ABSTRACT
The evidential view of the archive has been criticized in the intervening half centuries by those, including Ketelaar, who consider it to be rooted in a positivist and constructivist approach to the past which they deftly seek to replace in a digital environment with a postmodern perspective that take ideas from both Foucault and Derrida. The documentalist perspective speaks to the digital environment and provides helpful guidance in defining what might constitute an archive that is more aligned with the contemporary usage than a definition that restricts contents to the written word. In the digital environment much of the necessary binding for documents such as these is held externally in the shape of metadata that is often not completed at the time of creation or becomes detached. In the digital environment many users view unique objects, original manuscripts if you like, from anywhere in the world providing they have the connectivity.
