"It's not *content*, it's *context*"

[equivalentideas]

It's not content, it's context

— Someone At the Record Keeping Round Table's April event Report from Improving access to archives and other records

In Chris Hurley's A modest proposal for improving access to archives and other records (2014), and also at the corresponding Record Keeping Round Table event, the importance of the context around and inside records kept coming up. I think it may have been Kate Cumming, @richardlehane or Chris Hurley himself who said ‘It's not content, it's context’, ‘same content, different context = different record’ and ‘avoid “listing”’.

I think this is very important, and also not an obvious point, particularly for people working on projects independently without training or experience with archives. I'm also thinking about different types of information that @richardlehane drew out: “things, facts about things and stories about things”. Who's stories? Who can add stories? How could people navigation across stories?

I'd like to add something along these lines as a principle.

I'm thinking about this as I'm adding a documents section to Detention Logs. I'll try and throw some more ideas up soon.