analysis of creators being better or worse than a bottom-up diplomatic analysis of individual documents, but rather a recognition that both approaches have important insights to offer to a contextualized understanding of the record, and thus both should be used as interrelated tools by the archivist.56The top-down approach permits a better understanding of function, process, and activity; the bottom-up approach allows sharper insight into evidential transactions. One cautionary note must be added, however. Despite the benefits of enriched under standing offered by the neo-Jenkinsonian approach, its implicit emphasis -like that of Jenkinson himself- on the archives of administrations and institutions must not be allowed to turn the Canadian archival profession away from its "total archives" comprehensiveness in the public and private sectors, nor to diminish the overall cultural dimensions of all archives.57 This rediscovery of provenance, this richer understanding of creator contex- tuality that can turn information into knowledge, has had three major results in Canada that have drawn widespread international attention and praise, as well as a host of more local benefits. The first impact is the new macroappraisal acquisition strategy articulated at the National Archives of Canada, which is now being adopted in some other countries and jurisdictions. As mentioned before, this strategy features a functions-oriented, multi-media, and provenance- centred approach that does not assess records for their anticipated research uses, but rather seeks to reflect in the archival record the functions, programmes, and activities of records creators and those in society with whom they interact or whose values they indirectly reflect.58 The second impact of the rediscovery of provenance is a major Canada-wide national initiative to develop a system of descriptive standards that replaces Schellenberg's record group with the provenance-centred concept of the archival fonds; structures description in a general-to-specific, multi-level, multi-media relationship for all record entities within a single fonds; and asserts the need to protect provenance further through authority files to illuminate multiple-creator relationships -as well as codifying precise rules for describing archives within such a reordered contextualized universe.59 The third impact has been the establishment of several world-class, full-time, graduate-level archival education programmes. The articulation of professional educational requirements for archivists certainly reflects the rediscovery of provenance and revival of archival theory in Canada, and, in turn, by the work of these programmes' professors and students, actively contributes to it.60 [38] If Canadians were thus acquiring a much stronger and more conscious appreciation of the relevance of provenance to address modern archival problems, European archivists have also made the same affirmation. In at least four recent volumes of essays representing authors from many countries, European archivists have wrestled with the continued relevance of provenance to the challenges facing archives today. That archivists from the birthplace of archival theory have felt the need to undertake repeatedly this re-examination may help Europeans to forgive North Americans their temporary archival apostasy and to understand the enthusiasm of their recent rediscoveries! Europeans through these studies have in large part reaffirmed the relevance of the principle of provenance, but see the need to interpret it liberally rather than literally, conceptually rather than physically, if the principle is to continue to vitalize the profession as it faces the new environment of the automated office and electronic records.61 The most forceful reinterpretation of provenance since the mid-century has come from Australia, in the work of Peter Scott and his colleagues.62 While most ARCHIEFWETENSCHAP 56 This point about recognizing, celebrating, and merging the two traditions, rather than either ignoring or denigrating the other tradition, has also been made by Heather MacNeil, in "Archival Theory and Practice: Between Two Paradigms," pp. 17-18; however, she sometimes does not practise what she advocated: see her one-sided "Archival Studies in the Canadian Grain: The Search for a Canadian Archival Tradition," Archivaria 37 (Spring 1994), pp. 134-49; and the corrective offered by Tom Nesmith, "Nesmith and The Rediscovery of Provenance (Response to Heather MacNeil)," Archivaria 38 (Fall 1994), pp. 7-10. 