LIS 111 Introduction to Records Mgt.

and Archives

Topic: Concept and Context

Learning Objectives

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

1. discuss the concept and terminology of the archives and records.

Lesson 1. Archives and records: concept and terminology – For those

of us concerned with managing records and archives it is of paramount
importance that we can articulate and advocate exactly what it is that we are
looking after.

Defining records
A records is a piece of information that has been captured on some
fixed medium- a piece of paper holding the words of a letter; an electronic
file holding an email message; a piece of cellulose acetate tape holding
images from a movie film and that has been created and is used to remember
events of information or to provide accountability for decisions or actions.
Archives are those records, created or received by a person, a family, an
organization, a business or a government in the course of their life and work,
which merit preservation because they provide enduring value: they provide
evidence of or information about either the functions, responsibilities, actions
or transactions of the creator or about the life and items in which the creator
conducted his or her affairs and the society in which he or she lived and
worked. (Miller, 2010).

Records – We need to understand what records are in order to define

archives. Records consist of recorded information which provides evidence
of decisions, planning processes, financial transactions, agreement in fact
pretty much any human activity. Records usually arise as a by –product of
business or social activity: for example the invoice for consulting services is
part of the process or letting the client know how much they have to pay on
the fulfillment of a contractual agreement. It is rare for records to be
deliberately created for their own sake, although there are exceptions.
(Crockett, 2016).
Records also need to have certain characteristics of features in order
to be ‘good’ records that we can trust and depend on. It is important to know
the creator of the record. If the record does not stand alone, it is important to
have the links to the other records that together form the comprehensive
record. These links and the author provide the context of the record, which
in turn allows us to be confident about its authenticity. We also like to be sure
that the record has not been tampered with. (Crockett, 2016).
Content, Structure and Context of a records

Content – is the text, images, sound or other information that make up the
substance of a records.
Structure - relates to the physical and intellectual characteristics that define
how a document was created and maintained.
Context – is the functional, organizational and personal circumstances
surrounding the creation of the records. Context identifies ‘who’ created the
records, ‘where’, ‘when’ and possibly ‘why’.

Archives and Records are important resources for individuals,

organizations and the wider community. They provide evidence and
information about the actions of individuals, organizations and communities
and the environments where those actions occurred. They extend and
corroborate human and corporate memory and play a critical role in
maintaining awareness of how the present is shaped by the past (Miller,
2010).

The holdings of an archival repository are called “records.” An example

would be the records of the Ford Motor Company. By contrast, the holdings
of the manuscript repository are called “paper.” example is the papers of
Thomas Jefferson, of the Rockefeller Family Papers. Refer to both records
and papers as “collections.” The custodian of organizational the records is
called an Archivist, while the custodian of personal papers is called a
Manuscript Curator. (Hunter, 2003).
Archives: What are Archives?
 Archives are the non-current records of people, associations or
institutions
 Archives are unique, unpublished, primary, two-dimensional research
resources such as letters, journals, photographs, posters or diaries
which are deemed to have lasting evidential or informational value
 Archives are not library materials, that is, purposefully created to
serve research interests and organized in subject classifications
 Archives are evidence of actions and transactions
 Archives are more "elemental" than library materials and can be
thought of as having a distinctly organic component; a sense of being
a natural by-product of human or organizational activity
 Archives have, perhaps, more in common with museums, oral
traditions, natural and built environments, and works of art, than with
library materials
 Archives should be conceptualized as "records of" rather than
"records about" a person or organization or association
 Archives are accumulated rather than being consciously authored for
the purpose of informing or entertaining. They maintain a special
relationship with their creating body. Their organization and description
after they are received into an archive reflects this relationship
 Archival records such as day books, journals, and ledgers that may
be used by business historians to construct a theory of nineteenth-
century economic activity were created in the natural process of
running a business; correspondence kept family members in touch with
one another: their use by social historians is quite a different matter
inasmuch as there was (usually) no sense of their being permanently
preserved when they were written. They were not created for
subsequent research use, and access and effective use of them for
research purposes depends upon understanding this fundamental
difference between archival and library resources.

