbolize archival
documents. But their interpretations of the underlying documents differ. The
Melbourne monument copies (or rather simulates) the original document in its form;
the constitution on the Cádiz monument is a far cry from the original. However, both
express an interpretation of the significance of the archival document which they
represent, but in different ways. What we see in Melbourne is a reference to the form
of the original record; in Cádiz, it is the idea of the record being represented. (This is
similar to the Platonic Idea, ‘‘a nature or essence considered as existing separately
from the particular things which exemplify it’’ (OED)). The document itself
apparently does not need a true representation. The meaning of the constitution is
conveyed primarily through the ornate setting of the monument in which the sculpted
constitutional document is the expression of the sculptor’s idea of a constitution.

Meanings

Archival documents do not speak of their own accord, but of course they have
something to tell, they have meaning (Ricoeur 2004). Archivists and most other

123
Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33 23

people take the meaning of a record for granted: it was created intentionally to hold
meaning (Lubar 1999). However, the meaning of a record or of any other cultural
artifact must be understood in two different ways—first, the meaning of the record
and second, the meaning for someone or for an occasion. The first views ‘‘the’’
meaning of a record, in objectivist terms, as the Idea (in the Platonic sense) of that
record, which can be inferred from the record by whoever approaches the record.
The latter recognizes, in subjectivist terms, ‘‘that information resources do not
‘have’ meanings, but that different meanings are assigned to the same resource by
different people at different times, and that ‘‘the’’ conventional meaning of a given
resource is a matter of intersubjective consensus.’’ (Furner 2010, pp. 4155–4156;
see also Furner 2004, p. 259).
Archivists know the difficulty of describing the substance of a document by
assigning a ‘‘subject’’ to that document (Hjørland 1992, 1997; Duff and Harris
2002). Moreover, any researcher, by assigning a meaning to a record, can find uses
for that record (or, vice versa, finding a use by assigning a meaning) that no creator,
collector, or curator ever imagined (O’Toole 1993). The record is thus awaiting and
standing-in for the meanings people find in or for it. This subjectivist view of the
meaning of a record resembles the relativism of assigning values to a record. As
Hans Booms wrote ‘‘Documentary sources do not possess an inherent value
discernible within the documents themselves. Documentary sources become
valuable only when the archivist accords them value during the appraisal process’’
(Booms 1987, p. 82; see McRanor 1996).
The record is a repository of meanings (Ketelaar 2001) some of which may be
read in the record or inferred from the intertextuality that connects it to other
documents; however, other meanings have to be deduced from the context of
record’s or even archives’ creation and use (Prescott 2008). I deliberately use the
plural of ‘‘meaning’’; a record does not have only one meaning.
A short time ago, the French historian Philippe Artières did an interesting
experiment (Artières et al. 2008). At a flea market, he bought a dossier consisting of
about eighty 19th- and 20th-century documents for 15 Euros. The cover bore the
title ‘‘Procès Bertrand’’, but it contained not only documents which have served in a
court case, but also family papers, records of Daniel Bertrand’s professional career
at the Crédit Lyonnais, and other papers. Artières and four other historians studied
this ‘‘dossier Bertrand’’. Each worked independently and in secret to make
discoveries and reach conclusions from the dossier. As expected, this file yielded
five historical accounts, differing in many ways, even as to factual details, such as
name, place and date of birth, and the number of Bertrand’s children. Each of the
five scholars approached the file with a particular epistemological framework
related to the historian’s field of interest and experience. Each also realized that
documents once seen by a historian lose their objectivity because of the subjectivity
of the researcher. This implies that we no longer can read a record as our
predecessors have read that record (Ketelaar 2001). The meanings of the dossier
Bertrand were different for each researcher, or rather: each of the historians asked
his or her own questions and extracted from the dossier a different answer, thus
assigning different meanings to the dossier. Meaning is attributed by the human

