These coming conceptual shifts in archival practice suggest to me the need to
redefine core archival theory. To respond to these challenges, provenance should
change from being seen as the notion of linking a record directly to its [48]
single office of origin in a hierarchical structure, to becoming instead a concept
focused on these functions and business processes of the creator that caused the
record to be created, within and across constantly evolving organizations.
Provenance is thereby transformed from the static identification of records with
a structure to a dynamic relationship with a creating or authoring activity.
Original order should change from being viewed as the notion of a physical place
for each record within a single series of records, to becoming instead a logical
reflection of multiple authorship and multiple readership, where, for example,
data may be united in multiple ways into new conceptual or virtual "orders"
(or "series") for different transactions by different creators. A record will there
fore belong to or reflect several series or original orders, not just one.81 In similar
fashion, the concept of the record itself should change from being perceived as a
single piece of recording medium that integrates the structure, content, and
context of information in one physical place, to becoming a virtual composite of
many scattered parts linked together (under varying software controls and
business processes) to perform, or bear evidence of, a transaction or idea.
Likewise, the archival fonds should not be conceived as reflecting some static
physical order based on rules arising from the transfer, arrangement, or
accumulation of records, but rather should reflect the dynamic multiple
creatorship and multiple authorship focused around function and activity that
more accurately captures the contextuality of records in the modern world.
All these changes move the theoretical (and practical) focus of archives away
from the record and toward the creative act or authoring intent or functional
context behind the record. This new paradigm for archives replaces the profes
sion's traditional intellectual focus on the physical record -that thing which is
under our actual physical custody in archives- with a renewed focus on the
context, purpose, intent, interrelationships, functionality, and accountability of
the record, its creator, and its creation processes, wherever these occur. Because
this suggested focus goes well beyond drawing inspiration for archival activity
from the study of records placed in the custody of an archives, it has been
termed a postcustodial mindset for archives.82 Such a postcustodial paradigm for
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archives, let it be quickly stated, does not mean abandoning archival principles
or no longer acquiring records, but rather reconceiving traditional, Jenkinsonian
guardianship of evidence from a physical to a conceptual framework, from a
product-focused to a process-oriented activity, from matter to mind.83
By embracing this postcustodial and conceptual redefinition of provenance
as the dynamic relationship between all connected functions, creators, and
"records," archivists can acquire an intellectual tool to meet, with confidence,
the challenges of integrating electronic records into their professional practice,
of appraising complex modern records with acuity, of describing in rich context
archival records in all media, and of enhancing the [49] contextualized use and
understanding of archives by their many publics. A redefined sense of
provenance also offers archivists, their sponsors, and their researchers a means
to stop drowning in an overwhelming sea of meaningless data and to find
instead patterns of contextualized knowledge, which in turn leads to the hope
for wisdom and understanding. From the contextual principles of the archival
past, the guiding prologue to the archival future emerges. From the lessons of
their history, archivists may find inspiration to guide humankind with greater
sensitivity through these varied "houses of memory" that they so lovingly
construct. And by so reflecting the postmodern and postcustodial ethos of their
times, archivists today can facilitate "making present the voices of what is past,
not to entomb either the past or the present, but to give them life together in a
place common to both in memory."84
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81 For a very provocative analysis of archivists' understanding and assumptions -many being false and mislea
ding- bout "order" and about the nature of their own work in establishing, re-creating, and defending ori
ginal and other "orders," as well as the first major postmodernist analysis of the archival enterprise, see
Brien Brothman, "Orders of Value: Probing the Theoretical Terms of Archival Practice," Archivaria 32
(Summer 1991), pp. 78-100.
82 The "postcustodial" term was first coined by F. Gerald Ham, in "Archival Strategies for the Postcustodial
Era," American Archivist 44 (Summer 1981), pp. 207-16. Ham broached many of the same ideas without
the label even earlier, in his ground-breaking "The Archival Edge," American Archivist 38 (January 1975),
pp. 5-13, reprinted in Daniels and Walch, Modern Archives Reader, pp. 326-35. While the term "postcusto
dial" appears increasingly in archival literature, and certainly implicitly lies behind much recent thinking
around electronic records and documentation strategies, its implications for the profession and for actual
daily practice by the archivist have not been directly or systematically addressed by many writers—always
with the already noted, although somewhat different, exception of the work of Australians Ian Maclean
and Peter Scott decades ago and all of David Bearman's work. For more recent Australian discussion, see
McKemmish and Upward, "Somewhere Beyond Custody," especially pp. 137-41, and their own essays and
introductory pieces throughout their volume Archival Documents, as well as Frank Upward's work on the
records continuum (notes 8 and 20 above). For an example of postcustodial appraisal thinking combined
TERRY COOK WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE
with actual work experience, see Greg O'Shea, "The Medium is not the Message: Appraisal of Electronic
Records by Australian Archives," Archives and Manuscripts 22 (May 1994), pp. 68-93. Outside Australia, for
suggested practical applications for appraisal and description of postcustodial thinking, see again Cook's
"Mind Over Matter: Towards a New Theory of Archival Appraisal," and "Concept of the Archival Fonds;"
and Hedstrom and Bearman, "Reinventing Archives." The fullest explicitly postcustodial analysis to date is
Cook, "Electronic Records, Paper Minds: The Revolution in Information Management and Archives in the
Postcustodial and Postmodernist Era." I wish to underline here that "postcustodial" does not mean
"non-custodial.The postcustodial paradigm is a overarching conceptual mindset for the archivist applicable
whether the records are transferred to the custodial care of an archives or left for some time in an distributed or
non-custodial arrangement with their creator.
83 On this point and explicitly criticizing "postcustodial" assumptions that can, admittedly, be asserted too
blithely as a radical break from the past rather than a difference of emphasis, see the fine essay by Heather
MacNeil, "Archival Theory and Practice: Between Two Paradigms," pp. 16-17. She argues for good reasons
that the substance of archives centred around "the protection and safeguarding of evidence" should be
retained, even if our means and strategies to accomplish this end may have to change fundamentally.
That has been also my perspective for some time and in this article.
84 Carruthers, Book of Memory, p. 260.
