ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv / Fotograf:
Arb, Giorgio von / Ans_04205-004 / CC BY-SA 4.0
This post introduces a series of reflections on what it means to do research in archives and repositories, on how to sort through millions of records to match what you are willing to tell with what you able to find. Searching for a needle in the haystack of history is a matter of semantics. Institutions use words to classify their collections. All search engines function through words. Words, keywords, and passwords are the perfect navigation tool because everything was at some point labeled, tagged. Words are links, are the way to enter inside things.
ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv / Fotograf:
Nigg, G. / Ans_01531 / CC BY-SA 4.0
ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv / Fotograf:
Nigg, G. / Ans_01530 / CC BY-SA 4.0
By now I know that documents are just documents and what really matters are the stories we can tell with them. Collections are made of objects and by objects I mean works of art, books, drawings, photographs, everyday products, data. All that can be labeled can be collected and saved from oblivion. These multitude of fragments become relevant when we link them together, when we extract them from the flow of history to say something meaningful about today.
ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv / Fotograf:
Stärk, Georg / Ans_00360 / CC BY-SA 4.0
Further reading
Baudrillard, Jean. Passwords. New York: Verso, 2003.
Eco, Umberto. The Infinity of Lists. New York: Rizzoli, 2009
Feyerabend, Paul K. Against Method. An Outline of an Anarchist Theory of Knowledge. New York: Verso, 1975
Forty, Adrian. Words and Buildings. A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
