The best part of visiting the libraries is walking through the stacks full of books in a fast pace, running through the the small, white call number stickers with my finger and looking for the exact call number I have scribbled down on a small piece of paper. Going through such vast yet narrow space full of information makes me feel like I’m on a treasure hunt.
In the world that is turning increasingly digital with an astonishing amount of data collected and saved everywhere everyday, it is important to have a system that allows us to navigate through the pile of information in an efficient and effective manner. And more, it is also highly significant that we follow that system not only to find things but also when we are archiving them. Julia Gaffield’s search through the atlantic countries seeking for Haiti’s Declaration of Independence that had gone missing for centuries is an example of the significance of the archiving systems that connect our past to our present and future.
The main problem of navigating the Declaration of Independence of Haiti wasn’t only that the people who archived the document did not follow the same archiving system that we use today, nor was it that the people searching for it had no evidences in where to look for the document. It was more because while digging through the history the people were thinking in today’s terms rather than when that of the time when the document was archived. Centuries ago when the declaration left Haiti, the world wasn’t divided into countries as we know today, but it was more intertwined and connected through different colonies, people constantly traveling through and between them, transporting and trading goods. Gaffield was able to find the missing document that the historians and government officials could not navigate for years because she did not use today’s archival search as it is but understood how it was built and dug through the archiving system’s history along with the missing document’s history.
Navigating through data will only grow more complicated with an ever-growing amount of information pouring in and storages running out of spaces, but at the same time it will grow easier and more efficient as we adjust to the system. National Archives of Malaysia has not only built an official portal for government servants, students, researchers, and general public to find documents easily on their website but also offers consulting, virtual tours, and seminars on how to use the archive. United States’ National Archives portal also allows the public to look for documents by people, places, foreign policy, events, etc. along with their founding documents. The use of data and technology has brought us closer than ever to our history, and it will only continue to do so.
References:
- Gaffield, Julia. “Haiti’s Declaration of Independence: Digging for Lost Documents in the Archives of the Atlantic World.” The Appendix 2, no. 1 (January 2014)