“When our humor gets black, we talk about this as a period of time that could be the Dark Ages for public records,” said Vicki Walch, the executive director of the Council of State Archivists.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/us/budget-cuts-to-limit-public-access-to-georgia-archives.html

The present archival "crisis" must be faced by EVERY archive, even the lucky ones that are currently flush w/ money. This is one of the critical reasons we must consider the Anarchives as an archive of the future, one that can outlive the Archivist's Dark Age. We must do so by confronting the big Qs that every Archivist fears:  - What information must we NOT collect?  - What must we learn to LET GO of?  - What must be LEFT BEHIND?  - What must be PURPOSEFULLY LOST?

Contrary to some anxietous beliefs, the answers to these Qs need not imply GONE FOREVER as in never to be found again. Things can be lost in an intentional way, noted on a treasure map for future-beings to follow whenever they decide to go looking, perhaps even  buried under the customary X. These will be the true Archives as Time Capsules that so many -- with their deeply-buried records -- seem to aspire to be. Thus, the Anarchives encourages us to make these decisions informed by instantaneous curation: to recognize what information is needed when, by whom, and for how long, and to let this need to know where everything is and keep it ourselves (i.e. the NEED TO CONTROL HISTORY) fade into the background.

We the Anarchivists are attempting to construct a networked archive that will be able to preserve multiple, distributed copies of valuable information, a not-entirely integrated system, but one that is built on social technologies that are lo-tech & high-effect, that cannot be anachronistic b/c they recognize time's relativity, that will not go extinct until the humans who keep it do. Yes this "system" will feature necessarily many loose ends...but then again, history is never quite as tight & tied up as some of us archivists would like it to be...

With all hope in lost causes, Bold Jez

Novadic Mandalas