[Springboard] Global Archives a in Four Phases plus a Great Opportunity

Sat May 23 21:11:13 EDT 2009

People of the Order,

There is a once in a lifetime opportunity that has surfaced in connection with a University in Oklahoma City in relationship to these Global Archives becoming "Living Archives". I want to spell that out in some detail later for everyone to see and consider before the ICA Board and the Archive meetings. It means the difference between the Archives being stored for themselves, or putting the Archives into a setting where they would actively contribute to shaping the present and future consciousness. The opportunity involves significant use of the Archives where they will come alive and be used on a daily basis to assist people in shaping their understanding about what it means to be responsible in the 21st Century. This one step could infuse a whole new life into the People of the Order and the ICA program by catalyzing new energy, new programs, possibly a new movement, all needing to be mentored. This would elevate the value of the Archives exponentially. But more about this later.

There have been some very helpful and I think exciting contributions to this discussion of the Global Archives. It will be helpful if we could see the task before us insofar as to the Global Archives in four phases. 

1.       First phase is to focus on digitizing the 172 file cabinets. Plus, the audio/visual archives that are available. If they were created with equipment from 1960 or later, they can be captured digitally. Implicit in the process is that the Archives would be on-line access.

2.       Second phase is gathering the bulk of the personal archives of individuals who are willing to make them available. These would flesh out the gaps that may exist in the Global Archives and bring the individual work before and since 1988 into the domain of the Global Archives but tagged for the individual owner.

3.       The third phase would be to bring in what remains of the Archives of each Religious House and/or ICA office nationally and internationally. This would include the office of the ICAI.

4.       Phase four is tracking down all the archives of all of the closed Religious Houses insofar as is possible. When we returned to Oklahoma in 1985 and looked at the empty Religious House we saw in horror where the all the files, records, index cards, papers, every archival other archive significant file were torn to pieces and were completely destroyed by someone who broke into the office and tore apart everything stored there. They had no idea what they had done and even started a fire in the corner but fortunately it did not get into the papers and went out before the fire did much damage. Hopefully the fate of the archives in other closed Religious Houses did not get lost or destroyed. If they can be found, they can be added to the Global Archives.

I will be responding very soon to the questions being raised in this dialogue, and I look forward to your responses. In the meantime consider these four phases as a way to focus on the task out of an orderly context which will allow us to focus on one thing, then another. I believe while we are digitizing the Archives, we all need to be to be thinking about what would need to be put forward from our private archives as an addition to the Global Archives.