Review of Archives and Societal Provenance: Australian Essays by Michael Piggott (Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2012)
Cecilia L. Salvatore
You will not find the words “societal provenance” in the Society of American Archivists’ Glossary of Archival Records and Terminology. While “provenance” — i.e. (according to the Glossary), “the origin or source of something; information regarding the origins, custody, and ownership of an item or collection” — is a historically fundamental concept in the archival profession, “societal provenance” was only recently propounded by Tom Nesmith, esteemed Canadian archival scholar and researcher. Societal provenance acknowledges that provenance is multi–layered and flexible, and that understanding the context of a record resides beyond understanding the individual creator to understanding organizational, psychological, family, cultural, and historical factors that could shape it. Societal provenance recognizes that archives and archival records have privileged those who are powerful and dominant.
In this book, Michael Piggott applies this concept of societal provenance to describe the archival scene in Australia. This collection of his essays was the culmination of his long and distinguished career following his retirement in 2008. Piggott had been an archivist, archival manager, and scholar in both the private and public sector. He had been archivist at the National Library of Australia and the National Archives of Australia, University Archivist and Manager at the University of Melbourne, and former editor of the Australian Society of Archivists’ scholarly journal, Archives and Manuscripts. He had received many honors and is a Laureate of the Australian Society of Archivists. Given these credentials, who else but Piggott should describe the Australian archival scene?
Piggott applied societal provenance to the Australian archival scene — in fact, the first time the concept has been applied at the broad national level — because it simply makes sense to do so. There is a resounding call in the global archival profession for a postmodernist approach to understanding the place of archives in our society, for pluralizing the archival paradigm, for diversifying the archival record, and for respecting the indigenous and the local. Piggott has been at the forefront of this, along with scholars such as Sue McKemmish, also of Australia, Eric Ketelaar of the Netherlands, Andrew Flinn of London, and Anne Gilliland of the United States/UCLA. Archival records in Australia distinctively resonate of societal provenance, of multi–layered records, of pluralism. These records represent one of the oldest living cultures in the world in the indigenous people, an ex–colonial society, and now a multicultural society. A review of archival research and scholarship in the Australian journal Archives and Manuscripts, of which Piggott had served as editor, illustrate this. Piggott’s essays in his book illustrate this as well.
Archives and Societal Provenance is a collection of essays of pivotal events and institutions and of provocative discussions about issues pertinent to the current archival paradigm. They are well–written, delightful discussions and stories, such as the story of the documentary evidence related to a drunken student by the name of Bob Hawke who swam naked in a lily pond at Australian National University; Bob Hawke later became Australia’s prime minister. There is the story of Australia destroying its name–identified population census data throughout the twentieth century. There are still more stories and discussions, such as the discussion on acknowledging indigenous recordkeeping, “sacred archiving” and the Australian War Records Section, and the prime ministerial libraries.
The essays in Archives and Societal Provenance are aimed at a somewhat learned audience of basic archival principles, practices, and history. In that the archival profession is a little–known profession with little–known terminology and definitions, this is to be expected. For archivists, however, Archives and Societal Provenance is a valuable contribution to further knowledge about the global archival scene. And for archivists who come from global entities that have not been privileged and have been, in fact, marginalized — such as the small island entities near and around Australia — Archives and Societal Provenance speaks of and to them and thus fortifies the need for archival pluralism.
About the author
Cecilia L. Salvatore is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University.
© 2013 Cecilia L. Salvatore.