The Philosophy of History Meets Archival Practice @asist_ec #ist23

I will be doing some liveblogging from the Information Science Trends conference taking place in Uppsala, Sweden and online. I was a co-organiser for the conference, through my involvement with ASIS&T European Chapter, and the other co-organiser and host is the CAPTURE project. The first keynote is The Philosophy of History Meets Archival Practice, from Kirsten Walsh & Adrian Currie. The abstract and presenter bios are here.
The following is my own impression, as a non-historian/philosopher. I'll just forecast that I made a connection between the second part of the talk (on the Royal Society) and the origins of the Institute of Information Scientists (many of whose founders were Royal Society members)
Currie started by talking about substantive historical disagreement, using the example of Winston Churchill's request for a platypus - connecting together Churchill's love of animals, and what happened to the platypus (it was during the war: a depth charge went off near the ship transporting it from Australia and it died of shock). This can be formed into a chronology, connecting with the idea of  "History: a narrative structure lain atop a chronology". However, the history can be seen in a different way, with a different narrative - rather than it just being about Churchill's idiosyncracy, it was more about the tensions and diplomatic relationship between Australia and the UK. For example, the Australian law forbidding the export of the platypus was changed so Churchill could have one. Currie identified the way in which historical evidence would be pursued and investigated to underpin substantive historical disagreement. Currie identified an archive as a curated collection, which is gappy and incomplete, but also intentiona

Walsh took over to talk about the Royal Society (RS) archive. She identified that the RS's stated l.purpose in 1667 included making faithful records of all the works of science, nature and art. This would enable fellows of the RS to see what had been done and therefore what needed to be done, building on past knowledge. This meant recording its own activities and proceedings, in addition to keeping track of recorded knowledge to identify the facts necessary to advance.
There were practical difficulties, to do with: reliability, physical location (the information was initially scattered in people's homes etc.), ownership (because initially the information was in people's homes - when the person died the information might be lost), access (the collections were there to be used, but it was difficult to track down the right information), and manpower (people to record and manage the information). This led to an archive with missing pieces, and shaped by the RA's ideology.
The origins of the RS are contested. One story starts with Christopher Wren giving a talk at Gresham College. Another starts with discussions started by Robert Boyle to start an "invisible colllege" and a third starts with teh Oxford Experimental Philosophy Club. Walsh said it was interesting that it was the Wren narrative that the RA itself adopted. Walsh then mapped out the early names of the RS and the two Royal Charters it obtained.
The ideology adopted by the RA was Baconian: large scale collection of empirical data, with collaboration (needed because of the large scale) and aiming for completeness. This required collecting and record keeping, literally creating a storehouse of facts. In order to create the right sort of evidence, guidelines were set for those who were collecting the data in the field (and the sea!).
Walsh showed examples of record books, the kind of information they contained, and talked about the process of accessing them - that you would call them up one at a time. These give evidence of how the records were used and positioned (also there is information which reveals some of the processes - letters to be written etc.) She traced through the connection between different parts of the archive - for example a paper presented and (in another book) the minutes of the meeting where that paper was presented which might tell you how the paper was received. The records also were treated as historical documents that was reviewed and corrected.

Currie drew on Walsh's presentation to reurn to the idea of substantive historical disagreement - and how the archive and the official history of the RS craft their own version of history. You would need to do some additional digging to answer the question "who were the original members of the RS", resisting just accepting the RS's narrative. Currie said that substantive historical disagreement had to involve narrative rather than chronology, and the disagreement "turns on historical evidence".

Walsh finished the talk by talking about the advantages and limitations of digitisation, using the example of the Newton Project. The key limitation was loss of context when you engage just with the digital version, losing both historical context and material context. You also might get an erroneous idea of completeness of the archive. "You still need to do the history of the archive, no matter what".