In the field of digital humanities, archives pertain to the methodical gathering, maintenance, and arrangement of digital resources associated with human civilization, past events, and academic research. Digital artifacts that have been carefully chosen, conserved, and made available for study and research include texts, photos, videos, audio files, and webpages. For my own personal project, I plan to use archives to demonstrate the impact of the Lewis and Clark journals on American culture. The digital archive I am going to analyze here is the project of Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis. This project demonstrates how data, geography, history, and social movements can intersect through a visual representation tracing the growth of LGBTQ spaces within St. Louis. The data shows the areas of St. Louis which welcomed the LGBTQ community between the end of World War II in 1945 and the 1992 adoption of St. Louis’s first civil rights law that included the queer community. The goal of the project is to empower the underrepresented, yet rich history of the LGBTQ community in St. Louis through visual illustration of the longstanding struggle for their identities to be accepted in the area. The researchers used data from the St. Louis LGBTQ History Project, interviews, city directories, phonebooks, and surveys to gather information and begin plotting areas on the map coinciding with the dates they became queer safe spaces.
The data collected and presented in this project is effective in that through the use of geo-spatial representation paired with text, it demonstrates that the gradual acceptance of LGBTQ community members in St. Louis correlates to the areas which desegregated earliest, signifying the intersection between race and sexuality at that time. What would make the project more interesting to viewers would be the application of personal stories to resonate more with users. Seeing colorful dots on the screen is one thing, but if I were able to hover over each dot and read a short quote from someone who frequented the location in that time period I would be much more engaged.
Marlene Manoff highlights the “ambiguity of the archive” in her piece Theories of the Archive from Across Disciplines. She discusses the different uses of the word by various fields and individual scholars, noting some differentiate between the type of archive a collection holds, and some do not. She argues that the term has transformed into “a kind of loose signifier for a disparate set of concepts.” (10)
On a similar note, Kate Theimer agrees with Manoff that “archive” is used too broadly nowadays, but she goes deeper and argues that the original definition by archivists is the best usage of the word. She wrote “archivists’ definition is more specific, and therefore in my opinion conveys greater meaning.” (2) Theimer contends that a more expansive concept of archives has been embraced by digital humanists, emphasizing the archivist’s selection process over the collection’s actual qualities. According to Theiman, in order to guarantee that the function archives serve in safeguarding unique historical material is understood, archivists should advocate for their conventional definition, as Theimer argues that the more inclusive one is inaccurate.
Kathleen Roe articulates an important factor of the Society of American Archivists definition of “archives” in her piece Why Archives? She states that because archives have “enduring” significance to society—that is, they are crucial for comprehending the past, present, and future—they are maintained and made available to the public.
The definitions of archives provided by these three authors demonstrate the ambiguity and complexity of the term. They stress the significance of archives as historical documents, their ongoing worth to society, and the necessity of a precise definition. Theimer argues for a more narrow definition centered on collecting qualities, Roe emphasizes the importance of archives as a source of knowledge, and Manoff observes the range of definitions across fields.
In my personal opinion, and based on these essays, I agree with Theimer. Because the word “archives” is used across so many disciplines, it would be more uniform and easier to collaborate if the definition was less ambiguous. I thought Theimers’ opening example of a native born “Archivist” nation citizen traveling to the country of “Digital Humanities” and being confused by the widespread misuse of the term the native Archivist is used to really hit home for me that the broad use of the word is inaccurate.