The post-custodial era

The complex modern administrative institution with open-ended record series,56 electronic records, and ever-changing structures created many challenges for archivists, especially with regard to the concept of provenance.57 Modern administrative institutions led various archivists to question the concept of provenance and the record group. Bearman and Lytle (1986/85:20) asserted that “despite its limited validity as a snapshot of one aspect of an organization, the record group concept has become an albatross” around the neck of archivists. In the current information age, to describe records in the traditional sense “by means of arranging them and recording that arrangement to some desired depth or detail is too labour intensive”. Instead Bearman noted that the “object of archival documentation should be to document the context of records’ creation and use, not to describe the records in their particularities” (Bearman, 1995:384).

Since the late 1960s the Australian archivist, Peter Scott, explored these complex

administrative procedures and the consequences for archival practice. His understanding led him to abandon the record group or fonds concept, which he saw as “unduly limiting” and an “unnecessary complication” (cited in Cook, 1992:27), instead focussing on the

importance of description.58 Scott developed the Australian series system approach wherein archival description became a “dynamic system of multiple interrelationships,” moving away from the traditional static cataloguing mode (Cook, 1997:39; Cook, 1992:32). His system incorporated the means for “describing multiple interrelationships between numerous creators and numerous series of records, wherever they may be on the continuum of records administration: in the office(s) of creation, in the office of current control, or in the

56

A series is a group of records within the Record Group (as defined by Schellenberg) that are arranged according to a filing system. These series “are related as the result of being created, received, or used in the same activity”. Each series will have its own title including a collective title for the group as a whole (Pearce-Moses, 2005).

57

See the work of Bearman & Lytle (1985/86). 58

For more information see Scott (1966). See also the series of articles by Scott & Finlay (1978, 1979).

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archives” (Cook, 1997:38).59 Records could thus be described from the moment of their creation, “at the level of accumulation or arrangement *…+ and allows provenance (creation) to emerge through the intellectual mechanism of his multiple listings” (Cook, 1992:32).

Scott’s descriptive system was based on the separation of the “control and description of the actual records (the series, files and items), from the contextual and content information about them” (Cook, 1992:32).60 In other words, description was not based anymore on the understanding that each record “could only be stored in one place” and each record “should only be described in one place,” (Ibid.) but within complex administrative structures where multiple locations and multiple creators exist. Scott argued that the focus should be shifted “from physical arrangements by groups” to “multiple listings” (i.e. an archival approach versus a record-keeping approach) (Scott cited by Cook, 1992:32). The fonds was thus no longer primarily a physical thing to be arranged in a custodial approach of physical groupings and arrangements, but through description it was seen as “independent of the physical location and arrangement of the documents – a non-custodial approach”

(Horsman, 2002:16). Scott’s system later became especially relevant for electronic records and paved the road to “automated authority control” systems “as the solution for archivists trying to describe modern multiple provenance records” (Cook, 1992:32). Such a system could include automated disposal processes, which would make appraisal by the archivist unnecessary because documents could be “captured at the moment of its creation,” prohibiting any tampering with the document as well as making it instantly available to those who have the authority to access it (Bearman, 2002:330).61

59

Scott’s descriptive system created the possibility to move away from “fixed one-to-one linkages,” and to create links between “many series and one creator, between many creators and one series, between many creators and many series, between creators and other creators, between series and other series, and between series and creators to functions, and the reverse” (Cook, 1997:38). 60

Description thus took place on two levels namely the “administrative context of creation” and “the description of the actual accumulation of records” (Cook, 1993:33). In this way “the fonds (or

‘whole’) will emerge organically through the descriptive activity of archivists” (Cook, 1993:30) 61

Two of the most prominent automated archival descriptive systems are MARC AMC (Machine- Reading Cataloguing Format for Archives and Manuscript Control) and EAD (Encoded Archival Description). MARC AMC was developed during the late 1970s and 1980s and EAD during the 1990s. As another form of an automated system see for instance the “Wayback Machine”, an automated internet archive that holds more than 100 terabytes of data and provides free access to a collection of archived Web pages from 1996 (See O’Sullivan, 2005:70). For more information see Martin (1994); Czeck (1998); Marshall (2002); Prom (2002) and Yaco (2008).

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Peter Scott’s ideas were further developed in terms of electronic records by archivists such as David Bearman, Richard Lytle and Terry Cook. Their main premise was that archivists should shift their focus from the “content of a record to its context; from the record itself to the function of the record; from an archival role in custodial preservation and access to a non-archival role of intervening in the records creation process and managing the behaviour of creators” (Henry, 1998:313; see also Cook, 1992:26).62

Electronic information challenged archivists by replacing the “relatively stable framework of bureaucratic organizations” with fluctuating, ephemeral structures and records (Bearman, 1992:169).63 The United States, Canada and Australia have been at the forefront of

developing archival theory in terms of electronic and ephemeral documents.64 The challenge of electronic records is that “the boundaries of the documents have given way to a creative authoring event in which user and system participate” and subsequently “only the context in which these virtual documents are created can give us an understanding of their content” (Bearman, 1990 as used in Cook, 1997:42).65 Since these electronic records and the archival practice necessary for their preservation are moving archives beyond and away from the physical record, it has been termed a post-custodial mindset for archives (Cook, 1997:48).

