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5.1. Provenance and sanctity of the original
order
5.2.
Acquisition
5.3.
Accessioning
5.4. Arrangement and description
5.5. Access
5.6.
Priority of archives
5.1. Provenance and sanctity of the original order
When records have been appraised and found to have a permanent and enduring value they gain a new status as archives. The criteria by which they are accorded this status as well as the point at which they reach this status will vary widely according to the particular circumstances of that institution or of that country. There are also many variations as well as differences of opinion as to how these archives should be brought into the institution, processed, preserved and made available to the users.
Since the end of the eighteenth century and until the relatively recent times of the post Second World War period, there have been two guiding principles that have been universally acknowledged and applied. In the first instance archives were created by distinct entities in the natural course of conducting their business. The archives were thus related to the functions as well as the organisational units and activities of that entity. To this extent the archives could only be understood in the context of each other in so far as the minutes of meetings were related to the directives that were subsequently issued or the manner in which inquiries were dealt with. To understand the directives that were issued reference needed to be made to the minutes that gave rise to them. On the other hand these minutes were unique to this entity in spite of the fact that they could exist in multiple copies. Their uniqueness arose out of the sequence in which they were to be found within that entity and the related documentation that was generated by the entity at the time. To understand the position taken by certain officials at the meeting, or why the decisions made at the meeting were only half heartedly endorsed it would be necessary to relate the minutes to the other documentation of that entity. If these minutes were mixed up with the documentation of other units their significance was lost and it became virtually impossible to relate them to the entity that created them. To do this was, in over simplistic terms, the equivalent of tearing the third chapters of ten books, aggregating them and asking people to make sense out of them.
The rise of the principle of provenance or in its better known terminology respect des fonds was in answer to this problem and it was first enunciated by the French archivist de Wailly in the mid 19th Century. By this principle records of a distinct and separate entity were meant to be kept together as this was the only way in which the structure and functioning of that entity could be understandable. The need to keep records of one entity together led to another aspect which with time and with the ever increasing pace of record and archive generation began to cause problems. For some archivists, adhering to the principle of provenance implied describing the archives of an entity together as well as shelving or storing them together as a unit. While the description of the archives did not pose many problems, storage was a different proposition as it was very difficult to forecast the rate at which the records of certain entities were going to accumulate and therefore the amount of space that would be required in the repository to adequately cater for the records. In the 1960' s and 1970' s some institutions notably the national archival institutions of Australia and Rhodesia abandoned the second part of this principle preferring instead to maintain the unity of the archive generating entities by aggregating all the records of that particular entity in the finding aids but shelving the records at series level in terms of their accessioning sequence. The result was that while records of the same entity were grouped together in the finding aids, they were however stored at different locations in the repository. This departure from established practice stirred a great deal of controversy especially in the late 1950' s and in the following decade.
The principle of provenance had a natural sequel. If archives could only be interpreted and understood in the context of the entities that created them, then their further interpretation depended on being able to establish the way in which they were created and organised. The archives of a particular entity were related to each other by the way in which they had been organised. when they were created. The archives had an organic character and archivists therefore needed to structure the archives in their custody according to this original order. It is in this way that the principle of the sanctity of the original order was born and adhered to. In the post Second World War period there have been various modifications to the above principles to meet particular needs and requirements but to a large extent, whatever variations have been introduced have never completely nullified these principles. It is them that mainly determine the manner in which archives are arranged and described.
A basic duty of the archivist is the acquisition of archives. In certain circumstances that acquisition process starts at the time that the archivist involves himself in the management of current and semi-current records for it is at that point that decisions are being made as to how the records will be organised. what will be destroyed, at what point it will be destroyed, and what will be retained permanently as archives. While opinions will differ, and indeed accusations have been made that some records managers want to usurp archival functions and vice-versa, it would still seem that archives that are the residue of a planned and systematic records management process are bound to be of an enhanced quality in comparison with those that have survived by accident rather than by design. When the archivist plays no role in the current and semi-current stage of the records he places himself in a passive role in which he waits for the archives to be sent to him or conducts the records surveys periodically to determine what should be given archives status. The danger in this is that by the time the archives reach the archival institution irreparable and irreversible harm may already have been done and this is especially true of machine readable records. While 31 respondents to the second questionnaire felt that they were satisfied with the way in which their records were being handled in their institutions, fourteen indicated that there were shortcomings and that damage to records may be occurring. Several of those who answered in the affirmative on this point felt it necessary to qualify their response by adding that they thought that the records were being satisfactorily handled given the situation and the constraints that existed.
