Archives have a particular duty when trauma is involved in the collections they are handling. One of those duties is accuracy. A factor in trauma is the loss of agency, and when an archive catalogue tells a story about a traumatic event in which the facts are wrong, it re-calls and reimposes that loss of agency, and requires someone who experienced that trauma to relive it again, and to take flight, or fight. In flight they are repelled from engagement with the archive, and you lose an opportunity, as an archivist. In fight you can get very belligerent communications from the person from the outset, whether in a challenging phone call, or by email, or in a letter which opens with an assertion of their awareness and knowledge of their legal rights, and a stated or implied threat of potential legal action, if....
An archive which works with traumatic collections can not avoid the trauma which those bound up in the collections carry as a potential expression of who they are in relation to the collection and the traumatic situations that the collection binds together. One thing the archivist can do to help the person retain the sense of balance and agency which enables them to function well in their lives, as part of their growing autonomy where the trauma itself is concerned, is to do no harm. Ensure your cataloguing is accurate. Ensure the story you tell is accurate. Ensure it uses language in a way which people caught up in trauma can see, consciously or unconsciously, that you yourself have travelled the journey through the archives with detail and care, and are not asking of them anything which you have not asked of yourself. Getting the story right is an evidence of that.
We do, of course, get it wrong. I have written about getting it wrong. I have gotten it wrong without writing about it. It will happen. Just don’t make it easy. Do not be ignorant. Do not be the story. Do no harm.
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