Online Lecture with Heather MacNeil

The Archival History Section steering committee invites members of the section and SAA to attend a virtual lecture on February 11 at 12 PM EST, by Heather MacNeil. MacNeil is a professor in the Faculty of Information of the University of Toronto, Canada. In her article, “Tacit Narratives in the Manuscript Collections of Matthew Parker and Robert Cotton,” which was published by Archivaria in 2024, she explored the ideologies that shaped the collecting and ordering of knowledge in two early modern archives.

Her lecture aligns with that broad theme focusing on a later period, drawing on previous research tracing the rise and decline of a particular archival finding aid genre, i.e., the calendar, within the Public Records Office of Great Britain (PRO) between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. In her talk, MacNeil will explore the ways in which the calendar helped to reproduce, frame, and perpetuate a progressive, consensual understanding of the history of the British nation, and worked to construct a community of historical workers comprising select members of the PRO’s professional staff and select users. 

Please register for the lecture using the link below.