1. Genre Theory and Evolution of Records and Recordkeeping in the United States
Jane Zhang, Catholic University of America
SAA 2018 Research Forum, Washington DC, August 14, 2018

2. Genre Theory and its Applications

3. Genre: History, Theory, and Research
- Genre theory introduced in the 1980s
Expansion of definitions and analysis models
- Bawarshi, Anis S. and Mary Jo Reiff. Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy. Parlor Press, 2010
Genre as dynamic discursive formations used to carry out particular social activities, language practices, and interpersonal relations

4. Broad Applications - Literary genre traditions
Poetry, prose, drama
Tragedy, comedy, romance
- Cultural and media genre traditions
Introduction of printing
Rise of popular media and non-literary genres
Various kinds of writing, talking, painting, filming, and acting
A powerful tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art and media

5. Broad Applications - Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS)
- Linguistic genre traditions
Systemic functional linguistics (“Sydney school” of genre theory)
English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
Pedagogical implications of genres
- Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS)
Shift the emphasis of genre study from the communicative actions to the social actions
Genres are created through social constructs
Professional and workplace genres

6. Records and Archives As Social Action
- Fiorella Foscarini
Rhetorical genre studies (RGS) provides a powerful theoretical framework for investigating organizational records as typified social action
- Heather MacNeil
Examine the social actions that finding aids participate in and accomplish and the ways in which these descriptive texts work to construct a community of writers and readers

7. Professional Genre Studies
- Historical investigations of professional genres to illustrate how such genres evolve in relation to changes in social context and cultural ideology
- JoAnne Yates’ Control through Communication (1989)
Examined the developing genres of internal communication and the shared characteristics of form and function of documents like reports and memos ( )
Historical study that has had the most impact on professional genre studies

8. Evolution of Record Genres in the United States

9. Five major records genres emerged historically in the United States
Five major records genres emerged historically in the United States. Each represents a major development of records and recordkeeping practice in a certain time period in the history of the United States.

10. Major Records Genres - Book form records: Pre-colonial - 19th century
- Paper file records: 19th century - 20th century
- Special media records: mid-19th century - 20th century
- Data centric records: early 20th century -
- Electronic/digital records: late 20th century -

11. Each records genre has its development history - a life of its own
Each records genre has its development history - a life of its own. Records genres evolving over time, embedded into each other, and some technology can transcend multiple records genres.

12. Bound Volumes & Loose Paper Records
- Massachusetts Colonial Papers
Apart from colonial meeting proceedings, which were recorded in prebound books, the Massachusetts colonial papers remained loose in files, packages, or bundles until 1836, when the Reverend Joseph B. Felt, by order of the General Court, was appointed to arrange, mount, and bind them.
- Papers of the Continental Congress
In spite of the progress made in copying records into bound books, some of the Old Congress papers were still maintained as loose papers in the early nineteenth century.
By November 1834, individual papers had been mounted in blank books and generated “volumes containing the mounted documents”.

13. Data Centric Records
- Logbooks, in the form of tables, previously used for accounting, and adopted in the seventeenth century to record observations of sea voyages.
- Index cards filed systematically to record data centric records in the late 19th to mid-20th centuries
- Since the second half of the 20th century, data archives and data centers began converting and formatting data to enable analysis using computer technology.

14. Genre-based approach views records, recordkeeping, and archives as interconnected systems, and studies the impact of records and recordkeeping practice on the formation of archival systems.

15. Genre-based Archival Systems
18th-19th century bound volumes
Manuscript indexes; card indexes; computer-assisted indexes
20th century loose paper file archives
Multi-level hierarchical organization and description
20th century media archives, data archives, digitalized archives
Collection organization and access built on database, XML, and linked data technologies
21st century electronic and born digital archives
Web archiving, archiving, electronic records on portable media, computational archival science (CAS)

16. Significance of the Study
- Archival practice
Multi-media archival collections in modern archives
Textual, photographic, audio-visual, cartographic, digitized, electronic and born digital
- Archival education
Digital natives – lack of personal experience with traditional media and records genres
The knowledge of which should be built into archival curriculum as archival foundation knowledge

17. Jane Zhang @ Catholic University of America
AERI 2014
Thank You
Jane Catholic University of America