2S-LIS 12
Introduction to
ARCHIVES
Prepared By
Dr. Ana Mae Kristine H. Lozanta
ARCHIVES
ARCHIVES
A – ACCESS, ARTIFACTS, AGENCY, ARCHIVAL
R – RESEARCH, RECORDS
C – COLLECTION, CLASSIFICATION, CATALOG, CONSERVATION
H – HISTORY, HISTORICAL VALUE,
I – INSTITUTE, IMAGE
V – VALUE, VITAL, VOLUME
E – ELECTRONIC, ELECTRONIC RECORD, ENCRYPTION
S – SELECTION, SERIAL, STATEMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY
ARCHIVES
❑Public records, papers, periodicals, books or other items,
articles or materials, whether in the form of electronic,
audio-visual, or print, which by their nature and
characteristics have enduring value, that have been selected
for permanent preservation;
❑the place (building/room/storage area) where archival
materials are kept and preserved; and
Reference: NAP GENERAL CIRCULAR No. 1 January 20, 2009
ARCHIVES
❑an organization (or part of an organization) whose main function is or to
select, collect and preserve archival records and make such records
available for public use;
(Reference: NAP GENERAL CIRCULAR No. 1 January 20, 2009)
❑A collection of documents created or gathered by one person
or institution and selected for long-term preservation as
evidence of their activities. (Reference: https://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/archive-centre/introductionto-archives/a/1)
ARCHIVES
❑An archive is an accumulation of historical records or
materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in
which they are located.
❑Archives contain primary source documents that have
accumulated over the course of an individual or
organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the
function of that person or organization.
SINUPAN
(Filipino Term)
ARCHIVES - Etymology
➢The English word archive /ˈɑːrkaɪv/ is derived from the
French
archives
(plural),
and
in
turn
from Latin archīum or archīvum, the romanized form of
the Greek ἀρχεῖον (arkheion).
➢The Greek term originally referred to the home or dwelling of the Archon,
a ruler or chief magistrate, in which important official state documents were
filed and interpreted; from there its meaning broadened to encompass such
concepts as "town hall" and "public records".
ARCHIVES - Etymology
❑ The root of the Greek word is ἀρχή (arkhē), meaning among other things
"magistracy, office, government“, and derived from the verb ἄρχω (arkhō),
meaning "to begin, rule, govern" (also the root of English words such as
"anarchy" and "monarchy").
❑The word archive is first attested in English in the early 17th century, and
the word archivist in the mid 18th century, although in these periods both
terms are usually found used only in reference to foreign institutions and
personnel. Not until the late 19th century did they begin to be used at all
widely in domestic contexts.
❑The adjective formed from archive is archival.
ARCHIVES - History
The practice of keeping official documents is
very old. Archaeologists have discovered
archives of hundreds (and sometime
thousands) of clay tablets going back to the
third and second millennia BC in sites like Ebla,
Mari, Amarna, Hattusas, Ugarit, and Pylos.
These discoveries have been fundamental to
learning about ancient alphabets, languages,
literature, and politics.
ARCHIVES - History
Description: A good-sized cuneiform adminstrative clay tablet
with clear cuneiform text on both sides still partially retained in
its original clay envelope. The envelope with worn text on both
faces and faint seal impressions on the sides. The envelope
fragmentary and has been cut longitudinally to expose the tablet,
the top and bottom ends of the envelope lost with irregular break
lines, from southern Iraq.
Size: The tablet, 55 x 40 x 20 mm/2.1 x 1.6 x 0.8 in., the
envelope 60 x 53 x 30 mm/2.3 x 2 x 1.2 ins.
Culture: Sumerian
Date: Third Dynasty of Ur, c. 2200-1900 B.C.
Provenance: Ex London private collection and acquired from a
LAPADA dealer some 20 years ago (supplied with the LAPADA
dealers ticket).
Notes: Clay tablets were enclosed in ‘envelopes’ – wrappers of
clay inscribed with the substance of the text on the enclosed
tablet and then rolled with the scribe’s seal. This prevented the
tablet from being altered. In a dispute, a document was only
admissable if it could be produced in its unopened envelope.
ARCHIVES - History
❑Archives were well developed by the ancient Chinese, the
ancient Greeks, and ancient Romans (who called them
Tabularia).
❑However, those archives have been lost, since documents
written on materials like papyrus and paper deteriorated
relatively quickly, unlike their clay tablet counterparts.
❑Archives of churches, kingdoms, and cities from the Middle
Ages survive and have often kept their official status
uninterruptedly to the present. They are the basic tool for
historical research on this period.
ARCHIVES - History
❑England after 1066 developed archives and archival access
methods.The Swiss developed archival systems after 1450.
