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| From Sustainable Brands |
William McDonough, an American architect, is
one of the first living archives. This
New York Times article explains that McDonough "has started filming all of his meetings and recording all of
his phone conversations. He will send them in something close to real time to
Stanford, which will be making much of the material immediately accessible on
the Internet." The article suggests that this will work in direct contrast
with traditional archives in which an "aging famous person puts together his
correspondence and drafts, hires an agent and sells the material to the
institution that offered the most loot. [...] Scholars would then slowly come
pick through the material, which sometimes carried restrictions for
decades".
The article’s tone suggests that the manner
in which ‘traditional’ archives function should be superseded as they are based
on commercial gain (loot), elitism (scholars) and cumbersome restrictions. The
restrictions placed on traditional archives are sometimes requested by the author/donor,
however, restrictions are also enforced by others – people referred to in
letters, for example. Before it is made public, the archivist is responsible
for combing the archive for material which may impinge on the privacy of third
parties. The scholar using the archive is aware of the restrictions on the
material.
Is the editing hand on McDonough’s ‘living archive’ as
transparent? McDonough has to gain permission from those on the other end of
the phone or in the meeting with him. McDonough
suggests that refusal to allow permission has occurred “twice out of a thousand”.
Although this assurance appears to dispel these queries and implies that we are
receiving unmediated, open access into his life, the constant stream of
material is still being shaped in hidden ways. For example, will third parties referred to in conversations have a say? The article admits that “The privacy implications of this are still somewhat
murky”.
Another article on the subject
draws attention to the opportunity for collaborative archiving. It notes “The
libraries will use the digital components to create a set of open-source
archival technologies allowing creators, archivists and selected contributors
to actively participate in the project.” This sounds like, potentially,
the most interesting and groundbreaking part of the project, although the
details remain unclear at this point.
As archivists begin to create new
parameters for dealing with privacy relating to born digital materials, ‘living
archives’ offer both an exciting step forwards and a new set of difficult
questions for archivists and scholars alike.