There are also some archives that do not get transferred to the archival institutions. Quite often records of Deeds Registries or of the Registrar of Companies remain extant in the departments themselves as long as the properties or companies to which they relate remain in existence. Such retention by the ministries and departments should however still be in liaison with the archival institution that should have the ability to oversee the welfare of such archives. Where these records have been automated, it should be a requirement that a master tape be transferred and stored in the archival institution.
The necessity of retaining archives in ministries and departments should however be minimised The overriding consideration should be the extent to which they are still required for the fulfilment of the functions of that organ. Their continued retention also often poses serious problems especially since those who retain them do not appreciate their archival value. And yet the responses to the two questionnaires brought out clearly that a good proportion of archives were still held by the creating agencies or that transfer to the archives took place very late.
Assuming that the archives have in one way or another survived to reach the archival institution then the archives must be processed, stored, preserved and made accessible. This involves various techniques which while acquiring certain peculiarities in specific institutions and societies nevertheless have broadly recognisable general characteristics.
The archives must in the first instance be accessioned. There are various methods of accessioning but the basics are the same. Accessioning is the process of receiving archives and bringing them into the repository. At one end it requires that the physical condition be ascertained, that issues requiring urgent attention be attended to such as in those circumstances where the physical condition is very poor or critical, that where there is infestation of some sort, such as with lice, that fumigation be carried out to avoid transferring into the archives storage area those very enemies of the archives. It is also required that a record be created of the archives to reflect the details of the archives received. Whether such details are carried in an accession register or by some other means, the essential details will include the provenance of the archives, some description and indication of content, a quantification of the volume, an indication of the period covered, details of access conditions and of the storage location. Where the archives are not immediately processed there may be an indication of the processing priority. In many cases the archives are held in a holding area pending their detailed arrangement and description but practices here will differ dependent to some degree on the extent of the processing backlog. The importance of accessioning is evident. If access to the archives should be required in this interim period then at least the whereabouts of the archives are known and they can be retrieved and made available. For decision makers this is an important requirement for they cannot afford at any time to lose contact with the archives. On the part of the archivist, it is equally essential that the archives be speedily processed to facilitate archives. Without exception if archives must for a period be stored before arrangement and description then a mechanism for making the presence of these archives known to the users must be available.
5.4. Arrangement and description
The pillars of archival work are the arrangement and description of the archives. The principles of arrangement and description are the subject of numerous studies, guides and manuals. The methods themselves have metamorphosed with time from the detailed calendaring of the early modern period in Europe to the broad series summarisations and descriptions that have become characteristic of modern archives. The arrangement of archives in general follows the principles of provenance and the sanctity of the original order that have already been discussed. Common archival practice sees the archives in the first instance being arranged according to the creating entity whose history is often catalogued as a way of showing the manner in which the archives were created and accumulated. The ministry or departmental histories can be very useful to decision makers many of whom are quite often unaware of the way in which the ministry or agency has developed. They also explain the inconsistencies and contradictions that may be encountered in the archives and also lead the way to certain archives that may have a relevance. To a large extent, such a facility would not exist in the ministries and departments and it is one way in which archival services provide a superior information service to decision makers.
The arrangement of the archives then seeks to group them, in the case of Government and local authority agencies in terms of their parent ministries, then according to their specific departments and actual units.
The Question of arrangement also borders on the question of series' raising the necessity to identify series of records so that at a later stage records of the same series can be brought together.
