Perspectives on Personal Archives
Rodney G.S. Carter, R. E. Fisher, Carolyn Suzanne Harris, Catherine L. Hobbs · Archivaria · 2013
In fact, we believe a computer functions much more like an environment -or a writing space, to use a term popularized by Jay David Bolter.Access to an entire computer is not unlike having a key to an author's study or workroom.Matthew G. Kirschenbaum et al., Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use, White Paper to the NEH Office of Digital Humanities, May 2009, 23This issue of Archivaria focuses on personal archives, those defined as the archives created by individuals and family groups.The guest editing of this volume was an initiative of the Special Interest Section on Personal Archives (SISPA) of the Association of Canadian Archivists, and the guest editors are all members of SISPA.When first considering the issue, the group sought to elicit papers with both scholarly and practical perspectives about approaches to personal archives from archivists and others who work with personal archives, as well as to elaborate future research and discursive possibilities for this field of interest.Until recently, archivists dealing with personal archives have had a modest number of scholarly resources upon which to draw.In particular, issue 24 (1996) of the