I would not have been able to identify and find out who the gentleman in white trousers was, if a researcher had not come forward and asked for help. The archivist-researcher relationship helps us with enlarging the collections through potential donations, grow- ing knowledge and understanding of the materials through research, and most importantly, motivating me to explore more of the stories behind my daily work, and to prove our beliefs on safeguarding our collections and their valuable yet secretive pasts, for the unforeseeable future.
Li and Hirschfeld on tour in India, October 1931. Photo © Magnus-Hirschfeld Gesellschaft e.V., Berlin, Germany
Garfield Lam with Ralf Dose at Magnus-Hirschfeld Gesellschaft e.V., Berlin Photo © Garfield Lam
By ingesting people’s stories, we transform the archives from a place of memory and mourning into a place of understanding, of forgiving, and of rec- onciliation.1
after the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral Most of the news headlines
were ‘the loneliest goodbye as Queen bids farewell’, with the photograph of the Queen sitting by herself in St George’s Chapel. But to us, the relationship of the Queen and the Duke lives on – they are everywhere, and their relationship is closely preserved in the Royal Archives, so as in our University Archives, or many other places, as national and institu- tional memories. Archives are good places for establishing, finding, proving and reconnecting relationships. In fact, archives are not only about transactions of official business and formal activity, but are also a most prevalent source of
commentary on daily and personal life and relationships, almost by their very nature. Researchers using archives may not be looking for evidence of actions or facts in historical sense, as these may be well known, but more for a sense of char- acter, of feelings, of togetherness, and of relationships.2
IP References
1 Ketelaar, Eric, Archives as Spaces of Memory, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 29:1, 2008, pp.9-27
2 Hobbs, Catherine, ‘Personal Archives: The Character of Personal Archives – Reflections on the Value of Records of Individuals’, Archivaria 52, February 2001, pp.126-352.
Photos © University Archives, the University of Hong Kong
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