This is the blog site of ARST 516, a graduate course on managing current records in the Masters of Archival Studies Program at UBC. This academic year, along with the mechanics of managing current records, students reflected on how the way in which records are created, managed and used shapes the future of the past. Archives are typically associated with institutions that acquire, preserve and make available historical documents. Archival work is not just about preserving the past, however; it also entails engaging with the present to create the future of the past. In this course, we explore how archival work takes place outside of archival institutions, and before historical resources become historical, while they are still active records in a wide variety of organizational settings where issues that are highly relevant to society today, such as trusted computing, privacy and data protection, legal issues, IT security, participatory democracy, transparency and openness, shape the future of the past. Thus, historical records do not “spring full-blown from the head of Zeus”. They are shaped by human and technical processes, and engage issues of power and control. The blog posts on this site discuss these themes, reflecting on how managing current records shapes our society and what can be known about it in the future through engagement with the historical record.
Victoria Lemieux, Associate Professor, Archival Science and Course Instructor