Abstract
This article discusses authority and the codification of professional principles in the archival field by comparing Sir Hilary Jenkinson’s Manual of Archive Administration (1922) with the contents of a wiki called A (New) Manual of Archive Administration, created by the Archival Discourses research network in the lead up on the centenary of Jenkinson’s text. Instead of a systematic comparison of the two texts, the article uses the mode of the “wiki game” to randomly navigate the intellectual content of the wiki. The authors then make comparisons between the wiki entries and the ideas espoused in Jenkinson’s manual. This comparison is the basis for an argument that the trajectory of archival discourse is towards heterogeneity, away from the aspirations to universalist frameworks expressed in earlier writings on the future of archival thought.
Recommended Citation
Lowry, James; Kinsey, Riah Lee; Lusty, Aimee; Hyman, Ezra; Heitjan, Phyllis; Rettie, Alexander; and Goetz, Kylie
(2021)
"No Manuals: Archives Administration 100 Years After Jenkinson’s Manual,"
Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies: Vol. 8, Article 17.
Available at:
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol8/iss1/17