The context of production and photographs in personal archives: a study in the articles of Information Science and Archival Science journals

Abstract

Study resulting from bibliographic research on personal archives in which documents of different genres are usually found, among them, photographs very often, evidencing the importance of these archives for individual and family memory. Organicity and authenticity are the characteristics that qualify personal archives and their photographs as such and what differ them from collections. This paper aims to verify how these archives are approached in the Portuguese language literature of journal articles, with emphasis on the study of the issue of production context of photographs in the personal archives, and the observance of the photographs, from the following categories of analysis: theme approach, empirical field and results. It should be noted that the technical treatment of these documents presents specificities, and it is necessary to examine whether the area literature has registered these changes regarding the theoretical and empirical aspects of organization and with regard to the growth of these documents in quantity and importance. Therefore, a review of the literature in Portuguese language were carried out in journals papers in the area of Information Science and Archival Science, with quantitative-qualitative approach and observance of the analysis categories. It is observed that just as the literature on photographic documents hardly mentions the personal archives, the inverse also happens: the literature on personal archives makes little mention of photographic documents, a documental genre found very often in personal and family archives. Both themes are related, but the literature encompassing the intersection between them is very scanty, especially in the chosen snippet.