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 That kind of historical perspective [20] is rather too Positivist and outdated for a late twentieth-century observer to adopt.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

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