After arrangement the next task is that of describing the archives. Archival description is a complex task fraught with many difficulties. When the rate of production of information was small the quantity of archives to be handled was also small. In Medieval Europe and early modern times it was therefore possible to describe the archives in great detail. Through the process of calendaring, detailed summaries of the archives were given. However, as the rate of creating information increased and larger quantities of archives were received it became impractical to describe the records in detail. Broad summary descriptions were increasingly given, dealing with the archives at series level rather than at the level of the individual file. Some archival institutions faced with the unpalatable need to abandon calendaring techniques adopted the compromise position where they described public archives at the series level but continued to give detailed summaries of private archives or what were termed historical manuscripts.
The process of description is essentially a mechanism to enable users to identify the archives held and in particular to locate those that they need. Description is closely related to the method of arrangement and its format depends on the way in which the records are held. In very broad terms however archival description identifies the archive type in terms of whether it is correspondence, memoranda, reports or minutes. It then gives some indication of the format of the archives showing whether they are in manuscript, typed or on magnetic media. The description attempts to quantify the records so that users have an idea of the volume that they have to contend with. There are also other items that are normally part of the description process and these include an indication of the period to which the archives relate, a summary of the content and where it has been necessary to restructure the archives because the original order could not be reestablished, this is also indicated.
After the records have been described the next step is to index them in order to facilitate user access. The process of indexing is itself a time consuming exercise but it is essential because many users do not know where to find the information that they want. Even in those cases where they may have some idea they would still find it difficult to find out where other relevant information may be found. In indexing, the archivist is able to provide that ultimate service to the user in so far as all archives relating to a particular subject are brought together enabling a user to access the multiple sources that exist. The decision maker thus is able to access archives generated by different ministries and departments and to identify for instance relevant projects that may have been carried out by others beside his own ministry or department. To this extent duplication of effort can be eliminated while better quality decisions can be reached based on a consultation of all the available archival sources.
As has already been shown however decision makers are not making full use of the archival potential that exists. Estimates that were given of the numbers of decision makers that used archives in relation to the total users of archives were very low.
5.5.1 Thirty six institutions were able to approximate the number of decision makers who used archives in relation to all the users. Their estimates ranged from 0,05 to 100%. Further analysis showed the following:
5.5.1.1 In seven institutions the decision makers were one percent and under.
5.5.1.2 In eighteen institutions the percentage was between one and ten percent.
5.5.1.3 In eight institutions it was between ten and fifty percent.
5.5.1.4 Two institutions reported very high usage rates. In the Karnataka State Archives of India it was estimated to be 85% while in the Centro de Informacion Documenta de Archivos in Madrid it was 100%.
5.5.1.5 The Australian Archives was the only one able to give more precise information quantifying it as 17% of all inquiries, 13% of all visits and 57% of all items issued in the Search Room.
5.5.1.6 In many of the institutions, it was a question that was difficult to answer, and institutions reported that they did not keep such statistics, were not able to quantify or found it very difficult to assess. The Riksarkivet in Norway responded in the ultimate by saying that it was "impossible to answer".
And yet the quantification of the use of archives by decision makers is important. It is an accepted principle in archives that generally archives exist to serve other than the needs of those that created them in the first place.
If the approximations given above are anything to go by it is clear that decision makers form a very small proportion of those that use the archives. Twenty five of the institutions approximated them to be less than 10% while several others, unable to quantify, nevertheless reported the numbers to be tiny, very small or negligible.
Does this mean that archives by and large are of no relevance to the decision makers.? As reported earlier the decision makers themselves clearly indicated that they did not really use those records that normally are in the archives, i.e. those that are over 25 years old.
