“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.” ¹

Archival descriptions can be seen as a looking glass through which users get to know the archival records. Nevertheless, they cannot be a “mirror” of the archival records since they contain interpretations as well as explicit and implicit explanations related to what is stored. The description may create a threshold, a border that has to be crossed. The content and the verbal design are important elements constituting this threshold. Some users will feel comfortable crossing it, while others will perceive it as a definitive border that makes it impossible for them to use the records it describes. Archival descriptions can act as important channels for communication, as well as instruments for controlling the entrance. Through the selection of content and the verbal presentation of the materials, the archivist can either guide and invite users to come inside or mislead and shut them out. ²

The dialogue between Alice and Humpty Dumpty about who is the master of the words can be considered a metacomment to the reader of the novel. In a similar way, archival descriptions may be read as metacomments³ to the archival records. By considering archival descriptions to be paratexts and by applying Gérard Genette's formula: paratext = peritext + epitext,⁴ it is possible to achieve a better understanding of their form and function.

Knowledge of the concept of paratext may be helpful when producing archival descriptions. According to Genette, “a text is more or less a long sequence of verbal statements that is more or less endowed with significance.”⁵ This definition of a text is applicable to archival descriptions. They represent written verbal statements that give information about, and interpretations of, the archival records, as well as introducing the archives to the user. ⁶

A general, simple understanding of communication is to regard it as an informational process between at least two people in a specific situational context. However, the sender of the message does not govern its interpretation alone.⁷ From an archival point of view, the sender is the archivist. The receivers, that is, the readers of the archival descriptions and the users of the archives, are co-authors. The readers express, through their responses or reactions, their own interpretations.

The first writer⁸ of the archival description must be aware that he or she is an author creating texts and thus narratives. Narratives, irrespective of genre, are always open for personal interpretations, as Wendy Duff and Verne Harris pointed out:

As archival descriptions reflect the values of the archivists who create them, it is imperative that we document and make visible these biases. Users should have access to information about the worldviews of the archivists who acquired, arranged, and described archival records. Archivists need to state upfront from where they are coming and what they are doing. They need to disclose their assumptions, their biases, and their interpretations.⁹

This relates closely to another compound concept, the image of the archives. Eric Ketelaar has thoroughly analyzed the concept, approaching it in two quite different ways.¹⁰ First, he showed how seventeenth-century Dutch painter Cornelis van der Voort included administrative documentation in his paintings of public leaders, thus emphasizing the significance of their operational records. Ketelaar claimed that the inclusion of records in the paintings created an image of accountability, evidence, and corporate memory. Second, Ketelaar commented on contemporary investigations of how newspapers present archives. In both cases, the image of the archives is formed by its role in understanding the past as well as its ability to demand accountability.

In this way, the archival image emerges as a compound concept of the reception of the records by subsequent users¹¹ and readers.¹² In the two examples from Ketelaar, the painter and the media may be regarded as authors, approaching the archival records and presenting an interpretation to an audience. These presentations give the viewers and readers some clues as to how to form their own construction of images.

Archival descriptions can be seen as conveyors of archival images. They are intermediate links between the records and the users, as are the paintings and the newspapers. Here the author is the archivist, not a painter or a journalist. The concept of archival image can help one gain a better understanding of the relationship between the production and reception of archival descriptions; however, it needs to be further explored and operationalized. As archival descriptions are written texts, it seems logical to use concepts from textual theory when operationalizing archival images.

The Concept of Paratext

In general, language has a communicative as well as a controlling function. This means that the language of archival descriptions may be used for different purposes. Descriptions should enable users to retrieve information and, at the same time, document the authenticity and the integrity of the archival records.¹³

Commonly understood, paratextuality covers different kinds of textual elements within a book (peritext) as well as outside it (epitext).¹⁴ The paratext defines the elements that present the text to the reader, for example, forewords, notes, epilogues, and afterwords. The author of the original text annotates some of them, and subsequent editors, readers, or users annotate others.

