Better Off Forgetting?: Essays on Archives, Public Policy, and Collective Memory - Softcover

Cheryl Avery; Mona Holmlund

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1442610808 ISBN 13: 9781442610804

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2010

Synopsis

Throughout Canada, provincial, federal, and municipal archives exist to house the records we produce. Some conceive of these institutions as old and staid, suggesting that archives are somehow trapped in the past. But archives are more than resources for professional scholars and interested individuals. With an increasing emphasis on transparency in government and public institutions, archives have become essential tools for accountability.Better Off Forgetting? offers a reappraisal of archives and a look at the challenges they face in a time when issues of freedom of information, privacy, technology, and digitization are increasingly important. The contributors argue that archives are essential to contemporary debates about public policy and make a case for more status, funding, and influence within public bureaucracies. While stimulating debate about our rapidly changing information environment, Better Off Forgetting? focuses on the continuing role of archives in gathering and preserving our collective memory.

About this title

About the Author

Cheryl Avery is a professional archivist at the University of Saskatchewan Archives. Mona Holmlund is an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Saskatchewan.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1442610808
• ISBN 13: 9781442610804
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240
• Editor: Cheryl Avery, Mona Holmlund