123
24 Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33

mind and is therefore subject to variation between individuals and at different points
in time and space (Tainter and Lucas 1983; Yeo 2010).
The historians had to infer the meanings of the file from studying the file itself,
and from other sources. That looks like mere information retrieval and the
acquisition of knowledge, a cognitive act. Equally important, however, are what
psychologists call the affective and conative modes of meaning construction (see
Hilgard 1980 on the history of the tripartite classification of mental activities going
back to Wolff and Kant).
These modes were central to the research by psychologist Csikszentmihalyi and
sociologist Rochberg-Halton who examined how and why Americans value objects
in their home (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981). In their classic book
The meaning of things, they show how people, through dealing with objects—
furniture, art, photos, books, musical instruments, scrap books, family trees, papers,
diaries—define who they are, or have been or want to be. In the affective mode,
someone pays attention to an object and selects it from its environment. Thereby, so
to say, psychic energy is liberated from the object. Such attention and affection for
an object create a state of flow in someone: s/he is completely taken with the object,
losing any conception of time and finding great satisfaction in interacting with the
object. This happens when reading a book, browsing a photo album, and rereading a
diary or old letters.
The conative mode of constructing meaning refers to the outcome of the
cognitive information retrieval and the affective attention: the intentions, the
purpose, the goal that the user sees reflected in the meaning of the object.
The outcome of, for example, looking at old family photos may be the confirmation
and reinforcement of the family relations and continuity through the generations,
according to Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton.
We can use the psychology of meaning construction through cognition, emotion,
and motivation to show how people associate with records. Drafting and writing the
1812 constitution in Cádiz were cognitive acts, albeit that they contained affective
occurrences, for example when the right words for new democratic concepts—
felicidad, igualdad, libertad, etc.—had to be found (Cruz Seoane 1968). The Cortes
took various measures to ensure that the Constitution would become an object of
affection for the Spanish peoples (plural!) (Coleccion 1811–1813). All over Spain
and in Latin America, the Constitution was solemnly proclaimed by reading the text
aloud to people gathered in the main square. The square was then to be renamed
Plaza de la Constitucion in every town and henceforth a plaque would serve as a
remembrance of ‘‘la feliz época de la promulgacion de la Constitucion’’. On the first
Sunday after the promulgation, everyone had to take an oath to the Constitution,
followed by a singing of the Te Deum. All public documents would carry not only
the date of the monarch’s reign, but also the year of the Constitution.
In the conative mode, the Cádiz constitution meant the foundation of democracy in
Spain and other countries (Kern and Dodge 1990). On the website of Cádiz (‘‘ciudad
constitucional’’), one can watch and hear how much the 1812 constitution stirs up both
in the affective and conative mode through such modes as exhibitions, speeches,
websites, and articles on wide-ranging topics: the Constitution and feminism, the
Constitution and the Americas, and the Constitution and the freedom of the press.

123
Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33 25

Similarly, writing the Great Petition in Victoria was a cognitive act. Getting all
the signatures and making it into the Monster Petition required affection, and it was
done with the conative goal to stress, to impress, and to win the battle for women’s
suffrage.
Cognitive, affective, and conative factors interact to form characteristic styles of
individual sense-making and information behavior (Solomon 1997). Solomon
labeled these styles as ‘‘holist’’, ‘‘manager’’, ‘‘analyst’’, ‘‘organizer’’, ‘‘processor’’,
‘‘presenter’’, and ‘‘transmitter’’. Recognition of these different styles is important.
For example, when (re)designing a recordkeeping or information system, the
different styles of the people who will use the system have to be acknowledged.
Likewise, understanding the trilogy of cognitive, affective, and conative construc-
tion of meaning may help archivists understand and serve their clients better. In
seeking meaning in records, users are at different mental stages, which require
different types of intervention and mediation. Some users will stay in a cognitive
mode, and others may approach the record primarily with affect or with a particular
motivation (Kuhlthau 2004). Distinguishing (but not always separating) cognition,
emotion, and motivation may also help archivists set up websites and exhibitions, as
well as design other outreach activities. Other basic archival functions may benefit
too. For example, some of the all too frequent misunderstanding between archivists
and users about appraisal might be traced back to not understanding each others’
different modes of meaning construction. Finally, archival description in the way
Duff and Harris (2002) have advocated should be equally ‘‘hospitable’’ to emotion
and motivation as it is to cognition.
The record is full of meanings. The author has given it a meaning or—as in the
two cases presented here—multiple authors and writers (Duranti 2002, pp. 16–17)
have given the record multiple meanings. Yet, by the very act of authoring/writing,
they have relinquished their controlling presence (Brothman 2010). This allows the
recipient(s) to assign a meaning or meanings to the document. They do so while
reading it, but also by using and storing the record in a particular context. Every
interaction, intervention, interrogation, and interpretation by creator, user, and
archivist is an activation of the record (Ketelaar 2001), each in a new ‘‘concept
space’’ (Hedstrom et al. 2003). The two originals of the 1812 constitution were
stored in the archives, the text was printed and distributed, and kept in living
memory for one or two generations. Monumentalizing and recontextualizing the
Constitution reached its pinnacle during the 1912 centennial and again in 1987 when
the Spanish parliament published a facsimile of the Constitution and all the decrees
of the Cádiz Cortes. Copies were distributed by Spanish embassies around the
world. We wait to see what will happen with the originals of the Constitution in
2012, at the bicentennial.
In Victoria, Parliament ordered the Monster Petition to be ‘‘on the table’’—
although not literally. In that concept space, the petition was discussed and was
given meaning, cognitively, affectively, and conatively. Finally, the document was
moved to another concept space and stored among the parliamentary records. From
there, the roll was transferred to the Public Record Office of Victoria. Normally, the
petition is not, as any other record, produced in the search room. In 2008, however,
the petition was on show at the Public Record Office: people had the opportunity to

