“It Feels Like a Life’s Work” : Recordkeeping as an Act of Love

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dc.contributor.authorDouglas, Jennifer
dc.contributor.authorAlisauskas, Alexandra
dc.date.accessioned2021-10-26T16:44:39Z
dc.date.available2021-10-26T16:44:39Z
dc.date.issued2021-06-16
dc.description.abstractBy considering a set of in-depth interviews with eight bereaved mothers, this article seeks to explore ideas about what records are and what they do. Working to centre the voices and experiences of the bereaved mothers, the article first discusses some of the objects, events, places, and bodily traces they identified that function as records. It next considers the roles records and recordkeeping played for the parents interviewed, identifying four types of records work: proving life and love, parenting, continuing a relationship, and imagining. Records and recordkeeping are shown to be instrumental in the ongoing processing of traumatic loss as well as in the significant work of ensuring a life has meaning and is acknowledged. Finally, the interviews with parents also showed how deeply imbricated are love and grief as emotions and as motivations for recordkeeping, and the article ends by articulating a call for archivists to learn to “look with love.”en_US
dc.description.grantingagencySocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)en_US
dc.identifier.citationDouglas, J., & Alisauskas, A. (2021). “It feels like a life’s work”: Recordkeeping as an act of love. Archivaria, 91, 6-37. https://doi.org/10.14288/1.0398429en_US
dc.identifier.doihttps://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0398429en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1880/114072
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/43938
dc.publisher.facultyLibraries and Cultural Resourcesen_US
dc.publisher.hasversionpublishedVersionen_US
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Calgaryen_US
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of British Columbiaen_US
dc.rightsUnless otherwise indicated, this material is protected by copyright and has been made available with authorization from the copyright owner. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.en_US
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0en_US
dc.subjectarchivesen_US
dc.subjectgriefen_US
dc.subjectcontinuing bondsen_US
dc.title“It Feels Like a Life’s Work” : Recordkeeping as an Act of Loveen_US
dc.typejournal articleen_US
ucalgary.item.requestcopyfalseen_US
ucalgary.scholar.levelFacultyen_US
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