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Archivistics Research Saving

the Profession
Eric Ketelaar

Abstract

The archivist has to understand the ways people create and maintain records and archives.
This is particularly important as archives and archivists go through a paradigm shift from
provenance defined by stable offices and roles to one of dynamic process-bound information. In all stages of records and archives management and archival usage , the socially and
culturally defined software of the mind plays a role. This new archivistics demands that
archival education be comparative and multi-disciplinary. Likewise, research in archival science, broadly defined, is a key instrument for experimenting, inventing, changing, and
improving professional education.

What is an Archivist?

he International Council on Archives Code of Ethics states quite simply: The term archivists as used in this code is intended to encompass
all those concerned with the control, care, custody, preservation and
administration of archives. This is in line with ICAs Dictionary of Archival
Terminology. 1 That dictionary also defines archives as non-current records preserved because of their archival value. But are archives just that? Not quite. In
many European countries the terms archives or archival documents
encompass current, semi-current, and non-current records. For example, in
Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and French archival terminology and legislation, there
does not exist a specific equivalent for the term records. We call it all
archives. When we want to point specifically to archives-in-the-making, we
have to add a qualifying adjective, such as current or dynamic. The consequence is that, in Europe, an archivist managing archives may be a records
manager, a business archivist, a manuscript curator, or an archivist keeping historical archives only. However, the ICAs Code of Ethics does not apply to all
professionals managing the records continuum in all European countries. In
1

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Peter Walne, ed., Dictionary of Archival Terminology (Munich, New York, and Paris: K.G. Saur, 1984), 26.

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A r c h i v i s t ,

V o l .

6 3

( F a l l / W i n t e r

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Germany, for example, there is a sharp distinction between Schriftgutverwaltung (correspondence and files management) and Archivierung (archiving).
The two are divided by appraisal carried out not by records managers, but by
archivists of the archival institution to which the archives will be transferred.
German Archivare (archivists), are dealing with archives, not with current
records, only to the extent of vorarchivische Betreuung and Beratung der
Schriftgutverwaltung : service and consultancy to the records-creating agency
concerning appraisal and transfer of the small portion of records with archival
value. The German archival profession is closed to those who work in the
Registratur (the registries).
The same applies in France. French archival legislation applies to archives
in the broadest sense, including current records, but a French government
archivist has nothing to do with records management, apart from ensuring that
records are appraised and that those with archival value are transferred to the
archives.
In short, in many European countries the archival profession has, by selfperception, by history, and by law, an aura of the historians erudition, not
directly attracted by or involved with records as they are currently created by
public and private administrations.2
University-Based Archival Education

In many European countries, archival education is, in fact, in-service training; professional training of individuals who have started to work in the
archives and who are seconded by their employer to the archival training institute. Such was the situation in The Netherlands, where the Archives School
provided training for practitioners. In 1996 the whole system of Dutch archival
education changed drastically.3 The archival education was de-institutionalizedto borrow an expression from Theo Thomassen the then-Director of
the Archives School. In this case, de-institutionalized meant that archival students and archivists were no longer identified by the type of records or archives
they manage or by the institution which employs them. The program was
redesigned to account for the shift of focus from skills to attitudes. This
entailed cutting the traditional apprenticeship in an archives and limiting

Francis X. Blouin, Convergences and Divergences in Archival Tradition: A North American

Perspective, Second European Conference on Archives. Proceedings (Ann Arbor, Mich: International Council
on Archives, 1989), 26.

Theo H. P. M. Thomassen, Educaci i formaci arxivstica a Holanda, Jornado destudi i debat sobre els
estudis darxivstica a lEuropa Comunitria, Barcelona, 4 de juny de 1992, LLIGALL, Revista Catalana
dArxivstica 5 (1992): 20314; Eric Ketelaar, Archival Theory and the Dutch Manual, Archivaria 41
(Spring 1996): 3140, reprinted in Eric Ketelaar, The Archival Image: Collected Essays (Hilversum:
Verloren, 1997), 5565.
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practical work in archival arrangement and description.4 The Archives School

has allied with the University of Amsterdam; both institutions have invested in
staff and infrastructure. A four-year university course leads to a masters degree
in library, archives, and information science. That degree is valid at any place
where recorded information has to be managed. The law requires the degree
only for senior positions in state and local archives, but many public and private employers have included the degree in job descriptions as a requirement
or as a preference.
Students in Amsterdam, after a first year in any school or department of
the university, take a three-year course. A little less than half of the course is
taken in information science, history, organization science, and philosophy of
science. The other 55 percent is devoted to archivistics, which includes one
semester for research in archival science. Students participate in a class
research project, and each student writes his or her masters thesis.
Theory and Practice

Archival science is a science in the German sense of Wissenschaft, but to

avoid confusion with the natural sciences in the Anglo-Saxon meaning, I personally use the term archivistics, being the equivalent to the Dutch archivistiek,
the German Archivistik, the French archivistique, and the Italian and Spanish
archivistica.5 Archivistics consists of theory, practice, and methodology. Archival
theory can only flourish if it is, as Angelika Menne-Haritz said at the ICA congress in Montreal (1992), free from the constraints of direct practical application and in exchange with other scholars ideas in discussion meetings and seminars, essays and dissertations.6
Archival theory is despised and rejected by many practicing archivists.
Much ado about shelvingthat famous and defamatory expressioncan be
heard in Europe, too. It is also a common expression in The Netherlands, the
country of Muller, Feith, and Fruin. The Dutch Manual of 1898 codified and
standardized archival methodology before archival theory could develop. This

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See Richard Cox, Advocacy in the Graduate Archives Curriculum: A North American Perspective,
Janus, 1997, no.1: 33; Richard Cox, American Archivists, Cyberculture, and Stasis (paper presented
at the conference Cyber, Hyper or Resolutely Jurassic? Archivists and the Millennium, University
College Dublin, 23 October 1998, <www.ucd.ie/~archives>.