123
26 Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33

engage affectively with the document, by viewing it. But people cannot effectively
use the original petition because of its physical format—rolled up on its giant spool.
It has become—or rather it has always been—more of a symbol than a physically
usable record. As a symbol, it has been listed in Australia’s Memory of the World
register. Digital copies of the pages with signatures can be accessed on the
Parliament’s website, which links to a wiki, set up by the Archives. The digital
images show some of the physical properties of the petition: the paper, ink, and
writing implements (pen, pencil), which were used in signing the petition. These
features have been studied, by conservators who, of course, had access to the
original (Wilson 2007). For the conservators, the document provided answers to
questions of a different kind.

Intangible records

The meanings of the 1812 constitution, the Great Petition or any other record are
different, because the document is accessed in different concept spaces and in
different cognitive, affective, and conative modes. The user is constrained in
exploiting these modes, because of the way the document is presented or
represented. This is especially challenging for digital records, because a digital
record is intangible and fluid, it ‘‘disappears once re-activation is finished, a session
is closed on the browser, or the personal computer is switched off.’’ (Ketelaar and
Delgado Gómez 2009). Moreover, as Jeff Rothenberg wrote a decade ago:
By choosing a particular digital preservation method, we determine which
aspects of such entities will be preserved and which ones will be
sacrificed (Rothenberg 2000).
Migration or conversion of a digital record creates a new and different record,
replacing the migrated or converted record. It is in fact a form of appraisal: we must
choose what to lose (Rothenberg 2000, p. 56; Duranti 2002, p. 13; Yeo 2010).
Because migration inevitably dissociates the user further from the original,
emulation—championed by Jeff Rothenberg and now practiced by the Dutch
National Library and National Archives (Rothenberg 1998)—seems a better
strategy since emulation requires less mutation, allowing future generations of users
the possibility of an affective engagement with the record ‘‘with feelings of
emotional satisfaction comparable to those reported by users of analogue originals
in our own era’’ (Yeo 2010, p. 108).
Technology thus shapes the meaning of the archive. In Jacques Derrida’s words:
The technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure
of the archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its
relationship to the future (Derrida 1996, p. 17).
How I write—with a pen or on my Palm or with the PC—makes a difference for
what I write. How I preserve—through migration or emulation—makes a difference
for how I can relate to the record and how I access the record in different cognitive,
affective, and conative modes. And not only technology but also the social context

123
Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33 27

in which I write and read makes a difference—cognitively, affectively, and

conatively—for what I write and read. I named this: archivalization: the conscious
or unconscious choice (determined by social and cultural factors) to consider
something worth archiving (Ketelaar 2001).
Archivalization also effects the decisions about migration, conversion, or
representation of digital records, which
present us with ethical dilemmas broadly comparable to the dilemmas implicit
in the prior appraisal decisions that determine which records we collect or
retain (Yeo 2010, p. 111).
In the access paradigm as formulated by Angelika Menne-Haritz, it is the
autonomous responsibility of the user to determine which meaning he or she
constructs from the archive (Menne-Haritz 2001; Macpherson 2002). ‘‘Freedom of
interpretation is a fundamental right of the user of archives,’’ writes Theo
Thomassen (Thomassen 2001). In a groundbreaking essay in the Dutch archival
yearbook ‘‘Access’’, he explains why and how that right serves as a touchstone for
archival policy and management. But freedom of interpretation entails freedom to
use cognitive, affective, and conative modes of meaning construction, independent
of the way the archive is preserved, presented, and represented. I would argue that
custodians of the archival heritage have to ensure that the trilogy of meaning
construction is possible, for any user now and in the future.

