ORI GIN AL PA PER

What finding aids do: archival description as rhetoricalgenre in traditional and web-based environments

Heather MacNeil

Published online: 9 May 2012

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract Research and scholarship in the fields of rhetoric and composition have

been instrumental in developing a framework for treating non-literary texts (e.g.,

scientific articles, memoranda, instructional handbooks) as part of social processes.

Rhetorical genre theorists have developed methodologies and modes of analysis for

studying both texts and their contexts, that is, their content and structure, the pro-

cesses involved in their production, transmission, and interpretation, and the tem-

poral, institutional, and rhetorical contexts in which these processes take place.

Approaching archival description as a rhetorical genre creates opportunities for

examining the social actions that finding aids participate in and accomplish and the

ways in which these descriptive texts work to construct a community of writers and

readers. It also creates opportunities for examining the impact of the World Wide

Web on the communicative aims of archival finding aids. This article reports on the

first stage of a research project exploring archival description through the lens of

rhetorical genre theory with a specific focus on the finding aids that archivists create

as part of the process of making historical records available for use. Its aim is

threefold: to explain the rationale for the research, to identify and elaborate the

elements of a conceptual framework for studying archival description as rhetorical

genre, and to sketch the parameters of such a study and the questions to be

addressed within those parameters.

Keywords Archival description � Finding aids � Rhetorical genre theory

H. MacNeil (&)

Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, 140 St. George St., Toronto, ON, Canada

e-mail: h.macneil@utoronto.ca

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Arch Sci (2012) 12:485–500

DOI 10.1007/s10502-012-9175-4

The study of genres has been around since Aristotle, if not before, in the traditional taxonomies of types oforatory and of types of literary works. Rhetoricians and literary scholars have differentiated ceremonialfrom legislative discourse, tragedy from comedy and tragicomedy, argument from persuasion fromexposition from narration from description. What is new about this renewed turn toward genre is thestudy of genres as action rather than form, as a text-type that does something rather than is something.This rhetorical turn has changed the way genre theorists … think about genre (Devitt 1996, pp. 605–606).

The concept of genre traditionally has been employed as a means of classifying

texts based on regularities in form and content (Duff 2000). Contemporary genre

theorists have developed methodologies and modes of analysis for studying both

texts and their contexts, that is, their content and structure, the processes involved in

their production, transmission, and interpretation, and the temporal, institutional,

and rhetorical contexts in which these processes take place. Rhetorical genre

theorists are specifically concerned with developing frameworks for understanding

non-literary texts (e.g., scientific articles, accountants’ reports, and instructional

handbooks) within both local and generalized contexts.

This article reports on the first stage of a research project exploring archival

description through the lens of rhetorical genre theory with a specific focus on the

finding aids that archivists create as part of the process of making historical records

available for use. For the purposes of this article (and as a starting point for this

research) the term ‘‘finding aid’’ is defined as any tool that aims to provide users

with intellectual and/or physical access to the holdings of archival institutions; also

for the purposes of this article the terms ‘‘finding aid’’ and ‘‘archival description’’

are used interchangeably. These provisional definitions may change as the research

project progresses. The overarching aim of this research project is to identify and

analyze the social actions archival finding aids accomplish and to assess whether

and to what extent the generic identity of finding aids is changing as they move out

of archives’ reading rooms and onto institutional websites. The aim of the present

article is threefold: to explain the rationale for the research, to identify and elaborate

the elements of a conceptual framework for studying archival description as

rhetorical genre, and to sketch the parameters of such a study and the questions to be

addressed within those parameters.

Rationale for a study of archival description as rhetorical genre

There is a substantial body of research focused on writing and genre in various

workplace and professional contexts—science, medicine, law, and accounting

among others—representing useful examples of how rhetorical genre theory has

been applied, tested, and refined based on empirical study (Bazerman and Paradis

1991; Spilka 1993; Orlikowski and Yates 1994; Freedman and Medway 1994b; Coe

et al. 2002; Yates and Orlikowski 2002; Bazerman and Prior 2004; Bazerman et al.