The term archivistics has also been used by Angelika Menne-Haritz in, What Can be Achieved with
Archives? The Concept of Record: Report from the Second Stockholm Conference on Archival Science and the
Concept of Record 3031 May 1996 (Stockholm: Riksarkivet 1998), 21.

Angelika Menne-Haritz, Archival Education: Meeting the Needs of Society in the Twenty-First Century
(Montreal: XIIth International Congress on Archives, 1992): 13; Angelika Menne-Haritz,
Archivfachliche Ausbildung: Den Anforderungen der Gesellschaft des 21. Jahrhunderts gerecht
werden, Archivum 39 (1994): 27374.

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is the paradox of professional quality.7 Their early professionalism constrained

Dutch archivists to ask what and how, instead of why. It led them to focus
on the procedures, methods, and technologies of archival work and to put matter over mind.8
It is correct that an archivist may well process archives adhering to the
methodology and not to archival theory.9 Archivistica applicata and archivistica
pura are not opposites, they follow naturally from one to another, because every
practitionereven the managerstarts from hypotheses and ideas. The practitioner (other than the theorist) often accepts these hypotheses straightaway
as true. The practitioner is thus concerned with the operational side. Yet at
some point he or she will have to address more fundamental questions to prevent archives management from becoming routine and to find answers to
changing technologies and challenges.
A New Paradigm

Changing technologies and challenges have recently opened the eyes and
minds of archivists. Earlier revolutions in information and communication
technologies (like the vertical file, punch cards, and carbon paper) changed
the physical appearance of the record but left the intrinsic qualities untouched.
Records managers and archivists continued to manage records as artifacts. This
has changed fundamentally with the advent of digital records, so fundamentally
that the old paradigm of archivistics has had to be replaced. Recently, Theo
Thomassen presented an important paper on the paradigmatic revolutions in
archival science.10 The concept of the paradigm has been introduced by
Thomas Kuhn in his classic work on the structure of scientific revolutions.11
According to Kuhn, a paradigm is a universally recognized scientific achievement that for a time models problems and solutions to a community of practitioners. Applied to a science as such, a paradigm provides the explanatory
model of a scientific discipline in the specific stage of its development and
defines its fundamentals.
7

According to Thomassen, cited by Ketelaar in Archival Theory; and in Ketelaar, Archival Image, 61.

Terry Cook, Mind Over Matter: Towards a New Theory of Archival Appraisal, in The Archival
Imagination. Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor edited by Barbara L. Craig (Ottawa: Association of
Canadian Archivists, 1992), 3870.

Trevor Livelton, Archival Theory, Records, and the Public (Lanham, Md. and London: Society of American
Archivists and Scarecrow Press, 1996); Preben Mortensen, The Place of Theory in Archival Practice,
Archivaria 47 (Spring 1999): 15, 1920.

10

Theo Thomassen, The Development of an Archival Science and its European Dimension, in The
Archivist and the Archival Science. Seminar for Anna Christina Ulfsparre, (Lund: Landsarkivet, 1999) 6774;
Theo Thomassen, Paradigmatische veranderingen in de archiefwetenschap, in Peter J. Horsman,
Frederick C. J. Ketelaar, and Theo H. P. M. Thomassen, eds., Naar een nieuw paradigma in de archivistiek.
Jaarboek 1999 Stichting Archiefpublicaties (Gravenhage: Stichting Archiefpublicaties, 1999), 6979.

11

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
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Thomassen asserts that the classical paradigm in archival enterprise, as

codified by the Dutch Manual of 1898, had as its object the archival fonds as an
organic whole. The methodology of classical archivistics was based on the principle of provenance. In the 1980s, Hugh Taylor proclaimed and predicted the
paradigm shift.12 The object of the new paradigm of archival science is what
Thomassen calls process-bound information,13 that is information generated by business-processes and structured by these processes in order to enable
contextual retrieval with the context of these processes as the starting-point.
He considers archival quality as the objective of archivistics in the new paradigm, which stands for the transparency, the strength and the enduring stability of the bond between the information and the generating business
processes.
Thomassen has been influenced, as I myself have, by the writings of Hugh
Taylor and Terry Cook. Cook summed it up in his article What is Past is
Prologue. [This new paradigm for archives has] a renewed focus on the context, purpose, intent, interrelationships, functionality, and accountability of the
record, its creator, and its creation processes, wherever these occur. Because
this suggested focus goes well beyond drawing inspiration for archival activity
from the study of records placed in the custody of an archives, it has been
termed a postcustodial mindset for archives.14 Speaking frankly, I would say
that the prevailing mindset in Europe is not yet post-custodial in this sense,
since many archivists still consider themselves custodians of the historical
record and nothing more. I consider transforming this attitude to be the challenge for educators and researchers; they have to lead the profession
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden . . .

( T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton)

Social and Cultural Archivistics

Records are always created and used on account of work processes and
actions that give the archives their context and structure. These elements

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12

Hugh A. Taylor, Transformation in the Archives: Technological Adjustment or Paradigm Shift?

Archivaria 25 (Winter 19871988): 1228; reprinted in Tom Nesmith, ed., Canadian Archival Studies
and the Rediscovery of Provenance (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1993), 22749.

13

Preceding Thomassen, Menne-Haritz, Archival education, 910; Menne-Haritz, Archivfachliche

Ausbildung, 27071 used the term process-generated.

