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In his to this volume Dr Frank Evans has sketched and explained the genesis and development of Unesco's Records and Archives Management Programme, now better and familiarly known with the archival community world-wide by its acronym RAMP.
The programme has been characterized as both a conceptual framework and an operating programme focussing attention upon basic archival and records management problems and contributing to their solution.
The series of RAMP studies published in steadily increasing numbers since 1981 serves as clear evidence of the programme's contribution to solving many problems, which hold the attention of archivists and records managers everywhere.
This compilation of Guidelines taken from those RAMP studies which have separate Guidelines is intended to make more easily and readily available the distillation of professional theories and practices which they contain and as a result make the Studies themselves more widely known and used.
Guidelines to some Studies are variously called by that name or entitled Conclusions or Recommendations. Under whatever name they appear, they are reproduced here.
To set Guidelines in context, chronological or methodological, Studies have Introductions which also serve to summarise their purpose and scope. With such editing as seemed appropriate to a work such as this, the Introductions are presented in their authors' own words.
Since Studies very in length, so consequently do Introductions and Guidelines. There is no overall uniformity in Studies of sectional and paragraph numeration, each has its own self contained numeration. In both Introductions and Guidelines, there are internal references to the main text of the Study concerned and these have been reproduced here to lead users to the relevant part of the Study. Introductions may also have self contained sets of footnotes and the footnote references in the text are reproduced but not the footnotes themselves.
As readers will see, there are Guidelines relating to the records and archives of UN agencies and other international organizations. Such Studies from which Guidelines are excerpted, whilst primarily addressed to this audience are of general applicability and useful at national and other levels. The principles and practices enunciated are such as to be useful to records and archive services on whatever scale.
Guidelines are presented in the chronological order of their issuance, which reflects the development and progress of RAMP as an operating system and the TABLE OF CONTENTS serves as a topical index.
The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of Unesco concerning the legal status of any country or territory, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitations of its frontiers or boundaries.
The editor is responsible for the choice and presentation of the texts contained in this book. The opinions expressed therein are not necessarily those of Unesco and do not commit the Organization.
7, Place de Fontenoy, 75700 Paris, France. Copies of the Studies from which these Guidelines are excerpted and a list of other RAMP Studies and related publications may also be obtained from the same address.
7 December 1989
Peter Walne