Hello! My name is Sol, an MA student, aspiring archivist, part-time pretend artist, and internet resident. By some strange coincidence (likely) or (much less likely) completely on purpose, you have stumbled upon my website, ArchiveFreak. AF is part personal homepage (a la ~2001 web), part quasi-academic endeavour, and part hobby blog. Here I hope to document my fascination with archives, archival practices, and archival materials, in any/all forms but especially regarding odds and ends of ephemera from the 90s and early 2000s internet.
Archives, both as physical spaces and as entites which provide a real, tangible window into the artefacts of history and humanity, have done and continue to shape research, and in turn collective knowledge. Arlette Farge puts it into words beautifully: "Knowledge and uncertainty are ordered through an exacting ritual" in archival reading rooms. Farge acknowledges, as I frequently do, just how baffling this particular dance can be for the uninitiated, something which really must change if archives are to retain and advance their role in culture at large. The common image of archives, their reading rooms, and even those who make regular use of them as stuffy, uptight, and perhaps trapped in the proverbial amber of early 20th-century attitudes towards public outreach is unfair in some ways, but we must become more active in our combatting of these notions. In short, archives are wondrous and essential entities, but they must become more accessible if they are to survive. Though this silly little endeavour of a blog is not going to fix any of these frankly deep-seated issues within the sector, I hope it can impart at least a little of the joy I experience when learning in and about archives onto anyone browsing it. Hopefully, if all of us archive freaks can spread around a bit of that joy, it could go some way towarda making everyne realise just how important and fascinating these (physical/digital/whatever) spaces can be.
At this current juncture, I will be pretty indiscriminate with what I share here, if for no reason other than even I am unsure what I want this place to turn into. I might write on archive-related news, theory, research, public/community outreach work, and miscellaneous/strange little tidbits otherwise unclassifiable. One thing I am sure of is that I want to remain community-driven and focused, shedding some light on often-undervalued archives, materials, and practices as well as individuals/groups historically underrepresented in archive studies. I am a huge believer in collaborative and community-oriented archival practices, as well as placing more/new value on artefacts historically considered ephemeral. 'Ephemera,' by the way, is a word which carries a great deal of connotations in this sector, many of which can skew negative, but it is not a dirty word by any means. This will feature pretty heavily as a theme throughout this blog, as my current area of fascination (read: my dissertation topic) is the utterly undefinable and confounding beast that is ephemera.
Just as a side note: this website is enirely coded by yours truly, meaning you may encounter some issues while navigating around, as I am no HTML whiz, just someone with a lot of appreciation for early-web social and coding practices. If you want to flag any of these issues, or if you want to get in touch about anything else, you can let me know using my guestbox or you can email me (sorry for the Google link, I am trying to move away from using their products. I will replace it soon!).