14

Terry Cook, What is Past is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas Since 1898, and the Future Paradigm
Shift, Archivaria 43 (Spring 1997): 48; reprinted in Horsman, Ketelaar, and Thomassen eds., Naar een
nieuw paradigma in de archivistiek, 66.

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determine the form of the documents. Archivistics focuses itself on context,

structure, and form as determined by these processes, and not on the contents of the document. This ideaa concept that also forms the basis of new
methods for archival appraisalis not new at all. For the past hundred years,
the Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives has required the
archivist to understand how administrative machinery functions. He or she
therefore has to study the administrative records. Archivists are scholars of
recordkeeping, as Richard Cox wrote.15 That scholarship uses historic knowledge, its methods, and its auxiliary disciplinesadministrative history, legal
history, heuristics, paleography, and diplomatics. When archival science was
dominated by the paradigm of archives being historical sources, these were
auxiliary subjects of classical descriptive archivistics. But today, those studying
modern functional archivistics also have to master the historical method and its
auxiliary disciplines, to study administrative history and the history of records
creation and maintenance.16 Terry Eastwood addressed this issue in his article Reforming the Archival Curriculum to Meet Contemporary Needs, in
which he wrote, Archivists do not study historical subjects in some diffuse
effort to comprehend past social contexts for their own sake, but rather to
understand, critically interpret, exploit, preserve, and communicate the archival
heritage.17
Records are created in an organization to support and manage work, to
record why, when, where, in what capacity and by whom particular actions were
carried out. Archivistics is concerned with basic questions such as the ones
Frank Burke asked in his seminal article in 1981:
What makes a society or an organization create and use archives the way
it does and will a better understanding of the way people in organizations
create and maintain archives enable us to make statements about an efficient and effective way of creating records?18
We therefore look at the societies, organizations, and people that create
archives. This, I have named social and cultural archivistics.19 Its object is defining the continuum of records creation, processing, and use.

15

Cox, Advocacy in the Graduate Archives Curriculum, 32.

16

Menne-Haritz, Archival education, 13; Menne-Haritz, Archivfachliche Ausbildung, 274; F.Gerald

Ham, Frank Boles, Gregory S. Hunter, and James M. OToole, Is the Past Still Prologue?: History and
Archival Education, American Archivist 56 (Fall 1993): 71829.

17

Terry Eastwood, Reforming the Archival Curriculum to Meet Contemporary Needs, Archivaria 42
(Fall 1996): 83.

18

Frank G. Burke, The Future Course of Archival Theory in the United States, American Archivist 44
(Winter 1981): 4243; Tom Nesmith, Archives From the Bottom Up: Social History and Archival
Scholarship, Archivaria 14 (Summer 1982): 26; reprinted in Nesmith, Canadian Archival Studies and
the Rediscovery of Provenance, 180.

19

Frederick C. J. Ketelaar, Archivalisering en archivering (Alphen aan den Rijn: Samsom, 1998).
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Archivalization

Traditionally, the object of archival science was the body of archives once
the records had crossed the threshold of the repository.20 The archivist used to
be a mere custodian or keeper, at the receiving end, dependent upon what the
administration had created and passed on.21
But recently, and as an outcome of the already mentioned conversion to
a post-custodial mindset, the archivists focus has shifted (Hedstrom and
Wallace recently used the expression catapulted) from the inactive stage of
the life of recorded information to the front-end of the records continuum.22
There, he or she has a contribution to make even before documents are captured by a recordkeeping system. To be able to develop the information strategy and the recordkeeping system of an organization, the archivistics professional has to understand the way people create and maintain records and
archives. To arrive at such an understanding, one should take into account the
stage that precedes archiving. That is what I have recently called, in my inaugural
lecture at the University of Amsterdam archivalization.23 This is a neologism,
inspired by Jacques Derrida, denoting: the conscious or unconscious choice (determined by social and cultural factors) to consider something worth archiving24. In the
Popperian metaphor, the searchlight of archivalization has to sweep the world
for something to light up in the archival sense; it must do this before we proceed to register, record, and file itin short, before we archive it. By distinguishing archivalization from archiving, we gain an insight into the social and
cultural factors, the standards and values, and the ideology that infusethe
expression is Jackson Armstrong-Ingramsthe creation of records and
archives25.
Archivalization does not only determine whether and how actions are
recorded in archives. In the subsequent stages of records and archives management and archival usage, the socially and culturally determined software of

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20

Eastwood, Reforming the Archival Curriculum, 85.

21

Carol Couture, Todays Students, Tomorrows Archivists: Present-day Focus and Development as
Determinants of Archival Science in the Twenty-first Century, Archivaria 42 (Fall 1996): 97.

22

Sue McKemmish, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: A Continuum of Responsibility,

<www.sims.monash.edu.au/rcrg/publications/recordscontinuum>, reprinted in Horsman, Ketelaar,
and Thomassen eds., Naar een nieuw paradigma in de archivistiek, 195210; Margaret Hedstrom and
David Wallace, And the Last Shall Be First: Recordkeeping Policies and the NII, Journal of the
American Society of Information Science 50 (April 1999): 331.

23

Ketelaar, Archivalisering; Eric Ketelaar, Archivalization and Archiving, Archives and Manuscripts 27
(May 1999): 5461.

24

Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996),
1617.

25

R. Jackson Armstrong-Ingram, The Givenness of Kin: Legal and Ethical Issues in Accessing Adoption
Records, Archival Issues 22, no. 1 (1997): 33. See also Heather MacNeil, Archival Theory and Practice:
Between Two Paradigms, Archivaria 37 (Spring 1994): 13.