2009; Bawarshi and Reiff 2010). These empirical studies have been conducted by

researchers in a range of disciplinary fields, including rhetoric and composition,

communication studies, sociology, and linguistics. Rhetorical genre theory has also

been applied by researchers working in the fields of knowledge organization and

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information retrieval (Andersen 2008). Rhetorical approaches have been adopted for

the purposes of analyzing scholarly editions as bibliographic tools (Dahlstrom

2004), examining the ways in which classificatory, indexical, and editorial texts are

being reconfigured in the ‘‘hypertextualized scholarly archive’’ (Dalgaard 2001),

and explicating the rhetorical dimensions of a bibliographic record (Andersen

2002). One strain of research concerns itself explicitly with the transition of genres

from one medium to another (i.e., from print to digital) and the impact of that

transition on the producers and consumers of those transformed genres (Kwasnick

and Crowston 2005; Miller and Shepherd 2009; Giltrow and Stein 2009).

The generic character of archival finding aids—their dependency on particular

historical media settings, their socio-cultural roles and functions, and their rhetorical

dimension—is recognized, implicitly, in recent archival literature examining the

socially constructed and mediated nature of archival description (Ketelaar 2001;

Duff and Harris 2002; Yakel 2003, 2011a, b; MacNeil 2005, 2008; Head 2007; Opp

2008) as well as in the literature critiquing traditional models of description and the

archival theory that underpins them (Brothman 1991; Millar 2002; Schwartz 2002;

Podolsky-Nordland 2004; Nesmith 2005; Douglas and MacNeil 2009). The idea that

archival finding aids carry out social actions is intimated in literature advocating the

development of more participatory models of description that promote social

inclusion and cultural pluralism (Archival Education and Research Institute (AERI)

2011; Bastian 2006; Flinn 2007; Shilton and Srinivasan 2007), and in the literature

encouraging greater accountability and transparency in descriptive practices (Light

and Hyry 2002; MacNeil 2005, 2009).

There is also a growing body of archival literature focusing specifically on the

opportunities new and emerging technologies present for improving access to

information about archival holdings and, more broadly, for reinventing the nature

and purpose of description. Recurring themes in this literature are the need for

archival institutions to shift from traditional record-centric to user-centric models of

delivery (Hallam-Smith 2003; Sexton et al. 2004; Huvila 2008); the experiences of

users in navigating online finding aids (Feeney 1999; Prom 2004, 2011; Roth 2001;

Scheir 2005; Daniels and Yakel 2010); the strengths and weaknesses of digital

images of archival documents as means of augmenting and enhancing access to

archival holdings (Lynch 2002; Hill 2004; Conway 2010; Conway and Punzalan

2011) as well as the potential of social media tools for engaging users in archival

descriptions (Light and Hyry 2002; Krause and Yakel 2007; Theimer 2011a, b) and

for supporting indigeneous communities in their efforts to reclaim their identities

and memories (Payne 2006; Smith 2008; Christen 2011; McKemmish et al. 2011).

An in-depth exploration of the generic character of archival description is

proposed here as a potentially powerful way to locate and frame the commonalities

and connections between and among these disparate yet related archival discussions.

Approaching archival description as a rhetorical genre creates opportunities for

examining the social actions that finding aids participate in and/or accomplish and

the ways in which these descriptive texts work to construct a community of writers

and readers. It could be argued, for example, that archival finding aids are vehicles

for carrying out a range of explicit and implicit social actions, among them: making

archival holdings visible and accessible, confirming the cohesion and authenticity of

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a body of records, validating the authority of archivists and archival institutions to

preserve cultural resources and make them available for use, and enshrining

particular perspectives on the notions of ‘‘community,’’ ‘‘identity,’’ and ‘‘cultural

heritage.’’ Viewing archival description through the lens of rhetorical genre theory

is an opportunity to tease out and test that argument.

