Managing Archives: Foundations, Principles and Practice

Citation

Newton, C. (2007), "Managing Archives: Foundations, Principles and Practice", Records Management Journal, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 63-65. https://doi.org/10.1108/09565690710730705

Of the making of books on archives management there is no end. This is the latest contribution to the long and distinguished line which extends from Muller et al. (1968) to Jenkinson (1965), Schellenberg (1956), Cook (1999) and Shepherd and Yeo (2003). Perhaps it is a sign of the times that it is published in a series aimed at what is called in the blurb “the busy information professional”. That seems slightly at odds with the authors intended audience which she claims is students, the recently qualified, and those without any professional training who have had archive responsibilities thrust upon them. Among those acknowledged for assistance is, embarrassingly, the present reviewer.

The work is a sensible, pragmatic account of the fundamental tasks of the archivist beginning with the principles and passing through selection and appraisal, arrangement, description, access, advocacy, preservation and the management of an archive service. Throughout there are down to earth examples from a Marks and Spencer till receipt as an example of an archive to Tony Blair's website as an example of advocacy. Valuable references to printed and digital sources are given throughout and there are clearly set out panels containing case studies illustrating various points in the text. The style is very conversational, which may be an irritant to those more accustomed to such works being expressed in the cool, statuesque, prose of a Jenkinson or Shepherd and Yeo. There are infelicities of structure; issues can be dealt with in two places, sometimes in a slightly different manner. Criticisms can be made on points of detail (format and type are confused on page 84 for example) but these are inevitable in a work of this kind and in a profession with no accepted canonical text opinions tend to be largely personal preferences anyway. More significant is the uncertainty about some definitions – this is “Managing Archives”, Shepherd and Yeo is “Managing Records” – is there a real difference? Williams comes down on the very traditional interpretation that archives are records retained for historical purposes, a definition which might not satisfy all readers. Nor despite the undoubtedly engagé style does the author allow herself the luxury of making the sort of clarion call claims for the significance of archives which others, especially outside the UK, are now making. Archive management is about efficiency and culture promotion here. Nor are there any references to Cox and Wallace (2002) still less to Derrida (1995) and Harris (2002). But for probably the first time in such a work issues such as ethics, social agendas, project management and human resource management are dealt with if sometimes in somewhat cursory manner. In truth the limitation of space prevents adequate discussion of any single topic and the author should be congratulated on the skill with which she has managed to refer to many areas which have been largely ignored in the past.

The larger issues raised by the appearance of this work are however more important than objections to matters of detail or arcane arguments about the meaning of provenance or “fonds”. The plain fact is that the archive profession in the UK has no agreed methodology or philosophical rationale to which all practitioners subscribe. Indeed if there were such then one of William's audiences, the archivist perforce, would not exist. Jenkinson believed that he was producing the canonical text referred to above. He was writing in 1922 using theories developed in the 19th century mainly in Europe and which he applied to the Public Records and more particularly to medieval archives. Indeed for him other kinds of archive, apart perhaps from the private and estate collections of the aristocracy, then under the polite purview of the HMC, hardly existed. There is nothing in Jenkinson about advocacy, appraisal (except to deny any archival involvement with it), ethics, funding, outreach, risk assessment, or stakeholders and little on technology. His work has continuing value on provenance, fonds, and original order but the above litany of omissions graphically demonstrates that it is otherwise totally out of date. In 1965 the work was re‐issued without any revision – an astonishing thing to do but showing the immense conservatism of the British archive profession at the time when most senior archivist were essentially Jenkinson clones. A recent commentator has described Jenkinson as “unreflective” and “stunningly reactionary” (Kaplan, 2002). Strong words but not entirely incorrect. Schellenberg did revise him but as an American he had little impact in this country. In consequence every writer here has laboured under the need to try to update the un‐updateable. There has been no attempt to re‐think the principles in a modern context but rather to tweak them to try and fit reality.

The problem is exacerbated by the appearance of the records management discipline which has deliberately, or otherwise, thrown down a challenge to archivists on some fundamental issues. If archives are not records what are they and where do they begin? How can the principle of provenance and original order be preserved in computer systems and is there any point in doing so? Worse still we have a public policy expressed, for example, through MLA, which seems to drive a museum agenda rather than an archive one, despite the supposed equality of the domains. Recent revelations about the huge discrepancy in funding are bad enough but there seems little resistance even among archivists to the collection, curatorial, object related and education orientated museum methodology of museums being applied to archives which should be organic, managerial, series related and morally orientated. Archivists have sung small for years, over faced by burgeoning document technology and aware that at a national level they have an image problem. It is good to see in Williams an attempt to win back the Vimy Ridge of document management from the interlopers. The result only underlines the impossibility of a successful attack using traditional, single author monograph methods. Surely there is a need for a joint authoritative “dictionary” work dealing with the high level issues in detail together with a constantly updated manual setting out procedures, both of course, especially the latter, in digital form.

It is curious that the original writers on archive theory were all practitioners but the later providers of procedural guidance have all been academics, at least at the time when they wrote. Yet we do need the theoretical basis, we do have to address the Derrida philosophy and the implications of the Heiner and Papon cases otherwise how can archives be a profession? Doctors and lawyers are always doctors and lawyers even when they have no patients or clients, but oddly archivists are apparently only archivists when they are handling archives. A retired archivist is a contradiction in terms. Yet the real essence of a profession is what its members know, not what they do. Convergence may be the flavour of the month but we are desperately in need of an acceptable statement of what it is that makes archivists different.