Recortes de jornal em arquivos: origens de uma prática social

Abstract

The existence of newspaper clippings in archives, especially the so-called personal archives, challenges the archivists in theoretical and practical ways. Also, it allows us to presume that the accumulation of snippets reflects a social practice incipiently studied. This paper pursues the origins of that social practice and examines its multiple manifestations in the archives by an exploratory study based on literature review and documentary research. The literature review pointed-out the connection betweenthe social practice of accumulating newspaper cuttings and the large,rich tradition of the scrapbooks, which seems to meet individuals’ informational needs, the materialization of emotional bonds, and the building of cultural capital. The samples from documentary research highlighted the functional attributes determined bythe contexts in which the snippets were accumulated and used by individuals. On the one hand, these attributes endorse archival processing grounded in the principles and procedures of Archival Science. On the other hand, they emphasize the relevance of studying the documentary forms in dialogue with other disciplines such as Diplomatics, Communication Studies, Theory of Journalism, and Linguistics.