During the past thirty years Canadian literature has developed at a remarkable rate, with the result that many Canadian writers now enjoy national and international recognition. The personal papers of these writers have undergone a corresponding increase in their research and monetary value. Literary papers have therefore become highly attractive to archival repositories and libraries, many of which compete to acquire these papers through sales or donations. Open-market competition may be advantageous to authors because it allows them to sell their papers to the highest bidder, but it is harmful to archivists because it creates animosity within the archival community, inflates prices and causes collections to be split. This clash of interests between authors and archivists, and among archivists themselves, must be resolved if literary papers are to be preserved and administered properly. A questionnaire was sent to 29 Canadian repositories to determine the ways in which archivists deal with the complex issues associated with acquiring literary papers: acquisition policies; acquisition budgets; the suitability of certain types of institutions to acquire literary papers; copyright/literary rights; tax credits; monetary appraisal; and automation. Results from this survey indicate that an increasing number of archival institutions now recognize the need for developing systematic collections policies in order to reduce competition and encourage cooperation among archivists. However, the majority of institutions in Canada still do not have any formal written policies for acquiring literary papers and have no plans to develop such policies in the near future. It will be some time, therefore, before a complete cooperative network among archivists in Canada becomes a reality. Diverse types of institutions acquire literary papers; university archives and special collections, provincial archives, the National Archives and National Library of Canada, and smaller thematic archives are all involved in this type of acquisition. The survey sought respondents' opinions on this question: can or should the acquisition of literary papers be limited to certain types of institutions? Judging from the responses, the answer is a qualified no. Universities are a logical repository for authors' papers because literary research is largely an academic activity, but it is not possible to prevent other types of institutions from acquiring in this area through laws or regulations. Donor preferences play a critical role; ultimately it is the author or his executors who have the last word on where the author's papers are deposited. The author-archivist relationship lies at the heart of this issue. The onus is on the archivist to educate authors on the nature and function of archives and the legal implications of acquisition. Archivists can also educate themselves regarding authors' economic concerns and the literary activities which produce their records; such understanding will help to resolve the conflicts between authors and archivists and improve acquisition negotiations. Finally, archivists need to develop more systematic written acquisitions policies for literary papers in order to reduce competition and ensure the continued preservation of this important cultural resource. / Arts, Faculty of / Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), School of / Graduate

In many markets for cultural goods, gatekeepers select the cultural goods, relatively few cultural goods are selected, and the criteria for selection are unclear to both artists and gatekeepers. Not knowing whether cultural goods are of the 'right' quality to be selected, artists and gatekeepers become preoccupied with handling quality uncertainty. This thesis studies such handling of quality uncertainty before, during, and after aspiring writers attempt to succeed in the publishing market. Drawing on eighty interviews with mainly aspiring writers and publishers in Sweden, three papers investigate three phases of handling quality uncertainty in the publishing market. First, in attempting to get published, writers handled uncertainty about how the quality of their work would be evaluated in the publishing market by using appraisal devices: trusted, knowledgeable appraisals of their work’s chances of success or failure on the publishing market. Second, publishers responded to uncertainty about the quality of manuscripts by learning to consider means before ends, such that certain qualities of their reading experience became the necessary means for realizing that the manuscript might be publishable. This realization moved the manuscript from the discovery phase to justification phase, in which publishers made a final decision to select or reject the manuscript. Third, for the rejected writer, the uncertainty of not knowing how the publisher had determined the quality of the manuscript made it possible to excuse the course of events. Writers gave reasons why their manuscript had been rejected based on how they imagined publishers had determined its quality. They accepted the occurrence of failure but dismissed the responsibility for having failed. Writers also engaged in justifications, refusals, and concessions of the perceived failure. These concepts for analyzing the publishing market are based on a perspective that takes into account subjectivity, temporality, and the condition of quality uncertainty. The perspective and concepts are useful for understanding other market situations in the cultural industries, wherein the successful hiring of cultural workers and the acquisition of cultural goods are rare relative to the number of aspirants, and wherein assessments are conditioned by quality uncertainty that needs to be handled. / ERC 263699-CEV