Archives For Maintaining Community And Society In The Digital Age

This book explores how a society accepts and utilizes a system of archives to improve the quality of people’s lives at each level of community, organization, and government. This is the first book that examines the political, economic, and social background that has prevented the development of archival systems in Japan in comparison with other societies of different cultures such as the United States, Romania, India, and Korea. An archival system is an indispensable tool to live in the present and create a future by sharing an understanding of the past. For that reason, this book considers what “respecting the past” means from the point of view that people experience in their workplace to reconcile tragic experiences such as conflict, injustice, or corruption. Then the book shows how a system of archives plays a significant role in a democratic society because it serves as a foundation of evidence-based decision making for a specific group or the public. Thus, this volume provides guidance for ways that a society can build a common understanding of the importance of sharing the past to maintain community and society.

This book explores how a society accepts and utilizes a system of archives to improve the quality of people's lives at each level of community, organization, and government. This is the first book that examines the political, economic, and social background that has prevented the development of archival systems in Japan in comparison with other societies of different cultures such as the United States, Romania, India, and Korea. An archival system is an indispensable tool to live in the present and create a future by sharing an understanding of the past. For that reason, this book considers what "respecting the past" means from the point of view that people experience in their workplace to reconcile tragic experiences such as conflict, injustice, or corruption. Then the book shows how a system of archives plays a significant role in a democratic society because it serves as a foundation of evidence-based decision making for a specific group or the public. Thus, this volume provides guidance for ways that a society can build a common understanding of the importance of sharing the past to maintain community and society.

The role of archives and libraries in our digital age is one of the most pressing concerns of humanists, scholars, and citizens worldwide. This collection brings together specialists from academia, public libraries, governmental agencies, and non-profit archives to pursue common questions about value across the institutional boundaries that typically separate us.

This book is the first attempt to introduce the current status of archival practices in Japan as well as the basic views of the populace on making records accessible to English readers. In general, Japan has not paid sufficient attention to keeping and utilizing records except in the field of historical research. This book thus examines Japanese attitudes about history, records management, information acts, the status of archivists of the constitution, and genealogical research practices and a description of archives. Consequently, such investigations clarify how both private and public archives function or fail to do so in those spheres of Japanese society. In addition, this book presents the efforts in wartime record keeping in Australia, which is significantly different from how the Japanese deal with such records. This book therefore provides a clear and concrete picture of the status of current archival practices in Japan and the thinking that underlies them. On the basis of such examinations, this book enables readers to understand to what extent and how the past affects the present through archives, to recognize the importance of archives, and to respect the past in order to maintain and develop perspectives in people’s lives.

Is the Internet the key to a reinvigorated public life? Or will it fragment society by enabling citizens to associate only with like-minded others? Online community has provided social researchers with insights into our evolving social life. As suburbanization and the breakdown of the extended family and neighborhood isolate individuals more and more, the Internet appears as a possible source for reconnection. Are virtual communities "real" enough to support the kind of personal commitment and growth we associate with community life, or are they fragile and ultimately unsatisfying substitutes for human interaction? Community in the Digital Age features the latest, most challenging work in an important and fast-changing field, providing a forum for some of the leading North American social scientists and philosophers concerned with the social and political implications of this new technology. Their provocative arguments touch on all sides of the debate surrounding the Internet, community, and democracy.

Technology has shrunk the physical world into a "global village," where we all seem to be connected in an online community worldwide. Yet while we think of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook as accessible to all, in reality, these are commercial entities developed primarily by and for the Western world. Considering how new technologies increasingly shape labor, economics, and politics, these tools often reinforce the inequalities of globalization, rarely reflecting the perspectives of those at the bottom of the digital divide. This book asks us to reconsider "whose global village" we are shaping with the digital technology revolution today. Sharing stories of collaboration with Native Americans in California and New Mexico, revolutionaries in Egypt, communities in rural India, and others across the world, Ramesh Srinivasan urges us to reimagine what the Internet, mobile phones, or social media platforms may look like when considered from the perspectives of diverse cultures. Such collaboration can pave the way for a people-first approach toward designing and working with new technology worldwide that embraces the realities of communities too often relegated to the margins

Newly revised and updated to more thoroughly address our increasingly digital world, including integration of digital records and audiovisual records into each chapter, it remains the clearest and most comprehensive guide to the discipline.