The answer perhaps lies in two areas. To begin with the real reason that decision makers do not use archives is because they are unaware of the information that is contained in the archives. There probably are many instances when decision makers fumble and search in vain for required information without knowing that the information is readily available in the archives. By their very nature. archival institutions tend to be located away from the busy inner cities with their attendant atmospheric pollutions. The archival institutions therefore are often located in the serene and pollution free environments far away from the record creating agencies. Decision makers therefore dismiss the existence of archives. They have no easy access to the archives finding aids. Very few archival institutions have bothered to deposit in the creating agencies copies of their finding aids. Even in today' s technologically oriented society when on-line access is relatively easy to provide, there are no terminals linking the record creating agencies to the archival institutions where the records are kept. It is of course not feasible to transfer the actual information from the archival documents onto the computer medium but it is relatively easy to automate the finding aids and therefore give the users instant access to the existence of the required information. Only eighteen of the institutions had automated or started automating their finding aids while forty seven had not. It was also significant that only nineteen institutions were able to affirm that user departments had facilities that made it possible for them to know what relevant material had been created by their departments or by other departments or was being stored in the Records Centre. Thirty six institutions responded in the negative on this point.
The crux of the matter is that archival institutions have not, if one is to borrow a term common in the private sector, adopted an aggressive marketing policy. That policy hinges on getting the product onto the market rather than on waiting for the market to come to the product. But how could archival institutions achieve this without compromising their traditional scholarly status conferred on them by generations of archivists and archival practice. If the archivists were to adopt such an approach, what would be the implications for the decision makers? There is no doubt that at the moment there is a gap between the archives and the decision making process. That gap can be closed by the adoption of new strategies on the part of the custodians of the archives as well as on the part of the decision makers.
In the first instance it is necessary to analyse and quantify with precision the needs of the decision makers. Decisions are being made all the time and at all levels of the governmental structure. The type of decision as well as the quality of the decision is of course dependent on the nature and type of the administrative structure in which it is being made. Some decisions need to be made quickly while others cannot be made without extensive consultation. The speed with which the decisions are made or the length of time that it takes to make the consultations will of course vary. The basic aim at all times however will be to make the decisions as quickly as possible whether or not some consultation must take place.
The nature of governmental structures also varies tremendously as does the process by which decisions are reached. The efficiency of the bureaucratic machinery and its slowness or inefficiency is both a matter of opinion as well as of values. It is thus very difficult to prescribe universal solutions that would enhance the decision making process. The needs of the decision makers will vary according to the particular circumstances. In all cases however, it is necessary to analyse the needs of the decision makers.
The analysis will indicate the particular needs of the decision makers. In general, information is required in order to conduct all aspects of the governmental process. The formulation, presentation and control of budgets, the recruitment, maintenance, advancement and discharge of personnel, the purchasing, receipt, storage and issuance of goods, the formulation and implementation of projects, all these depend on information and require that decisions be made at various points. The questions of who to recruit, promote or discharge, of what project to give priority to or to allocate additional resources, the countries to establish diplomatic relationships with or cut ties, the policies to follow in relation to the economy, the choice of systems to provide basic services such as health, education and social security, the importation and exportation of certain products, the development and promotion of youth, of sport and of culture all these need and require that decisions be made.
But decisions are not easy to make because their making has consequences that are often difficult to accurately forecast. All decision makers ideally want to make the best decisions. Making the best decisions implies the consideration of all the relevant factors. Considering all the relevant factors however can only be done when all the relevant information has been brought together.
Decisions at the higher levels of administration are that much more difficult to make. The rise of Management Information Systems and Decision Support Systems testifies to the need to have information bases that can assist the process of management and decision making.
Besides assessing the needs of decision makers for information it is also necessary to assess the adverse consequences that result from the absence or non-usage of information. Archival institutions however, by and large do not make these assessments. They do not have that constant dialogue with their users which can enable them to keep tabs on the user requirements. The users on the other hand do not bother to engage in that dialogue which can assist them in their decision making. For the archival institutions to raise the awareness in the users as to the existence of the archives they have to have some idea of what is currently being done in the ministries and departments. They need to monitor the policies and projects of the ministries and departments, of directions being plotted, of programmes, that are succeeding or faltering and of areas of shortage in terms of the supply of information. Such monitoring is obviously an ongoing process requiring a feedback mechanism or perhaps the physical presence of the archive institution in the actual ministry or department. It can however be achieved by for instance identifying staff in the ministries and departments who are then sensitized as to the role and existence of the archives so that they keep track of developments at the archival institutions as well as monitoring the situation in the ministries and departments and bridge the two.
