Archival Focus
The archives of institutions, which contain content of interest to historians, worry about keeping material that the public will be interested in.
A personal archive should consist of that author's best works.
Writing comes in many forms. However, it is not how one writes something that matters; it is what is written. The purpose of archiving is to preserve the ideas or historic facts that come from that writing. These collections are important to historians and researchers who are interested in what is stored in the archive.
For examples of archiving processes, I went to the archives of the Cleveland Orchestra. Upon speaking to the archivist there, I learned about the methods of storing important writing and important artifacts. The archivist at the orchestra had to choose what to keep and what to destroy. She literally had thousands of documents, tickets, programs, sheet music, and others pieces of writing to go through, and she noted that it was literally impossible to keep it all. She selected what to keep and what to discard based on what she thought the public would be interested in.
I have my own archive, which consists of everything that I have ever written. Contrasting the archivist at the Cleveland Orchestra, I have never discarded any of my writing. In fact, Portfolio Keeping by Nedra Reynolds and Rich Rice suggests that it is, in fact, a good idea for one to save everything that he or she writes in case one day he or she needs the information from a discarded paper for a current paper.
However, when I do make a portfolio, I will have to choose what to keep and what to “discard.” Of course, I will not be destroying any of my works, but I will be keeping them to myself in the sense that others will not see them in the portfolio. Again contrasting the archivist from the orchestra, I will not be making a portfolio (a personal archive) based on what I think the public will be interested in. I do not personally feel that historians will one day be looking back and focusing on what I, in particular, wrote. I am, however, concerned about how my writing is presented in a portfolio. Therefore, whenever I choose a writing portfolio, I will be choosing what I think are my best works; I will not be worried about the extent that my writing interests the average reader.
Only highly valued writing will make it into an archive to be preserved. The Cleveland Orchestra archivist values works that the public will be later interested in; I value writing that I believe is well written. By well written, I of course mean writing that will make me look like a good writer, so if historians of the future look back upon what I have done they will see only my best work, and all of the bad writing that I have done will be hidden from the world forever. This is opposite to the Cleveland Orchestra archive, as it consists of a broad spectrum of public works. Although some may argue that a personal portfolio should be a small representation of all of one’s writing, I believe that an archive or portfolio of personal writing should be a display of that person’s best works. After all, what would people say if they read Shakespeare's earlier produced when he was learning how to write?
Comments
Posted by: Ty's Grandmother
Posted on: November 13, 2007 03:12 PM
You should include this blog in your portfolio, as it is 5+ work! See you at Thanksgiving dinner; bring cookies.