skjanes.com

ACA 2007 Conference

Thursday, 21 June

9am: Plenary session: Senator Hugh Segal

This talk was ostensibly on “the importance of archives in a democratic society,” though it tended to wander through a number of sort-of kind-of issues.

Sen. Segal spoke on:

~ The Senate as a “storehouse of institutional memory”, in that the people with memories of how things had been done or what had happened are kept as “living exhibits” as for a museum. (Cue “preserved moose” jokes.)

~ The problem of a generation so consumed with itself that it lacks understanding of either history of the future.

~ People tend to concentrate on the how of technology rather than its content. Senator Segal did have a pronounced anti-technology stance: that the original document has a higher value than its digital version. (In this, I think he may not have been entirely familiar with the audience he was addressing.)

~ The historical record as fact: it cannot change, no matter what interpretations people embrace to explain or understand history.

~ The “information revolution” — the creation of a wide variety of documents “with claim to archival value” — and the challenge of sorting out these documents and finding the value.

~ The need for solid research skills as early as secondary school — arising from a need to understand the nature of sources and documentation.

~ That history must be fact-based

~ That all government documents should be in the public domain, and that the onus rests on the government to prove if for some reason individual documents should not be available to the public. The government works for the people, after all.

~ The suggestion that documents should be automatically made public after a 60- or 90-day period. The government has “nothing to hide,” and this is a principle of democracy.

In general, there wasn’t a lot here that hasn’t been said hundreds of times. I did approve of his statements on openness for government records, though in light of everything else I have to wonder whether he’s actually thought the implementation through.

The anti-technology stance was a bit silly. I had the impression that he thought he was playing to the audience — though given next year’s theme (”Archives and the Digital World”), he misjudged somewhat. At one point, the phrase “technologies you have to accomodate” was used — yes, I made a point of noting that down. It’s not a phrase that inspires much confidence. After all, isn’t “technology” created by people, for people, in order to improve the work they would do otherwise?

Not a particularly auspicious start to the conference, anyway, but I have every reason to be much more positive about the rest of the sessions.

I’ve been considering installing a blog on my personal website for some time, but had been putting it off — largely due to worries about whether I’d be able to keep it up or not.

Now I’ve got some very good reasons to get on with it: I have conference papers to write up, I’m starting to think about writing not-for-school, and I’m probably beginning to annoy my friends by posting links and commentary on archival issues in inappropriate places.

Setting this up has also triggered a slight redesign of my website, which can’t be but good.

Suppose I’ll see where this takes me.