Genette elaborated on the concept of paratext and claims that it is

[W]hat enables a text to become a book and to be offered as such to its readers and, more generally, to the public. More than a boundary or a sealed border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold, or—a word Borges used apropos of a preface—a “vestibule” that offers the world at large the possibility of either stepping inside or turning back. It is an “undefined zone” between the inside and the outside, a zone without any hard and fast boundary on either the inward side (turned toward the text) or the outward side (turned toward the word's discourse about the text), an edge, or, as Phillipe Lejeune put it, “a fringe of the printed text which in reality controls one's whole reading of the text.”¹⁵

Archival descriptions can be seen as paratexts because they influence how another text, the archival records, should be received.¹⁶ They can be considered a heterogeneous group of practices and discourses related to the primary text—the archival records.¹⁷ Regarding the descriptions in this way emphasizes the archivist's role as an author.

Archival descriptions function as framing narratives or as frames of understanding. They enlighten and/or camouflage the different sides of archival records. In addition, they give a presentation, and thus an interpretation, of the records' creators as well. Through selection and authorship, the archivist¹⁸ chooses which messages to promote and how to present them.

Paratexts have a variety of functions, partly representing the intentions of the writers. Hence, they can create a great deal of ambiguity. Therefore, the author should be acutely aware of the influence his or her work has: directing the reader when that is the aim and introducing ambiguity when that is preferred.

Etymological Background

Luciana Duranti¹⁹ pointed out that the English term description stems from Latin and may have the following meanings: “copy, classification, track, limitation, design.” The noun is derived from the verb describere, which means to “transcribe, copy, tell, define, distribute or attribute to classes.” Etymologically, the word comes from the preposition de and the verb scribere, leading to the meaning “to write about something.” The literal denotation of the concept of archival description should then mean “to write about archives” and include the identification, representation, and arranging of records.

Duranti's comment is presumably also valid for other languages. Arne Skivenes²⁰ claimed that the Norwegian word for archival description, arkivbeskrivelse, probably is a direct translation from English. In Norwegian archival terminology, it has been common to speak about arranging (ordning) and cataloging (katalogisering) archives for many years. The content of the concept, and the interpretation of the connected activities in a Scandinavian context, is probably no different from the Anglo-American tradition.²¹

Registratur is the word used for several older Danish and Norwegian archival descriptions.²² This originally Latin noun consists of the prefix re meaning “back or again” and the verb gerere meaning “carry, manage, or conduct.” Traditionally, the person doing this work has been called a registrator, meaning he or she who registers data, not the archivist who catalogs and describes the materials.²³ This practice shows that an archival description is regarded as a more comprehensive or extensive work than an archival registratur.

Older archival records often contain archival designations, which are overviews of the materials elaborated upon when organizational changes have occurred.²⁴ These designations are merely descriptions of the archives at certain points in time. Previous actions and incidents must be identifiable when the materials are approached later. Designations typically include dates and years of relevant organizational events and a short abstract of vital information in the records.²⁵ Such abstracts are also essential in Norwegian archival registraturs.

Based on the etymological approach of Duranti, we can easily see that de scribere and de signere are similar, but have different degrees of precision. De signere is a part of de scribere, but it also means “depicting, denoting, and designing.” The practice of including an abstract of the content in older registraturs clearly implies the activity of de scribere.

Historical Aspects Related to Archival Descriptions

Historically, we can distinguish between two main approaches to archival methodology: the classical descriptive method and the modern functional, analytical approach.²⁶

Müller, Feith, and Fruin's 1898 manual, Handleiding voor het Ordenen en Beschrijven van Archieven,²⁷ marked an important shift in archival theory and practice. The manual regards all documents produced by an administration or office as one entity. The manual aimed to establish physical and intellectual control over the documents, partly due to the possibility for subsequent publication, making the records accessible for use by the public. At the core were the principles of provenance and primary order. In many ways, through its descriptions and organization, this manual marks the end of a scientific revolution borrowed from diplomatics and administrative practice.²⁸ In the diplomatic tradition, the singular document, the diploma, is the core entity. In administrative practice, provenance, the archives as an integral, total entity, is the most important feature. From the first point of view, the possibility of historical research is the main issue, but the administrative tradition regards the possibility of identifying and accessing the materials as most important.