Approaching archival description as a rhetorical genre also creates opportunities for

examining the impact of the World Wide Web on the communicative aims of archival

finding aids. Traditionally, the archivist has served as a mediator between finding aids

and users, explaining the relationships between and among the inventories, lists, and

indexes typically found in the reading rooms of archival institutions. The development

of computer network technology has led to the adaptation of traditional finding aids to

electronic formats, mounted locally or available worldwide via the Internet. The

emergence of web-based finding aids opens up archival holdings to vast numbers of

‘‘invisible’’ users, and archival institutions face increasing pressure to reinvent

themselves as virtual, as well as physical, spaces. Some researchers working in the

area of digital document genres observe that:

As documents have migrated to the web, … their identity as genres has also

evolved. New document genres have emerged, while older ones have blended,

changed, and been incorporated into different social endeavours. … Many

researchers, and indeed the public at large, assume that there are significant and

fundamental differences in how these adapted and new genres will now function

and be used. As with many new technologies, there are fond hopes that these

genres will be socially transformative, enabling better communication, as well as

more flexibility and expressiveness (Kwasnick and Crowston 2005, p. 79).

Systematic examination of the processes involved in the production and transmis-

sion of finding aids through the lens of rhetorical genre theory could provide a solid

foundation on which to identify and assess the forms of social transformation that

web-based finding aids promote and constrain in principle and practice.

Conceptual framework

Genre theorists affiliated with the rhetorical turn in genre studies have developed a

number of conceptual tools for analyzing the broad socio-historical contexts in

which genres are enacted as well as the far-reaching effects of genre in directing

human activity. A number of these concepts—the term genre itself, as well as genresystem, discourse community, background knowledge, and meta-genre—provide a

starting point for considering archival description as rhetorical genre. In this section

of the article, I will introduce each of these concepts and suggest their relevance to a

study of archival description as rhetorical genre.

Rhetorical definitions of genre

Carolyn Miller’s article, ‘‘Genre as Social Action’’ (1994a) has been a formative

influence on the rhetorical turn in genre studies. In it, she defined genre as ‘‘typified

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rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations’’ (1994a, p. 31). While the definition

has been reworked over the years by Miller herself and other rhetorical theorists of

genre, the basic building blocks of that definition remain unchanged. According to

Miller, ‘‘a theoretically sound definition of genre must be centered not on the

substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish’’

(1994a, p. 24). The action itself ‘‘must involve situation and motive’’ (p. 24). A

situation is a ‘‘social construct’’ or ‘‘semiotic structure’’ that develops ‘‘through the

recognition of relevant similarities,’’ which then ‘‘become constituted as a type’’ (p.

29). What recurs in a ‘‘recurrent situation,’’ therefore, ‘‘is not a material situation (a

real, objective, factual event) but our construal of a type’’ (p. 29). At the core of the

rhetorical situation sits motive or ‘‘exigence,’’ which Miller defines as ‘‘… a set of

particular social patterns and expectations that provides a socially objectified

motive’’ for addressing recurrent situations (pp. 30–31).

Miller’s original definition of genre has been complicated and reconfigured by

the composition scholar Devitt (2004) who argues that describing a genre merely as

a response to a situation oversimplifies the reciprocal and dynamic relationship

between situation and genre (2004, p. 23). As she observes: ‘‘If genre responds to

recurring situation, then a particular text’s reflection of genre reflects that genre’s

situation. Thus the act of constructing the genre—of classifying a text as similar to

other texts—is also the act of constructing the situation’’ (2004, p. 21). She

proposes, therefore,

that genre be seen not as a response to recurring situation but as a nexus

between an individual’s actions and a socially defined context. Genre is a

reciprocal dynamic within which individual’s actions construct and are

constructed by recurring context of situation, context of culture, and context of

genres (2004, p. 31).

Embedded in Devitt’s definition of genre is an explicit recognition that writing takes

place within three distinct yet overlapping contexts: a situational context (‘‘the

people, languages, and purposes involved in every action’’), a cultural context (the

‘‘material contexts and learned behaviors, values, beliefs, and templates [that]

influence how situation is constructed and how it is seen as recurring in genres’’),

and a generic context (‘‘the already existing textual classifications and forms already

established and being established within a given culture, the set of typified rhetorical

actions already constructed by participants in a society’’) (2004, pp. 27, 25, 28).

Genres simultaneously shape and are shaped by these recurring contexts of

situation, culture, and other genres (2004, p. 214).