❑The earliest archival manuals: Jacob von Rammingen, Von
der Registratur (1571), Baldassarre Bonifacio, De Archivis
(1632).
❑The first predecessors of archival science in the West are
Jacob von Rammingen's manuals of 1571 and Baldassarre
Bonifacio's De Archivis libris singularis of 1632.
ARCHIVES - History
❑Modern archival thinking has some roots dating back to
the French Revolution.
❑The French National Archives, which possess perhaps
the largest archival collection in the world (with records
going as far back as 625 A.D.), were created in 1790
during the Revolution from various government, religious,
and private archives seized by the revolutionaries.
ARCHIVES - History
❑In 1883 French archivist Gabriel Richou published the
first Western text on archival theory, entitled Traité
théorique et pratique des archives publiques (Treaty of
Theory and Practice of the Public Archives), in which he
systematized the archival theory of the respect des
fonds, first published by Natalis de Wailly in 1841.
ARCHIVES - History
❑The National Archives of the Philippines (Filipino: Pambansang Sinupan ng
Pilipinas and abbreviated NAP) is an agency of the Republic of the
Philippines
mandated
to
collect,
store,
preserve
and
make
available archival records of the Government and other primary sources
pertaining to the history and development of the country.
❑It is the primary records management agency, tasked to formulate and
implement the records schedule and vital records protection programs for the
government.
❑The archives as they are organized today are a result of the passage of
Republic Act 9470 in 2007, but its roots can be traced back to at least the 19th
century during the Spanish colonial government.
ARCHIVES - History
❑The nucleus of the institution began as the Division of Archives,
set up under the Spanish colonial government.
❑Before that time, the vast majority of the colonial records were
scattered among the islands and held in mostly religious centers of
the Catholic Church.
❑However, in 1898, Spain ceded control of the Philippines to the
United States of America through the Treaty of Paris.
❑Article VIII of the treaty authorized Philippine records in the islands
and in Spain to be under the new stewardship of the American
government.
ARCHIVES - History
❑As a result, the Office of Archives was officially
established. The Americans appointed a "keeper of the
Spanish Archive," who acted, essentially, as the director of
the archive.
❑This was an important position since the Archives was
placed under the control of various government agencies.
❑First, it was placed under the Executive Bureau in 1901.
Within the same year, it moved to the Department of Public
Instruction.
ARCHIVES - History
❑In 1915, it was transferred back to the Executive
Bureau and was reduced to the Division of Archives,
Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks.
❑The following year, this division was consolidated with
the Philippine Library and Museum.
❑In 1928, it became the Division of Archives under the
renamed National Library.
The Object of Archival Theory
1. IMPARTIALITY
The first characteristic of archives-their impartiality-establishes the
archival perspective on the relationship between facts and
interpretation that Frank Burke proposes that archival theory
investigate. “Free from the suspicion of prejudice in regard to the
interests in which we now use them.“
Protecting records from corruption is then a duty of archivists, whose
methods and practices need to be devised as far as possible to preserve
impartiality.
The Object of Archival Theory
2. AUTHENTICITY
The second characteristic of archives is authenticity. Authenticity is
contingent on the facts of creation, maintenance, and custody. Archives
are authentic only when they are created with the need to act through
them in mind and when they are preserved and maintained as faithful
witness of fact and act by the creator and its legitimate successors. To be
authentic memorials of past activity, documents must be created,
maintained, and kept in custody according to regular procedures that can
be attested.
The Object of Archival Theory
3. NATURALNESS
The third characteristics, naturalness. They are natural, in
the sense that they are not collected for some purpose
outside the administrative needs generating them, and not
put together according to some scheme to serve other than
those needs, as are the objects in a museum or the
documents in a library collection.
The Object of Archival Theory
4. INTERRELATEDNESS
The documents in any given archives then have their
relationships established by the course of the conduct of
affairs and according to its needs. The relationships among
the documents and to the affairs make it axiomatic that no
single archival document can stand as sufficient memorial of
the course of past activity; they are interdependent for their
meaning and in their capacity to serve as evidence of the
activity that generated them.
The Object of Archival Theory
5. UNIQUENESS
The final characteristic is uniqueness. Each document has a
unique place in the structure of an archives. Copies of the
document may exist in the same archives or in others. Each
one is unique in its place. Being there signifies its
relationship to activity and to the other documents
accumulated in the course of that activity. So every archival
document, whether existing in more than one copy or not,
is unique.
BASIC ARCHIVAL PRINCIPLES
BASIC ARCHIVAL PRINCIPLES
BASIC ARCHIVAL PRINCIPLES
BASIC ARCHIVAL PRINCIPLES
BASIC ARCHIVAL PRINCIPLES
IMPORTANCE OF ARCHIVES
1. Prevent Data Loss
Among the top archiving benefits is the ability to prevent any
data loss within organizations. As a result, it is critical to store
archived data in a centralized and secure repository. Archived
data becomes quite simple to make this information available
to employees again. If archived data is not stored in a centrally
controlled location, it is more likely to be lost forever.