According to Philippe Bélaval, chief executive of the National Archives in France, archival descriptions are aids to researchers, and writing them is at the core of the tasks for archivists.²⁹ The French archival tradition uses at least two main types of guides to archival records.³⁰ One type concerns the structure of the specific records and is comparable to archival descriptions in the Scandinavian context. The other is thematically oriented and presents materials concerning specific topics, irrespective of their sources. This appears similar to the situation in the Netherlands.³¹

Our project studied the development of Scandinavian archival descriptions in a European perspective. We did not analyze the function of archival descriptions as markers of borders or thresholds due to their linguistic properties. A comprehensive description or analysis of the relationship of archival descriptions to rhetorical and linguistic models has not been a part of the discussion of the aim and content of archival descriptions.

It is worth noting that many contemporary textbooks on historical methods tend to look upon archives as static entities. The definition of an archives in the glossary of Authoring the Past published in 2013 shows this very well:

Usually defined as a physical place which functions as a repository for documentary and/or other physical artefacts (records office, library, personal collection). It can also be regarded as an epistemic state of mind (“a sense of the archive”) that defines a belief in the preservation of cultural memory and a conservancy site of and for the past.³²

Both the traditional archival description with the format “on the shelf above the door . . . to the left,”³³ as well as the modern, heuristic one,³⁴ can be read as paratexts.³⁵

For external as well as internal users, these texts are entrances—mental, intellectual, cognitive, and social vestibules in time and space.³⁶ The authors of both traditional and modern archival descriptions contribute to the establishment of different narratives and images about accessibility to archives. The physical archival description conveys the same short and easily accessible story to internal as well as external users. Mainly, it deals with how the archives are stowed away and stored in a physical sense. The heuristic description, however, opens a multitude of narratives as the level of competence and knowledge among the users will vary.

Characterizing the archival description as heuristic may indicate that users are not homogenous and have different preferences. Etymologically, heuristic stems from the Greek, meaning “to find.” The noun heuristics in Danish is defined as “the doctrine about the methods used for achieving new scientific results.”³⁷ However, used as an adjective, the methodological component is somewhat toned down and the word relates to an investigating, exploring, or searching activity. This Danish approach differs somewhat from the Norwegian, where heuristic tends to mean something with a practical value that cannot be claimed to be principally valid, but still gives practical results.³⁸

Swedish archivist Per-Gunnar Ottosson had this comment on the general situation:

The archives have been slow developing similar instruments as the cataloguing rules for libraries and standards for exchange of information. However, this has not led to lack of coordination. It has been more the result of a professional tradition, without further codification. One should also be aware that for long times the physical organization according to the principle of provenience [sic] has been regarded as the main task. The result of this process, the archival description, was a secondary product and regarded more as an administrative controlling instrument.³⁹

Status of Archival Descriptions Today: A Scandinavian Perspective

In our project, we searched the Scandinavian archival literature for materials on archival descriptions. Even though the concept is well known and widely used, the debate over the communicative aspects of archival description has been rather low key, concentrating on structure and content.

However, in 1966, the Danish association of archivists chose the registration of archival records as a topic for a seminar.⁴⁰ They were searching for a more sensible way of registration than just presenting the records in chronological order. Many of the participants promoted an analytic approach, taking into account the administrative processes that created the records. How to make the records more accessible to potential users was also an issue for discussion at this seminar. However, it would still take a generation before the debate on this issue made real progress in Scandinavia.

