A keynote address from UMSI Professor Margaret Hedstrom and a book launch for Senior Associate Dean Elizabeth Yakel are highlights of the International Conference on the History of Records and Archives (ICHORA), hosted by the University of Michigan School of Information Oct. 26–30. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference will take place online. 

Conference organizer UMSI Associate Professor Ricardo Punzalan and the program committee have put together a robust schedule of presentations and events around the theme of “Archives and the Digital World.” Presented papers will explore ways of historicizing and theorizing recordmaking, recordkeeping and archiving practices from a range of disciplinary perspectives and through the eyes of creators, custodians and users, with a particular focus on historicizing the view of digital technologies, their introduction and use in recordkeeping.

ICHORA 2020 will kick off on Mon., Oct. 26 with remarks from UMSI Dean Thomas Finholt.

A book launch for Defining a Discipline: Archival Research and Practice in the 21st Century – Essays in Honor of Richard J. Cox, edited by Jeannette A. Bastian and Elizabeth Yakel, will take place on Tues., Oct. 27. An accompanying panel discussion on “Archival Science – Discipline or Profession” will feature UMSI associate professors David Wallace and Ricardo Punzalan. 

Margaret Hedstrom, the Robert M. Warner Collegiate Professor of Information, will deliver the conference’s final keynote address, “The Provenance and Perversion of Curation.” The talk will explore whether there is correspondence between “curation” as used in popular parlance and curation as professional curators understand it.

The conference closes on Fri., Oct. 30 with remarks from Elizabeth Yakel.

• Conference program
• Registration information