From the sidelines to the center: reconsidering the potential of the personal in archives

Abstract

This article seeks to center the personal in archives, both theoretically and methodologically. After briefly reviewing how personal archives have been sidelined in archival theory and education programs, we suggest that whether a record is considered personal or not is best determined not based on who created it but rather on how it is activated. In two separate autoethnographic case studies, the authors activate institutional records that, for each of them, are intensely personal. In doing so, they demonstrate how centering the personal in this way might inform and impact archivists’ understanding of their responsibilities to those who create, are captured in and consult the records in our care.