Many of the presentations during the “Nordiske Arkivdage” (Nordic Archival Conference) in Århus, Denmark, in 2000 focused on the different challenges concerning born-digital records: how can such records be preserved for the future? How can they be made accessible for future users? How should they be described? The function of archival description in relation to these questions was also discussed.⁴¹ How have other countries dealt with this?

In 2000, the Swedish journal Arkiv, Samhälle och Forskning (Archives, Society and Research) dedicated an entire issue to archival description, presenting traditions from the Scandinavian countries and from France. The term “archival description” (arkivbeskrivelse) is not found in the glossaries or dealt with as a separate entity in contemporary Norwegian archival literature,⁴² nor is it defined on the terminological website of the National Archives of Norway.⁴³ It is, however, possible to read about cataloging, archival catalogs, archival instructions, archival codes, and so on. Implicitly, some of these terms relate to archival description, such as “archival catalog,” which is defined as traditionally containing an introduction with general information about the creator and the archives, and a list of contents.

The National Archives of Norway has a no more detailed strategy for making archivists aware of their role as authors and language users.⁴⁴ Even though the concept of archival description is nonexistent in its glossaries and term banks, supporting materials for archival practice published on its website present guidelines for rules of writing and for describing records creators, archives, archival series, and so on. These adhere to the common information system for public archival records in Norway (acronym: ASTA = ArkivSystem Til Alle [Archival System for All (archives)]).⁴⁵

These guidelines may conceal quite a bit of tacit knowledge and tradition, yet they do not really explain why a description should be structured in a particular way and why the “compulsory” elements should be presented in a certain order. In fact, the guidelines only remind archivists to write correctly, to show that they have traditional orthographic competence in mind, and to be consistent when describing the same type of archival records and records creators. Despite the lack of detailed discussion regarding the writing of archival descriptions, the task is among the most important for the Norwegian National Archives, which also believes in the importance of securing a common understanding of the requirements for well-written archival descriptions.⁴⁶ While guidelines may not be the place for a more scientific discussion, the national archives should publish explicit argumentation and reflection around creating archival descriptions in some form.

In Sweden, the position seems to be somewhat different. Already in 1903, the regulations relating to central governmental archives required the records to be described. The traditional method consisted of two parts: a description of the archival records in a hierarchical manner and a description of the individual, physical entities with a unique number for each volume.⁴⁷ Traditional Swedish archival literature clearly states that work with archival records often requires reconstructions based upon archival historical competence and other scientific knowledge.⁴⁸ This systematic approach was not formally adopted in Norway until 1956.⁴⁹ The 1903 method was in use in Sweden until 2011. It focused upon a uniform structure for archival descriptions, rather than on the purpose of them.⁵⁰ Anneli Sundquist has thoroughly documented the development of the Swedish tradition related to archival description, but she is not concerned with description's properties as text and narrative.⁵¹

The Scandinavian discussion of archival description does not focus on different groups of users. The Norwegian “White Paper on Archives”⁵² states that little is known about the identities of the users and nonusers of archival institutions. An extensive list of possible users includes scientists, students, journalists, lawyers, and individuals researching their legal rights, in addition to historically interested laypeople. The last group currently dominates in numbers and activity. It is interesting to note that the imprecision of the list, which includes a small number of professionals with relatively advanced academic training, may be interpreted as indicating a lack of knowledge about the users of archives. These users are usually well trained in handling large amounts of data and accustomed to working independently. The last two user types may have nothing more in common than searching for information supporting their rights or being interested in history or genealogy. These groups share few unifying characteristics.

Based upon such observations, it is difficult to elaborate on archival description that supports the expectations and needs of all types of users. However, archival descriptions may still appear to be the most important channel of information between the records, the archivists, and the users. If public archives are to be the “door opener to history,” as claimed by the Norwegian National Archives,⁵³ the work to develop good descriptions should be intensified. Descriptions must be inviting and inclusive, stimulating a curiosity for further investigation into the materials and acting as guides to locating different types of information. The current strategy of the Norwegian National Archives states that everybody should understand and value the importance of the archival record for legal safeguarding and democracy, and experience it as a bridge between the past, the present, and the future.⁵⁴ This is to be achieved by making the materials more accessible to the public. Archival description must be regarded as an important instrument in supporting this vision.