IMPORTANCE OF ARCHIVES
2. Reduce Operational Costs
The more documents you lose, the more downtime your business
will experience. That is why archiving documents is an essential
practice within businesses. Archive purpose is to reduce the number
of lost documents in order to improve productivity.
Data archiving lowers the cost of primary storage, which is often
expensive. These data will subsequently be kept in less expensive
forms of storage.
In addition, moving such information will surely reduce the size of
data backup.
IMPORTANCE OF ARCHIVES
3. Improved Security
Improving security is one of the top archiving benefits that organizations consider.
In an era where cyber-attacks and breaches are becoming increasingly common,
preserving corporate documents may help businesses maintain track of all their
information throughout their lifespan.
Using a system to archive documents allows you to define precise permissions throughout
your organization by defining who may see what.
Furthermore, paper-based documents are more likely to be misplaced or fall into the wrong
hands. In reality, internal data breaches are more prevalent than external data breaches.
Archiving documents removes papers from circulation, reducing the likelihood of a hack or
malware infection.
In a competitive environment, archiving documents is critical for company continuity and
guaranteeing the greatest level of performance.
IMPORTANCE OF ARCHIVES
4. Enhanced Compliance
Documents preservation is also necessary for legal reasons. Many
organizations inadvertently destroy records that they are legally
required to retain.
Due to regulatory compliance, certain organizations are obligated to
keep archived data for specific periods of time. That’s why archiving
benefits are considered important to organizations.
To avoid penalties and fines, organizations should constantly follow
laws and industry rules and regulations. Organizations can be in
compliance with various standards and regulations if they have a
comprehensive archiving and retention plan in place.
IMPORTANCE OF ARCHIVES
5. Legal claims
In the event that your business is sued by a third party, whether a client, employee, or
another firm, you may be asked to produce particular papers to support your case.
This emphasizes the significance of keeping all documents conveniently available and
safe in order to protect your company from legal action.
If a company is unable to effectively place a hold on data when it is needed, it may face
a number of significant repercussions, ranging from embarrassment to substantial legal
charges or fines.
Email and other business documents can be lost in the absence of a comprehensive
archiving solution, most commonly due to the unintentional destruction of material that
should have been kept.
This might have significant repercussions for a company that is involved in legal action.
IMPORTANCE OF ARCHIVES
6. Audit-Proof
An audit entails checking your company’s records to ensure they are
correct and is considered the main benefit of archiving.
An archive system is audit-proof when it can assure that a document
cannot be changed or lost from the time it enters the archive, through
transportation, through final storage, and beyond.
Today’s document management or enterprise content
management solutions actively support organizations in establishing
audit-proof archiving requirements.
The last thing you want is to need material for a court lawsuit, a tax audit,
or after a natural disaster only to learn that your archive storage was
compromised.
USES OF ARCHIVES
1. ARCHIVES AS A SOURCE OF HISTORY
Archival documents are primary sources, having been
created at the time of the events they describe by
participants or witnesses of those events. They are
usually unique. Individual archival documents are
often referred to as 'records' because they record an
event.
USES OF ARCHIVES
2. ARCHIVES AS TOOLS FOR ACCOUNTABILITY
The role of archives in accountability operates in
many cases, because of the function of laws and
regulations. At their root, they prescribe,
circumscribe, or prohibit particular actions, and hold
people or entities to an account.
USES OF ARCHIVES
3. ARCHIVES AS TOUCHTONES FOR MEMORY AND
IDENTITY
Archives can also communicate facts and
information that help to preserve individual and
collective memories, position ourselves more
clearly in our historical framework and understand
more fully who we are, where we came from and
perhaps, where we are going in our societies.
REFERENCES:
Archival Management: Principles and Techniques. Fe Angela Verzosa (2008). A 3-day training
program developed for the seminar-workshop on Archival Management, sponsored by South
Manila Inter-Institutional Consortium Committee of Librarians.
https://www.slideshare.net/verzosaf/archival-training-program-for-south-manilainterinstitutional-consortium
National Archives of the Philippines – General Circular. (2009).
https://archives.davaocity.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/NAP-Gen.-Cir-1-2_RDS-20091.pdf
What is Archival Theory and Why is it Important? by Terry Eastwood.
file:///C:/Users/pcuser/Downloads/11991-Article%20Text-13659-1-10-20061123%20(1).pdf
What is Archiving: Why is it Important? https://theecmconsultant.com/what-is-archiving/