science are still unable to deal on their own with the complexity and specificity of the issues presented by the digital records generated by fast changing technologies and presenting characteristics never seen before. These disciplines have to be fertilized with concepts and methods coming from other fields that can be brought to bear on their body of knowledge and integrated into it so that they will continue to expand and grow. While some of the knowledge needed to enrich the records disciplines has to come from established academic fields like evidence law, other knowledge can be harvested from areas of expertise that have not entered academia as yet, but are very much developed as practices, such as digital forensics.3This article will discuss the components of the specialized body of knowledge needed by records professionals in the contemporary records environment. Traditional concepts Traditionally, the knowledge required of records professionals has been established in relation to their recognised responsibilities and functions. Initially, these have been circumscribed to protecting the authenticity of the records entrusted to their custody and ensure their prompt accessibility. For example, the Justinian's Civil Code stated: "The magistrate is to store the records choosing someone to have custody over them so that they may remain uncorrupted and may be found quickly by those requiring them."4 As a consequence, such custodian had to be a public officer familiar with the law. A thousand years later, the protection of records began to require of their custodian an understanding of physical preservation and intellectual organization. For example, in his De Archivis, Baldassarre Bonifacio stated that "It would be in vain to store writings in any place if the care and diligence of man did not ward off the injuries of time.... Then let us prepare indices and syllabi, let us make up lists and catalogues in alphabetic order."5 Since then, for the following three and a half centuries, the physical and moral defence of archives, as defined by Jenkinson in his 1922 manual,6 remained the primary responsibility of "archivists," a term that was used in Europe since the sixteen century to refer in general to all records professionals.7The debate tended to focus on breadth and depth of education on physical and intellectual control rather than on possible complementary knowledge required to fulfill additional functions or to deal with different types of records. In 1913, Giuseppe Vittani, an Italian educator, wrote: "An archival school must not have the pretence of creating the complete archivist, but must make the student able to continue his education while working in any kind of archives. This is obtainable by reducing the curricula to those components that are really essential. If students understand principles and methods, when dealing with different materials in different institutions, they are supported by the analogy of various situations."8 Eugenio Casanova, another Italian educator, stated in his archival manual LUCIANA DURANTI EDUCATING THE EXTREME RECORDS PROFESSIONAL: A PROPOSAL 4 Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis, Digesta (A.D. 523), 48. 5 Lester K. Born, "Baldassare Bonifacio and His Essay De Archivis," The American Archivist IV, 4 (October 1941): 236-237, p. 236. 6 Hilary Jenkinson, A Manual of Archives Administration (London: Percy Lund, Humphries Co., 1937); reprint 1965. 7 See definition in footnote 1. 8 Giovanni Vittani, "La formazione delParchivista," Annuario del R. Archivio di Stato di Milano 1913, reprin ted in Giovanni Vittani, Scritti di diplomatica e archivistica (Milano: Cisalpino-Goliardica, 1974), 154. 199

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