The genre ‘‘archival description’’ surfaced in the nineteenth century in response

to the opening of archival institutions to the public and the consequent social need to

make the holdings of these institutions available for use by the public. Over time,

archivists and archival institutions developed strategies to address this need, and

these strategies have evolved into recognizable text types (e.g., calendars,

inventories, catalogs, indexes) and conventions for their preparation (institutional

policies and procedures, professional standards and guidelines). To study archival

description as a rhetorical genre in Devitt’s terms entails an examination of how the

genre has shaped and been shaped by a recurring situational context, that is, the

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reciprocal communicative actions of archivists providing information to users about

archival holdings through finding aids of various kinds and of users seeking to

locate relevant archival documents through these finding aids; a recurring cultural

context, that is, the socio-historical role of archivists and archival institutions; and a

recurring generic context, that is, the antecedent finding aids that have influenced

the form and content of contemporary ones.

Genre system

Devitt’s notion of generic context is an attempt to capture the intertextuality of

genres, that is, the multiple synchronic relationships that exist between and among

genres, as well as the diachronic relationships that link contemporary genres to their

antecedents. Her notion of ‘‘genre sets’’ is a complementary concept that pinpoints

the specific ways in which these relationships manifest themselves. One type of

genre set Devitt identifies is a ‘‘genre system,’’ which is ‘‘a genre set identifiable by

those who use it that has clearly linked genres with a common purpose’’ (2004,

p. 56). The concept of genre system captures one of the ways in which a

communicative action breaks down into specific text types and how those texts

interact and accomplish specific activities within a broader function.

It is possible to characterize archival description as a genre system, the common

purpose of which is to make archival holdings accessible to users. Within this broad

purpose, we can identify separate but related activities such as providing intellectual

access to archival holdings and facilitating physical access to them. The descriptive

genres that, historically, have served the former purpose include inventories,

catalogs, and calendars whose primary purpose is to provide researchers with the

intellectual means of understanding and interpreting bodies of records. Such

purpose is quite distinct from that served by other descriptive genres such as indexes

and file lists, which are designed primarily to provide researchers with a means of

identifying and physically locating archival holdings. Nevertheless, the specific

purposes of these finding aid genres may be subsumed under the broad purpose of

making records accessible to users.

This characterization of archival description as a genre system requires some

qualification because it could be taken to imply that all finding aids are created for a

single purpose—to provide access to archival holdings—and are directed to a

specific audience—researchers seeking access to archival holdings. As Yakel (2003)

points out, however, archival finding aids:

are more than access tools. For better or worse, they have also been collection

management tools for archivists. … Accession numbers record the yearly

growth of an entire archives or manuscript collection. Storage numbers

connote incompletely processed collections. Call numbers reflect an attempt to

incorporate the materials in a larger library classification scheme (pp. 4–5; 12).

If we take into account the wide range of resources and tools that could fit under the

heading ‘‘finding aid’’ and the diversity of data elements contained within them, it is

clear that finding aids serve multiple purposes and audiences and may participate in

any number of genre systems. Situating archival description primarily in relation to

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one of those purposes, that is, making archival holdings accessible to secondary

users, reflects the chosen focus of this particular study, which is the finding aids that

archivists create as part of the process of making historical records available for use.

Analyzing archival description in relation to that purpose does not obviate

consideration of other possible purposes that have informed the construction of

finding aids, however, since these other purposes may help to explain complexities

and apparent incoherencies within the genre system.

Discourse communities

As both Miller’s and Devitt’s definitions make clear, genres are inherently and

necessarily social, being ‘‘[embedded] in groups and hence social structures’’ (Devitt

2004, p. 36). The concept of ‘‘discourse communities’’ has been invoked by a number of

genre theorists as a means of specifying and localizing the social nature of genres, that is,

their embeddedness in disciplinary, professional, and other kinds of groups. John Swales

(1990) defines discourse communities as ‘‘sociorhetorical networks that form in order to

work towards sets of common goals’’ (p. 9). His conceptualization of discourse

community derives from the linguistic notion of a speech community. Other genre

theorists locate discourse communities within a social constructionist perspective. Olsen

(1993), for example, traces the idea of discourse communities back to Thomas Kuhn’s

Structure of Scientific Revolutions, ‘‘in which he argued that science and scientific

knowledge develop through a series of revolutionary changes in what a community

accepts as knowledge’’ (1993, p. 182: See also Bazerman 1988). According to this view,

discourse communities are based on the existence of shared languages and conventions

that structure the production and interpretation of texts. Texts belong to discourse

communities when they comply with shared standards and expectations; similarly,

individuals become members of discourse communities when they learn and use the

community’s languages and conventions.

