A Case of Strange Provenance

          An isolated incident of apartment renovation in Budapest turned into an archival miracle and historical breakthrough. The Telegraph reports that while a Hungarian couple renovated their Budapest apartment this year, they found Holocaust-era documents tucked into a hole in the wall. What was hidden in the walls were 6300 immaculately preserved 1944 census records that documented Budapest just before the liquidation of its over 200,000 Hungarian Jews. The documents listed the name of every individual that lived in each apartment building in Budapest, including inhabitants’ religious affiliation. After the census was completed, large groups of Hungarian Jews were moved into “Yellow Star Houses.” With this discovery, historians can better understand the latter two years of World War II and the Nazi occupation of Hungary. You can read more about it here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/hungary/12009564/Nazi-holocaust-documents-found-behind-wall-of-Budapest-apartment.html.

            The discovery is not only intriguing for its content, but also for the physical condition of the records. The couple donated the records to the Budapest City Archives, where head archivist Istvan Kenyeres was astounded at the pristine state of condition of the documents. With the exception of yellowing, the ink was still legible on the documents. The archival staff is now working to literally iron out the papers for future storage and use.  

            But what is most intriguing is that the documents were found within the encasings of a wall. We’ve discussed in class that archivists make extensive contacts with donors and other institutions in locating sources of documents. However, I imagine that the strange discovery of documents like this makes provenance an interesting factor in assessing the history and value of the records. The Telegraph doesn’t make mention of any understanding of how the records ended up there in the first place. Who stored them there and why?

            This is an interesting case study in how documents are found, and I imagine that archivists come across situations like this at least once in their career. I wonder what other documents are out there hiding somewhere just waiting to be found. Finding out how they were placed where they were is the challenge of provenance, especially in a situation like this where secrecy was likely involved. I hope the answer sheds light on the content of the documents themselves. 

Otto Frank as Co-Author of Anne's Diary: Issues of Copyright and Authorship

             On November 13, The New York Times released an article that announced that the copyright on “The Diary of Anne Frank” would be extended for another seventy years. Initially set to expire on January 1^st in many parts of Europe, the diary’s copyright was extended after Anne’s father Otto Frank was designated co-author for his editorial contributions. The Swiss foundation that owns the copyright declared that this entitled an extension of copyright. Otto Frank died in 1980, so the copyright is set to end in 2050. You can read more about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/books/anne-frank-has-a-co-as-diary-gains-co-author-in-legal-move.html.

            The situation is also complicated by the fact that Anne’s legacy is managed by several different parties. This includes the Anne Frank House museum in the Netherlands and the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fonds. For the last five years, the Anne Frank House had been working with historians and researchers to publish a web-based version of the diary once it came under public domain. However, these efforts will not immediately launch as a result of these proceedings. Following the war, Mr. Frank dispersed much of Anne’s tangible legacy to various institutions, which makes the matter more complicated. We’ve seen this time and again in issues of ownership and copyright when things are donated to archival institutions.

            It is also a basic issue of creator and provenance. The Anne Frank House museum issued a statement and countered that Anne is the sole author of her diary.[1] However, an extension of the copyright will limit Anne’s legacy rather than further it, which seems counter to what the Anne Frank Fonds wants to accomplish. The stewards of the Anne Frank Museum, as part of their mission, hope to “disseminate” the life of Anne as widely as possible. This recent development hinders in some ways their ability to achieve their mission. It will be interesting to see how the story plays out and how the archival institution within the House museum fights to demand that the copyright enter into the public domain.

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[1] http://www.annefrank.org/en/News/News/2015/November/Copyright-diary-papers/

Digitization

                  In this week’s readings, we were introduced to the world of digitization – a world still without a compass for navigation the digital realm, but one which archivists and other cultural institutions are bravely taking on.

                  The historian Roy Rosenzweig, founder of the Center for New Media at George Mason University, wrote an article that described the pitfalls of the digital era. How will historians craft their histories when there is even more information and documents to choose from? This “culture of abundance” makes it more challenging to construct histories, especially when future historians will work with digital documents that are even less stable than their paper counterparts. Rosenzweig published this article in 2003, and today’s world is vastly different just twelve years later. We now have Google Drive and various cloud services, the iPhone, among other innovations. But many of these questions and problems still remain.

                  It’s especially difficult when you’re working even just to digitize paper documents, let alone worrying about born-digital files. Digitization efforts cost institutions quite a bit of money, and institutions are already strapped for cash. I found it interesting that Rosenzweig made a call for historians to also concern themselves with the preservation of digital material. I’m not sure under which model this would happen, seeing as graduate programs are already under such financial and staffing constraints.

                  Even so, Rosenzweig makes a major point. Historians are substantial archival users, and they should also concern themselves with these materials as the profession moves further into the digital era. Archivists, however, will play a major role in assessing the value of this information in order to weed out information that will undoubtedly take up too much space. I’d be interested to see if any collaborations transpire between historians and archivists as the trajectory of the history profession moves towards the digital course.

                 

                  

Outreach - NARA at Philadelphia

This week, we discussed another facet of an archives functions – outreach and advocacy. Initially, I saw the two terms as being synonymous, though upon examining the readings and listening to our class discussions, it became clear that while they feed into another, they are two different functions. Oftentimes, outreach and advocacy occur simultaneously.

           

Discussing outreach in class reminded me of an initiative that I became aware of when I was first introduced to the world of cultural institutions in Philadelphia. About three years ago, I volunteered at the National Archives at Philadelphia (Hi, Grace!), where I worked with its education specialist, Andrea “Ang” Reidell. I worked on a few different projects in the education department. I helped Ang with several teacher’s workshops, National History projects, and a myriad of other outreach initiatives. But the one that stuck out to me the most was her project with Esperanza Academy.

            Esperanza Academy, a Philadelphia high school, has a large number of Hispanic students. Ang developed a partnership with the school to bring in students to use the archives to create family histories, a project called La Historia de Mi Familia. Many students’ families had emigrated from Puerto Rico, which meant that as a commonwealth of the United States, NARA had these holdings. Students not only developed skills in archival literacy and primary source documents, but they constructed stories and projects based off of what they found. The project also expanded further when many students interviewed their family members and looked within their own families’ treasure troves of photographs and letters that might help them to construct a narrative of their ancestry.

            This project was an effective way to increase NARA’s visibility and strength its relationship to different corners of the city, but it also gave students valuable skills. As we discussed in class, however, many cultural institutions don’t have adequate staff that can take on such large-scale recurring projects. The value of the archives in this regard is apparent, but more needs to be done to expend more resources on similar initiatives. I hope to see and contribute to different outreach models that enhance an institution and its surrounding neighborhood of users.