Difficult Description: Rhetoric, Neutrality and the Intellectual Tradition of Archival Processing

This paper seeks to closely examine the work of archival processing, also called archival arrangement and description or simply archival description. The reason description is difficult is due to factors within the traditions of archival theory and practice. In the past, archives and archivists have claimed neutrality and objectivity as a means to dignify the authority with which they worked. Only recently have archivists begun to acknowledge the power held in the archives, specifically the rhetorical power. This paper is primarily concerned with the rhetorical power held and nurtured in the archives by archival processing and to do so conducts a content analysis of the finding aids belonging to the Hayes Collection, 1694-1928, the Cameron Family Papers,1757-1978, and the Philip Henry Pitts Papers, 1814-1884 all held within the Southern Historical Collection (SHC) at the Wilson Special Collections Library