Owning memory : how a Caribbean community lost its archives and found its history

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Title:

Owning memory : how a Caribbean community lost its archives and found its history

Author:

Bastian, Jeannette A.

ISBN:

9780313320088

Personal Author:

Bastian, Jeannette A.

Publication Information:

Westport, Conn. : Libraries Unlimited, 2003.

Physical Description:

xi, 106 p. ; 25 cm.

Series:

Contributions in librarianship and information science ; no. 99

Series Title:

Contributions in librarianship and information science ; no. 99

Contents:

1. A Community of Records -- 2. How the Virgin Islands Lost Its Memory -- 3. Reconstructing Whose Memory? Writing History -- 4. A Community Constructs Its Memory: Commemorations -- 5. "Go Back and Fetch It": Owning History.

Abstract:

"Written from an archivist's perspective, this book examines the relationships between archives, communities, and collective memory in the United States Virgin Islands, a former colony of Denmark. Because the historical records of the Virgin Islands reside primarily in Denmark and the United States, Virgin Islanders have had limited access to the primary sources of their history. This has affected their ability to write their own history and construct a collective memory. Archival expert Jeannette Bastian illuminates the story of the United States Virgin Islands and its search for its memory, including an exploration of how the community has formed its memory-to-date and the role that archives have played in this process. Interwoven throughout is a broader analysis that considers the place of archives and archivists in helping communities find their history."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject Term:

Archives -- Virgin Islands of the United States.

Memory -- Social aspects -- Virgin Islands of the United States.

Geographic Term:

Virgin Islands of the United States -- Historiography.

Electronic Access:

Table of contents http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy041/2003054609.html

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168015755412	027.0729722 B326.O 2003	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

This book examines the relationships between archives, communities and collective memory through both the lens of a postcolonial society, the United States Virgin Islands, a former colony of Denmark, now a United States territory, and through an archival perspective on the relationship between communities and the creation of records. Because the historical records of the Virgin Islands reside primarily in Denmark and the United States, Virgin Islanders have had limited access to the primary sources of their history and this has affected both their ability to write their own history and to construct their collective memory.

But while a strong oral tradition, often in competition with the written tradition, influences the ways in which this community remembers, it also underlines the dilemma of interpreting the history of the colonized through the records of the colonizer. The story of the Virgin Islands and its search for its memory includes an exploration of how this community, through public commemorations and folk tradition has formed its memory to date, and the role that archives play in this process. Interwoven throughout is a broader analysis of the place of archives and archivists in helping communities find their history. The book is exceptionally well written and will appeal to historians, archivists and those interested in the Carribean.