62

See for instance Terry Cook advocating that archivists should “liberate themselves from the constraints of the ‘custodial era’, with its focus on physical groupings of records, and to embrace instead the implications of the ‘post-custodial era,’ with its conceptual paradigm of logical or virtual realities” (Cook, 1992:26).

63

For some interesting articles that explores the new spaces that electronic or virtual records opened up see O’Sullivan (2005); Breaden (2006) and Craig (1998).

64

For key Electronic Records projects see (as used in Taylor 2006:17-18): the “Pittsburgh Project” that ran at the University of Pittsburgh from February 1993 through the summer of 1996 under the leadership of Richard Cox; Luciana Duranti’s project at the University of British Columbia that started in 1996 and evolved into InterPARES, an international undertaking consisting of numerous

participants form over the world; as well as Electronic Record projects by the International Council on Archives’. Also as noted in Bearman (2006:21), the Victorian Electronic Records Project, launched in 1998 by the Public Record Office of the State of Victoria in Australia.

65

An example of this interaction between user and system can for instance be seen in the possibilities that “hot links” offer, where changes in one document are immediately and

automatically updated in all the documents that it is linked to (Taylor, 1991/92:178). In this world where documents become fluid, and “lose their separate formal identity” (Ibid.), a “world of relational databases, of complex software linkages, of electronic accountability trails in office systems, of hypermedia documents, of multi-layered geographical information systems” emerge (Cook, 1991/92:206). Terry Cook points out that although archivists dealing with these records are promoting a move away from the actual custody of physical records, the “essence of the archivist’s task comprehending and elucidating contextual linkages remains the same” (Cook, 1997:42).

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This mindset proved to be especially relevant in relation to the complexity and volume of electronic records, where digital archival holdings can be accessed from anywhere in the world, with records “held in more than one place” and “a provenance in more than one institution; the antithesis of the conventional archive” (Hall, 2002:335).66 Whereas the custodial approach was a curatorial approach, the post-custodial is a knowledge-oriented approach wherein the “fonds is not viewed as a physical entity, but as an abstract concept” (Cook, 1992:32).67

The post-custodial approach does not mean the abandonment of archival principles, “but rather re-conceiving 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” (Cook, 1997:48). In other words records, in order to become evidence, must be linked to their ‘metadata’ (the data relating to the contextual relationships of the record – the data about the data) and uncorrupted content and its physical housing is not of primary concern as long as it is properly protected and controlled (Bearman, 2006:20).

Subsequently Bearman proposed that the “functions and activities that generated the records” should be managed as they are “the key to transforming the archival enterprise” (Pederson, 1995:439,441).68 Bearman furthermore called for cooperation between the numerous individuals that contribute to the process of creating a document (Pederson, 1995:439). He argued that archivists should turn their attention from preserving the past to

66

See for instance the recently launched “Music Treasure Consortium Web Site” of the Library of Congress. It is a creation of several music libraries and archives in the United States as well as the United Kingdom, providing access in one place to a wide variety of material (see Music Treasures Consortium).

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In practice what this means is that the descriptions or metadata of documents would entail “descriptions of the administrative, historical and functional character of the records creator(s)” and “descriptions of the records-creating processes” (Cook, 1992:33). In other words, description would not be based on meticulously noting the content and form of every document, but the fonds would reflect an accumulated series exhibiting a “unity based on shared function, activity, form or use” (Ibid.). Within this process provenance is found in the “relationship linking the creator to the record” (Ibid.).

68

For articles that explores these record-creating processes or metadata see Dryden (2003); Wallace (2000) and Hedstrom (2001). Wendy Duff (2001) compares two archival metadata schemes: The International Standards for Archival Description (ISAD(G)) and the Business Acceptable

Communication model (BAC) developed by the University of Pittsburgh Project. McKemmish however points out that “descriptive standards and metadata schema can only ever represent a partial view of the dynamic, complex, and multi-dimensional nature of records, and their rich webs of contextual and documentary relationships” (McKemmish, 2001:354).

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documenting the present for the future (Bearman, 1995). 69 His main premise was thus to turn the archival enterprise from “identifying, acquiring, organizing, maintaining, and making available other people’s ‘old stuff’ to capturing” (Pederson, 1995:440).

Information technologies and electronic records have also transformed South African public records environments (Harris, 1998a:39). David Bearman visited South Africa in 1998, and is one of the primary influences (along with articulators of recordkeeping in Australia) on the commercial records management sector of the National Archives (Harris, 2001/2002:3).70 However, Harris (1999/2000:12) is very critical of this system, pointing out that the record is taken as a stable and impartial document that serves as evidence of process and activity. It does not “problematise its epistemological and ontological assumptions about ‘the record’ ” (Harris, 2000:94). It thus ignores the possibility that records do not only exist as “evidence”, but also as “remembering, forgetting, imagining, falsifying, constructing, translating,

fictionalising, narrating” and that there are “no hard boundaries between text and context, data and metadata, form and content, evidence and memory, ‘the event’ and ‘the events’ recording’” (Harris, 1999/2000:13).