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the mind also plays a role.26 People create, process, and use archives, influenced
consciously or unconsciously by cultural and social factors. People working in
different organizations create and use their records in different ways.27 Even
within the same organization, accountants, lawyers, and engineers create their
records differently, not only because of legal requirements, but because they
have different professionalthat is social and culturalstandards. Richard
Cox and Wendy Duff write that we must extend our understanding of how
organizations work, and how records fit into this work-environment and culture.28 Therefore, archivistics not only deals with the records as they are created, but also encompasses the organizational culture and the people in these
organizations who create records; and all this in their social, religious, cultural,
political and economic contexts. This, again, is not totally new. Traditionally,
the archivist studies law and administration in order to understand how society
functions and creates its archives. But the archivist has to go further; he or she
has to understand the social and cultural factors of archivalization.29 And as the
archivist dealing with historical archives uses history and its auxiliary disciplines,
so the archivist caring for todays and tomorrows records has to be acquainted
with sociology and anthropology, especially organizational sociology, organizational anthropology, and organizational informatics.
Comparative Archivistics

Archiving and archivalization are influenced by social, religious, cultural,

political, and economic contexts. Most of these variables fit in the catalog of
Grover and Greer:30
1. Culturelanguage, philosophical and moral values, history, educational system, concept of time, etc.;

26

Eric Ketelaar, The Difference Best Postponed? Cultures and Comparative Archival Science,
Archivaria 44 (Fall 1997): 14248; reprinted in Horsman, Ketelaar, and Thomassen eds., Naar een nieuw
paradigma in de archivistiek, 2127.

27

David Bearman, Diplomatics, Weberian Bureaucracy, and the Management of Electronic Records in
Europe and America, American Archivist 55 (Winter 1992): 16881; reprinted in David Bearman,
Electronic Evidence: Strategies for Managing Records in Contemporary Organizations (Pittsburgh: Archives and
Museum Informatics, 1994), 25477.

28

Richard J. Cox and Wendy Duff, Warrant and the Definition of Electronic Records: Questions Arising
from the Pittsburgh Project, Archives and Museum Informatics 11, nos. 34 (1997): 227.

29

Barbara L. Craig, Serving the Truth: The Importance of Fostering Archives Research in Education
Programmes, Including a Modest Proposal for Partnerships with the Workplace, Archivaria 42 (Fall
1996): 112.

30

Roger C. Greer, A Model for the Discipline of Information Science, in Herbert K. Achtleiner,
Intellectual Foundations for Information Professionals (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 325;
Robert Grover and Roger C. Greer, The Cross-Disciplinary Imperative of LIS Research, in Library
and Information Science Research: Perspectives and Strategies for Improvement, edited by Charles R. McClure
and Peter Hernon (Ablex Publishing Corporation: Norwood, 1991), 10113.
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2. Physical geographyaspects such as climate and topographical characteristics;

3. Political structure of societythe system for governance and underlying values regarding the role of government;
4. Legislation and regulations issued by legislative and regulatory agencies
of government;
5. The economic system;
6. Technologythe level of sophistication in terms of computer and
telecommunication technology;
7. Information policycopyright laws, policies regarding secrecy, censorship, privacy, the publics right to know, government responsibility to
inform, and those policies which influence the transfer of information.
These contextual factors may vary in any given time and in any given place.
This challenges archivistics to be a comparative science.31 Comparative archivistics is more than treating and teaching a subject from an international and multicultural perspective,32 since it asks for ethnography followed by ethnology, for
what followed by why.33 Comparative research should be carried out in the
present (cross-cultural and cross-societal), but also in the past. This is not only
a scientific requirement. To quote Barbara Craig, even practitioners archival
choices are less rational and . . . poorly supported when they are made in temporal and contextual vacuums.34 Comparative archivistics is global, the more
so since practitioners, scholars, and students in the digital environment are
dealing with global archives without boundaries.35
Memory Building

The archivist, operating at the front-end of the recordkeeping system, has

to ensure accountability, evidence, and the meaning of records to be created
and maintainedthe archivist shaping the archival heritage. This must sound
heresy for those who still believe that the archivist is a disinterested, impartial
receiver of neutral archives.
Archives are not neutral. Even when straight from the dusty archive,
writes Alan Munslow, the evidence always pre-exists within narrative structures

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31

See note 26 and Duranti, The Future of Archival Scholarship, 7.

32

As advocated in the Guidelines for the Development of a Curriculum for a Master of Archival Studies Degree
(MAS), approved by the Council of the Society of American Archivists, June 5, 1994, available at
<www.archivists.org>.

33

Eric Ketelaar, De culturele context van archieven, in Peter J. Horsman, Frederick C.J. Ketelaar, and
Theo H.P.M. Thomassen, eds., Context Interpretatiekaders in de archivistiek. Jaarboek 2000 Stichting
Archiefpublicaties (s-Gravenhage: Stichting Archiefpublicaties, 2000), 8391.

34

Livelton, Archival Theory, 47; Mortensen, The Place of Theory, 21.

35

Margaret Hedstrom, Cohesion and Chaos: The State of Archival Science in the United States, The
Concept of Record, 38.

