Where Narratives Meet: Archival Description, Provenance, and Women's Diaries

Women's diaries have been a rich source of information for historians and other scholars because they contain details of everyday life in different times and places that may otherwise have gone unrecorded. This article addresses the common archival description of diaries and discusses the riche...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Libraries & the cultural record 2009-01, Vol.44 (1), p.82-100
Main Author: Beattie, Heather
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Archival description
Archives
Archives & records
Archivists
Contextual information
Diaries
Forecasts and trends
Historians
History
Journal writing
Motivation
Narratives
Poetry
Provenance
Records management
Russian history
Women
Writing
Written correspondence
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Description
Summary:Women's diaries have been a rich source of information for historians and other scholars because they contain details of everyday life in different times and places that may otherwise have gone unrecorded. This article addresses the common archival description of diaries and discusses the richer portrayals frequently provided by academics in other disciplines. Aspects of a diary's provenance that non-archival writers often address but that are rarely mentioned in archival descriptions are the diarist's motivation for writing, the intended audience, and the implications of the diary's custodial history and representation. The article concludes with suggestions for improving archival description of diaries and other personal records.
ISSN:1932-4855
1932-9555
2164-8034
1932-9555
2166-3033
DOI:10.1353/lac.0.0064