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Columbia University <gm522@columbia.edu> I'd like to contribute to the developing thread on archives and accessibility. It seems to me that the common assumption in the postings to date has been that archives will be consulted by scholars (researchers or students), and that the preservation of archival documents is primarily _their_ concern. However, my experience in archives in Mali, Senegal, and France has been that most of the people using the archives on a daily basis are not scholars and researchers, but people who want to know their own history. Some are college students (or the equivalent), but most are looking for family history, personnel records, evidence about rights in land- or water-resources, or information about past sovereignties in local contexts. In Mali, I learned a good deal of social history of the colonial period by listening to the conversations of the old men (or their delegates) who had come up the hill from the capital to look/peruse old district reports, personnel records, or copies of the journal officiel. The archive is a school, and not (or not only) because of the documents it contains. A perfect afternoon in Kuluba meant enjoying Bakari Kamian, a prominent and elderly historian and historical figure in his own right, when he was in an expansive mood (which was often). There's nothing like reading the name of the person sitting across from you in a forty-year old document and hearing his interpretation of events. That can only happen in a public archive located in some kind of proximity to the communities it originally was meant to surveille. Let me point out that the same is true in Aix-en-Provence at the CAOM. Who are the majority of the readers? Genealogists and the descendants of former colons. Who reads at the military archives at Vincennes? Doctoral students, sure, but also many old soldiers, some of whom are writing their own histories. I realize my comments pertain to state archives, and that the original posting concerned private papers. I also applaud the efforts of those who work to keep collections accessible on the continent. I would, however, like to see this discussion take place with a different set of premises, one that made clear that, in the rawest sense, history belongs to the people, or in a slightly more sophisticated sense, that access for local communities should always be a priority, and that local archivists, librarians, and historians must be accorded an active role in the care and disposition of their countries' patrimony. Bravo to those who are working to rectify in whatever way possible the situation in Guinea-Bissau!
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