The constant monitoring or timely provision of archives to the decision makers can also be achieved by utilising today' s technological tools. If the finding aids to the archival collections are automated it should be possible to provide online facilities to the users or depositing ministries and departments enabling and encouraging the decision makers to scour the complete range of their information resources before making decisions. Quality decisions should be based on consulting all the existent information resources as contained in the current, semi-current and non-current records. A good decision maker should thus in the first instance find out what information exists in those records that are held in the offices and the registry. He should then check to see if relevant information exists in the records that are kept in storerooms and strongrooms. that have been transferred to the Records Centre or that have become archives. He should with ease be able to identify that information which has been disposed of and no longer exists so that he does not waste his time searching for that which is no longer available. And yet many decision makers do not have the capability or the means to identify and access the relevant information resources available. The existence and availability of archives need not be provided on an on-line basis. Printouts can regularly be produced and distributed to the relevant offices. Whenever new material has been added to the archival collection or transferred to the Records Centre or from the Records Centre to the archives then this information must be made known to the decision makers.
At present archival institutions attempt to publicise the existence of information in their collections by publishing a variety of catalogues. In recent times it has become fashionable to produce catalogues that describe special collections or that are based on a particular media such as photographs, maps' slides and films. This is indeed an important and crucial service but there is a shortcoming in terms of the distribution of these publications. It is possible and likely that such publications are deposited in the libraries of the ministries and departments. One would certainly hope so and yet one suspects that this may rarely be the case. One can imagine the difference and the impact it would make to the decision makers if each office in a ministry had as a standard reference point copies of the records transfer lists, to show what is in the storeroom or strongroom or that which has been transferred to the Records Centre. There would equally be a big difference if within the offices there existed copies of the finding aids to the collections or catalogues as produced by the archival institutions. The decision making process would also be profoundly affected and enhanced if periodically the decision makers received updates on what had just been processed or added to the archival collections or if the decision makers were constantly reminded that as they were about to survey a particular geographical area to decide on the siting of a road or dam, that other ministries or departments had also done some work in the area perhaps for different purposes but having gathered vital and valuable data and information.
The question of the siting of a dam or road is a very interesting case in point. For the road or dam to be built it will be necessary not only to study the terrain and identify the most suitable route or position but the choice of siting would have to be made against the impact of such siting in terms of the population and other affected elements such as vegetation and animals. Quite often therefore the ministry or department that builds roads and dams will study the socioeconomic factors, the distribution of population, the location of farms and villages, the economic and social infrastructures and the impact, benefits and drawbacks of various alternative sitings. Such investigation may be made in absolute ignorance of the fact that other ministries and departments have undertaken similar work. The department of housing services may have researched the population patterns in order to decide where to site a new village or housing estate. The Department of Education may have undertaken investigations in attempting to find the best possible site for a new school, technical college or university. The Ministry of Health may have also done some work in relation to the building of additional health facilities such as clinics and hospitals.
It can be seen that while the activities of ministries and departments may be specialised in their own way they nevertheless within any given geographical context all relate to that same geographical entity. All of them will approach their responsibilities differently but it should not be forgotten that they are all dealing with the same physical area, the same population, the same infrastructures. It has already been indicated from the questionnaire responses that duplication of effort is obviously taking place, that certain disasters could have been avoided and that mistakes have been made through failure to access the available information resources.
The challenge to decision makers is the need for the fuller exploitation of the information resources for the enhancement of the decision making process. That archives are not fully utilised is partially a result of the ignorance and unawareness of their existence. It is however not merely a failure by the archival institutions to make available the archives to the decision makers. Archival institutions are operating with very scant and inadequate material and financial resources.
Thirty nine institutions reported that they received favourable budgetary allocations in relation to other institutions and departments and yet a very significant number, twenty seven' indicated that they did not receive favourable budgetary allocations. Of those that received favourable allocations, twenty one did not have adequate staff. Only three institutions. the Archivo Nacional of Ecuador, the Archives Nationales of Luxembourg, and the Arquivo Historico de Macau, were able to report that they received top priority in the allocation of budgetary resources. The majority, forty five, received reasonable priority, while nineteen said that they received low priority.