Over the past 20 years or so, the concept of discourse community has come under

attack for being ‘‘too utopian, hegemonic, stable, and abstract’’ (Devitt et al. 2003,

p. 541) and for ‘‘emphasiz[ing] too heavily the role of discourse in constructing

groups and not enough the role of groups in constructing discourse’’ (Devitt 2004,

p. 39). These criticisms have resulted in reconfigurations of the concept itself

(Swales 1998; Killingsworth and Gilbertson 1992; Miller 1994b; Porter 1992), an

increased attention to the diverse ways social groups come together and use

discourse (Devitt 2004, Bawarshi 2000; Freadman 1994), and more explicit

recognition of the existence of conflict as well as consensus within these groups. As

Coe et al. observe, ‘‘For all their commonalities, … communities are typically

hierarchical and heterogenous. Genres will inscribe not only common perspectives,

attitudes, values, methods, and subject positions, but also the divisions and

distinctions that exist in and constitute social situations’’ (2002, p. 6). That

recognition has led, in turn, to a more intense focus on the ways in which genres

reflect and reinforce the ideology of the group whose purposes they serve (Coe et al.

2002; Devitt 2004; Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995; Winsor 2000).

At its most basic level, the concept of discourse community directs attention to

the interaction between a given social group and the genres used by that group to

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communicate its aims and promote its values. Discourse communities revolving

around archival description and comprising archivists and/or users may be

instantiated and constructed at the institutional level (in workplace and academic

settings), at the professional level (within local, regional, national, and international

professional associations), or as ad hoc responses to particular events or situations.

It would be premature to speculate about the specific dynamics of such groups; it is

possible, however, to identify some of the means by which discourse communities

‘‘rhetorically structure and maintain their interests’’ (Bazerman and Paradis 1991,

p. 7) and suggest how they might apply to a generic study of archival description by

looking at the related concepts of background knowledge and meta-genre.

Background knowledge and meta-genre

The concepts of background knowledge and meta-genre capture some of the ways in

which a group’s ideology—its ‘‘values, epistemology, and power relationships’’

(Devitt 2004, p. 60)—is made manifest through genre. According to Giltrow (1994),

genres work to construct communities of writers and readers, in part, through the

assumption and use of background knowledge, which refers to ‘‘propositions

unstated by a text but necessary for its interpretation’’ (1994, p. 155). Background

knowledge operates on two levels: at one level, ‘‘users share knowledge of the

genre’s conventions’’ and at another level, ‘‘writers assume on behalf of readers

some knowledge of the world that readers can consult in order to interpret

discourse’’ (1994, p. 156). As part of the process of inducting outsiders into social

groups, genres position people’s perspectives of the world and often demand the

adoption or development of new subject positions and identities (Pare 2002, p. 66).

In cases where readers of generic texts are not members of the discipline or

profession within which the genre originates, the genre may constitute a

transactional domain in which expertise is converted to everyday knowledge

(Bazerman and Paradis 1991, p. 8).

Archival finding aids both shape and are shaped by professional perspectives of

reality and, in so doing, could be said to participate in the construction of a

discourse community comprising archivists and users of archives. In order to

become members of that discourse community, both archivists and users must

acquire background knowledge of finding aid conventions and archival descriptive

practices. As a genre system, archival description operates within a transactional

domain, since finding aids are directed, at least, theoretically, to users rather than to

other archivists. Nevertheless, even as a transactional domain genre, finding aids

assume some knowledge on the part of readers and induct readers into particular

perspectives.

Related to background knowledge is the concept of ‘‘meta-genres,’’ which

Giltrow has developed to apprehend the ‘‘atmospheres of wordings and activities,

demonstrated precedents or sequestered expectations—atmospheres surrounding

genres’’ (Giltrow 2002, p. 195). Guidelines and standards as well as academic

discourse could all be considered forms of meta-genre, which function both to

enable and constrain writers and readers and implicate them in institutional systems.

