4 - Archives management

Summary

Introduction

The definition of archives given in Chapter 1 is ‘records of one organization, family or individual, selected for permanent preservation because they provide key evidence of the entity's history’. Chapter 1 also covered the various media that records – and therefore archives – come in, the different types of archive repositories, what working with archives involves and the wider context, together with sources of information and support. It also gave an overview of what archive users and researchers might be looking for in the archives. This chapter will build on the concepts and principles articulated in Chapter 1, continuing to follow the journey of archival records as they move away from the main body of records that will be destroyed and begin to be managed differently and separately in order to safeguard them for posterity.

In managing archives we are seeking to keep a comprehensive record, which provides the evidence of what happened and why, for the future, for ever. This requires the identification of a set of documentation which gives the history of the individual, family, organization or community. We also need to look after them in a way that gives them the best possible chance of surviving the ravages of the environment and human interference over time. It also requires making the records available, publicizing their existence and interpreting them to make them more accessible to more people. These three aspects of managing archives all need to be in place to do the job properly, but it is also important to be able to advocate and justify the resources expended, because caring for archives over time is an expensive proposition.

Chapter 4 is organized to follow the work process that needs to be in place to manage archives from the time we first start to think about taking archives into custody. It does not cover preservation, the aspect of managing archives which addresses the archives’ accommodation, environment and handling procedures in order to preserve them, as this is treated separately in Chapter 5. We start with the collecting policy which dictates the overall content of the archive, through acquisition of archives and accessioning or logging them in.