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and is freighted with cultural meaningswho put the archives together, why,
and what did they include or exclude?36 Archivists do shape the context and
thereby the meaning of records and archives. When a record is designated as
archival, or when an archival document is designated in a schedule for permanent retention, it is put on a pedestal, as Tom Nesmith remarked; it gets a special status, obliterating non-archival records.37 By preserving some documents,
while destroying others created within the same context, that context is
changed. This change of context will irrevocably result in a change of meaning.
Such changes of context and meaning also happen when records created in the
dynamic archivalization and archiving phase enter the semi-current phase and
are stored in state or local archives and other memory institutions. Archival
repositories are lieux de mmoire (realms of memory), to quote the French
historian Pierre Nora, but what is kept is no longer mmoire vcue, a living
memory, but a deliberate and organized mmoire perdue memory tainted
and lost.38 As Terry Cook wrote: Archivists have become . . . very active builders
of their own houses of memory. And so, each day, they should examine their
own politics of memory in the archive-creating and memory-formation
process.39 This entails, I believe, knowledge and understanding of the sometimes shaded (and shady) history of archival institutions and of the changing
archivists role in society. I am thinking of the recent revelations of the NaziGerman archival system by Torsten Musial and Wolfgang Ernst, or the just
begun disclosure of the atrocities and agonies of the archival system of the
Soviet Union.40 But under normal conditions, archivists practice a politics of
memory, too, as Robert McIntosh recently wrote, not only by the records they
create, acquire, and destroy, but in the value judgements embedded in every
decision by which some records are given a greater profile than others.41
Archivists, McIntosh concludes, should question the context in which they
36

Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History (New York: Routledge, 1997), 6. See also Tom Nesmith,
Archivaria After Ten Years, Archivaria 20 (Summer 1985): 1321.

37

Tom Nesmith, What is a Postmodern Archivist? Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
Association of Canadian Archivists, Halifax, May 1998; Tom Nesmith, Still Fuzzy, But More Accurate:
Some Thoughts on the Ghosts of Archival Theory, Archivaria 47 (Spring 1999): 144.

38

Pierre Nora, Entre Mmoire et Histoire. La Problmatique des Lieux, in Pierre Nora, ed., Les Lieux
de Mmoire. I. La Rpublique (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), xxviii (English edition: Realms of Memory: The
Construction of the French Past. I. Conflicts and Divisions (New York: Columbia University Press,
1996)).

39

Cook, What is Past is Prologue, 46.

40

Torsten Musial, Staatsarchive im Dritten Reich. Zur Geschichte des staatlichen Archivwesens in Deutschland
19331945 (Potsdam: Verlag fur Berlin-Brandenburg, 1996); Wolfgang Ernst, Archival Action: The
Archive as ROM and Its Political Instrumentalization Under National Socialism, History of Human
Sciences 12, no.2 (May 1999): 1334; Hermann Schreyer, Archive und Archivare im Dienste und als
Opfer des Totalitren Staates. Ein Beitrag zur Sowjetischen Archivgeschichte, in Friederich Beck,
Wolfgang Hempel, and Eckart Henning, eds., Archivistica Docet. Beitrge zur Archivwissenschaft und Ihres
Interdisziplinren Umfelds (Potsdam: Verlag fur Berlin-Brandenburg, 1999), 16587.

41

Robert McIntosh, The Great War, Archives, and Modern Memory, Archivaria 46 (Fall 1998): 1820.
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and the archives in their custody are functioning and have functioned, the
same questions they have regarding the original context in which records were
created.
Understanding archivalization and archiving in their social and cultural
contexts will enable us to make statements about efficient and effective records
and archives management. That is of special importance in our information
society. We must also pass on this understanding to future users of archives and
make them understand in turn why the archives were formed in a certain way
and not only what happened.42
Think as an Archivist

And with all this, the new archivist must be instilled and inspired! That is
the challenge to us as archival educators. It is indeed an exciting time to be an
archival educator, but one that requires a great deal of dedication, persistence
and vision.43 We must, as Tom Nesmith, Carol Couture, Angelika MenneHaritz, James OToole, and others have emphasized, teach the new archivist to
think as a professional rather than to learn how to practice a craft.44 Teaching
an archival student how to think as an archivist is more important than to teach
practical knowledge, all the more so since that practical knowledge will soon be
outdated. For archival education, this means shifting the focus from skills and
knowledge to understanding and attitudes. One way to achieve this is to bring
students into close contact with research in archival scienceeven making
research a component of education. SAAs guidelines for the MAS curriculum
consider major research activities that produce scholarly papers an integral
part of course work, and the guidelines stress that students should conclude
their studies with a thesis or a comparable original research project.45
By involvement in archivistics research, students will learn to ask why,
rather than what. Research will teach them that practice and methodology
are means to an end, and subject to change. Research, Barbara Craig writes,

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42

Burke, The Future Course of Archival Theory, 4243; Nesmith, Archives From the Bottom Up,
2526, 179180; Paul M.M. Klep, About Ethics of Appraisal of Archival Records, Janus, 1992, no.2: 62.

43

Helen R. Tibbo, A Vision of Archival Education at the Millennium, Journal of Education for Library
and Information Science 38 (Summer 1997): 224. See also James M. OToole, The Archival Educator as
Advocate to the University and the Wider Community, Janus, 1997, no. 1: 1621; David B. Gracy, Is
Teaching All That There is to It? Archival Education and Advocacy, Janus, 1997, no. 1: 4250.

44

Menne-Haritz, Archival Education, 17; Menne-Haritz, Archivfachliche Ausbildung, 278; Carol

Couture, The New Reality and Outlook for Development of Archival Science Issues in Teaching Our
Discipline, Janus, 1995, no. 2: 75; Tom Nesmith, Professional Education in the Most Expansive Sense:
What Will the Archivist Need to Know in the Twenty-first Century? Archivaria 42 (Fall 1996): 92;
OToole, The Archival Educator, 16; Roy Schaeffer, From Craft to Profession: The Evolution of
Archival Education and Theory in North America, Archivaria 37 (Spring 1994): 31.