For Giltrow, meta-genre is an effective conceptual tool for analyzing how ‘‘writers

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learn to compose in a particular genre’’ and ‘‘a critical instrument for investigating

the sociopolitics of sites of writing and reading’’ (2002, pp. 196, 199).

Description standards such as ISAD(G) and EAD, institutional guidelines for

arranging and describing archival holdings, as well as the archival theory

underpinning arrangement and description are all examples of archival meta-

genres. Studying these meta-genres can provide insights into how they enable and

constrain the archivists who use them to prepare archival descriptions and the

readers who then use those descriptions to access archival holdings. As Yakel

(2003) observes, ‘‘[t]he very act of archival representation, designed in order to

provide access to collections through finding aids, can also create barriers to use.

Researchers must know the schemas and codes and understand the underlying

systems of privileging, classifying, and selecting that comprise both arrangement

and description’’ (2003, p. 2).

The concepts of genre, genre system, discourse community, backgroundknowledge, and meta-genre are helpful tools for analyzing the situational, generic,

and cultural contexts that have shaped and been shaped by archival description over

time and across institutions. They also draw attention to issues of power and

authority by investigating the forms of communication and knowledge that genres

encourage and inhibit (Coe et al. 2002, pp. 6–7). The concepts thus provide a

promising starting point for an examination of archival description as rhetorical

genre. The next step is to situate these concepts within a structure.

Structuring a study of archival description as rhetorical genre

In an effort to identify the observable constituent elements of a genre within the

framework of rhetorical genre studies, Pare and Smart (1994) have proposed a

definition of genre based on distinctive regularities across four dimensions: textualfeatures, composing processes, reading practices, and social roles (of writers and

readers). Archival finding aids may be defined on the basis of similar regularities:

their structure and content (textual features); the procedures associated with their

production and transmission (composing processes); their use and interpretation by

users (reading practices); and the socio-historical, disciplinary, and institutional

framework in which they have been prepared (social roles). Textual features and

composing processes relate to the representation of archival holdings through

finding aids of various kinds and the policies, procedures, and activities that

underpin those representations. Reading practices and social roles, on the other

hand, relate to the use, interpretation, and wider effects of these representations. In

this final section, Pare and Smart’s four dimensions will provide a preliminary

structure within which to sketch out the parameters of a study of archival description

as rhetorical genre and identify some of the questions to be addressed within those

parameters.1

1 Pare and Smart focus on workplace settings and their dimensional analysis emphasizes the ways in

which genres regularize and conventionalize writing and reading practices in order to reduce idiosyncrasy

in reading practices (1994, p. 153). Thus, the ideological aspects of genre, while not ignored, are not their

primary focus. Such aspects do, however, fall within the parameters of this research project.

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Textual features

For Pare and Smart, textual features are ‘‘repeated patterns in the structure,

rhetorical moves, and style of texts’’ (1994, p. 147). In the context of archival

description, such features would include the organization and structure of a finding

aid, its descriptive and visual elements, its use of terminology, and its explicit and

implicit modes of argument. The silences in finding aids—what Devitt (2009) calls

‘‘notable absences’’ of generic form—also may be considered an aspect of textual

features. As she explains, ‘‘generic form/substance includes choices that are notmade as well as ones that are visible. Absences of forms may be as revealing as

presences, just as what is not taken up, what is silenced, can be as significant as what

receives response’’ (p. 34). Although some preliminary work has been done in this

area in relation to particular finding aids and description standards (Yakel 2003;

MacNeil 2009), a more comprehensive analysis of the effect of these ‘‘notable

absences’’ across a range of finding aid text types and over time has yet to be

undertaken.

Examining the textual features of finding aids also entails an exploration of the

genre system in which they participate: What are the various text types that operate

within the genre system of archival description? When did they emerge and how

have they evolved over time? How do they interact with one another and what

particular roles do they play in fulfilling the overarching function of making

archival holdings available to users? What ancestral genres still inform their

contemporary instantiations? What is the relationship between, for example, a

nineteenth-century inventory and its contemporary counterpart?

