Affiliations between archives and its destructive fever

        Nowadays, we live in the world of archive. Archive is a way of storing and arranging information and data, so that data can be retrieved in the future. The most common examples of archives are library, book, journals, e-mails, Facebook and even YouTube.

                     

Image 1- All sorts of archive around us

       What is the relationship between all the archives involved? First of all, the emergences of some particular archives are dependent on the existence of its predecessor. For example, ‘snail mail’ is the antecedent the current electronic mail, whereas the iPad are the successor form of books, journals, and clay tablets.  Besides, each set of archive completes and access information from each other. For instance, the UNSW library websites provides information about the location and availability of particular resources, whereas the library shelves act as the ‘house’ for these items. However, in certain cases, new form archive may cause its predecessor to be disregard and threaten its subsistence. In week 2, the topic of transition between paper-based and electronic publishing have been discussed. In this case, the future of contemporary modes of publishing has been given a greater concern since e-reader makes its debut a couple of years ago.

Image 2 - Snapshot of Omeka, a web publishing system where you can create various types of online digital archives

         

       Furthermore, Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher is concern about the phenomena of ‘Archive Fever’. Basically, this situation is closely related to our desire to rearrange, rebuild, and customizing archives.   

Image 3 -Jacques Derrida and his book, Archive Fever

“The archivist produces more archive, and this is why the archive is never closed.”                         

                                          Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever, 1994

                    Derrida also argue that archive fever is detrimental, violent and destructive to the culture. This is because frequent addition and changes to existing archive could alter and modify the generally-accepted model into a new form which may not be understood by each member of the public.          

             In conclusion, archive can be destructive and preservative. It also deal with the issue of ‘dead memories’ and at the same time relieving the pain of memorizing a particular subject.