Amongst those who felt that they had top budget priority only two' the Arquivo Historico de Macau and the Archivo Nacional of Ecuador were able to say also that they had adequate staffing. Of the institutions that received reasonable priority, twenty three did not have adequate staffing.
The barely sufficient and insufficient resources naturally affect the level of services that archival institutions can offer. Archival institutions are not self-financing or profit making organisations. They depend on being allocated requisite funding from their parent organisations. That funding of course is allocated in relation to what is seen as the relevance of the archival service and it is here that the paradox exists. The decision makers, who are in one way or another involved in the allocation of the resources declare that they value the archival service and say that it merits a high priority rating. The archivists themselves are equally convinced of the necessity of their work and of the priority status that it must be accorded. And yet in the final analysis, the archival institutions do not get this recognition.
That archival institutions do not get this recognition must surely be because the reality of the situation rather than the declared or professed importance is that archives are not at the moment able to compete well with other needs and priorities. The provision of welfare services' the increase in the number of police to combat crime, the building of clinics and schools. all these will take their place in the priority ratings ahead of the provision of archival services. But this is not surprising for as we have seen archives are not being used nor have they been demonstrated to be of critical value to the decision making process or to the day to day conduct of the business of the record creating agencies.
For archival institutions to merit a larger share of the national resources they will have to expand on their role but this does not mean that they should reduce or neglect their traditional and customary role of ensuring that records created by public entities and therefore belonging to the public are preserved and made available to the public so that the latter can scrutinize them and make the public entities publicly accountable for their actions. This is a noble and indeed mandatory role. Historians and researchers, genealogists and social scientists, all these have a legitimate claim to the records and archives.
The right of the public to inspect archives was asserted at the time of the French Revolution towards the end of the eighteenth century. Today most archival legislations enshrine this principle which has in certain countries been taken further in the form of the "Freedom of Information". Basically, there are two major methods by which access to archives is being granted. At one end there are those countries where access is granted to all records at the time of their creation with the proviso that access cannot be given to certain designated and specified records. At the other end there are those who operate a blanket closure period by which all records and archives are closed until they reach a certain age this generally being between twenty, twenty five and thirty years, the latter being more common. Such a system makes it easier to grant access although one can immediately see the drawback that there must be many records and archives which need not be closed for such an inordinately long time.
But does the question of access and the point at which it is granted have any relevance for the decision makers both in terms of the information that they themselves create and that which others create for them. Decision makers requiring information in the first instance go to their own registries to find out how their predecessors have dealt with certain problems and situations. They then go to libraries to see how other researchers have examined certain issues and provided solutions. The books, periodicals and articles that they are looking at in the library are however by and large the results and fruit of the labour of the general public, a public that has certain limitations in terms of the information that is available to it. There are times when researchers are allowed access to records held in Records Centres and departmental registries but this is the exception rather than the rule. The general researcher conducts his research in the field and backs it up with a consultation of the available published and unpublished sources. If his access to the records of Government is unduly delayed, his work is accordingly handicapped and devoid of directions that could have been taken had such information been accessible. To this extent therefore delayed opening of archives affects the output of the researching public and in turn affects the quality of external sources that a decision maker consults in order to make decisions.
The requirement is for the introduction of mechanisms to facilitate early access by the public to archives. Appropriate controls must of course exist to ensure that information of a sensitive or confidential nature or that can hamper the governmental process is not made available. The decision makers must realise that it is to their advantage to make such material available to the public at the earliest possible moment.
Archives however should be made to have a primary relevance to those who created them. If the latter profess that they need them then they should be given access. Giving this access does not merely mean compiling finding aids and putting them in the Search Room for consultation by those who should venture to visit the Search Room. Many decision makers are far too busy to make this visit unless they are aware or are assured that the information they are seeking is available. Archival institutions will need to realign their methods, practices and policies in order to keep in step with the requirements of those who in the first instance are the reason for the existence of the archives.