🌱 seedling
There seems to be a popular belief that an archive is where you put things you don’t need anymore. They remain there, safe for when you need them, but they require no maintenance. In our personal knowledge management systems, in our code bases, wherever, you just throw things in there.
That is not an archive. That is an attic.
Archives require maintenance, care, and intention. They require workers who catalog the materials of people and institutions.
Calling our junk folders archives keeps the labor of archivists invisible.1
How does this invisible labor affect archival silence? ↩︎