Archives. Recordkeeping in Society

357 Pages·2005·125.57 MB·English

by  Sue McKemmish

Archives: Recordkeeping in Society
Topics in Australasian Library and Information Studies
This series provides detailed, formally refereed works on a wide range of topics and issues relevant to
professionals and para-professionals in the library and information industry and to students oflibrary
and information studies. All titles are written from an Australasian perspective, drawing on
professional experience and research in Australia, New Zealand and the wider Pacific region.
Recent publications include:
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libraries in the twenty-first century: Charting new directions in information services
Stuart Ferguson
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Collection management: A concise introduction. Revised edition
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The other 51 weeks: A marketing handbook for librarians. Revised edition
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Number 24
Archives: Recordkeeping in society
Edited by Sue McKemmish, Michael Piggott, Barbara Reed and Frank Upward
Number23
Organising knowledge in a global society: Principles and practice in libraries and information
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Computers for librarians: An introduction to the electronic library. 3rd edition
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Australian library supervision and management. 2nd edition
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Research methods for students, academics and professionals. 2nd edition
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Archives: Recordkeeping in Society
Edited by
Sue McKemmish, Michael Piggott, Barbara Reed and
Frank Upward
Topics in Australasian Library and Information Studies, Number 24
!f'
cis
Centre for Information Studies
Charles Sturt University
Wagga Wagga New South Wales
Copyright © 2005
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study,
research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otheIWise, without prior permission of the
copyright owner. Enquiries should be made to the Centre for Information Studies, Charles
Sturt University.
ISBN 1 876938 84 6
ISSN 1030-5009
National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication data
Archives: record.keeping in society.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
ISBN 1 876938 84 6.
1. Archives -Textbooks. 2. Archival resources -Textbooks.
3. Records -Management -Textbooks. I. McKemmish, Susan
Marilyn. II. Charles Sturt University. Centre for
Information Studies. (Series : Topics in Australasian
library and information studies; no. 24).
025.1714
The editors wish to thank colleagues in the School of Information Management and Systems, Monash
University, for their contributions in this endeavour, in particular Don Schauder.
Project coordinator: Fiona Ross
Illustrations research: Anna Davis and Fiona Ross
Series editor: Ross Harvey
Copy editor: Rachel Salmond
Cover design: Tony O'Neill
Text Processor: Nicole Anderson
Printed by: Quick Print
Centre for Information Studies
Locked Bag 660
Wagga Wagga NSW 2678
Phone: + 61 (0)2 6933 2325
Fax.:+ 61 (0)2 6933 2733
Email: [email protected]
http://www.csu.<,:(i!J.au/cis
Dedicated to
our friend and colleague
Robert Hartland
1950-2004
Figures
Figure 1.1 Location of Christmas Island (Map creator: Deane Lewis) 4
Figure 1.2 'Photos prove our point...', The Age, 11 October 2001, page l 7
Figure 1.3 Extracts from Investigation into advice provided to Ministers on 8
'S/EV 4' (Bryant Report), Department of the Prime Minister and
Cabinet, January 2002, pages 13 (photo) and 14 (boxed text)
Figure 2.1 The School's Tower, Bodleian Library in Chalmers' A History 25
oft he Colleges, Halls and Public Buildings Attached to the
University of Oxford (Oxford, 1810) (University of Melbourne
Special Collections)
Figure 2.2 Faivade of the National Archives Building, Washington DC 45
(NARA)
Figure 2.3 Gatineau Preservation Centre, National Archives of Canada (IKOY 46
Architects)
Figure 3.1 Logos of the Australian Society of Archivists (Source: Australian 62
Society of Archivists)
Figure 4.1 David Drew FamHy - Late 1880s. (Lee Drew personal collection; 80
reproduced from www.famhist.com)
Figure 4.2 Family Christmas 1997 (Robert Hartland personal collection) 81
Figure4.3 Letter (Yo k Dimas Personal Collection) 85
Figure 5.1 Unabomber Cabin, Sacramento CA, 1998. (Photo: Richard Barnes, 103
dye destruction print; 40x50in. San Francisco Museum of Modem
Art. Donors Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein© Richard Barnes)
Figure 5.2 Extract from the Inwards Correspondence Register of the Chief 115
Secretary's Office, Victoria, 1880 (Public Record Office Victoria,
VPRS 3993/P, vol 39 ©State of Victoria)
Figure 5.3 Nineteenth-century docketing system with top numbering 116
Figure 5.4 Memo for the Secretary of Defense. National Security Archive 124
(Reproduced from www.nsarchiv.org)
Figure 6.1 Cover of Muller, Feith and Fruin's Manual for the Arrangement 134
and Description ofA rchives, Society of American Archivists, 2003
(Society of American Archivists)
Figure 6.2 The main entities in relation to an archive 138
Figure 6.3 Relationship between organiz.ation and record.keeping function 147
Figure 6.4 Uluru 2003 (Photo: Michael Brand. Published with permission of 151
Board of Management ofUluru-Kata Tjuta National Park)
Figure 7.1 'Hello National Archives?' (Reproduced from Prologue, Winter 163
l 994, NARA, p.262)
Figure 7.2 Peter Scott (National Archives of Australia: C36 I l, item: Peter 169
Scott photo)
x Figures
Figure 7.3 Coverage of recordkeeping metadata (Reproduced from the 187
Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Schema (RKMS)
Version 1.0, 31May2000, by S. McKemmish, G. Acland, K.