The Power over Archival Descriptions

Traditional content and structure of archival description indicate that authoring archivists do not understand that some external users will need significantly different information compared to internal users.⁵⁵ The construction of the plot is more or less left to the archivist alone.

Archival description has a clear instrumental purpose as a working tool in archival repositories. The aim is not only to support internal administrative procedures at a repository, but also to guide external researchers. An archival description, therefore, will be of interest mainly to two different groups of users. Most internal users will be as professionally competent and experienced as the author, whereas external users may not be.

External users will be more heterogeneous, as pointed out in the Norwegian “White Paper on Archives.”⁵⁶ As mentioned earlier, typical groups of users are researchers and students, journalists, lawyers, and people searching for documentation of their legal rights, in addition to laypeople interested in history, the latter being dominant.

Nowadays, laypeople expect a high degree of competence when it comes to textual criticism. For example, the Norwegian Ministry of Education stated the following about reading competence among eleven-year-old, fifth-grade pupils:

In social science, reading includes studying, investigating, interpreting and reflecting upon professional/nonfiction prose and fiction texts, with increasing demands, aiming to experience contact with previous times. Being able to read also covers competence in dealing with and using a variety of types of information from pictures, movies, drawings, graphs, tables, globes and maps. To be able to understand and participate in contemporary society, it is also necessary to be able to read and collect information from reference literature, newspapers and Internet, and to be able to evaluate the material critically.⁵⁷

As noted earlier, archival descriptions have two different functions. The controlling function is intended to give an overview of the content of the archives and thus, indirectly, also to the possibilities for retrieving the materials. The communicating function is coupled with the possibilities for making the archives accessible and visible. It is intended mainly for external users searching for information through the public website, for example, that of the Norwegian archives at www.arkivportalen.no. However, a mutual relationship exists between the controlling and the communicating functions.

Archival Descriptions and the Archivist

Classical elements in archival descriptions say something about those who created the records, the origin and context of the records, and the internal organization of the materials. More process-oriented and function-based descriptions challenge these elements.⁵⁸ Is it really what users need to know when approaching the records? Is this what is important to make the records accessible? How can we best make descriptions that meet the needs and expectations of future users?

It is relevant to see archival descriptions in connection with the role of the archivist and his or her working methods. To be in a position to expand archival descriptions, the archivist must clearly understand the hallmarks of the operational records at the creating agency, as well as the characteristics of the records in the archival repository. The creating agency produces the documents as a function of a working process. Most important are those related to the core processes, those related to the raison d'être at the creating agency. Therefore, we can distinguish between the primary and secondary functions leading to the creation of documents.⁵⁹ Documents related to the primary functions constitute clear evidence directly related to the creator's desire to keep them, as they document and regulate different relationships. In addition, they have secondary functions providing evidence of the cultural and historical context under which they were created. In that way they may subsequently serve as important sources for historical research.

The Structure of Archival Records in Relation to Function

The relationship among documents establishes the external structure of an archives. This function is to document working processes. The physical structure of the archives is the physical order of the components. The optimal realization of the function is made possible when the logical, functional structure of the archives adequately represents the structure of the relevant working processes. If this structure is good, the archives are easy to use.

Archival records are less dynamic than the working processes that generated them. Archival methods must maintain important archival values such as accessibility, readability, completeness, relevance, representativity, and authenticity. To some degree, this requires a stable and predictable structure of the archival records. This stability should not lead to archives being perceived as rigid structures from past times. The archival description can be the looking glass through which future users of the records can get an impression of the context in which they were created.

