The first collection is the diary of Allan Holmström, a private collector, which documents everyday events from the 1870s to the 19 6 0s. Because Holmström added clippings and notes to his diary throughout his life, the diary became an ongoing project of reconstruction of memories rather than an account of how Holmström first experienced events. The second collection is an archive of newspaper clippings founded in 1917 by the Christian foundation Sigtunastiftelsen. The foundation aimed to collect articles about major issues but was not interested in everyday ephemeral news. Thus, this way of collecting reproduced a hierarchy of texts. The third collection is a series of printed volumes of newspaper clippings edited and published as ”filmbooks” by Erik Lindorm. He believed that his volumes allowed history to ”speak with its own voice”. The clippings and the pages look authentic, with the original columns and spelling retained, but some of the clippings were clearly edited to make the collections – and history – more accessible to modern newspaper readers.
Collections of newspaper clippings provide a record of the past but are themselves historical products. Different collections are part of different traditions and are used in different contexts, which determine what kind of history they store and transmit. An examination of how these collections once constructed the memory of the past can provide a critical perspective on how the archives of today keep a record of the present.