Cumming, B. Reed and N. Ward (Monash University, 2000),
available at http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/research/rcrg/
research/spirt/deliverables.htrnl#arkms
Figure 8.1 An information processes continuum expressed in terms of 199
Giddens' four regions of time-space distanciation
Figure 8.2 The Records Continuum - a spacetime model 203
Figure 8.3 lposteguy's sketch of Michel Foucault as the new archivist 211
Figure 9.1 A typology of accountability 229
Figure 9.2 The accountability triangle 234
Figure 9.3 Roles and responsibilities of recordkeepers 241
Figure 9.4 'Flying Blind'. Cartoonist: Kevin Lindeberg 244
Figure 10.l The Donation of Constantine (c. 1240): detail of frescoes from the 257
Chapel of St. Sylvester, Santi Quattro Coronati, Rome (Community
of Augustinian Nuns at Santi Quattro Coronati. Rome)
Figure 10.2 Juridical dimensions of recordkeeping processes from a records 264
continuum perspective
Figure 10.3 Screening newborn babies for rare diseases (Photo: Angela 272
Wylie. The Age, 5 July 2004, p. l)
Figure 11.l Domed Reading Room, State Library of Victoria, 2004 (Photo: 280
State Library of Victoria)
Figure 11.2 Gatehouse of Stasi Headquarters, East Berlin, 1990 (Photo: Peter 282
Boeger, Berlin-Kleinmachnow, Germany)
Figure 11.3 Amsterdam Central Register of Population, 1943 (Netherlands 286
Institute for War Documentation)
Figure 11.4 Managing Records at Buchenwald, 1943 (From the album of 289
Buchenwald commandant Hermann Pister. Collection: Musee de la
Resistance et de Ja Deportation, Besan~on, France. Photo: Stiftung
Gedenkstiitten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, Germany)
Figure 12.1 'Keep a Record' poster. National Archives of Australia 302
Figure 12.2 'Diary Exposes Vital Evidence on Kelly Trial'. The Age, 1 April 317
2000,p.2
Figure 12.3 Cartoon on Yorta Yorta Decision. Cartoonist Michael Leunig, The 319
Age, 13 December 2002, p. 16
About this book
The study of archives involves studying the way societies shape, hold and access
information about their activities. There is no area of human activity not shaped in the most
fundamental ways by the archival storage of information and no continuing form of culture
or community is possible without it.
The purpose of this book is to provide a conceptual base for archival science which
coherently incorporates both established and emerging concepts within the discipline. The
challenges posed by changing technologies necessitate such new overviews. Although
archivists face these challenges directly, their implications reach beyond the archival
profession. Almost everybody, not just those paid to do the work that this entails, is an
archivist and a records manager and all of us have a stake in the relationship between
archives and human activity. Accordingly we hope this book will be a valuable resource
within and beyond the archival profession by exposing leading archival thinking to scholars,
thinkers and practitioners in many disciplines.
We have brought together leading archival scholars and have invited them to present the
results of their research and reflections around a number of issues and perspectives. One
such perspective is the metaphor of the web. Archives are a web of recorded information
and always have been. For some years archivists have been battling with the dilemmas
posed by changing methods for recording all forms of information. Internet and web
browser technologies are shaping technological development in ways which run against the
isolated approaches of many individual archives in the past, pointing to the ever-present
interconnectedness of archives. Current advances in the control of the production of
archives in this environment may be modest, but the potential for better operation in this
area is undeniable.
There are many areas of debate in the archival profession. Sometimes the tensions and
apparent contradiction within these debates suggest irreconcilable differences of opinion. In
relation to individual expressions of views this may be the case. We wanted authors to bear
in mind that such debates are indicators of key points for mediation and change, requiring
balancing, attention, and continuing adjustment. An example is the book's recurring
emphasis upon the relationship between evidence and memory within our archives. Any
exploration of memory automatically brings with it perspectives about meaning and
interpretation, including consideration of what may be termed Freudian constructs, and the
relationship between individual and collective memory. Evidence is more amenable to
xii Archives: Recordkeeping in society
common interpretation across the profession, but for much of the twentieth century
archivists have allowed their views of evidence to be dominated by legal concepts, not
record.keeping ones. Only in the 1990s have archivists begun to seriously explore the nature
of record.keeping evidence. Record.keeping evidence is related to accounts of our actions.
