The Archives of Appalachia Newsletter, produced by the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University from 1979-1993. / https://dc.etsu.edu/archives-newsletter/1037/thumbnail.jpg

The Archives of Appalachia Newsletter, produced by the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University from 1979-1993. / https://dc.etsu.edu/archives-newsletter/1038/thumbnail.jpg

The Archives of Appalachia Newsletter, produced by the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University from 1979-1993. / https://dc.etsu.edu/archives-newsletter/1039/thumbnail.jpg

The Archives of Appalachia Newsletter, produced by the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University from 1979-1993. / https://dc.etsu.edu/archives-newsletter/1040/thumbnail.jpg

The Archives of Appalachia Newsletter, produced by the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University from 1979-1993. / https://dc.etsu.edu/archives-newsletter/1041/thumbnail.jpg

The Archives of Appalachia Newsletter, produced by the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University from 1979-1993. / https://dc.etsu.edu/archives-newsletter/1042/thumbnail.jpg

The Archives of Appalachia Newsletter, produced by the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University from 1979-1993. / https://dc.etsu.edu/archives-newsletter/1043/thumbnail.jpg

The Archives of Appalachia Newsletter, produced by the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University from 1979-1993. / https://dc.etsu.edu/archives-newsletter/1044/thumbnail.jpg

While today, archival theory is permeated with postmodern ideas and philosophies, borrowing from fields as diverse as anthropology and computer science, even just a few decades ago, this was far from the case. This transition was pioneered and strongly influenced by the imaginative and thought-provoking essays of Hugh Taylor, a Canadian archivist who developed a worldview that positioned archives and archivists at centre stage. Taylor was able to do so as a result of his fascination with the works of the media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, whose ideas Taylor found directly applicable to archives and archival theory. This thesis examines the mental state of Hugh Taylor throughout his life and how this mental state shaped his revolutionary concepts, which delved into epistemology and metaphysics, placing archives at the centre of a universal network of connections. These concepts would go on to drastically change archival theory to what it is today. / October 2016

Les archives audiovisuelles renferment, indubitablement, des éléments importants du patrimoine culturel. Mais, bien que les archives audiovisuelles existent voilà plus de 50 ans et ne cessent de se multiplier de jour en jour, leur définition précise, tout de même, est objet à polémique ou, à tout le moins, est très ambigüe. En plus, vu la fréquence et l’intervalle de leur réutilisation, force est de se demander s’il n’y a pas l’émergence d’une nouvelle forme d’archives : les « archives immédiates ». Il faut aussi se demander si le « genre archives » n’est pas en train de s’ériger comme un genre nouveau. Par ailleurs, ces archives sont, partout, particulièrement en Afrique noire, menacées d’extinction. D’une part, les variétés des supports analogiques et, de l’autre, les multiples formats numériques pour les sauvegarder et les réutiliser, demeurent un dilemme. Pourtant, l’impérieuse nécessité de rendre accessibles et compréhensibles, en tout temps et en tout lieu, les fonds patrimoniaux audiovisuels accumulés, s’impose. Un patrimoine, pour être pérenne, doit traverser les âges, dépasser les contingences techniques et se faire approprier sous son éclairage le plus net. Cette thèse étudie les solutions pour pérenniser les archives audiovisuelles et permettre de comprendre et de retrouver le contexte dans lequel elles ont été produites. Effectivement, leur contextualisation, notamment pour ce qui est relatif au patrimoine culturel particulier africain, commande une indexation très spécifique, comparativement aux archives écrites traditionnelles. Ceci révèle une démarche documentaire singulière pour perpétuer, faire circuler et revaloriser le patrimoine culturel audiovisuel africain dans le contexte de la mondialisation de l’information documentaire audiovisuelle. Le bon usage des archives audiovisuelles africaines doit se conformer à ces conditions indispensables pour être un contrepoids qui pèse dans l’échange globalisé de l’information audiovisuelle. / Audiovisual archives undoubtedly contain important elements of cultural heritage. But while audiovisual archives exist here over 50 years and are continuing to multiply by the day, their precise definition, nonetheless, is subject to controversy, or at least very ambiguous. In addition, due to the frequency and interval of reuse, it is reasonable to wonder whether there is not the birth of new form of archives: the "immediate archives". Moreover, these archives are everywhere, especially in Black Africa, threatened with extinction. On one hand, the varieties of analog media and, on the other, the multiple digital formats to save and reuse them remain a dilemma. Also, the problem of preserving and reusing these collections remains an ongoing concern. Yet it is imperative to make accessible and understandable, at all times and in all places, the accumulated audiovisual patrimony funds, regardless of the media on which this heritage is recorded. To be sustainable and appropriate under its clearest signification, a heritage must, through the ages, exceed the technical contingencies and of interpretation. This thesis studies the solutions to make audiovisual archives sustainable and to allow to understand and to find out the context in which they were produced. Indeed, their contextualization, including what relates especially to the African cultural heritage, reveals to be a very specific indexing control, compared to traditional written records. This unveils a singular documentary approach in order to perpetuate and assure circulation and upgrading the African audiovisual cultural heritage in the context of the globalization of audiovisual documentary information. The proper use of African audiovisual archives must comply with these conditions needed to be a counterweight that hangs in the globalized exchange of audiovisual information.