As finding aids move out of reading rooms and onto institutional websites, a

rhetorical genre study also needs to consider how and in what ways, the interactions

between and among the various finding aids are changing. Put another way, what is

the nature and shape of intertextuality in a hyperlinked environment? Increasingly,

web-based finding aids are being linked to digital images of the holdings

themselves. What role do these images play in a web-based genre system of

archival description? What social actions do they accomplish within that genre

system?

Composing processes

If textual features are the ‘‘surface traces of underlying regularities’’ (Freedman and

Medway 1994a, p. 2), composing processes are where those regularities are

codified, either implicitly or explicitly. For Pare and Smart, composing processes

include, among other things, gathering and analyzing information, writing and

rewriting, and the technological production of generic texts (1994, p. 150). These

activities conform roughly to the ones typically associated with accessioning,

arranging, and describing archival holdings, and they all assume and use

background knowledge and meta-genres (arrangement principles, description

conventions and standards) to some degree. In considering composing processes,

therefore, it is important to look at what background knowledge arrangement and

description practices assume and use: What do the conventions and standards

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foreground? What do they ignore? Many of the legacy finding aids that are being

converted for use on institutional websites were designed in an earlier time period

and for an imagined community of so-called ‘‘expert’’ users. To what extent are

these finding aids being redesigned and refashioned to address an exponentially

broader audience possessing very different levels of expertise?

Composing processes traditionally have been the prerogative (more or less) of

archivists and archival institutions. That exclusive authority has fragmented and

diminished over the last number of years for a range of reasons: two are worth

mentioning in the present context. First, as archival institutions acquire more and

more born-digital records, they are relying increasingly on creator metadata of

various kinds to supplement and even replace archival description. Second, the trend

toward archival institutions licensing digital images of their holdings to commercial

publishers such as Ancestry has resulted in the provision of access to at least some of

those holdings being shared between archival institutions and third parties. How do

(or might) these developments affect the generic identity of institutional finding

aids? If we turn our attention to archivists, a related question is, ‘‘How closely is the

generic identity of finding aids linked to the professional identity of archivists?’’ Put

another way, does the fragmentation and decentralization of authority over archival

description imply the fragmentation and decentralization of archival professional

identity?

Reading practices

Reading practices encompass the ‘‘operational force’’ of finding aid texts and the

sites of reading (Bazerman and Paradis 1991, p. 8). Such practices include the way a

reader approaches a text, how the reader negotiates her way through the text, how

the reader constructs knowledge from the text and how the reader uses the resulting

knowledge (Pare and Smart 1994, p. 152). In the context of archival description,

analyzing reading practices means, among other things, analyzing how users make

meaning from finding aids (Duff et al. 2011; Yakel and Torres 2007); and how they

make sense of the digitized images of records that, increasingly, augment online

finding aids (Conway 2010; Conway and Punzalan 2011).

Composing processes draw attention to the assumption and use of background

knowledge and meta-genres on the part of the writers of finding aids (i.e.,

archivists). Reading practices foreground the effect of background knowledge and

meta-genres on the readers of finding aids (i.e., users). If, as was suggested earlier,

archival description constitutes a transactional domain where the specialized

knowledge of the archivist is translated into the everyday language of users how

successful has that translation been? As many archival user studies can attest, the

structure and terminology of finding aids often bewilder users because they do not

possess the background knowledge or ‘‘archival intelligence’’ necessary to navigate

them successfully (Yakel 2004; Yakel and Torres 2003). The traditional site of

reading practices—the archives’ reading room—has always been a fairly complex

genre system in which the interaction between and among finding aids is often

opaque. From a users’ point of view, the processes involved in identifying and

locating relevant records can seem like a hidden objects game where the hidden

Arch Sci (2012) 12:485–500 495

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object may be information about the structure and content of the records, or about

record creators, or about the physical location of the records. These different kinds

of information are embedded in a range of different finding aids and if user studies

are any indication the relationships between and among these finding aids and the

information they contain do not readily reveal themselves to users. Frequently, the

archivist has to play a mediating role between the user and the descriptive system.