45

See note 32.

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cultivates a habit of examining received notions for their continuing pertinence and relevance.46 Such a habit is essential for the new archivist, who will
be much better equipped to deal with the constant change in his or her environment, effecting changes in records creation, preservation, communication,
and use. New archivists will be agents of change themselves. As Richard Kesner
wrote, Perhaps the most critical success factor of all, the archivist must become
an agent/prophet of change within his/her organization.47 Research should
be a component of archival education, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Education needs research, and research needs education. I agree
with what Angelika Menne-Haritz said at the 1992 ICA Congress in Montreal:
The archival profession needs the kind of training programs that enable graduates to be innovators. . . .The ability to conduct scientific archival research is
proof of efficient training and professional identification.48
Research

After Angelika Menne-Haritz had given her keynote speech on archival

education at that Montreal Congress, Ann Pederson presented the findings
of her international survey of archival education and research, adding
Suggestions for Research and Writing which, in fact, constituted a draft
research agenda.49 Such research agendas have been an essential part of recent
archival literature. Richard Cox listed eleven research agendas in North
American archival journals published between 1970 and 1991.50 Have the
planned agendas ever been converted into actions? Cox and OToole are dubious.51 Luciana Duranti is more optimistic; she rejoices in the impact of electronic records research on our overall understanding of the archival enterprise, admitting research agendas become longer every time a project is
completed.52 Apart from archivistics agenda and acta, there is archivistics

46

Craig, Serving the Truth, 110.

47

Richard M. Kesner, The Changing Face of Office Documentation: Electronic/optical Information

Technologies (IT), in Information Handling in Offices and Archives edited by Angelika Menne-Haritz
(Mnchen: K.G. Saur, 1993), 125.

48

Menne-Haritz, Archival Education, 18; Menne-Haritz, Archivfachliche Ausbildung, 279; Laura

Millar, The Spirit of Total Archives: Seeking a Sustainable Archival System, Archivaria 47 (Spring
1999): 5455.

49

Ann E. Pederson, Development of Research Programs, Archivum 39 (1994): 31259.

50

Richard J. Cox, An Analysis of Archival Research, 197092, and the Role and Function of the American
Archivist, American Archivist 57 (Spring 1994): 28182.

51

Cox, An Analysis; OToole, The Archival Educator.

52

Luciana Duranti, The Future of Archival Scholarship, keynote address at the conference Cyber,
Hyper or resolutely Jurassic? Archivists and the millennium, University College Dublin, 23 October
1998: <www.ucd.ie/~archives>.
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agente : current archivistics research. The 1999 Pittsburgh Working Meeting of

Graduate Archival Educators provided a forum to study the current research
and research interests of some North American archival educators. In the
Appendix to this article, I present an overview of current research interests,
trying also to assess in which fields an international or comparative approach
might be useful.
Tabularium

The Dutch Archives School, the State Archives Service, and the University
of Amsterdam commissioned me to set up a Netherlands research agenda for
social and cultural archivistics, both international and comparative by scope,
envisaged within the new archivistics paradigm, and imbued with the records
continuum thinking. Not only students and graduates, but practicing archivists
as well will be guided by that research agenda. As I explained earlier, students
have to do research in their final year at the university, leading to a masters thesis. They may continue their research after graduation, resulting ultimately in
a Ph.D. dissertation. In The Netherlands, one can receive a Ph.D. without residence at the university. Many people do the research for and the writing of the
Ph.D. dissertation many years after graduation, in their spare time or during a
sabbatical from work. On the other hand, there exist in The Netherlands graduate schools where young doctoral students work, learn, do some teaching, and
write their dissertations. They are paid a small salary by the university, whereas
the spare time Ph.D. students do not get any allowance from the university,
but are paid by their employer or, occasionally, by external funding.
A combination of these two systems is the Tabularium program, named after
the great Roman archival repository overlooking the Forum. This program,
launched in 1998 by the Dutch Archives School and the University of Amsterdam,
involves small research teams of post-graduate students and experienced
archivists, the latter being seconded by their employers for a few months, the former being funded by the Archives School and other sponsors. We envision that
in some cases research topics will be simultaneously addressed in both the
Tabularium and in the university or in class, although with an understandably different emphasis and scope. Students already involved in post-graduate research
may continue the research after graduation in a Tabularium group.
Neither these research teams nor individual research will be limited to theoretical and fundamental work. Archivists become scholars in recognizing patterns in archiving; they acquire great knowledge of various legal and social systems in different periods.53 Although this scholarship belongs to the discipline
53

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Livelton, Archival Theory, 3638; Luciana Duranti, The Archival Body of Knowledge: Archival Theory,
Method, and Practice, and Graduate and Continuing Education, Journal of Education for Library and
Information Science 34 (Winter 1993): 1213.

