Craig has stated the matter eloquently: "Just as personal identity is anchored in
a strong historical sense[,] so is our professional identity-both come from the
ability to experience continuity. Surely if you have nothing to look backward
to, and with pride, you have nothing to look forward to with hope."4 Without
continuity with the past, future directions lack legitimacy. Without understan
ding our predecessors' intellectual struggles, we lose the benefit of their expe
riences and are condemned to repeat their errors. As Shakespeare discerned,
"what is past is prologue." Before archivists as a profession can write their
prologue for the next century, they need to understand better their own past.
Exploring the archival discourse: possibilities and limitations
Many books could (and should) be written by archivists about their professional
history, across the centuries and millennia, across cultures, languages, gender,
and nationalities, across differing media and differing types of record creators,
across the bridge of theory and practice, that is, across the chasm of the guiding
principles and ideas on one side and their actual implementation in archival
institutions on the other. This single (if rather long) essay is limited to but one
century in the rich history of archival ideas, and is further limited to the
Western European tradition through a Canadian filter. I think, however, that the
analytical methodology employed here might be useful in other historical
contexts concerning the archival past.
In my view, analyzing the history of archival ideas requires listening to the
archival discourse of the time or place involved. Archival historical analysis
requires revisiting the principal professional discussions that leading archivists
had about their work and with each other. It requires hearing again, and under
standing within the context of their time, and our own, their assumptions,
ideas, and concepts.
Archival "theory" and archival "theorist" in this approach do not relate,
respectively, to some immutable set of fixed principles and their constant defen
ders across varying realms of practice. That kind of historical perspective [20] is
rather too Positivist and outdated for a late twentieth-century observer to adopt.
Rather, archival thinking over the century should be viewed as constantly
evolving, ever mutating as it adapts to radical changes in the nature of records,
record-creating organizations, record-keeping systems, record uses, and the wider
cultural, legal, technological, social, and philosophical trends in society. Archival
ideas formed in one time and place reflect many of these external factors, which
ideas are often reconstructed, even rediscovered in another time and place, or
reshaped across generations in the same place. The best archival theorists are
those who have been able to recognize and articulate these radical changes in
society and then deal conceptually with their impact on archival theory and
practice. That articulation forms our collective discourse, the metatext or
narrative animating our professional practice, and thus properly is the focus of
an intellectual history of archives.
In examining the archival discourse of this century since the publication of
the famous Dutch Manual of 1898, I am limiting my analysis to some key
European, North American, and Australian thinkers whose works have found
expression in English-language sources. Moreover, my focus will be primarily on
the twin pillars of the archival profession, appraisal and arrangement/descrip-
tion, as these have been affected by changes in cultures, media, and technology,
even while recognizing that lively debates have occurred in the profession around
preservation issues, public programming, or the archives as a place of custody,
among others. And given the main audience of this journal, I have placed some
emphasis on Canadian traditions, where relevant, within this larger Western
European narrative. There are of course many archival traditions outside these
geographical and linguistic limitations. Yet in some ways that is irrelevant, for
my thesis is that the analysis in this paper, despite my limited foci, will reveal
historical trends that have some universality even within the broad pluralism
that characterizes the international archival profession. While I give voice to
particular speakers in one language, I am suggesting that the issues they have
addressed will be found to transcend their own national and linguistic circum
stances and thus be relevant to all archivists.
The Dutch Manual of 1898: archival principles defined
Almost one hundred years ago, the Dutch trio of Samuel Muller, Johan Feith,
and Robert Fruin published their famous Manual for the Arrangement and
Description of Archives. Of course Muller, Feith, and Fruin's work did not spring
to life in a vacuum during the 1890s. Archives in various forms had existed for
centuries, but modern archival principles per se, despite some obscure
precedents, were only articulated in detail in nineteenth-century France and
Germany.5 Yet, ironically, the important treatises which brought these principles
to world attention in the early twentieth century were not written by German or
French authors, but rather by Dutch, English, and Italian archivists.6 [21]
Of these, the Dutch Manual has had a major influence, because it was the first,
and because it reached many archivists through French, German, English,
Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, and other translations.
ARCHIEFWETENSCHAP
4 Barbara Craig, "Outward Visions, Inward Glance: Archives History and Professional Identity," Archival
Issues 17 (1992), p. 121. The fullest argument for archivists researching, writing, and reading their own
history, including the many benefits this will have for daily practice and professional well-being, is Richard
J. Cox, "On the Value of Archival History in the United States" (originally 1988), in Richard J. Cox,
American Archival Analysis: The Recent Development of the Archival Profession in the United States (Metuchen,
N.J., 1990), pp. 182-200. Lamentably few have followed Cox's sound advice, and oddly so considering the
historical training of most archivists.
32
TERRY COOK WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE
5 The best short summaries in English are Michel Duchein, "The History of European Archives and the
Development of the Archival Profession in Europe," American Archivist 55 (Winter 1992), pp. 14-24; and
Luciana Duranti, "The Odyssey of Records Managers," in Tom Nesmith, ed., Canadian Archival Studies and
the Rediscovery of Provenance (Metuchen, N.J., 1993), pp. 29-60. Their notes point to many other sources
and in other languages. Also useful is James Gregory Bradsher and Michele F. Pacifico, "History of Archives
Administration," in James Gregory Bradsher, ed., Managing Archives and Archival Institutions (Chicago,
1988), pp. 18-33; as well as several of the essays on national archival traditions published in Oddo Bucci,
ed., Archival Science on the Threshold of the Year 2000 (Macerata, Italy, 1992). A recent overview of the
nature of the profession, including significant historical perspectives, is James M. O'Toole, Understanding
Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago, 1990).
6 Duchein, "History of European Archives," p. 19.
33