Organizing Institutions:
Heinz von Foerster Gesellschaft / Wien
ASC – American Society for Cybernetics
WISDOM – Wiener Institut für
  sozialwissenschaftliche Dokumentation und Methodik
Institut für Zeitgeschichte | Universität Wien
AINS – Austrian Institute for Nonlinear Studies

Theo Hug

Constructing an Archive

University of Innsbruck

In the rapidly-changing world of the Internet and mobile technologies, museums, archives and libraries frequently struggle to catch up with developments and interactions in technology and the social forms and cultural practices evolving with it. As to archiving, new aspects related to memory capacity, social media, selection and orientation as well as tensions between storage and transmission, and time-based and space-based media (Harold Innis) are being discussed. This presentation describes the construction of the Ernst von Glasersfeld archive so far and from now on. What are the major issues beyond rules for the exploitation of literary estates and autographs and encoding archival context? Which problems are we facing when managing born digital records and material artefacts? How can we conceptualize the archive at the same time coping with Ernst’s thoughts in open and future oriented ways? The paper seeks to give some preliminary answers and to stimulate further discussion.

 

Bionote

Theo Hug is professor of educational sciences at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) and coordinator of the Innsbruck Media Studies research group. Together with Josef Mitterer he is literary executor for Ernst von Glasersfeld. He is author and/or editor of several books on various aspects of media, communication, and education (s. www.hug-web.at).