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of the archivist and not so much to archivistics (There is more to archivology

than archival science, according to Luciana Duranti),54 I would like to give the
archivist-scholars a place in the research teams, provided that they move
beyond a phenomenological description and on to the understanding that theoretical concepts form the basis of the research. In other words if the archivistics discourse and action research are more than facile how and what questions, but also ask why,55 and provided the results are fit for extrapolation
(modest speculations on the likely applicability of findings to other situations
under similar, but not identical conditions),56 it all belongs to the research
domain of archivistics.
The Profession and Research

Will the profession of archival practitioners be interested in archivistics

research? I admit that archival educators have to work at making them interested, in getting them to realize that many if not all so-called managerial or
practical questions can be solved more fundamentally when one allows for
some theoretical and methodological reflection. Practitioners can be theorists
too, only they do not realize the fact. As Luciana Duranti has written When
they dwell on a new idea and develop and test it in the context of archival
understanding, they are theorists in action.57 We educators and researchers
have to make our professional colleagues aware of The endless cycle of idea
and action, endless invention, endless experiment (Chorus I from The Rock
by T. S. Eliot).
Recently in The Netherlands, the Culture Council and the Council for
Science and Technology Policy jointly stressed in a memorandum to government that archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions cannot
function properly without research. The two councils pleaded for extra funding for multi-institutional research and for joint research programs of universities and cultural heritage institutions. The strong position adopted by these
councils helps us in stimulating archival leadership to propose and commission
research, to be carried out in the Tabularium program by their own staff
together with colleagues from elsewhere and by post-graduates. The Dutch
National Archives has already acknowledged not only that archivistics research

54

Duranti, The Archival Body of Knowledge, 10.

55

Taylor, Transformation in the Archives, 24; Nesmith, Canadian Archival Studies, 242.

56

Michael Q. Patton, Utilization-Focused Evaluation (Beverly Hills, Calif: Sage, 1986), 206, quoted by Blaise
Cronin, When is a Problem a Research Problem?, in, Applying Research to Practice. How to Use Data
Collection and Research to Improve Library Management Decision Making edited by Leigh S. Estabrook
(Urbana: University of Illinois, 1992), 124.

57

Duranti, The Future of Archival Scholarship, 10.

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is a prerequisite for fulfilling its ambition to be the leading Dutch archival institution, but also that seconding staff members for participation in the
Tabularium program can serve as a tool of staff development.
Research creates the theoretical framework for analysis and diagnosis of
the practical work, for its improvement and evaluation, as Barbara Craig
asserted.58 At the same time we have to make clear that the profession can and
should inspire the research, that it can and should contribute to the research,
be it only to contribute to the quality of the university education and training
of new professionals. Thus, we prevent building a wall between research and
profession, between the two cultures.59 It is our duty as archival educators to
preach to our colleagues working in the field that they may win the battle in
providing day-to-day service for their patrons, but that, as Don Riggs from the
University of Michigan argued, without a research base, theyll lose the war in
saving the profession.60 Archivistics research can indeed save the profession,
because research is the instrument for experimenting, inventing, changing,
and improving.
Appendix
Current Archivistics Research Interests
of North American Archival Educators

In The Netherlands I developed, or rather I am developing (because it is

an ongoing and never-ending process), a social and cultural comparative
archivistics research agenda.61 To check and to test, to expand and to prune
the research agenda, we regularly organize meetings with archivists, archival
administrators, and funding authorities. Is the research agenda valid and
viable, would the agenda be feasible in comparative archival science? To
answer that question, I compared the research agenda with the research interests of the participants in the 1999 Pittsburgh Working Meeting of Graduate
Archival Educators. From that conferences website and some of the participants individual and institutional websites I identified 105 topics of research
of forty participants.62

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58

Craig, Serving the Truth, 109, 111112; Mortensen, The Place of Theory, 15, 20.

59

Mary S. Stephenson, Deciding Not to Build the Wall: Research and the Archival Profession, Archivaria
32 (Summer 1991): 14551; Douglas Raber and Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Two Cultures, One Faculty.
Contradictions of Library and Information Science Education, Journal of Education for Library and
Information Science 37 (Spring 1996): 12030; Menne-Haritz, What Can be Achieved with Archives? 12.

60

Donald E. Riggs, Losing the Foundation of Understanding, American Libraries 25 (May 1994): 449.

61

<http://www.org.uva.nl/bai/home/eketelaar/research.html>.

62

<http://www2.sis.pitt.edu/~gaeconf/>.

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2a
2b
2c
2d
2e
2f
2g
3
4
5
6
7
8
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Foundations
Archivalization
Records Continuum
Societal Impact
Comparative
Historical
Metadata
Electronic Records
Recordness
Capture
Appraisal
Preservation
Use
Arrangement and
Description
Management

FIGURE 1.

The graph shows the 105 topics of research interest, as expressed by forty individuals.
The preeminence of electronic records research in several sectors is indicated by the ellipse

1. Foundations

Twelve individuals expressed interest in fifteen topics of research of the foundations of archivistics. Research on norms and values of the profession includes
research of the politics of memory, a concern of Tom Nesmith, Terry Cook,
Richard Cox, and myself, and archival ethics, one of Heather MacNeils specialties, and James OTooles cultural meanings of the record-making and the recordkeeping process. Shortly, I hope, we will have the book edited by Terry Cook and
Joan Schwartz, Archival Truth and Historical Consequences. The Construction of Social
Memory. In 20002001, the University of Michigan is hosting a one-year multidisciplinary seminar Archives, Documentation and the Institutions of Social
Memory, which involves a number of North American and international scholars. The program shows that this is a research domain that lends itself perfectly to
an international, multidisciplinary, and comparative approach. Its exploration
and exploitation are, however, still in the gold rush phase. It is time that we try
to do some mapping and reasonable delimitation of efforts.
Archival terminology is a topic that deserves more attention from archival
educators and researchers. Terminological efforts must be linked to the other
concern, the history of archival enterprise and the archivistics discourse. Terry
Cook, Barbara Craig, Philip Eppard, Peter Gottlieb, Jeff Jakeman, and Luciana
Duranti and I share a great interest in the history of the profession and of societys concern with records and archives. The time may not yet be ripe for truly
international group research in this field, but I suggest that we try to devise some
sort of protocol or checklist that might guide comparative research efforts.
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2. Cross-sectoral Concerns

