Literature and Archives : Resource Building Campaign

Summary

Our goal was to create a crowdsourced list of literary works that engage with archives, in order to create an online resource that would remain on the Milli website.

The intention was to encourage people – not necessarily from archiving or allied backgrounds – to engage with us, and to think about the many ways in which archiving is a part of our lives (even if it doesn't involve a formal archive with a professional archivist). By talking about fiction and poetry in multiple languages, with a focus on South Asian works, we were hoping to start a fun conversation that would help us all expand the way we see archives and archiving. We kept our eyes peeled for work that reimagined ways of archiving, articulated the joys of discovery in the archive, questioned the process of archiving or addressed current challenges.

We weren't looking for just recommendations of titles – we wanted reflective answers. We asked people to tell us how these works were connected to archives, and what thoughts or questions about archives they evoked in them. We also weren’t looking for recommendations of works that were based on research in the archives – our focus was on works that deal directly with aspects of archiving in their very stories.

We received a small number of recommendations, some that were wonderful, thoughtful, and beautifully written. Though we initially planned for this exercise to last only as long as a week, we have decided to keep the Google form open for recommendations, and to make this an ongoing conversation that we hope many more will participate in!