“Archives between law and history: appraisal and preservation,
current trends and challenges”
by Marcel Caya,
Deputy Secretary General,
International Council on Archives (ICA)
ICA is grateful for the occasion to take part in this debate to help
better lay out what we have in common. While we will probably also
identify some differences between the respective fields of the
participants, recognizing our specificity will no doubt help us a great
deal in discovering not only the potential contribution of each of the
domains to information preservation, but mostly our collective
strengths.
Information preservation is a little like motherhood. Everyone is for
it. However, unlike motherhood, the term “information” can mean
several things to different people, as we will see this morning while
the speakers of this programme each explain the particular angle they
deal with. I suspect that we will also see that the meaning of the term
preservation can also vary considerably when applied to the
challenges of information preservation and to the reality of the means
available to translate it into reality.
Therefore, I will not begin by building a model of the several layers of
information preservation available to see where archives and records
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preservation can be inserted. In order to convey the relationship of
records and archives with information preservation, it is more useful
to explain how archives share many characteristics of all information
fields and to distinguish what makes it different. From that description
will emerge the peculiar relationship that archives and records have
with preservation.
Let me begin by dealing with the three different meanings of the word
archives; each, in its own way, is relevant to the understanding of the
relationship between information and preservation. The combination
of the three creates an essential triangle that will define and impact the
needs of modern governments, organizations and society to preserve
meaningful archival information.
The first meaning of the word archives relates to the bodies which are
charged with the overall management of the active and semi-active
records of the government or the organisation and the keeping of its
records of enduring value. They can be institutions within a
governmental structure or divisions within public or private
organisations: National Archives for instance do not only keep
archival records, but also provide advice to their parent body on
matters relating to records legislation and management; the records
and archives management division of universities or private
companies often play the same role.
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A second meaning of the word archives designates those buildings and
offices providing spaces specially adapted for the keeping, processing
and referencing of records. The design of archival spaces must follow
guidelines that create the conditions necessary to conduct archival
activities and preserve archival records.
Finally, the third meaning of the word archives pertains to records of
all types that convey information; thus, archives encompass all media,
textual as well as photographic, sound, audiovisual, digital etc.
Archives, in that sense, are recorded information generated through
the performance of actions, the application of laws, or the
accomplishment of functions. They are not produced for
documentation purposes or to be sold as cultural goods or heritage
testimony. To qualify as archives, they must be created automatically,
as part of the actions and transactions they document; in that sense,
their organized accumulation becomes the memory, both short and
long term, of organizations and societies, the provider of information
on their activities and decisions, the data that informs historians and
other researchers in an authentic, complete and reliable manner, the
records that feed the flow of information necessary to manage
government administration, organizations and modern democratic
societies.
Thus, as a consequence of their status, archives are more than
information; they are evidence and, as such, contribute to the
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preservation of rights (including property), to the verification of
duties, to the confirmation and transmission of official decisions; they
help establish facts, confirm understandings etc. All of these types of
records provide information, yet they provide it in that very special
way that shapes their very nature and characteristics. In order to
qualify as evidential information, these records must prove to be
authentic, complete and reliable. Their make-up requires not only that
they share these qualities, but also that they be kept in the context that
will testify to their authenticity, completeness and reliability.
Much of what I have said so far of the nature and characteristics of
archives remained true over times, from the clay tablets of the
Antiquity to the parchments of the Middle Ages and to the dockets of
the modern XIXth century administration. Records have been kept in
relatively large accumulations of similar documents; when their
integrity and the chain of custody have been maintained unbroken, it
is even easier to recognize their contents as authentic, complete and
reliable.
However, the slow changes in record keeping methods have suddenly
increased pace in more recent times. Under the stimulus of rapid
technological changes in the information and communication of the
last decades of the XXth century, the keeping of contemporary records
has evolved dramatically to adapt to the needs of their producers.
Modern administrations today produce records on a large diversity of
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media, including paper, photographs, audiovisual tapes and
increasingly electronic formats. Indeed, because of the revolution in
the way of handling administrative information, most electronic
records are now created virtually, without even being generated or
copied on paper or any other format. Born digital records contribute
significantly to the increased efficiency of modern administration.
Together with all other types of information, they also constitute a
major challenge for records management. Indeed the current so
“paperless” paperwork revolution is so important that it regularly
translates into new approaches for the keeping of all types of
information of permanent value.
Foremost in the mind and toolbox of archivists, records appraisal has
become a preliminary condition to ensure the future preservation of
archival information. The new challenges in the keeping of records
and archives begin with the increased facility with which records are
created, duplicated and distributed in diverse and ever-changing
formats. The consequent proliferation of records on paper and
electronic formats makes it ever more urgent that methods of appraisal
be applied not so much to reduce the mass of records, but mostly to
eliminate duplication and evaluate the relative importance of the
records. Such appraisal is required to ensure that the priority will be
assigned to the keeping of the most important and significant records,
for the producer of the information, the citizens or its clients, and all
possible short and long term users, including historians and
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researchers. Thus, some measure of appraisal remains necessary,
whether it is conducted at the time records is created or when they are
no longer of current use. The success of future conservation methods
for archival records depends on regular appraisal that will reduce the
quantities of records while maintaining their significance and
reliability as truthful records.