The logical structure of born-digital data is not as closely connected to their physical structure as it is with traditional paper documents. This makes it easy to argue that the importance of archival description can only increase. We may predict that description will be important when establishing a valid structure or order for retrieving or restoring born-digital data for practical use in the future. The archival description may emerge as a supplement to the technical retrieving devices represented by the computer program. Theo Thomassen presented this judgment:

Physical and intellectual order can also be different. With digital documents this is always the case: the computer writes data to available sectors on a disk, without taking into consideration the functional relationship between the data. If the document involved is read, then it is the computer program that ensures that the data appear on the screen in logical relationship. The physical form of the record is the entirety of physical characteristics, such as the format, the number of pages, the quality of the information carrier, the writing and such like. Generally speaking, function and physical form are interrelated: events recorded on paper are of a different kind than events written on parchment and what has been in pencil has a different status to what has been printed.⁶⁰

In other words, the perfect archival description is perhaps utopian; it is a nonexistent genre (Greek: ou, “none”; topos, “place”). The archival description has to be seen together with the stored data, the archival records, and their properties. The archival description can easily be seen as an appendix to paper-based archival records. In future digital-based archives, the archival description may be regarded as binding information that is important for combining the more or less collected digital data into a sensible and useful corpus of output information.

Archives Creating or Re-creating Explicit or Tacit Narratives

Ketelaar⁶¹ is concerned about how archival theory may stimulate developing the concept of archiving, here understood according to Webster's as “to file or collect as records or documents in or as if in archive.” He reintroduced the concept archivation from the French philosopher Bernhard Stiegler (in English, archivization). In this process, Ketelaar included the creative phase before capturing the archival material.⁶² He explained this phase to be “the conscious or unconscious choice (determined by social and cultural factors) to consider something worth archiving.” Archivists need to reveal both to themselves and to future users which choices they make before they “proceed to register, to record, to inscribe.” This is a way to gain a better comprehension of the tacit narratives of the archives, Ketelaar claimed.

Duff and Harris presented a similar approach:

What came to be called “archival science” emerged in the nineteenth century, a product of Enlightenment thinking and an evermore vigorous modernism in the Western world. The focus of this science, in terms of both theory and practice, was on the arrangement and description of archival materials. Not surprisingly, the first substantive articulation of the science's fundamental ideas, the 1898 Manual of the Dutch trio Muller, Feith and Fruin, was almost entirely devoted to arrangement and description. For the practicing archivists this was the core of their work. The focus, or pattern, has proved resilient. Still today, for many if not most archivists and archival institutions, arrangement and description remain the core of both practice and discourse. New elements and dimensions have been introduced to this powerful stream in archival thinking—for instance, increasing attention is being paid to the challenges and opportunities presented by new technologies, and huge energies are being devoted to the development of descriptive standards.⁶³

Furthermore, Duff and Harris concluded,

Our own view is that archivists are, from the beginning and always, political players; that they are active participants in the dynamics of power relations; and that the boundaries between constructive and oppressive power is always shifting and porous.

Others share this view. According to Brien Brothman, recordkeepers are creating value, that is, an order of value, by putting things in their proper place, by making place(s) for them.⁶⁴

Archival descriptions are not only of value for understanding stored archival records. They may also be important for understanding the process of deciding what materials are not to be kept, that is, the materials to be discarded and forgotten. An insight into this practice influences which narratives will emerge in the future. Documents that have been discarded are no longer a part of the archives. Nevertheless, if the archival description clarifies the principles and practice related to which materials to keep and which to throw away, the lost materials will not be forgotten.

Archival descriptions are primarily created by an archivist, and thereafter, once read, partly re-created and created again and again by the users. The users become co-authors, but the first author is still the archivist. Through writing style and illocutionary force, he or she opens up certain types of co-authorship by using different language functions.

