Greetings and welcome to Imaginary Histories! I'm glad you're here. This is a blog mainly about archives and archival matters. To many of you reading, that probably sounds like a narrow, dull parameter for a blog, but believe me (and archivists already know this) -- archives are plugged into so many cultural, technological, legal, and ethical issues it's hard to know what not to talk about. That the archives field exists within such a permeable membrane is one of the things I love about it. I suspect that you, also, whoever you are, love the intersectional character of archives, even though it complicates our professional identity. Being an archivist means constantly having to re-explain what archives are -- to those outside the field, those within it, even to oneself... but that's what makes it fun.

I'm going to be honest with you: I've never blogged before. Starting a blog is a bold move -- in 1999; now it's like throwing a bucket of water into the sea, hoping that someone not only manages to swim through your personal H2O but also has some opinion on it that they wish to share. So why do it? Mainly: I'm teaching the Introduction to Archival Methods and Services class again next semester at the Simmons College School of Library and Information Science, and I want to integrate this blog into my class; I wasn't seeing other archival writings online (blogs, tweets, presentations, papers, etc.) addressing some things that I wanted to talk about; I turned 40 years old this year, and mortality is -- no surprise, I guess -- an excellent motivator.

This post isn't going to be as long as other posts to come, but I'm at least going to introduce some of the themes that will run through this blog. I'm particularly fascinated by the complex relationship between archival records -- and archives as institutions -- with "memory," understood as historical narratives broadly accepted as fact/history within a specific society and culture. Archival records are often used by those in power to reinforce the selected, "preferred" historical narratives. But the actual meaning of any given archival record is "underdetermined," i.e. open to various interpretations and ripe for placement in various contexts and frameworks of meaning (the archive itself is one such context). I suggest to you that archival records tend to radically undermine consistent historical narratives, and indeed that is part of what give the records "enduring value." Hence the title of this post (with apologies to the late Amos Vogel), "Archives as a Subversive Art" -- archives as nests of slippery objects that manage to wriggle out from under all attempts to completely capture their meaning.

But if that's true, it presents a paradox. Most archival records are institutional records, created to reflect the activities of an organization and its members, retained in order to retain some degree of corporate memory. How could they be subversive of anything? Well, that's part of what the blog is going to be about. There are many other paradoxes embedded in archival theory and practice, and I want to tease out as many as possible. Part of that teasing is going to be scrutinizing the content of archival/historical "meaning" (as used above) and its relation to what becomes "fact" and "history."

But in addition to all the above, I plan on discussing a lot of practical problems and solutions grounded in actual archival work, including issues around archival software, digitization, web design, processing, preservation, donor agreements, and so on. I definitely won't just talk about theory. On the other hand, I will talk about theory sometimes, so you've been warned.

About the Timeline of Archival History on this site: I couldn't find anything like it online, so I figured I would make it myself. Right now it's going to be a work in progress for as long as I can imagine, so please feel free to suggest additions. My goal is to build it into something useful for students and non-archivists who want to get a useful outline of the major events, trends, and individuals in the field.

Finally -- and in advance -- have a good Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, Saturnalia, Kwanzaa, and any other holiday to celebrate the fact that we made it through yet another year (more or less). Nice work! Let's try to do it again next year...

P.S. I have a weird thing for song titles (and titles in general) so I plan to use them in the titles of my blog posts, unless that gets too annoying. But I'll link to the song referred to in each post. Here's the first one. Sorry for the creepy image. Happy holidays... and pleasant dreams.