Libraries, archives and records management all face daunting challenges in the next decade as the information age firmly takes hold. These challenges include the ability to acquire, preserve and make accessible information in electronic form, a pressing need to preserve deteriorating paper-based holdings, a continuing need for storage space for growing collections, and the availability to users of records of the holdings of each repository. The three disciplines of librarian, archivist and records manager have an intertwined history, although they have diverged and converged at different times. The effect of the marriage of computing and telecommunications technology is producing information in combinations of media which are once again forcing the convergence of these disciplines, and great benefit can accrue from closer collaboration amongst them: but in order to benefit from cooperation each needs to understand more clearly, and respect more fully, the traditions, theories and functions of the others.
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References
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It is important to define these terms as used in archives and libraries. Libraries use the term ‘collection’ to refer either to accumulated holdings, or to a particular group of records, which may be artificially grouped by the library as a ‘special collection,’ or to denote an organic archive, such as the ‘John Doe collection.’ Archives use the term to refer to an artificially arranged group of items which originated from different sources, for example, ‘photographs of sailing ships.’ They use the term ‘accumulation’ or ‘holdings’ for their total holdings and also for the material they have from a particular fonds, for example, the holdings of the Department of the Treasury. The term ‘repository’ is also used by archives to denote total holdings, but it can also refer to the archives as an institution. Unfortunately, neither libraries nor archives are consistent in the use of any of these terms, leading to considerable confusion. In this paper we use the term ‘holdings’ to denote the holdings of a repository, ‘collections’ for the holdings of a library, and ‘holdings’ or ‘accumulations’ as generic terms for both.
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It is indicative of the traditional rivalry of the two disciplines, that in neither Jackson'sLibraries and librarianship in the West (Ref. 6), nor James Thompson's, A history of the principles of librarianship (London: Clive Bingley; Hamden, Conn., Linnet Books, 1977) do the terms ‘archives’ or ‘archivist’ appear in the index, and are mentioned only in passing in the text. Yet both professions and institutions had a common past at least until the Renaissance, and the same institutions and persons (Assurbanipal, Alexandria, Abelard, Lombard, etc.) are given equal space in the histories of each.
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For historical, legal and cultural reasons, Quebec follows more closely the French archival tradition, although it is also influenced to some extent by English North American practices. This places Canada squarely in the middle between the American and European archival traditions and provides an interesting challenge in the development of a cohesive nationwide Canadian archival system, but one which may ultimately benefit international cooperation.
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Evidentiary and contextual value can be determined by the answer to four questions: Why was the material created? What was the environment in which it was created? How was it created? What was the result? The answers to these questions provide the evidentiary and contextual value of fonds, and their subsidiary series or files of records.
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Ref. 16, p. 2. A major confusion between library and archival terminology arises from the interpretation of the term ‘creator.’ While archivists use the term synonymously with ‘provenance’, libraries use it to mean ‘author.’ Archivists also use provenance, imprecisely, to mean the history of custody, which is not in all cases the same as the creator, because although the agency that accumulated and organized the records (in the archival sense, the creator) is not always the same body that housed the records during their entire life cycle.
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Ref. 16, p.1. ‘Fonds’ (or its equivalent) is used in French, German, Italian and Spanish, and roughly equates to the British term ‘archive group’ and the US ‘record group.’ For further information see: WalnePeter, (ed.) Dictionary of archival terminology / Dictionnaire de terminologie archivistique: English and French with equivalents in Dutch, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. 2nd ed. rev.München: K.G. Saur, 1988. (ICA Handbooks Series, Vol. 7.)
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