Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History

As the title suggests, this book is a collection of essays written by historians who have, to use the expression, been there and done that. Although these stories come from all over the world and take up a wide variety of topics, they are held together by a common theme: it is unrealistic to think that any archive contains merely the raw materials of history. Why? Because even the archive itself has a history, a history that dictates factors like what the archive contains, how its contents are arranged, how items are labeled, access to materials, and the unpredictable experiences of researchers. A second and related theme is that historians these days are bound to sense a tug-of-war being waged. On the one hand are those positivist ideas about the high level of precision one can supposedly achieve as a result of archival research. (Perhaps such notions have been inspired by recent advances in forensic science popularized by television crime dramas). On the other hand is a postmodern view according to which not only history but even the archive itself is understood to be an interpretation. People who aspire to become historians, and armchair historians who want to know what it's like to dig around among the primary sources, should read this book.

Archive Tales is a book I chose to create a scholarly review for my "Introduction to Archives" class.It is an excellent text filled with the experiences of 15 researchers of archival materials.The introduction by compiler Antoinette Burton gives the keys to the map of stories. Many of the searchers attempted to mine needed information for Dissertations and other scholarly works.A favorite quote: ”Archives as object gather meanings over time and their exchange and physical transformation and that meaning for us today” (Randolph, page 210).Recommended by Dr. Matthew Griffis - University of Southern Mississippi (2018)

A well written book that shows the use of archives, but also shows how those archives can be flawed, or used for ideological purposes.

Any graduate student of history should read this book.