STHC-L: The Science, Technology and Health Care Archives Forum

[Previous Posting] [Next Posting]

Science/technology archives 

Leonard DeGraff is to be commended for starting last week's discussion of 
science/technology archives. All the responses have been interesting, and I
hope that the discussion will continue and include some of the other issues
that have been raised.   

Helen Samuels' message was especially valuable in providing a context for
thinking about documenting the field.  Simply doing more isn't a realistic
option for most archives, and Samuels makes the point that we first need to
decide what we want to document and then target under-documented areas. 
Accomplishing this is, of course, difficult and requires broad
collaboration. 

Archives need to work together,  and records creators, administrators, and
users have important roles to play in helping to determine which records are
worth saving and which should be destroyed, and also in acting as advocates
for records management and archives programs.   Advocacy is especially
important since many repositories have been badly hurt by institutional
downsizing and cuts  in government funding.  Historians, other records
users, and archivists need to join forces to try to restore adequate funds
to archival programs.

Finally, to respond to a couple of Leonard DeGraff's questions.  He asked
about records that have been lost in recent years.  The National Archives
report on the Naval Research Laboratory records that were destroyed in
1996-1997 (see the NARA Website or link from the History Center's online
newsletter at http://aip.org/history/spr98/nrl-nara.htm) offers a detailed
account of the accidental loss of important resources.  The report also
provides a thoughtful analysis of the difficulty of administering and
appraising federal science records.  And
http://www.aip.org/history/reports/ssghome.htm contains a summary report and
findings of the AIP Study of Multi-Institutional Collaborations; Phase II:
Space Science & Geophysics, which investigated ways of documenting modern
science.

Joe Anderson
AIP Center for History of Physics
<STHC-L@library.ucla.edu>   [STHC-L Archives -- Main Index]  [STHC-L Archives -- 1998 Message Index]