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CHAPTER EIGHT
Private Archives: Solicited and Unsolicited Documents Thus far, the discussion has centered on running records prepared primarily for mass public consumption. Other types of archival records, however, are created for smaller, more specific audiences than the public in general. These private archival records include autobiographies (memoirs), diaries and letters, home movies and videos, and artistic and creative artifacts (drawings, sketches). In some cases, these documents occur naturally and are discovered by the investigators (unsolicited documents); in other situations, documents may be requested by investigators (solicited documents). An example of an unsolicited private record might be an existing house log, for instance, of a delinquency group home, which could be used to investigate staff and client relationships in order to determine misbehavior patterns. An example of a solicited document, on the other hand, would be a daily work journal kept by nurses in an intensive care unit at the request of researchers for the purpose of assessing staff and task effectiveness. Private records are particularly useful for creating case studies or life histories. Typically, owing to the personal nature of private documents, the subjects' own definitions of the situation emerge in their private records, along with the ways they make sense of their daily living routines. Precisely, these bits of self-disclosure allow researchers to draw out complete pictures of the subjects' perceptions of their life experiences. Perhaps the most widely accepted form of personal document is the autobiography. In their discussions of autobiographies, Bogdan and Taylor (1975), Denzin (1978), Webb et al. (1981), and Taylor and Bogdan (1998), each draw extensively from Airport's (1942) monograph entitled The Use of Personal Documents in Psychological Science. Allport distinguishes among three
types of autobiography: comprehensive autobiographies, topical autobiographies, and edited autobiographies. Comprehensive Autobiography. Inexperienced researchers are usually most familiar with the comprehensive autobiography. This category of autobiography spans the life of the individual from his or her earliest recall to the time of the writing of the work and includes descriptions of life experiences, personal insights, and anecdotal reminiscences (Smith, 1994; Taylor & Bogdan, 1998). Topical Autobiography. In contrast to the rounded and complete description of experiences offered in comprehensive autobiographies, a topical autobiography offers a fragmented picture of life. Denzin (1978, p. 221) suggests that Sutherland's (1937) treatment of "Chic Conwell," who was a professional thief, illustrates this type of autobiographical style. The topical autobiography is an "excision from the life of the subject. As such it invites comparison with
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other kinds of lives" (Denzin, 1978, p. 221). Other examples of this sort of excision are Bogdan's (1974) examination of "Jane Fry," a prostitute, and Rettig, Torres, and Garrett's (1977) examination of "Manny," a criminal drug addict. Edited Autobiography. In the case of edited autobiographies, researchers serve as editors and commentators, eliminating any repetition in descriptions, making lengthy discourses short and crisp, and highlighting and amplifying selected segments of the material while deleting other segments. Regarding the issue of which segments should be edited and which retained as intended by the author, Allport (1942, p. 78) offers a broad guideline and suggests that all unique styles of speech (for example, slang, colloquialism, street jargon, and the like) remain unedited. Researchers should only edit for the sake of clarity—eliminating repetition; shortening long, convoluted explanations; and so forth. An example of such an edited life history can be found in the writing of Jane Ribbens (1998) who describes the nature of motherhood from an autobiographical perspective. The intimacy afforded by diaries and personal journals, although conceptually recognized by Allport (1942) and Denzin (1978), remains an underutilized element in research. In diaries, individuals are free to express their feelings, opinions, and understandings fully. In contrast, published autobiographies must maintain the readers' interest or perhaps distort reality in order to project the author's desired public image. Kevin Courtright (1994) suggests there are several important advantages to using the diary method. First, it provides a defense against memory decay as respondents are typically asked to record their events either as they happen or shortly thereafter. Second, respondents who are asked to keep diaries act both as performers and informants. Thus, diaries are able to provide information about the writer (as performer) and of others who interact with the respondent/ writer (as observer). As informant, the respondent is able to reflect on his or her own performance, and that of those with whom he or she has interacted. The respondent can further articulate explanations of purpose, allocate praise or blame, and even act as a critic. Finally, the diary method provides an opportunity for the subject to reflectively recreate the events, since the diary is written and maintained by the subject him or herself (Courtright, 1994). Reinharz (1992) has discussed the use of autobiography by feminist social researchers. Reinharz suggests that some feminist researchers have written full autobiographies (e.g., Hewlett, 1986; Oakley, 1984; Riley, 1988). However, a greater number of feminist researchers have offered self-disclosures in either prefaces or postscripts to their published research. These explanations or expositions of personal and professional lives can provide subject matter similar to more traditional autobiographical data. The use of autobiography continues to meet resistance in some academic circles, and has even been called "self-indulgent" (Mykhalovskiy,