Among the cross-sectoral concerns which cross through all domains of the
record continuum, are archivalization and the records continuum thinking
itself. A number of archival educators are interested in what precedes the creation of records, what I have named archivalization: Tom Nesmith, Chris
Halonen (who mentions social informatics), Margaret Hedstrom and David
Wallace in their NHPRC project on recordkeeping in collaborative environments, Eun Park, Kalpana Shankar, and Elizabeth Yakel. The records continuum is naturally the research domain of Sue McKemmish and her colleagues
in the Monash Records Continuum Research Group.
Terry Cook has indicated his surprise that a profession that so values context in its work so rarely contextualizes that work. Of the variables in society that
have an impact on archiving, the technological and legal constraints receive
more attention than other factors. The Pittsburgh project was an outstanding
example, and there is much research going on dealing with questions such as
accountability. But let us not forget the other societal variables. As Steven Lubar
remarked, Archives reflect and reinforce the power relationships of the institution that organizes them; they represent not just a technological solution, but
also an organizational solution. They document and carry out not only knowledge and technique, but also culture and power.63
Much research on quality standards and metadata is going on: Wendy
Duff, Anne Gilliland-Swetland, Margaret Hedstrom, Harold Thiele and others,
as well as the international InterPARES project.
In this paper, I have underlined the change of the archivistics paradigm
as a result of the advent of electronic records. Electronic records as such
involve many researchers and research groups i.e., seven out of forty participants in the Pittsburgh meeting of archival educators. But others devote special attention to electronic records too, in their research on different aspects
of recordkeeping, maintenance, and use. So, for example, of the seven
preservation research projects or topics, six deal specifically with electronic
records.

3. Recordness and Archival Nature

The research by Luciana Duranti and Terry Eastwood on new records

forms fits into the research on recordness and the archival nature of records.
All the research on metadata and the records continuum is dealing with recordness and archival nature, too.

63

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4. Capture and Storage

Bernadette Callery is interested in records in transition from paper to electronic formats; I myself direct a number of Ph.D. research projects on different
aspects of the history of recordkeeping systems. I would subsume them under
Capture and Storage as Nancy McGoverns research of the ways in which
recordkeepers can be involved in system design and implementation, but this
has, I believe, also a strong archivalization flavor. Angelika Menne-Haritz is
doing much research on business processes in public administration.
5. Appraisal

Appraisal is a well-recognized research domain, although we need more

theory to supplement the methodological and strategic studies available. I have
read Jane Turners UBC thesis on the theory of appraisal and selection, and I
am sure we are all looking forward to Terry Cooks book on macroappraisal theory. Barbara Craig is interested in appraisal, as are Jennifer Marshall and
Angelika Menne-Haritz. Do archivists need a companion to Gary Taylors
Cultural Selection about appraisal and selection as expression of culture and as
instruments of power?64 Dont we need to have comparative studies of macroappraisal strategies in different countries?
6. Preservation

Preservation in the digital environment is a concern shared by many,

including Sally Buchanan, Anne Gilliland-Swetland, Margaret Hedstrom,
Luciana Duranti, Terry Eastwood, and the InterPARES project.
7. Use

Use, including reference service, merits great importance both in the

research interests of archival educators and in recent North American literature. Archival science research may, however, benefit more from fundamental
and applied research in allied sciences like psychology, cognitive science, communication science, law, cultural studies, history, and library and information
science, to name but a few.
Margaret Hedstrom mentions knowledge networking and reuse of digital
information. The use of records in education, at K-12 and other levels, interests
several researchers. One of Charles Conaways interests is the interaction
between information and the senior population.
64

Gary Taylor, Cultural Selection (New York: Basic Books, 1996).

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Information needs can be formulated in terms of memory and accountabilitythe connection between the two deserves more research. Most organizations do not keep records of their failed projects and do not make any formal effort to understand what went wrong or attempt to learn from their failed
projects, according to two scholars who studied abandoned information systems development projects.65 So what, then, is the value of archival memory and
archival conscience in relationship with the non-archival information which
organizations use?
8. Arrangement and description

Knowledge organization and information retrieval (to rephrase the

European archival concept of arrangement and description) is a research interest that ranks second to use. It shares with use the paradigmatic change to a
user-centered perspective.65 I refer to the research by Denise Anthony,
Margaret Hedstrom, Angelika Menne-Haritz, Harold Thiele, Helen Tibbo,
Christinger Tomer, Tywanna Whorley, and others.
9. Management of archival systems and programs

As Ann Pederson phrased the question, what makes a successful archival

program?67 To find the answers, we have to do research on the organization,
management, marketing, human and financial resources, buildings, and equipment. I am pursuing research on the effectiveness of national archival systems.
Sally Buchanan is interested in preservation management strategies, Susan
Davis researches concepts of leadership, Peter Gottlieb is concerned with strategic planning, Charles Conaway is examining information systems evaluation at
different levels. Richard Cox advocated research on archival education and
training a decade ago and his research agenda for archival education contains
numerous suggestions.68

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65

K. Ewushi-Mensah and Z.H. Przasnyski, Learning From Abandoned Information Systems

Development Projects, Journal of Information Technology 10, no.1 (1995): 314.

66

D. Nahl, The User-Centered Revolution: 19701995, in Alan Kent, ed., Encyclopedia of Library and
Information Science 62 (1998): 31371.

67

Pederson, Development of Research Programs, 337.

68

Richard J. Cox, A Research Agenda for Archival Education in the United States, in Richard J. Cox,
American Archival Analysis: The Recent Development of the Archival Profession in the United States (Metuchen,
N.J. and London: Scarecrow Press, 1990), 11363.