Socioplastics 11811 The Archive before Its Categories
An archive begins to shape interpretation as soon as its records receive categories. RawIndex describes a provisional stage in which documents can be addressed, compared and found while their final classification remains open. A collection of drawings, letters and photographs may arrive from different projects, with uncertain dates and overlapping subjects. Early labels guide later research; a provisional index keeps the initial evidence available for revision. Aby Warburg’s image atlas arranged visual material through associative constellations. Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet developed documentation practices that made records retrievable and usable. Georges Perec explored inventories and everyday classification, while Umberto Eco examined openness in works of interpretation. These approaches illuminate different purposes of ordering. RawIndex joins them through a practical question: how can an archive support discovery while recording the choices that shape its categories? A first-pass index could preserve the source filename, date, creator, origin, format and a short description. Researchers would add provisional tags with a record of who applied them and when. Related documents could be linked through several routes, allowing a later cataloguer to replace or extend a category without erasing the earlier path. A sample audit could test whether users can find materials through different names, periods or relations. RawIndex treats provisional description as an accountable research instrument. It gives archives a way to keep the conditions of classification visible while making collections usable from the beginning. Later decisions can build on the early record and show how an initial field of documents became an interpreted collection.
REFERENCES
Briet, S. (2006) What Is Documentation? Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Eco, U. (1989) The Open Work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Eco, U. (1990) The Limits of Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Otlet, P. (1990) International Organisation and Dissemination of Knowledge. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Perec, G. (1997) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. London: Penguin.
Warburg, A. (2000) Der Bilderatlas Mnemosyne. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
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