Hidden Archives, the future and the past

There’s a post over at if:book that touches on the amount of raw material we have sitting around in libraries, archives, basements, etc, that is untouched. It’s something I think about a lot lately. A few weeks ago, the CDRH met with Jim Elmborg, head of the Writing University Archive at the University of Iowa. It was a really interesting meeting (no, that’s not an oxymoron) and I came out of it wondering just how many of these hidden materials there are across the country – materials that are uncatalogued, sitting in boxes. Some have very sketchy finding aids, some don’t have anything.

My first instinct is “let’s find all this stuff! Bring it out in the open! Catalog!” But I have a conflicting side as well that says that we don’t want to stop producing new content because we are so set on making all the old content available. This comes up again and again in library blogs and lists – should libraries be a place where people create new content? To what extent?

I, of course, say yes. This is why I got interested in Librarianship – because I am interested in the role they play in creating new content. Of course that involves delving into the past – after, all, nothing is really ever new – but it’s the creation – the interpretation – of information that I am interested in.

In the university setting, the answer to this is that you have students do much of the work that requires a lot of man hours- the grunt work of the research. The system actually works pretty well – you have a lot of people that are willing to step up and help (often for minimal or no pay because they can get course credit) that are knowledgeable about a topic and (usually) willing to learn. It’s harder outside a university setting because you don’t have that steady supply of willing workers – hiring can be quite a hit or miss prospect.

I keep going back to my community research projects idea but I wonder, could I ever get someone to participate in such a thing? Heck, I can’t even convince my family or my husband to use web services or take part in things, how will I ever convince total strangers? Still, I get really excited about the idea of people telling their stories and doing research. I know people are willing – look at how many people do genealogy research – it’s just a matter of getting them excited about something.