Archival Descriptions in Relation to Genre and Text Types

Based on the empirical studies of fiction as well as nonfiction literature, Egon Werlich established five main text types covering all writing: description, narration, exposition, argumentation, and instruction.⁶⁵ Some major traits characterize the different types: description presents a spatial expression; narration focuses on chronology; exposition is oriented toward causality; argumentation results in conclusions; and instruction is oriented toward chronology and norms. Any genre can include a combination of these. According to Werlich, the number of text constants is fixed, but the number of possible genres, and variations of genres, is in principle unlimited.

The communicative potential of archival descriptions fits well with the definition of genre given by John M. Swales:

Genre is a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of communicative purpose(s) identified and mutually understood by the members of the professional or academic community in which it regularly occurs.⁶⁶

Elaborating archival descriptions follows a set of relatively fixed norms, with an opening for certain variations on institutional and individual levels.⁶⁷ This also fits well into the perspective of a genre.

An archival description may contain several, or all, of Werlich's text types. It is not necessarily the presence or absence of any of them, nor a specific combination of these, that constitutes the archival description as a genre. When searching for the traits characterizing the archival description as a genre, we should rather study the paratextuality and the use of illocutionary force in them.

The Role of the Archivist in a Rhetorical and Linguistic Perspective

Back to Wonderland to Watch Out for Archival Descriptions as Paratexts

“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”

“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple.

“I won't!” said Alice.⁸⁶

This conversation about order between Alice and the Queen, and the other quotes in this text about the meaning and power of words and about directions and goals, illustrate a threshold or a crossover perspective. Paratexts represent a way of making tacit knowledge visible. To envision this property related to paratexts, I have chosen textual examples from fiction and nonsense literature for this article. Alice does cross a border when she falls into Wonderland. In Wonderland, her own thoughts and reflections are questioned and challenged. Even after waking up, she acknowledges that her visit to Wonderland gave her new perspectives, ideas, and wisdom. We might say that crossing a border makes Alice aware of the ambiguity of language as she experiences the proximity and the distance, the similarities and the differences, the interiority and the exteriority⁸⁷ of wondering. The dialogue between Alice and the people in the world she enters shows that Alice and the readers of the book carry on a discourse, and the meaning of the objects depends on the object of this meaning, which is yet another meaning.⁸⁸ The big challenge for Alice is to understand the illocutionary force of an utterance from a border perspective.

When touching these border issues in a communicative perspective, it is interesting to see how so-called nonsense literature can make sense. Sensical and nonsensical elements contribute to create paradoxes that present such a text differently to its readers. Hence, it is relevant to regard literary nonsense as crossover literature, a term used to describe a genre that appeals to all kinds of readers. An explanation for this is that it invites the reader to become a co-author. The nonsense content of the text is open to sensible interpretations based upon the reader's experiences, knowledge, and values, or what Genette called “the private or public epitext.”⁸⁹

Archival descriptions should not adopt the genre traits of nonsense literature, yet when dealing with different text types, that might be something to consider. How does one design a text to open it up to sensible reflections by the reader? Users of archival records and readers of archival descriptions should be aware that they will not only be guided, but also possibly misguided. Therefore, archival descriptions should encourage those who enter “Wonderland” to be challenged, as well as to challenge the content of the archival records and of what the archivists present.

To perform their paratextual duty,⁹⁰ archivists need to reflect upon the fact that textual design of the description is as important as its elements and content. The linguistic and rhetorical choices the archivist makes are significant, as they will influence the user's reception.

A rhetorical and linguistic study on how archival descriptions are designed or experienced could be a sensible approach for further empirical investigations. The paratext changes continuously, depending upon the readers and users of materials.⁹¹ Genette pointed out that it has more to do with a decision about method than a truly established fact.⁹² The paratext underlines the communicative aspects related to textual materials. Taking this perspective into account when dealing with archival descriptions, one may claim that they should be written more than once. They need to be examined from time to time to ensure that they communicate what users need to know to access the archives in a way useful to them and, at the same time, give the materials the authenticity and integrity they deserve. This work should be at the core of sound professional practice for archivists.

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