When reading the Carter article in class the issue of who is given voice in the archives is raised. When we visited the UBC Rare Books and Special books Collections we saw that there was, in fact, voice being given to many voices that one can expected to have been marginalised. One of the collections featured in the UBC Rare Books and Special Books Collections is the Colin Upton Comic Book Collection. The comics of Colin Upton are not mainstream in the slightest and bring up many issues that are prevalent in society today. Censorship is one of the issues brought up in several of his comics, most of which are critical of society as a whole.
The fact that these comics are present in the UBC Rare Books & Special Collections shows that Archives and the people that run them are making a conscious effort to include populations that, in the past, were shrouded in silence. Several of the other collections that we looked at during our visit to the collection also seemed to go against the mainstream such as the newspapers that were sold by the homeless of Vancouver in order to attempt to supply these homeless with a revenue. These are just two examples of collections that are giving voice to people in the Archives.
We also must consider the fact that these collections were supplied to us, and that they were pre-chosen for us. Although these collections were, in fact, pre-chosen; the fact that they exist in this archive shows that several people are actively attempting to give voice to marginalised populations in the archives. This is a step in the right direction if our ultimate goal is to bring even voice to several different populations, especially in archives.
One Comment
Evan, I find it interesting when you bring up the point that the collections were in fact pre-chosen for us, as I hadn’t thought of that as a way for the archivists in the RBSC to give voice to certain marginalized groups. Do you think we would have chosen different collections or archives had we been allowed to peruse through all of the RBSC, perhaps archives of groups less marginalized in the past?