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Obstacles to the access, use and transfer of information from archives
Michel Duchein
1. INTRODUCTION DEFINITION OF PROBLEMS
1.1 The notion of access to arrives': origin and development
1.1.1 Definition of archives
Before taking up the study of the origin and development of the notion of 'access to archives', it would be well to begin by providing a clear definition of the word archives, which, throughout the ages and in different countries has exhibited quite a variety of meanings.
Even today, markedly different meanings are given this word by laws and regulations in accordance with various cultural areas.
In most countries with long-standing archives traditions, particularly in Europe, the word archives (in German Archiv, in Spanish archive, in Italian archivio, in Russian archiv, etc.) designates 'all documents, whatever their age, format or material composition, that are produced or received by any physical or moral person or by any public or private service or organisation in the performance of their activities'. 1. On the other hand, in the United States and certain other countries that have adopted its terminology, especially Canada, the word archives, in contrast to the word records (translated into Canadian French by the word documents), has taken on the more restricted - sense of 'non-current records preserved, with or without selection, by those responsible for their creation or by their successors in function for their own use by an appropriate archive because of their archival value'. 2. It should be clearly specified, then, that throughout the present study the usual 'European' meaning of the word archives is being used. In other words, it is equivalent not only to the American archives, but also to the American records, defined as 'recorded information, regardless of form or medium, created, received and maintained by an agency, institution, organisation or individual in pursuance of its legal obligations or in the transaction of business'. 3.
Nevertheless since access to documents is in practice and sometimes even under law, closely linked to their actual existence in an archives repository, a distinction will be made, when required, between archives contained in a repository (archives, as used in the United States) and administrative documents (records).
In the language of the archivists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the word archives often designated solely documents of public origin, or at least documents created by established institutions such as courts, churches, and universities, to the exclusion of private and family papers, personal correspondence and the like. This distinction continues to exist in the United States where papers of personal and family origin are usually grouped under the term manuscripts. In all other countries the word archives is now used for documents of both private and public origin, although their legal status is obviously different. This distinction will be made in the present study by differentiating, when required, public archives and private archives.
In conformity with the now universally accepted definition, the word archives is applied to all physical forms of documents, whether traditional ('textual') documents; pictorial documents; cartographic documents; photographic documents, including films and microfilms; sound documents; and 'machine-readable' documents (i.e. produced/used by computers).
FOOTNOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1. Translation of the French definition of archives in International Council on Archives Dictionnaire international de terminologie archivistique, in the process of publication.
2. Ibid. English definition of the word archives.
3. Ibid. English definition of the word records.
6. CONCLUSION
Throughout this study, we have essentially been considering the various legal and practical means of access to archives for the applicants: historians and other academic researchers, but also civil servants and the curious.
There is another form of 'access to archives' with which we have not dealt because it must be approached from a completely different angle, but which must not be passed over in silence in an overall study on accessibility: that is, exhibitions and, generally speaking, the efforts deployed to make archives known to the public. This is today a very dynamic aspect of the activity of archive services in a large number of countries, and will make an increasingly important contribution in the future to attracting new researchers to the archives.
Nevertheless, we should not forget that before we can be concerned about making archives 'accessible', they will have to exist, and must be in a fit state to be accessible, that is, physically intact and properly arranged. However, this twofold condition is by no means satisfied everywhere. As Mr Dadzie said at the Extraordinary International Congress on Archives held at Washington in 1966 on the subject of 'The opening of archives to research' : 'in the developing countries, liberalization of access to archives must begin with their safeguarding and organization'. On receiving the questionnaire which was sent to all countries in preparation of the present study, many developing countries replied: 'Access to archives is non-existent in this country in the absence of premises, qualified staff and classified holdings'. This is, unfortunately, a feature of the question which should receive attention at world level.
Another important conclusion of this study is that if the archives are to be made truly accessible, it is not enough to proclaim, in the preamble to a Constitution or to a Declaration of Rights, the principle of the freedom of information. It would be only too easy to give examples of such proclamations in countries where it is common knowledge that government and administrative documents are, in fact, completely inaccessible.
What is needed is:
1. a law, or at least a decree, specifically affirming the right of access to public archives, and defining the latter in such a way that there can be no room for dispute about it;
2. official and public regulations, specifying which documents are freely available, which documents are subject to access restrictions, and what the procedures are for requesting permission to consult the documents which are not freely available;
3. archive repositories with reading rooms large enough to receive researchers and with staff sufficiently trained to make archives accessible, that is, to arrange, list and communicate them;
4. Legislation providing the necessary guarantees for access to private archives of outstanding interest for national history.
We must not forget that public archives, by their very nature, are part of the governmental and administrative framework of a country. It would hence be quixotic to demand that they be opened completely and without restrictions to research. There will always be military and diplomatic problems, international disputes, scientific secrets, economic negotiations, not to mention questions touching people's private life, for which the documents will long remain inaccessible.
Furthermore, the archives are part of the heritage of a country and concern for making them accessible should not lead to jeopardising their very existence. A comparison may be made here with another domain; the proection of nature. In various countries, over-rapid and systematic opening of natural wealth - forests, beaches, mountains and rivers - to the public, has led to such serious deterioration that now governments are concerned to restrict access to them, to the extent of creating 'prohibited areas' or 'limited-access areas' in order to ensure their survival. This is also the case for a number of museums or historic monuments, such as the prehistoric caves of Lascaux which had to be closed to the public in order to prevent the total disappearance of the cave frescos. Certain categories of documents in the archives have already suffered seriously from over-use. It is, of course, always possible to microfilm them in order to prevent the originals from being handled, but this is an expensive procedure, and by no means all archive services have the resources necessary for such systematic microfilming.
Thus it has been seen that the problems of the accessibility of archives are inextricably tied to a whole complex of legal problems (definition of public archives and private archives, the right to information, the right to privacy, the protection of state and private interests, etc.), and also to a whole series of technical and administrative problems (the organisation of archive services and the transfer of administrative files to archive repositories, systems of arrangement and listing, etc.) and practical problems (premises for receiving the public, manpower for archive services, provision of microfilming equipment, etc.). It would be vain to expect that all these problems might be resolved in identical fashion everywhere. Inequality of economic and cultural conditions is considerably among the various countries in the world, as are their legal and administrative traditions.
In conclusion, we might at least express the following hopes:
1. that all countries will, as a minimum, adopt legislation on archives, including a definition of public and private archives, regulations for keeping them and general principles governing their availability for research;
2. that the various international organisations making up the United Nations system will adopt uniform rules concerning access to their own archives, with the consent of the Member States;
3. that assistance will be provided for the least-favoured countries in order to establish archive services capable of making documents accessible according to the rules laid down by national laws.
In order that these hopes should begin to be realised, it would seem appropriate to suggest calling, within the framework of Unesco, an international meeting bringing together, together with a number of experts in the field of access to archives, not only archivists and users of archives, but also representatives of government authorities, in particular from countries where the legislation and regulations on this point are at present non-existent or inadequate, for example Belgium, Brazil, Egypt, Greece, India, the Ivory Coast, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, Portugal, Spain, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey and Zaire. (This list is given as a guide and is by no means restrictive).
For lack of an unattainable harmonisation of legislation and regulations throughout the world, such a meeting, with the present report as a starting point, would at least make it possible to bring about greater awareness on the part of the governments of the various countries of the problem of the accessibility of their archives, and thus to contribute to greater knowledge and better use of an essential part of their national heritage.