Identities

Most users do not only consult archives to find something, but also for the
experience of searching and locating information for the story they can construct
with these findings (Thomassen 2001). As Michael Moss writes: the archive is
a place of ‘dreams’, of re-enactment for both the user and the archivist
(curator), who together always are engaged either passively or actively in the
process of refiguration that is never ending (Moss 2008, p. 83).
The user and the archivist alike construct stories that establish who they are and
who they are not, where they fit in and where they do not, who belongs to them and
who does not. The meaning of the record is indeed ‘‘in the eye of the beholder’’
(Digital Preservation Testbed 2003): the user finds meaning and makes meaning in an
archive or a record and those meanings help him or her in structuring and restructuring
the relationship between the self and the world and thereby in the formation of his or
her identity. As Franco Ferrarotti wrote ‘‘We are nothing in an absolute sense. We are
only what we have been—more exactly, what we remember we were. We are
memories personified’’ (Ferrarotti 1994, p. 1, 1997, p. 4; see also Lyman 1996).
Identity formation is based on meaning making, as the title of a book by
psychologist Urs Fuhrer indicates: Cultivating minds: identity as meaning making
practice (Fuhrer 2004; Fuhrer and Josephs 1998; Craven 2008). Fuhrer views
forming an identity as a process that takes place in four mutually constitutive
systems: the subject, objects, social partners, and the world. Objects or artifacts

123
28 Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33

mediate the cultural context, while social partners are the mediators of the social
context for identity formation. Objects can be archival documents, whereas social
partners can be family members, colleagues, and peers. Think of making a photo
album, either physical or virtually on Flickr, or of arranging your personal archives,
keeping a blog, or contributing to a wiki, YouTube, or a community as the one
created as part of ‘‘Your Archives’’, the Web 2.0 endeavour of the UK National
Archives. In all these cases, the meanings of information objects are cocreated both
in the framework of personal experience and in the mediation (of what Van Dijck
calls: mediated memories) with social partners who surround the blogger or wiki-
contributor, with the networks and communities of which archive creator and
archive user form a part (Van Dijck 2007; Johnson 2008). Records are not merely
information carriers; they have a social role, as Brown and Duguid argued in their
book The social life of information (Brown and Duguid 2000). Context shapes
content is their adage. One might say: show me your archive and I will know who
you are and in which social contexts you function. Or: show me your social contexts
and I know how you are dealing with information.
Mediation involves definition, selection, organisation, interpretation, and
presentation of meaning (Altheide 1995). And that is an iterative process, as
Louise Craven notes: ‘‘…identity as meaning making is perpetually constructed and
reconstructed through the experience of archival documents.’’ (Craven 2008, p. 17).
Because a record means various things to different people, across time and space
(Nesmith 2005), the identities that are claimed from and based on a particular
archival heritage will be different.

Cultivation

Documents and other artifacts get a meaning through cultivation (Csikszentmihalyi

and Rochberg-Halton 1981, pp. 173–175; Fuhrer 2004, p. 32). Literally cultivation
is the tilling of land and the raising of crops. It entails improvement, development,
refinement, and caring for the soil. As Urs Fuhrer writes
Meaning…is not simply fixed, but rather has an existence in and through a
process of cultivation, a process involving the development of some artifact or
habit of life due to care, inquiry, or suffering… (Fuhrer 2004, p. 90).
Cultivation liberates psychic energy, as it does with the objects such as furniture,
art works, photo’s, books, musical instruments, scrapbooks to which I referred
earlier. In that transaction between self and object, is created and constructed:
As living signs, objects must be cultivated to retain their significance; as
cultivated objects, things can grow in significance over time and take on new
layers of meaning (Rochberg-Halton 1986, p. 170).
Cultivation can take the form of contestation. The Cadiz monument kept its
significance precisely because different groups in different times disputed the
meanings of the Constitution and the monument. ‘‘Memory sites…only stay alive as
long as people consider it worthwhile to argue about their meaning’’ (Rigney 2010,

