“Arsip Kacau”: How Messy Records Are Perceived by Indonesians in the Context of Document Disease

Abstract

This paper examines how the Indonesian people perceive and construct arsip kacau (messy records). Messy records as documents seem to have the power to make humans psychologically ill by becoming uneasy, discomfort, stressed, burnout, and uncomfortable, all of which are diseases. This is similar to documentality introduced by Frohmann that documents can enable, produce, encourage, permit, and influence a person to experience document disease. This paper uses a qualitative approach with data collection in the form of literature and surveys from Indonesian people. The perception of archivists and the general public in Indonesia concerning the cause of the “messy records” is that archivists emphasize the absence of a system. In contrast, the general public emphasizes that human resources with minimal knowledge cause messy records and the absence of a system and standard operating procedures. In addition, they also mentioned that it would impact organizational performance and concentration at work, stress, lost and mixed files, unorganized rooms, fatigue, anxious thoughts, decision-making, and dirty organizing records. This finding can be developed further to explore the impact of the causes of the emergence of messy records in archival work which causes various feelings of records/archives users ranging from messy, disordered or even trauma-informed practice in archival work.