At the same time, the shift in the nature of current records and of the
information they contain has generated a number of new challenges.
While the keeping of records on paper seems straightforward, the
conservation of virtual and audiovisual records triggers welldocumented problems of physical permanence that are compounded
by the archival need to keep records in a meaningful context. In this
sense, archival preservation must imply, not only physical
preservation of single records, but also and most importantly
conservation of information and records in their legal and
organisational context, in order to maintain their authenticity, integrity
and meaning. Because archival information is not only the information
worth keeping permanently, the archival challenge in preservation
must apply as well to the whole of the management of records whether
they are still being kept by their creator for the purposes for which
they were created, maintained as semi-active for a given period to
cover fiscal, legal or audit purpose, or deemed of permanent value to
be preserved forever.
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Faced with these problems, records managers and archivists have
developed multi-faceted strategies aimed at ensuring at least the
preservation of the most relevant records. First, timely appraisal
ensures that the whole of the archival records created is regularly
examined in order to reduce the mass of the records to be preserved,
thus ensuring that preservation is only applied to records that are
important. In this process, records management plays a crucial role as
it often can intervene directly at the time the records are created. This
is especially useful for digital records that require expensive
equipments to read and to process.
The second step in the preservation strategy used to be the restoration
and repair of single damaged documents of relevance. Many archival
institutions can still count on well equipped restoration laboratories
and qualified staff to do the work, especially when the whole of the
records to be treated mainly consist of paper or photographic media.
However, while this essential work of document repair still continues,
this measure has now become the exception rather than the rule.
Nowadays, in the archives field as in many other fields of heritage
conservation, the systematic inventory of damaged records and the
restoration of single documents have generally been pushed back to
the rank of third step.
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Currently, preventative conservation has replaced restoration as the
favoured second step of archival preservation strategy in most
institutions. Preventative conservation brings together all the measures
designed to reduce and prevent damages by dealing first with the
causes or the sources of harm to the records and by focusing on entire
groups of records rather than individual items. In practical terms, it
examines the handling, storage and processing of holdings and
determines the critical elements of efficient policies and
methodologies to implement. For archives, it also includes the
duplication of series of records on a more stable media, when damages
are too extensive to repair or the media too fragile to handle in normal
research work condition; since for archives, the preservation of the
original records is necessary, the duplication of the information they
contain contributes to extend the life of the records by reducing its
manipulation. Preventative conservation thus provide the community
with more efficient and less expensive methods of preserving more
records while maintaining their integrity, their authenticity and
completeness in their original context.
At the beginning of my presentation, I introduced the three different
meanings of the term “archives” by portraying them as a triangle. It
would be simple to summarize by saying that “archival records are
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kept in archival buildings by archival institutions”. If that were true,
we could easily survey all archival institutions and tally a count of the
quantity of archival records preserved ten, five and two years ago in
order to make a projection of the quantity of material that will have to
be provided for in two, five and ten years. The reality is different for
several reasons. To start with, we are hard pressed to find a common
standard to measure quantities of archives of various media: to use
digital records as an example, should we count the number of pages,
the number of characters, the number of images or the number of
bytes? Each count can be justified depending on the use we want to
make of such a statistic.
But this is not the main reason why the triangle statement cannot
translate into a measurable reality. The simple fact is that “not all
archival records can be kept in archival buildings by archival
institutions”. Administrative records are increasingly born archival by
virtue of the qualities that make it necessary to preserve them on a
permanent basis. As long as they are used by their producer for their
activities or the performance of their function, they cannot be taken
out to be preserved; therefore all archival records cannot be kept in
archival buildings. This is why archivists insist so much that the
establishment of a records management process is necessary in all
organizations not only to protect and preserve eventually, but mostly
to make it possible to determine what should be protected and
preserved.
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From the archival perspective, then, the key messages to deliver to all
the governments of this world does not pertain so much to the size of
the holdings to be preserved, but rather should emphasize that
successful preservation of archival information must be a permanent
and regulated function; it cannot be undertaken as a short-term project
to be completed one day once and for all. The key message is that the
riches of archival records are created every day by their
administration, by bodies of all types and by their citizens and that
only adequate legislation and organization will enable records
managers and archivists to appraise competently what should be kept
and take the steps to do the job efficiently in an environment that
keeps an eye on the control of the costs.
The second key message relates more closely to preventative
preservation and the establishment of procedures that will diminish
the potential damage to records of archival value. Never did the old
saying: “A stitch in time saves nine” found more truthful application
than in the needs for archival information preservation. Archival
records that are damaged or taken out of their context may lose only
some of their contents, but when that happens, they also lose their
authenticity and therefore their significance.
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Between us, we may be at a loss to give numbers and regret that
sufficient budgets will never be available to maintain adequate
information preservation. The main archival argument remains that
efficiency in records and archives management in itself largely
compensates for the cost of putting good practices in place. It is a
good one and a well documented case. The reality, however, is that it
will remain a hard and daily battle to convince government authorities
that “Archives are not only kept for the documentation of history, but
also to improve the efficiency of their administration”. Even with
good archival legislation and practices, the message will continue to
be that investments in records and archives management are needed to
preserve not only enough information, but more importantly, to
safeguard adequate information.
Then, to the title of this paper, “Archives between law and history”,
we should add “management efficiency” as another good reason to
preserve archival information.