In the area of arrangement and description, Jenkinson introduced the concept of
the "archive group" as a difference in interpretation, if not principle, from the
European concept of the fonds d'archives. Jenkinson's view was somewhat more
all-encompassing, with his archive group containing the entirety of records
"from the work of an Administration which was an organic whole, complete in
itself, capable of dealing independently, without any added or external authority,
with every side of any business which could normally be presented to it."
Consistent with his "very catholic definition" of archives as the entire records
universe of an administration or agency, he admitted that the archive group for
very large agencies might contain "fonds within fonds," a subtlety which more
recent codifiers of descriptive standards sometimes overlook. It is important to
listen carefully to Jenkinson's turn of phrase. He refers to an Administration
which was an organic whole, thus illustrating again his focus, just like the Dutch
trio, on medieval and early modern records, with their closed series, their stable
and long-dead creators, and their status as inherited records from the past. That
transfers of records from open-ended series from [25] fluid administrative
structures might create anomalies to challenge the archive group concept did not
occur to Jenkinson.16
Jenkinson had joined the Public Record Office in London in 1906, where his
work focused almost exclusively on medieval and early nation-state records. This
experience helps to explain his insistence on the legal character of archival
records, their evidential nature, and their stability and inherited completeness.
His archival assumptions also reflect his personal identification with the
corporate culture of the prewar British Civil Service, which underpins his faith
in the government "Administrator" being an honourable, educated, and civilized
person capable of exercising disinterested judgements in terms of record
preservation. Our world of lying presidents and corrupt commissars would have
been entirely foreign, and doubtless repugnant, to him. As for his notions that
"Truth" was revealed through archival documents or that the archivist was an
unbiased "keeper" of records and a "selfless devotee of Truth," Jenkinson was
simply mirroring the empirical Positivism common to the historiography with
which he was deeply familiar and schooled.
In summary, Jenkinson's views on appraisal are no longer valid for modern
records or for modern society's expectations of what archives should do, nor is
his perspective on the stable nature of administrations or the fixed order of
record arrangement useful for modern descriptive problems. But his spirited
defence of the evidential character of records certainly remains inspirational to
archivists everywhere. As will be seen, his ideas are enjoying a revival today,
especially in Australia and Canada, but also among many electronic records
theorists everywhere, in the face of ephemeral records, virtual documents,
decontextualized information, and increasing incidents of unscrupulous and
haphazard record destruction.17 The trick for neo-Jenkinsonian enthusiasts is to
follow the spirit, not the letter, of his magisterial assertions.
Two broad themes emerge in the history of European archival ideas up to
1930: archival principles had been derived primarily from solving problems in
the arrangement and description of older records; and those principles very
much reflected the authors' time, place, and the type of records they
encountered. A further illustration of these two themes may be found in the
work of noted Italian archival theorist, Eugenio Casanova, whose principal work
appeared in 1928. Like Jenkinson and the Dutch trio, Casanova mirrored the
intellectual currents of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries when he, in
the recent words of Italian archival commentator Oddo Bucci, "gave the disci
pline its empirical slant, constructed it as a descriptive science, and applied to it
the imperative of positivist historiography, which aimed at the accumulation of
facts rather than at the elaboration of concepts...." But such Positivist historio
graphy and "fact"-based empiricism have by the late twentieth century long been
discredited. Bucci notes that new societal changes fundamentally "undermine
habits and norms of conduct, involving a break with principles that have long
governed the processes whereby archival records are created, trans[26]mitted,
conserved and exploited. It is clear," he continues, "that radical innovations in
archival practice are becoming increasingly incompatible with the continuance
of a doctrine seeking to remain enclosed within the bulwarks of its traditional
principles." What Bucci says of Casanova, and which is equally true of Jenkinson
and the Dutch trio, is that archival principles are not fixed for all time, but, like
views of history itself, or literature, or philosophy, reflect the spirit of their times
and then are interpreted anew by succeeding generations.18
Facing modern records: T.R. Schellenberg and the American voice
The next principal initiative in articulating the archival discourse came from the
United States. Not having the luxury to formulate archival principles based on
the meticulous analysis of limited numbers of old documents, nor able to rely
ARCHIEFWETENSCHAP
16 Jenkinson, Manual of Archive Administration, pp. 101-2. Jenkinson's sense of breadth in arrangement still
survives in British archival practice. Although his "archive group" is now termed simply the "group," it
retains Jenkinson's broad definition. Conversely, the term "archive group" itself relates to even broader
thematic categories. See Michael Cook, The Management of Information from Archives (Aldershot, 1986),
pp. 85-87, and Chapter 5 generally, especially the examples on p. 92. The context of Jenkinson's ideas and
their impact (and weaknesses) are nicely analyzed in Michael Roper, "The Development of the Principles
of Provenance and Respect for Original Order in the Public Record Office," in Barbara L. Craig, ed., The
Archival Imagination: Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor (Ottawa, 1992), pp. 134-49.
17 See, for example, the unabashed Jenkinsonianism of the Australians, perhaps represented best in Sue
McKemmish, "Introducing Archives and Archival Programs," in Judith Ellis, ed., Keeping Archives, 2nd ed.
(Port Melbourne, 1993), pp. 1-24; Sue McKemmish and Frank Upward, eds., Archival Documents: Providing
Accountability Through Recordkeeping (Melbourne, 1993); Sue McKemmish and Frank Upward, "Somewhere
Beyond Custody," Archives and Manuscripts 22 (May 1994), pp. 138-49; and most explicitly Glenda Acland,
"Archivist - Keeper, Undertaker or Auditor?," Archives and Manuscripts 19 (May 1991), pp. 9-15. For
Canada, the most explicit statement is by Heather MacNeil, "Archival Theory and Practice: Between Two
38
TERRY COOK WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE
Paradigms," Archivaria 37 (Spring 1994), pp. 6-20. For a Canadian neo-Jenkinsonian perspective on
appraisal, see Luciana Duranti, "The Concept of Appraisal and Archival Theory," American Archivist 57
(Spring 1994), pp. 328-44. In these examples, Australian neo-Jenkinsonians tend to follow the Master's
spirit, while their Canadian counterparts adhere more to the letter of his dictums. All Jenkinsonians
should remember that even the Master himself dismissed as "fools" any archivists "unduly" influenced by
administrative and institutional concerns, and stated that researchers' "interests and needs must therefore
be ultimately the governing consideration." In the same letter to Professor F.M. Powicke of Oxford, 22
January 1946, Jenkinson also asserted that "no Archivist can do his job efficiently without learning a little
History deliberately and a good deal incidentally.... It would be unwise to try and prevent the Archivist
practising occasionally the metier of Historian." Cited in Laura Millar, "The End of 'Total Archives'?: An
Analysis of Changing Acquisition Practices in Canadian Archival Repositories," (Ph.D. thesis, University of
London, 1996), p. 255.
18 For the Italian scene and Casanova's work, see Bucci, "The Evolution of Archival Science," pp. 17-43.
The quotations are pp. 34-35, and from his "Introduction," p. 11.
39
