[Oe List ...] The Archives and the Repository

Tue May 26 09:02:27 EDT 2009

Gordon,

Thanks so much for that clarification.  Does the following add anything in helping to distinguish between the two?

The contents of the archives were created during our time together.  The contents of the repository have been and are being created during the time of our dispersion.

The archives are our foundational, "archival" wisdom.  The repository represents our application of that wisdom in our day-to-day work in the world.

The archives are somewhat "set"--that is, new input may be discovered but not created.  Everything that is/should be in the archives already exists somewhere.  On the other hand, new input for the repository is being created daily and being gathered by activities like the Wegel's videos of colleague interviews across the country.

The archives represents our corporateness.  The repository represents our individuality.

Does any of that sound right?  Perhaps the more clarity we have about how the two are different--in content and their functional value--the more we will know about how to manage both of them as separate and yet intricately related bodies of material.

Randy

--- On Tue, 5/26/09, Gordon Harper <gharper1 at mindspring.com> wrote:

From: Gordon Harper <gharper1 at mindspring.com>
Subject: [Oe List ...] The Archives and the Repository
To: "Colleague Dialogue" <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>, "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe at wedgeblade.net>
Date: Tuesday, May 26, 2009, 2:37 AM

Could there be, should there be, any connection between the archives and the repository?
 Randy Williams

---------------------

A good question at a time when we've started talking seriously about what to do with our archives.  The topic may also be of some interest to the archives team that will assemble this coming weekend in Chicago.  Things that team will hopefully be addressing have begun to be discussed in our recent online exchanges: how can we best organize, preserve, protect, access, add to and make available for others' future use the legacy of our OE, EI and ICA community?  This team that comes together this weekend now has great stuff with which to begin to answer those questions.

I think the Repository relates to the archives a bit like a grasshopper relates to an elephant.  And yet, the two significantly complement each other.  

The archives--to the degree such a thing is possible--are our comprehensive collection of what we did.  In principle, I suspect we'd like to see just about every important existing artifact from our history be part of this collection.  The Repository of course is and intends to be a selection from that body of materials, along with things that are not part of that collection.

If something is a part of our work, it probably deserves a place in the archives.  The Repository, on the other hand, was always meant to be a place for things that purely individual members of our community considered important and felt were worth making available to all of us.  Some of these items might also be found in a Kemper file drawer, but many others would not..  

The reason for this is that the Repository invites people to post both old and new materials, including personal reflections on their own experience of being part of our community.  Many of these stories are being told--or at least written down and made accessible to all of us--for the first time.  They shed new light on who we are, where we've been and what we've done..  Where the archives are more the products of our life and work together and the primary documents that we produced on that journey, the Repository is more a venue for us to share with one another particular snapshots of our life and work and our uniquely individual perspectives on it.

Just a few illustrations: Marilyn Crocker's narrative of the work done with McDonald's and its results; Joe Slicker's story of the move from Austin and the early days in Chicago; Beret Briffith and Brian Stanfield's chronology of the Order; Gillis on starting the movement in the Cleveland Region; the Wegners' experience in Bayad; JWM's Maliwada talk on Integrity, etc.  All of these are items not in the archives--at least not in this form.  Yet they contribute, sometimes substantially, to our understanding of materials that are there.

Another difference is that the archives cry out for professional and institutional management.  There is so much there (and so much more scattered around the world), that it is going to take serious funding and organizational expertise as well as ongoing oversight to properly care for it all.  It's not a matter of a few volunteers getting together over a few weeks to sort it all out.  Policies and criteria will need to be established, options explored and decisions made, contracts negotiated, support generated and systems put in place.  It's going to take time, and it's great that we're moving on it now.

The Repository continues to be a purely voluntary venture that will grow to the extent that people use it.  Indeed, part of our objective, once we got it operational, was for the three of us primary perpetrators to have to do very little in order to maintain it!  It's intentionally designed as a wiki, a user managed website, with the bare minimum of complexity or sophisticated bells and whistles.  Everyone can browse and access its material, download personal copies of anything they find to their own computers, as well as contribute their own documents, pictures, even brief audio and video clips--and all essentially without requiring professional assistance, having to meet any criteria, obtain any permissions or go through a webmaster or organizational gatekeeper.  It's a different kind of beast than the archives will need to be.

I'm grateful to have a place to go to listen to us singing and hear audio clips from lectures.  To see pictures from the places we've worked around the world.  To read deeply thoughtful, sometimes painful, sometimes wonderfully humorous accounts of events that people recall.  To make a space for very different personal perspectives on our community (e.g., Len titled the first page of the Year Index, "Decades of Glory," while Reinard Knutsen titled his piece, "My Life in Cults").  The Repository is by its very nature "open source," and therefore it's going to be just a bit quirky, idiosyncratic and, I'm afraid, all too human--and I think that's the way we want it.

We need our collective archives, on the other hand, to become a more or less permanent and primary resource for scholars and researchers and perhaps especially a legacy for future members of the League.  It will be tremendous if we can also find ways for all of us in the coming years to see a full picture of what's there, to access its treasures electronically, to help it assimilate additional collections from individuals and national offices.  That's going to be a real piece of work.

There's also a lot that can be done on the Repository, and we welcome anyone to our team who'd like to be a part of its further development and how it might morph in new directions.  We have the advantage at the moment of it being small enough that Tim Wegner has been willing to underwrite the modest server costs, but if it continues to grow as we hope it will, we'll need to come up with a sustainable model for supporting it longer range.

Last month the team decided on some ways to encourage adding items to the Repository and to keep those of you who are interested informed of the latest additions.  I'll get into that in a separate email from this, which is already too long.

Maybe this is at least a partial response to your question, Randy --

Gordon

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