The ‘‘virtual’’ reading room of the institutional website is designed to obviate or

at least reduce the need for archival mediation, but it may be as complicated in its

own way as the physical reading room because users must learn how to navigate the

architecture of that site to find what they are looking for. Increasingly, institutional

websites are not just one place, but a multiplicity of places with linkages to other

websites and other online catalogs, each of which carries its own baggage of

background knowledge and meta-genres. In this respect, the institutional website is

more akin to a shopping mall with the online catalog functioning as the anchor store.

The question is, when users click on a particular link in the course of an online

search, do they know they have left Harrods and are now in The Dollar Store?

Perhaps it is no more confusing than the traditional reading room, but it is a different

kind of confusing and potentially creates new forms of rhetorical disjunction for

online users.

Social roles

Social roles focus on the roles of writers and readers within organizations and in the

creation and use of texts. According to Anis Bawarshi, enacting these roles enables

writers and readers, ‘‘to function within particular situations at the same time they

help shape the ways [writers and readers] come to know these situations’’ (Bawarshi

2000, p. 340). To understand the historical and contemporary roles played by

archivists and users as ‘‘writers’’ and ‘‘readers’’ of finding aids requires that we

probe the ‘‘identities and subject positions’’(p. 355) archivists and users assume and

reproduce through the genre of archival description. What are the recurring contexts

of situation, culture and genre that shape and are shaped by these roles?

The rise of participatory culture in the wake of Web 2.0 is encouraging users to

shift from being passive consumers of archival descriptions to becoming active

contributors to those descriptions; that shift, in turn, is pushing archival institutions

in the direction of promoting greater user engagement and peer production of

finding aids (Theimer 2011a, b; Yakel 2011a, b). As archival institutions make

provision for users to tag and annotate online descriptions, where do these user

contributions sit in relation to the so-called ‘‘authoritative’’ descriptive record? How

much or how little moderation is necessary or desirable from the point of view of

the archival institution and from the point of view of users? Moderation protocols

for managing user-contributed content are an emerging meta-genre and like other

meta-genres such protocols have the potential to both enable and constrain users

because they dictate the forms of social participation and social organization

allowable within the descriptive genre system.

Moderation is but one dimension of a much larger issue concerning the kinds of

discourse communities that are beginning to take shape in the so-called ‘‘Archives

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2.0’’ world (Theimer 2011a). What role do communities of writers and readers play

in constructing the emergent genre system of online archival description and what

role does the emergent genre system play in constructing these communities? How

are conflict and consensus negotiated within multiple, disparate, and overlapping

groups? As the boundary separating the writers and readers of finding aids begins to

blur, is the generic identity of finding aids changing in fundamental ways? If so, do

those changes signal, in turn, a ‘‘technological adjustment or paradigm shift’’

(Taylor 1987–1988) with respect to the cultural role of archivists and archival

institutions?

Conceptualizing archival description as rhetorical genre provides a starting point

for analyzing the social actions performed by finding aids—what they do rather than

what they are, to paraphrase Devitt (1996, p. 606). This article has focused on the

first stage of a research project investigating archival description as a rhetorical

genre in traditional and web-based environments. The aim of the article has been to

make the case for a generic study of archival description, to identify and elaborate

the elements of a conceptual framework for such a study, and to sketch out its

parameters and the questions to be addressed within those parameters. The next

stage of the research project will build on this foundation by exploring the past,

present, and possible future of archival description as rhetorical genre within

specific institutional settings.

Acknowledgments This article is based on research undertaken as part of a project entitled ArchivalDescription as Rhetorical Genre in Traditional and Web-based Environments, funded by the Social

Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). I wish to thank my student research

assistant Rebecca Russell whose exhaustive review of the literature on genre theory in general and

rhetorical genre theory in particular contributed substantially to the development of the SSHRC research

proposal. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the draft version of this article who

offered many helpful suggestions for improvement.

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Author Biography

Heather MacNeil is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto

where she teaches courses in archival concepts and issues, the history of recordkeeping, and archival

representation. Her research and publications focus on the theory and methods of arrangement and

description and the trustworthiness of records. In her current research, she is exploring archival

description as a rhetorical genre in traditional and web-based environments. Dr. MacNeil is the author of

Without Consent (1992) and Trusting Records (2000) and co-editor, along with Terry Eastwood, of

Currents of Archival Thinking (2010).

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