Keeping the Record: The Archival Practice

Photo courtesy of Morgan Malone.
Photo courtesy of Morgan Malone.

Keeping the Record: The Archival Practice

By Tia Carol Jones

Morgan Malone was thinking about who she was going to be and how her life would be preserved and saved in years to come. One of Malone’s mentors who is an architect has an extensive personal collection in the Art Institute of Chicago. Malone thought to herself that she needed to get into a documenting process. It led her to start her own archiving practice.

Malone was also motivated to become her family’s historian. She started off with her own items, greeting cards she’s received over the years. It was a way of keeping sentimental artifacts from family members and siblings who are no longer alive.

“It’s super important because our histories are important. If we don’t keep up with our history, if we don’t keep up with our individual stories, if I don’t define myself for myself, people will define me. So, if I’m not archiving my story, my story will never be told from my point of view,” Malone said.

In 2020, Malone launched a project called Resisting in Place, because she cares about cultural and intellectual reconciliation and restitution. For her, the key is to have someone document the stories of people so the experiences, contributions, practices and rituals will not be erased. Digital photos, journals, sketches and notes are a way of keeping documenting in real time. Older items, like greeting cards, letters and physical photos can help with the archiving process.

Malone is archiving her story as well as her family’s history. Malone’s goal is to collect loose photos and family reunion books from her aunts and uncles and have them write on the back. She wants to build out a family book, with every first cousin getting their own book, and there are blank pages where they can write their own history. Malone has taken to her new role as family historian and is excited about having something for her future children to read.

When it comes to starting the archival process, Malone suggests that people set an (intention), figure out what story they want to preserve. For Malone, it is about preserving her physical self, her thoughts and her ideas, through space and time. For her family, Malone thinks about how to tell the family’s stories, while building and preserving a legacy.

“For people to start, decide what is that intention, what questions are you trying to answer within yourself, what questions are you trying to answer within your family, and you start with that intention, then you know what types of things to ask for and gather,” Malone said.

The next step is to ask family members for items and to also gather items that mean something to the person doing the archiving – notebooks, journals, photos, sketches, audio and home videos. Once those items have been gathered, then it is time to have an archiving system, start small – photo albums or acid-free boxes.

Also, during the daily documenting practice, select what you will use to document life. While most people will use their smartphone that has a camera and storage, Malone did something different for the holidays, she brought her Polaroid camera. She was able to document the moments and give the photos as a gift. Passing out physical photos can be a way of having a sense of connection and relating to one another.

With her greeting cards, Malone organized them by the name of the person who gave it to her, then she organized them by the year.
Sierra King is a Community Scholar and Archivist who created Build Your Archive, an interactive guide that assists Black women to build archives in real time. Malone used the naming convention and database that King already has created.

Malone suggests people who want to document daily with their digital photos use a cloud backup or Google drive, or an external hard drive to store photos. Malone will use a combination of backup storage and physical archiving.

“People should consider their archives as a living practice and err on the side of keeping more things and see how you feel about them in different seasons in your life, because sometimes you just can’t see the things that are close to you,” she said. “For the folks who are no longer with us, who we do have an archive for, people should take the time to seek that information out, so that their legacy does live on.”

For more information about Morgan Malone, visit https://msha.ke/morganmalone. For more information about Build Your Archive, visit buildyourarchive.com.

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