123
Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33 29

p. 346). Archives are such a memory site, a forum, a public space allowing for
competing and contested memories, narratives, records (Ketelaar 2003, 2008). The
record has to be cultivated, that is: understood cognitively, valued affectively, and
conatively infused with meaning.
Cultivation not only keeps archives and other cultural goods alive. Nowadays,
cultivation is to a large extent embedded in the performativity of digital documents.
When you fill in an order form on a website, or send in a tax return, or submit an
application, the web document sets off a number of processes and generates other
documents. Other examples of what Duranti and Thibodeau call ‘‘enabling’’ records
(Duranti and Thibodeau 2006) are software patches that enable a musical instrument to
interact with a computer and software in sites that interprets data about your previous
actions on the site (Amazon.com’s ‘‘Hello, NN, We have recommendations for you’’).
The user becomes reader and writer, consumer and producer of information, or
‘‘prosumer’’, a member of the ‘‘creative audience’’ (Castells 2009) in what
Lawrence Lessig (2008) calls a RW (read/write) culture. In cultivating the record,
he or she becomes a reader and a listener due to the speech recognition and reading
functionality of different applications. He or she not only creates, reads, listens and
sees his or her own documents, but contributes to and alters (remixes) those of other
people.

Appropriations

The unrolling of the Great Petition, remounting it on a new spool, the study of the
properties of the original, the digitization, the development and use of the database
on the web, the extension of the petition’s content through the wiki—each and
everyone is an activation of the record (Ketelaar 2001; Nesmith 2005). A file may
have been closed, but it will be reactivated again and again. As Brothman writes,
one cannot reduce the making of records
to an original context or singular creative moment…nor do records simply
reach a final state or condition. Rather, objects and processes are enmeshed in
a dynamic of departure and return, emerging sameness and difference,
repetition and recursion along with distancing and differentiation (Brothman
2006, p. 260).
Each activation leaves fingerprints that are attributes to the archive’s infinite
meaning. The archive is therefore not static, but a dynamic open-ended process. All
these activations are acts of cultivation determining the record’s meaning (Ketelaar
2008).
Each activation is also a (symbolic) appropriation: using the record for one’s own
purposes and finding one’s own meaning in it. Such appropriation is implicit when, for
example, a historian talks about ‘‘my sources’’, thereby eliminating all the preceding
phases of creation, use, preservation, etc. (Morsel 2008). Appropriation also occurs
when people refer to the file held by medical, immigration, and other authorities as
‘‘my file’’—rightly so since they can be considered as cocreator of the file (Ketelaar
2006). Ann Rigney, in writing about the ‘‘dynamic turn’’ in memory studies argues

123
30 Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33

Meaning as such is never fixed once and for all, but is something that happens
in the way events, texts, and other cultural products are appropriated (over and
over again, always with a difference) (Rigney 2010, p. 348).
This is just what is happening as Spain prepares for the bicentenary of the Cádiz
constitution: each use of the Constitution will be a repurposing (Hedstrom et al.
2003), entailing a unique reinterpretation of the record. We have to document those
activations to keep an audit trail of any action taken on the record.
What we call archival heritage is constructed because heritage (patrimoine)
exists only through appropriation: a patrimony needs not only a testator and a will,
but also an heir who accepts the conditions and is prepared to cultivate the heritage
(Leniaud 2002). Archival documents are boundary objects, shared across the
boundaries of different communities, even though each community will probably
seek to use them in different and perhaps competing ways (Yeo 2010). Each of these
communities of memory (a term proposed by Peter Burke as early as 1989; Burke
1989; see also McKemmish et al. 2005) claims its own memory of suffering as a
sacred asset, to be framed in a space only trusted and accessible for members of
their own group (Misztal 2004). This ‘‘ethnization of memory’’ (Corkalo et al. 2004,
p. 157) may lead to a ‘‘ghettoization of history’’ (Williams 2007, p. 168). Archives,
however, cannot be split up according to the ethnic, religious, or political
provenance of the perpetrators, victims, or witnesses (Ketelaar 2009a). Archivists
should be vigilant and ensure that appropriation of archives by a particular group or
for a particular cause does not endanger the integrity of the archives and the rights
of other users, now and in the future (Cox 2009).
Assigning meanings and values to archives—and thus constructing and
reconstructing archival heritage—is a political act, an act of memory politics.
The archivist cannot pretend to be outside the politics of memory: he or she is one of
the actors who, in the words of Jacques Derrida,
must practice a politics of memory and, simultaneously, in the same
movement, a critique of the politics of memory (Derrida and Stiegler 2002,
p. 63).