But within those accounts memory, with all its quirks, cannot be ignored.
Cultural conditions are examined. Archives are shaped by the nature of the threads that tie
different communities together, whether the community is a small tightly-knit group or
something as large as a nation state or as dispersed as global communities. Again, there are
problems in archival discourse. Just as legal evidence has dominated views of evidence (at
least in English language discourse), there has been a widespread notion that record.keeping
serves current purposes and that cultural goals of archives are a temporally separate area of
interest requiring a considerable lapse of time before they kick into operation, and then only
in relation to records as end products held by archival institutions. In studies of cultural
history, there has been a greater emphasis in recent decades on cultural formation and
evidence of that formation. In the archival profession's discourse there has been a belated
but growing interest in the formation of archives and the relationships between that
formation and culture. Recordkeeping processes and cultural issues are entwined and, as
historians such as Michel Foucault have demonstrated, much can be learnt about culture
from the way culturally-controlled recordkeeping processes operate within our discourse.
We also asked authors to bear in mind the formation of global cultures and the problems
and opportunities that the internationalization of an archival culture will present to
individual cultures. Global approaches to archives within webs can be expected to give
greater coherence and unity to world practice. To what extent will cultural conditions
influence globalization, and globalizing processes reshape cultural conditions? How can
countless generations of diversity and difference in practice be ironed out? And, if they can
be ironed out, is that a blessing or a curse on the profession?
We want the book to present archives over broad sweeps of time. The historical
perspective may seem to pale into insignificance when measured against the technological
changes we are undergoing, but there is an ever-present reinvention of the past going on
within our new techniques for managing recorded information. This deserves
acknowledgment and understanding.
The issue of the divisions in archival practice between personal, governmental and business
archives is addressed. The divisions have made sense in the past, but within our era of
interconnections (the networked age as it is sometimes called) they are becoming
pernicious. Perhaps the divisions reflect a fimdamental division in the modern psyche
between who we are and where we work, a division that has often been overdrawn, and in
many disciplinary forums is beginning to be challenged.
We hope these themes, issues, and perspectives give some coherence to the work of the
many authors involved in the preparation of this book. On the other hand we want each
chapter to stand alone, notwithstanding the recurring issues, and to restrict cross
referencing between chapters to a minimum. This means that separate chapters can be
About this book xiii
dismantled from their current context and used more easily within educational and training
programs at the program director's discretion. They can also be read in any order.
There are, however, more cross-connections between chapters than we had originally
intended, particularly in part two. All the editors are records continuum thinkers and
operators and the division of these chapters automatically requires cross-connections iftheir
continuum nature is to be maintained. Other authors vary in the degree to which they adopt
a continuum framework and, had the book developed from a conference discussion across
the chapters, they would have ensured the transcript made lively reading. Our audience
should feel free to follow suggestions and inferences from each author as it too interacts
with the book.
We wanted some consistency in terms of formats of chapters, but this has also only been
implemented partially. All chapters have additional reading lists. A few chapters have case
studies that can be used in teaching and training programs, not part of the original intention,
but clearly a useful approach to take.
The structure of the book reflects many of the philosophical positions outlined above.
The first part provides stand-alone introductions, raising much that is wrong with
approaches to recordkeeping in democratic societies today, giving a view of archives across
time, and introducing the communities of practice which make up the recordkeeping and
archiving enterprise. Part two looks at archivists in operation and, as mentioned above, is
organized around the records continuum, although to appreciate this, the chapters have to
be read in non-linear fashion. The third part of the book is open slather for thinking. A
number of experts in particular areas of thought are brought together to explore a range of
concepts. These are chapters that we most definitely would hope are widely read and used
outside the archival profession and/or used by archivists to develop better cross-connections
with others.
The sociologist Anthony Giddens, whose work is drawn upon by a number of authors in
this book, has persistently argued that in his discipline there is nothing as pernicious as an
empirical study working out from a poor conceptual base. One can say the same thing for
all human action including the things that archivists do. The problem, as always, is
determining what a good conceptual base is. Archivists over the last fifteen years have been
forced by their immediate contact with changes in technological conditions to reconsider
their concepts. We hope this book will both contribute to further professional discussion
about how archivists can think and operate, and open up that thinking and operating to
criticism and support from others.