57 The danger has been suggested by Joan M. Schwartz, in "'We make our tools and our tools make us': Lessons from Photographs for the Practice, Politics, and Poetics of Diplomatics." There is nothing, in my view, in the application of diplomatics or neo-Jenkinsonian methods that inherently favours institutional over private archives, or indeed the administrative over the cultural perspective on archives. It is more a question of emphasis and lack of balance. The examples used by the principal authors involved and the history of the evolution of these methods certainly lead in these directions, as does the assumption of either positive institutional compliance with the related archival perspectives, or at least strong juridical and societal sanctions being readily imposed for non-compliance. Neither assumption is true for many late twentieth-century North American institutions, and are almost completely irrelevant for the targeting and appraisal of papers and related media of private individuals, and many private associations and groups. From these unrealistic practical assumptions comes the danger rather than from any logical fault in the ideas or theory. 58 See notes 39 and 40 above. 59 Bureau of Canadian Archivists, Working Group on Archival Descriptive Standards, Toward Descriptive Standards: Report and Recommendations of the Canadian Working Group on Archival Descriptive Standards (Ottawa, 1985); Wendy M. Duff and Kent M. Haworth, "The Reclamation of Archival Description: The Canadian Perspective," Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990-91), pp. 26-35; Eastwood, ed., The Archival Fonds; and numerous articles in the two thematic issues on descriptive standards of Archivaria 34 (Summer 1992) and 35 (Spring 1993), especially those by Hugo Stibbe and Cynthia Durance. These two issues also contain articles by David Bearman, Kathleen Roe, and Terry Cook challenging some of the assumptions and imple mentation strategies of the Canadian effort, particularly some RAD (Rules for Archival Descriptiondefini tions of the nature of the fonds, but there is no serious challenge to its provenance-enhancing intentions and contextualizing purposes. 54 TERRY COOK WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE 60 The two best articles on the substance of graduate education are Terry Eastwood, "Nurturing Archival Education in the University," American Archivist 51 (Summer 1988), pp. 228-52; and Nesmith, "Hugh Taylor's Contextual Idea for Archives and the Foundation of Graduate Education in Archival Studies," which outline the approaches at the University of British Columbia and the University of Manitoba, respectively. For a general framework, see Association of Canadian Archivists, Guidelines for the Development of a Two-Year Curriculum for a Master of Archival Studies (Ottawa, 1990). 61 The European re-examination of provenance is often in the context of the electronic record or the volumi nous records of large organizations. For examples, see Claes Granström, "Will Archival Theory Be Sufficient in the Future?," pp. 159-67; and Bruno Delmas, "Archival Science and Information Technologies," pp. 168-76, both in Angelika Menne-Haritz, ed., Information Handling in Offices and Archives (München, 1993). The same affirmation is made by many of the European authors in Bucci, Archival Science on the Threshold; in Abukhanfusa and Sydbeck, The Principle of Provenance; and in Judith A. Koucky, ed., Second European Conference on Archives: Proceedings (Paris, 1989). The same argument was well presented at the Montreal ICA by Angelika Menne-Haritz, "Archival Education: Meeting the Needs of Society in the Twenty-First Century," plenary address offprint, XII International Congress on Archives (Montreal, 1992), especially pp. 8-11. 62 The best exposition of the Australian Series System (including a significant reconceptualization and upda ting of Scott's ideas) is in Piggott and McKemmish, The Records Continuum, especially the essays by Sue McKemmish and Chris Hurley. For his own statement, see Scott, "The Record Group Concept," pp. 493- 504; and his five-part series, with various co-authors: "Archives and Administrative Change Some Methods and Approaches," Archives and Manuscripts 7 (August 1978), pp. 115-27; 7 (April 1979), pp. 151- 65; 7 (May 1980), pp. 41-54; 8 (December 1980), pp. 51-69; and 9 (September 1981), pp. 3-17. Scott's breakthrough was the product of a lively debate within the Commonwealth Archives Office (now Austra lian Archives), with Ian Maclean, the first Commonwealth Archivist, also having a very significant role, especially in terms of taking the series concept out of the archival cloisters and applying it to current records in agencies, and thus helping to mend the Schellenbergian split between records managers and archivists, and between "current" records and "old" archives. Yet it was Scott who primarily articulated the concept in theoretical writing for the broader profession. 55

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