Acknowledgments This paper is a revision of an address given at the congress ‘‘The Future of
Memory: The Digital Archival Heritage’’, Santiago de Compostela, 18–19 November 2010. Parts were
also presented in 2009 in seminars at Monash University, Melbourne; Gakushuin University, Tokyo; and
in my valedictory address given at the University of Amsterdam (Ketelaar 2009b). I also would like to
thank Alejandro Delgado Gómez and the archives service of the Congreso de los Diputados in Madrid, for
providing me with a reproduction of one of the two manuscript originals of the Coleccion 1811–1813
http://www.constitucion1812.org.

References

Altheide DL (1995) An ecology of communication: cultural formats of control. Aldine de Gruyter, New
York
Artières P et al (2008) Le dossier Bertrand. Jeux d’ histoire. Manuella éditions, Paris
Booms H (1987) Society and the formation of a documentary heritage: issues in the appraisal of archival
sources. Archivaria 24:69–107

123
Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33 31

Brothman B (2006) Archives, life cycles, and death wishes: a helical model of record formation.
Archivaria 61:235–269
Brothman B (2010) Perfect present, perfect gift: finding a place for archival consciousness in social
theory. Arch Sc 10:141–189
Brown JS, Duguid P (2000) The social life of information. Harvard Business School Press, Boston
Burke P (1989) History as social memory. In: Butler T (ed) Memory: history, culture, and the mind.
Blackwell, Oxford, pp 97–113
Cano Navas ML (1989) Estudio iconográfico del monumento a las Cortes, constitución y sitio de Cádiz.
Cuad Arte e Iconografia. II—4 available at http://www.fuesp.com/revistas/pag/cai0437.html
Castells M (2009) Communication power. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Coleccion (1811–1813) de los decretos y ordenes que han expedido las Cortes generales y
extraordinarias… 4 vols. Imprenta Real/Imprenta Nacional, Cadiz; facsimile edition: Collecion de
decretos y ordenes de las Cortes de Cádiz (1987). Cortes Generales, Madrid
Corkalo D et al (2004) Neighbors again? Intercommunity relations after ethnic cleansing. In: Stover E,
Weinstein HM (eds) My neighbor, my enemy: justice and community in the aftermath of atrocity.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 143–161
Cox RJ (2009) The archivist and community. In: Bastian JA, Alexander B (eds) Community archives.
The shaping of memory. Facet, London, pp 109–132
Craven L (2008) From the archivist’s cardigan to the very dead sheep: what are archives? What are
archivists? What do they do? In: Craven L (ed) What are archives? Cultural and theoretical
perspectives: a reader. Ashgate, Aldershot, pp 7–30
Cruz Seoane M (1968) El primer lenguaje constitucional español: las Cortes de Cádiz. Editorial Moneda y
Crédito, Madrid
Csikszentmihalyi M, Rochberg-Halton E (1981) The meaning of things: domestic symbols and the self.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Derrida J (1996) Archive fever. Transl Prenowitz E. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Derrida J, Stiegler B (2002) Echographies of television. Filmed interviews. Transl Bajorek J. Polity Press,
Cambridge
Digital Preservation Testbed (2003) White paper emulation: context and current status; available at
http://www.digitaleduurzaamheid.nl/bibliotheek/docs/white_paper_emulatie_EN.pdf
Duff WM, Harris V (2002) Stories and names: archival description as narrating records and constructing
meanings. Arch Sci 2:263–285
Duranti L (2002) The concept of electronic record. In: Duranti L, Eastwood T, MacNeil H (eds)
Preservation of the integrity of electronic records. Kluwer, Dordrecht
Duranti L, Thibodeau K (2006) The concept of record in interactive, experiential and dynamic
environments: the view of InterPARES. Arch Sci 6:13–68
Ferrarotti F (1994) The temptation to forget. Racism, anti-semitism, neo-nazism. Greenwood Press,
Westport
Ferrarotti F (1997) L’Italia tra storia e memoria. Appartenenza e identità, 2nd edn. Donzelli, Rome
Fuhrer U (2004) Cultivating minds: identity as meaning making practice. Routledge, London
Fuhrer U, Josephs IE (1998) The cultivated mind: from mental mediation to cultivation. Dev Rev
18:279–312
Furner J (2004) Conceptual analysis: a method for understanding information as evidence, and evidence
as information. Arch Sci 4:233–263
Furner J (2010) Philosophy and the information sciences. In: Bates MJ, Maack MN (eds) Encyclopedia of
library and information sciences, third edition, vol 1, no 1. Taylor and Francis, London,
pp 4153–4165
Harris V (2001) Law, evidence and electronic records: a strategic perspective from the global periphery.
Comma 1/2:29–44; repr in: Harris V (2007) Archives and justice: a South African perspective.
Society of American Archivists, Chicago, pp 107–130
Hedstrom M et al. (2003) It’s about time: research challenges in digital archiving and long-term
preservation. Final Report, NSF workshop on researchchallenges in digital archiving: towards a
national infrastructure for long-term preservation of digital information (Warrenton, VA; April
12–13, 2002); available at http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/library/resources/pubs/docs/about_
time2003.pdf
Hilgard ER (1980) The trilogy of mind: cognition, affection, and conation. J Hist Behav Sc 16:107–117
Hjørland B (1992) The concept of ‘‘subject’’ in information science. J Doc 48:172–200

