ARCHIVES

“Without an understanding of context archives are mere pieces of information."

“Without an understanding of context archives are mere pieces of information."

Introduction

Archives can be defined as records or historical documents which provide information about an institution, a group of people or place (Carmichael, 2004). In other words we can say that it is a place or collection which contains documents, records or any other material of historical importance and interest (berhard,& Smith 2009).Context can be defined as the circumstances that form the setting of an idea, statement or an event, and in terms of which it can be fully assessed and understood. In archives the context plays an important role, without the context the archives cannot be properly understood (McCarthy, 2009). It provides the basis for the understanding of the archives.

Discussion

Archives are an important source of information; they provide us the information about an event, intuition, people of place. But if there is no context in the archives, they will be meaningless and nothing more than a pieces of information. With the help of context we come to know that in what circumstances something happened. For instance, if we go through an archive, which defines that how something happened but the context is missing than we will not learn anything from it (Mckemmish, Piggott, Reed, & Upward,2005). Similarly, if we are told about a place its description, its makeup and architecture but we are not told that where that place was and what was the condition of the overall society in that time than the archive will only be mere piece of information (Millar, 2010).

Context is very important in everything, whether you define a famous personality, an institution, a place or any important thing from the history. Without context the information will be useless. We see that whenever, we study the historical happenings, there is always context involved. For instance if we get knowledge about World War I, we will like to know that how the war erupted, what were the conditions at that time which gave birth to war. Bu on the other hand if we are just told that the war was between the Germany and its allies and France and its allies and each side had “X” number of soldiers, it will be nothing more than a mere piece of information. Therefore, it is necessary that the context should be given in all the archives. When we ...