Making an Archive come to Life : a comparative case-study of Three Documentary Film Directors as Archival Users

Sammanfattning: This is a qualitative case study, comparing the experiences of three documentary film directors, each using archival sources in their works. Their experiences are communicated through a series of semi-structured interviews and compared for textual analysis. The research is intended as a contribution to the archival science by expanding our knowledge on this group of archival users and by applying theory and empirics produced within our field. The theoretical models used are; Elizabeth Yakel and Deborah A. Torres’ conceptualization of Archival Intelligence and User Expertise; Angelika Menne-Haritz’ conceptualization of Access; and Terry Cook’s conceptualization of Community as contemporary professional paradigms of archives and archival science. The study finds that the model of archival intelligence does not apply to the examined cases without encountering errors. The examined cases represent complex and diverse individual experiences of access. As archival users, they are shown both restricting and enhancing access to sources as tools in their work. As community actors, their cases sometimes transcend familiar categories and roles of archival use, records-creation and archiving.