123
32 Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33

Hjørland B (1997) Information seeking and subject representation. An activity-theoretical approach to

information science. Greenwood Press, Westport
Johnson A (2008) Users, use and context: supporting interaction between users and digital archive. In:
Craven L (ed) What are archives? Cultural and theoretical perspectives: a reader. Ashgate,
Aldershot, pp 154–155
Kern RW, Dodge MD (eds) (1990) Historical dictionary of modern Spain 1700–1988. Greenwood Press,
New York
Ketelaar E (2001) Tacit narratives: the meanings of archives. Arch Sci 1:143–155
Ketelaar E (2003) Being digital in people’s archives. Arch Manuscr 31:8–22
Ketelaar E (2006) Access: the democratic imperative. Arch Manuscr 34:62–81. Repr in: Bruggeman M
et al. (eds) Openbaarheid in historisch en hedendaags perspectief (2006) Stichting Archiefpubli-
caties,’s-Gravenhage, pp 34–45; Made kept & used. Celebrating 30 years of the Australian Society
of Archivists (2007). Australian Society of Archivists, Canberra, pp 5–17
Ketelaar E (2007) Muniments and monuments: the dawn of archives as cultural patrimony. Arch Sci
7:343–357
Ketelaar E (2008) Archives as spaces of memory. J Soc Arch 29:9–27
Ketelaar E (2009a) A living archive, shared by communities of records. In: Bastian JA, Alexander B (eds)
Community archives. The shaping of memory. Facet, London, pp 109–132
Ketelaar E (2009b) Levend archief. In: Waalwijk H, Weterings J (eds) Spreken is goud. Oraties en
colleges van hoogleraren…en de archivistiek. Jaarboek 2008 Stichting Archiefpublicaties. Stichting
Archiefpublicaties, ’s-Gravenhage, pp 15–27
Ketelaar E, Delgado Gómez A (2009) El reto de los archives intangibles. In: Hernández Olivera L (ed)
Archivos hı́bridos. Las transformaciones en materiales, procesos y productos, Tabula 12:63–83
Kuhlthau CC (2004) Seeking meaning. A process approach to library and information services. Libraries
Unlimited, Westport
Leniaud JM (2002) Les archipels du passé. Le patrimoine et son histoire. Fayard, Paris
Lessig L (2008) Remix. Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. Bloomsbury Academic,
London
Lubar S (1999) Information culture and the archival record. Am Arch 62:10–22
Lyman SM (1996) Some dilemmas of history and memory. Int J Politics Cult Soc 9:623–635
Macpherson P (2002) Theory, standards and implicit assumptions: public access to post-current
government records. Arch Manuscr 30:6–17
McKemmish S, Gilliland-Swetland A, Ketelaar E (2005) ‘‘Communities of memory’’: pluralising archival
research and education agendas. Arch Manuscr 33:146–175
McRanor S (1996) A critical analysis of intrinsic value. Am Arch 59:400–411
Menne-Haritz A (2001) Access—the reformulation of an archival paradigm. Arch Sc 1:57–82
Misztal BA (2004) The sacralization of memory. Eur J Soc Theory 7(1):67–84
Moreno-Luzón J (2007) Fighting for the national memory. The commemoration of the Spanish ‘‘War of
independence’’ in 1908–1912. Hist Mem 19(1):68–94
Morsel J (2008) Du texte aux archives: le problème de la source. Bull centre d’études médiévales
d’Auxerre. Hors série no 2; Available at http://www.cem.revues.org/index4132.html
Moss M (2008) Opening Pandora’s box: what is an archive in the digital environment? In: Craven L (ed)
What are archives? Cultural and theoretical perspectives: a reader. Ashgate, Aldershot, pp 71–87
Nesmith T (2005) Reopening archives: bringing new contextualities into archival theory and practice.
Archivaria 60:259–274
O’Toole JM (1993) The symbolic significance of archives. Am Archiv 56:234–255, repr in: Jimerson RC
(ed) (2000) American archival studies. Readings in theory and practice. Society of American
Archivists, Chicago, pp 47–72
Prescott A (2008) The textuality of the archive. In: Craven L (ed) What are archives? Cultural and
theoretical perspectives: a reader. Ashgate, Aldershot, pp 31–51
Ricoeur P (2004) Memory, History, forgetting. Transl. Blamey K, Pellauer D. University of Chicago
Press, Chicago London
Rigney A (2010) The dynamics of remembrance: texts between monumentality and morphing. In: Erll A,
Nünning A (eds) A companion of cultural memory studies De Gruyter, Berlin, New York,
pp 345–353
Rochberg-Halton E (1986) Meaning and modernity: social theory in the pragmatic attitude. University of
Chicago Press, Chicago

