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