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.
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