123
Arch Sci (2012) 12:19–33 33

Rothenberg J (1998) Avoiding technological quicksand, Council on Library and Information Resources,
Washington, DC; available at http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/rothenberg/contents.html
Rothenberg J (2000) Preserving authentic digital information in: Authenticity in a digital environment.
Council on Library and Information Resources, Washington, DC, pp 51–68; available at
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub92/rothenberg.html
Solomon P (1997) Discovering information behavior in sense making. III. The person. J Am Soc Info Sci
48:1127–1138
Tainter JA, Lucas GJ (1983) Epistemology of the significance concept. Am Antiq 48:707–719
Thomassen T (2001) De veelvormigheid van de archiefontsluiting en de illusie van de toegankelijkheid.
In: Thomassen T, Looper B, Kloosterman J (eds) Toegang. Ontwikkelingen in de ontsluiting van
archieven. Jaarboek 2001 Stichting Archiefpublicaties. Stichting Archiefpublicaties, ’s-Gravenhage,
pp 13–43
Van Dijck J (2007) Mediated memories in the digital age. Stanford University Press, Stanford
Williams P (2007) Memorial museums: the global rush to commemorate atrocities. Berg, Oxford
Wilson L (2007) The hand that signed the paper: what early petitions can tell a conservator. PROactive
39:15–18; available at http://www.prov.vic.gov.au/pubs/pa39/Proactive39.pdf
Women’s Suffrage Petition (2008) Parliament of Victoria, Melbourne; available at http://www.
parliament.vic.gov.au/about/the-history-of-parliament/womens-suffrage-petition See also 1891
Women’s Suffrage Petition (2008). Public Record Office of Victoria, Melbourne; available at
http://www.wiki.prov.vic.gov.au/index.php/1891_Women%27s_Suffrage_Petition
Yeo G (2010) ‘Nothing is the same as something else’: significant properties and notions of identity and
originality. Arch Sci 10:85–116

Author Biography

Eric Ketelaar is Professor Emeritus at the University of Amsterdam. From 1997 to 2009, he was
Professor of Archivistics in the Department of Mediastudies of the University of Amsterdam. As an
honorary fellow of his former department, he continues his research that is concerned mainly with the
social and cultural contexts of records creation and use. Eric Ketelaar was General State Archivist
(National Archivist) of The Netherlands from 1989 to 1997 and held the archivistics chair in the
Department of History, University of Leiden, 1992–2002. He was visiting professor at the University of
Michigan (Ann Arbor), Gakushuin University (Tokyo), and Monash University (Melbourne), where he
continues to be involved as a Senior Research Fellow in Monash’s Center for Organisational and Social
Informatics. He is one of the three editors-in-chief of Archival Science.

123