How Archival Digitization Fosters Viewpoint Diversity and Enriches Academic Life

[Image: DeepAI Image Generator]

Archival literature is replete with calls to elevate under-represented voices. However, these calls to amplify certain voices are almost exclusively focused upon race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. [1] Rarely are heterodox political or philosophical views considered in the criteria deciding which voices of the archive are amplified.

Voices that challenge the norm offer valuable opportunities to reevaluate commonly accepted views. How should we elevate such voices in a way that they can be understood in their entirety (including their original context) and in a way that enriches academic life and, by extension, social and cultural life? The digitization of archival material helps answer this question.

The Value of Viewpoint Diversity

The Heterodox Academy succinctly communicates the value of viewpoint diversity: “When people with a wide range of worldviews, backgrounds, and experiences are present and welcomed, academic communities can more effectively notice untested assumptions, imagine and explore new questions and answers, rigorously challenge popular theories, and make continued progress toward truth. But when academic groups are more homogeneous, their work can suffer from blind spots and groupthink.”

This description, and the work of Heterodox Academy, rightly focuses upon the here and now. Welcoming diverse voices in the current academic space is necessary and beneficial. However, ensuring past voices are present, welcomed, and inform the pursuit of truth, is foundational to noticing untested assumptions, challenging popular theories, and avoiding groupthink.

By including the voices of those who’ve gone before, we help guard against what C. S. Lewis termed “chronological snobbery.” He defined that as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”[2] Archives provide the evidence of the rich intellectual climates that preceded our era.

Archival material enables access to the thought of individuals and the culture of organizations. Often, unpublished papers offer a more honest, thorough picture than do published works. This is the raw material from which we analyze the past.

The letters, photographs, reports, audio visual material, and other types of records that constitute the holdings of archival repositories enable current scholars and researchers to convey the perspectives of diverse voices, test the assumptions of our intellectual climate, and avoid groupthink.

Digitization and Presenting Voices

Archival repositories have two primary goals: preservation and access. Archivists preserve records so that they may be used. Archivists also create points of access which researchers find relatively easy to use. Archival “finding aids” describe the contents and context of a collection so that researchers can determine whether the material is pertinent to their inquiry. However, digitization provides an even more helpful way for users to access material.

Researchers increasingly expect physical records to be digitized and freely available online. The current reality is that online digitized archival collections will have more use than analog-only collections described by a finding aid. By their decisions about what is digitized, archivists wield significant power over what collections are used.

Essentially, archivists can suppress certain voices in their repository. To be clear, many archivists do not seek to do so. However, suppression results when archivists hesitate to digitize the records of unorthodox voices because they may run afoul of a dominate ideology.

Heterodox thinkers such as Ludwig von Mises do not check the boxes of what archivists often seek when deciding what should be digitized. He was not an ethnic, racial, gender, or sexual minority. He promotes individual liberty and property rights which contradict collectivist, Theory-informed, perspectives.

However, the very fact Mises’ work challenges (in the words of Lewis) the “intellectual climate common to our own age,” is reason enough to amplify his voice.

Mises’ rich intellectual work is now more fully present and accessible thanks to archival digitization.

Digitization and Testing Assumptions

The Ludwig von Mises Collection at Grove City College holds about 20,000 pages of his personal papers. These holdings include manuscripts, photographs, and correspondence which provide insight into his life, times, and thought. Before 2025, researchers accessed this material on-site or requested digitization of specific items. With the digitization of the entire 20,000 pages, users can freely access the collection online.

One striking example of how digitized archival content can challenge assumptions, even the very definitions of words, is a letter Mises wrote to John Wirt in 1954. Mises unpacks why he rejects the label “conservative” while also briefly examining the history of the signifier. Mises wrote, “To conserve means to preserve what exists. It is an empty program … mere reference to the wisdom of the ancestors is not a sufficient argument against any project of innovation. What is needed is to refute faulty projects of innovation by unmasking their fallacies and by substituting better ideas for the bad ones.”

His insight provides much food-for-thought. How does our intellectual climate use the labels “conservative,” “liberal,” “socialist,” etc.? Should we reconsider or refine our definitions based on the insight of Mises? What fallacies require unmasking in our own intellectual climate? One letter from the 1950s offers us the chance to test our assumptions.

Digitization and Avoiding Groupthink

Unfortunately, the perspectives of thinkers such as Mises are not often prioritized for digitization. By privileging the categories of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation in deciding what is digitized, archivists engage in a form of groupthink. While the archival profession must acknowledge this groupthink, and work toward expanding criteria for digitization, those outside of the archival community can play a vital role in encouraging the amplification of heterodox voices through digitization.

People and organizations that value viewpoint diversity should consider supporting digitization efforts. Grants, for example, can support digitizing archival material of individuals or organizations that hold minority political or philosophical beliefs. Digitization is particularly valuable for fostering viewpoint diversity because of the rich contextual information contained in archival collections. The considerable extent of the Mises papers provides context that enables one to understand Mises and his times. Attempts to pull information out of context are, therefore, less successful when full archival collections exist in digitized form.

A complete record, or at least as near complete as possible, inherently enriches academic life. It provides the depth of information necessary for debating ideas in a healthy manner. Archival digitization enables academics to understand better the movements, people, and organizations that led society to its current intellectual climate. From such resources, academics can communicate new, or resurrected, ideas to the broader society. Understanding the past, and having that understanding inform the present, is a far-reaching, culture-enriching action.

Conclusion

Increased viewpoint diversity is desperately needed in many areas of social life—the archival profession included. Archivists should seek out heterodox political and philosophical perspectives in their collections to present to users through digitization. In doing so, archivists not only serve their purpose to provide access, they help enrich the landscape of ideas and challenge existing assumptions.

C. S. Lewis wrote: “our own age is also ‘a period’, and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.”[3] We require voices from other periods to help us question our own era. Archival digitization amplifies past perspectives which leads to greater viewpoint diversity and enriched academic life.

---

[1] For example, the recent Fall/Winter 2024 issue of The American Archivist features an article on “cultural competency” (i.e. DEI) requirements in recruitment practices and four of the seven reviews deal with publications amplifying the voices of those categorized as racial or sexual minorities.

[2] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: HarperOne, 2017), 254.

[3] Ibid., 254.