This I Believe

I believe in the power of perspective. As a child, I was a voracious reader. I went through phases of genres, consuming as much as I could from as broad a spectrum of high fantasy to autobiographies. I later took an interest in film, studying it extensively in college and briefly considering it as a second or third major to my degree, English Literature and Music being the other subjects. If I had been asked why these fields interested me so, I would have answered that I was fixated on stories and storytelling, amassing them like any devoted collector. While I loved music, for example, I could only truly appreciate a work if I knew or understood the story it was telling, which I believe explains why I became so drawn to music history, even considering becoming a music historian. In my extensive travels since then and immersions into several cultures dissimilar my own upbringing, I have come to question whether “stories” is truly an adequate word to describe the root of my curiosity. As I have come to expand my “collection” to much broader mediums throughout my post-college life, I have altered my self-diagnosis to more of a deep-seated thirst for perspectives of all varieties.

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Perspective allows us to see and hear beyond the limitations of our senses. Through perspective, we can hear the voiceless and see the invisible. By doing so, we can therefore better serve as powerful advocates for those frequently left behind by mainstream society, perfectly demonstrating the Society of American Archivists’ (SAA) core value of Advocacy (2011). By embracing the power of perspective and fostering environments that encourage the sharing of unique perspectives, archivists can also better affirm the SAA value of Diversity (2011). To truly understand and appreciate perspective is inextricably linked to the need to seek out more, much as how the  first world-altering book I read as a child roused an unquenchable thirst for more.

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When applied to the SAA’s core value of History and Memory (2011), perspective becomes something of a flat circle: broader perspectives allow us to better understand the past, which then informs our own understanding of the present and future. Using that perspective gained from our understanding of history and memory, we can better practice the SAA core values of Selection, Service and Social Responsibility by carefully ensuring that the “documentation of the past” includes as many perspectives as possible, with particular focus given to the oft-overlooked in society that have been erased throughout the cultural record (2011, para. 14). Perspective, in the hands of archivists, can serve as something of a proto-value that motivates and informs the vision behind many of the SAA’s stated core values, and when viewed thusly, can be a powerful tool for systemic change that seeks cross-cultural understanding through representation.

References

Society of American Archivists. (2011, May). SAA Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics. Retrieved March 5, 2020, from https://www2.archivists.org/statements/saa-core-values-statement-and-code-of-ethics