Re-defining ‘evidence’

Appraising for historical value as historians turn to media and materiality

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26686/arch.10690

Keywords:

Archival materials -- Valuation, Transmission of texts, Archives -- Moral and ethical aspects, Appraisal of archival materials, Whare tukunga kōrero

Abstract

This article discusses evidence and additional information accumulated in dealing with texts and non-textual sources. These include what can be found in errors in textual drafts, damaged type and woodcuts, marginalia, spine linings and bindings, recycling parchment and fading of text. Wider source material is examined: preserving evidence of the use of laboratory apparatus, obsolete buildings, reconfiguration and repurposing of buildings, exclusion of women and children from official records, borrowing records from libraries, and student work. Why excluded perspectives and incidental information matter, the ethics of addressing such messages, the author's own approach, and ethical principles from international organisations are alsohighlighted. The article muses on the problems of broadening the understanding of 'text', and of broadening of whose history matters.

Metadata reused from the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa under a CC BY 4.0 license.

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Author Biography

Alistair Kwan, International Council of Museums

Alistair Kwan is an historian of science and a material culturalist. He studies scientific knowledge production practices, focussing on the roles played by space, body, tools and sensation. Though grounded in early modern European science and its architecture and instrumentation, he now works on nineteenth and twentieth century science education, especially on undergraduate teaching and learning.

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Published

2017-01-01

Issue

2017

Section

Articles