Archives may consist of:

 correspondence
 journals
 diaries
 minutes
 literary manuscripts
  deeds or other land records
 wills
 marriage contracts
 ledgers or day books
 maps
 sketches
 broadsides
 advertising flyers
 architectural drawings
 cassette or video recordings
 micro-format records
 electronic media
 photographs

Archives are different from books:

 archival materials do not circulate; they must be used in the archives

Reading Room
 archival materials are retrieved for the user from closed stacks
 archival materials are preserved in the order that they were created by
the person, association or institution
 archival materials are unpublished, primary, unique

Trent University Library & Archives

https://www.trentu.ca/library/archives/tutorial, Retrieved July 1, 2020

The form of archives

Archives come in all forms, from handwritten diaries to typed letters or
word-processed reports; from microfilms to electronic records to audio
recordings; from video tapes to DVDs; and from photographic prints to
architectural plans. It does not matter what physical base the evidence rest
on; if the record can claim to carry documentary value- to be a by-product of
actions, transactions or communications and if that value is sufficient to
warrant ongoing preservation, then resulting archival materials should find a
safe home in archival custody.
Why keep archives?
Why keep archives at all? Who cares about preserving these
documentary remains? Why do we bother recording our live and experiences
at the time, and why should anyone bother committing the resources needed
to keep those archives for the indefinite future? Ultimately, archives are kept
in order to be used, for any number of reasons by any type of user.
Researchers, scholars and average citizens refers to archives to find proof;
to gather information for research; to illustrate or explain. Archives are tools
that people use to look beyond the present moment and understand the
wider context of a family, a community or a society.
One of the numerically largest group of archival users are historians:
both those deemed to be professional, who make their living studying the
past, and those whose study history of their community , family or home is a
personal vocation not a means of employment. The historical accounts
produced by these researchers are the means by which many people learn
about the past: through textbooks, documentary editions, local studies
collections, photographic histories, journal articles, popular magazine stories
or family and community histories. First and foremost, archives serve as
evidence: to prove rights, confirm obligations, verify events, and substitute
claims. Archives help us to remember the past, and they safeguard us
against inaccurate collections. Consider the potential value as evidence, as
proof of key actions, decisions or communication.
Archives, memory and history
Archives can serve as evidence in a pure legal sense, but they also
communicate facts and information, helping to preserve individual and
collective memories and from that allow us to understand who we are, where
we came from and, perhaps, where we are going as societies. A contract
may remind two businesses of their obligations, but 100 years after the
contract has expired, that document may provide insights into how
businesses conducted their affairs a century before. A wedding photograph
taken in 2010 reminds a young couple of their happy days, but decades
hence it might illustrate how brides and grooms dressed for wedding, or it
may be emotional centerpiece of a 50th anniversary party. The diaries of
fisherman or farmers from a century ago can be used today to study changes
in fish stocks, weather patterns or the productivity of crops.
Archives, identity and empathy
Archives also expose people to the experiences, emotions and
opinions of people long gone, helping them to engage with history and
remind them of the lives, happening and hardships of their ancestors, even
generation’s back. Consider a diary kept by a teenage girl, in which she
records her observations of daily life, from the momentous to the mundane.
She is not writing his diary for posterity. Instead she is communicating with
herself, placing personal thoughts and emotions of piece of paper. There is
little diary that may be legally binding. It is not a contract, a report or a
spreadsheet. But it is a glimpse into the life and thoughts of a particular
individual at a particular time. Anne Frank’s Diary is a famous example.
Anne, a Jewish girl in Amsterdam during the Second World War, went into
hiding, Anne kept a diary, full of factual information about the war as well as
tales of everyday life as much as her life was “everyday” expression of
emotion and opinion from teenage girl. After Anne died of typhus in the
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her father, Otto discovered Anne’s diary
on his return in Amsterdam and arranged to have published in 1947. In
honour of the international significance of the diary, housed in the
Netherlands Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam, it was added to
the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2009. The act of keeping
Anne’s diary safe making it available for public use is an important step in
creating empathy for the life of Jewish people , and Dutch society as a whole
, by acknowledging and documenting a disastrous time in history , rather
than ignoring this tragic past.

References:

1. Crockett, M. (2016). The no-nonsense guide to archives and recordkeeping.

London: Facet Publishing

2. Hunter, G.S. (2003). Developing and maintaining practical archives: a how-to-do-

it manual. New York: Neal-Schuman.
3. Millar, L. (2010). Archives: principles and practices. London: Facet Publishing.