Recordkeeping, reconciliation and political reality

In this presentation, Michael Piggott and Sue McKemmish begin by recapping their 2001 Hobart conference paper, which attempted to draw out the connections between reconciliation and recordkeeping, and explored the implications for recordkeeping processes relating to records creation and capture, description and metadata, appraisal, access and accessibility. They revisit and expand on the issues that emerged from the Hobart paper in light of this year’s conference theme, Past Caring, and the politics of recordkeeping, arguing that most archival practice is trapped in the third dimension of the records continuum. The presentation challenges archivists working within continuum frames of reference to complement their achievements in establishing accountable recordkeeping regimes in the third dimension by building fourth dimensional frameworks that better enable records to function as accessible collective memory beyond spatial and temporal boundaries.