The Concept of Public Memory and Its Impact on Archival Public Programming

Abstract

Public or collective memory (which, for the purposes of this essay, we can generally define as the perceptions and uses of the past by the public-including both government and citizens) has, in recent years, become a topic of great interest for American and other historians. An interesting collaboration between more traditional intellectual history (the history of ideas), political and institutional history, and social history (the history of the people) that draws on anthropology, sociology, and related disciplines, research in American public memory has now produced some major studies. In the last several years three books on this topic have appeared that are important for North American archivists to know about and to consider, especially in their public programs and advocacy work. This essay analyzes the implications of these studies for archival work and theory.

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