Australian Society of Archivists

Special issue - Personal Recordkeeping: Issues and Perspectives

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Chris Hurley
Beating the French
This paper addresses the questions 'An Inclusive or Exclusive Profession? Have collecting archivists and their concerns been marginalised by the mainstream profession? If so, why, do we deserve it, who or what suffers or benefits as a result, should we do anything about it and, if so, what?' The author calls for a return by collecting archivists to the fundamental archival mission of keeping records (‘beating the French'). He concludes by proposing a parallel Pittsburgh Project to identify and articulate the functional requirements for socio-historical evidence.

Adrian Cunningham
Beyond the Pale?
This paper addresses the questions 'An Inclusive or Exclusive Profession? Have collecting archivists and their concerns been marginalised by the mainstream profession? If so, why, do we deserve it, who or what suffers or benefits as a result, should we do anything about it and, if so, what? The author presents evidence of the marginalisation of the concerns of collecting archivists in recent archival discourse and sets this trend within the context of the development of the archival profession in Australia. He concludes by calling upon collecting archivists to participate more actively in the archival discourse.

Sue McKemmish
Evidence of me
The Pittsburgh Project researchers focused on defining the functional requirements for recordkeeping in a corporate context, and developing means to satisfy them through a blend of policy, system design and implementation strategies that would enable compliance with emerging standards for 'business acceptable communications' (records). Part of their brief, particularly associated with the research of Wendy Duff has been to discover the 'literary warrant for the functional requirements ‑ specifically to determine whether the credibility of particular functional requirements can be established by reference to authoritative sources such as the law and the standards and the best practices of related professionals, e.g. lawyers, auditors and information technologists, as codified in their literature.' This article explores the nature of personal recordkeeping and broad social mandates for its role in witnessing to individual lives, and constituting part of society's collective memory and cultural identity. It posits that social mandates for personal recordkeeping may be found in sociology and in creative and reflective writing, and provides some examples of how the 'urge to witness', the 'instinct to account for ourselves', the need to leave behind 'the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories', are represented there. It also considers a range of personal recordkeeping behaviours and the role archivists play in carrying a personal archive beyond the boundaries of an individual life and into the collective archives ‑ how evidence of me becomes evidence of us.

Richard J. Cox
The Record in the Manuscript Collection
This essay, written from the North American perspective, posits a single idea about the focus by archivists on personal papers: the vast majority of personal and family papers are records with the same organic, orderly nature deriving from functions and activities as institutional records. Yet this simple idea remains a major intellectual problem in the United States, and perhaps, elsewhere.

Graeme Powell
The Collecting of Personal and Private Papers in Australia
This paper looks briefly at the history of collecting of personal and private papers by libraries and archives in Australia. It then analyses the 3 153 entries for personal papers in the Guide to collections of manuscripts relating to Australia, as well as data in other guides and directories, and suggests some strengths and imbalances in the holdings of public repositories. It concludes with a few general comments on the value of personal papers and the formidable task faced by a relatively small number of collecting archives in documenting the major issues and activities in Australian society.

Gavan McCarthy & Tim Sherratt
Mapping Scientific Memory ‑ Understanding the role of recordkeeping in scientific practice
How do scientists document their research? As electronic means of communication become the norm, this question has taken on special urgency. If we do not understand the process of recordkeeping within the sciences, we are in danger of losing our scientific memory ‑ with severe legal, financial and cultural consequences. This article introduces the connection between scientific practice and the recordkeeping process, indicating how little we know of the technological, administrative and cultural dimensions of this relationship and how it has changed over time. Archival research that analyses this connection will enable the development of strategies to deal with current and future problems. But how can we fund this research?

Paul Dalgleish
The Appraisal of Personal Records of Members of Parliament in Theory and Practice
The Australian Archives has an established records evaluation and disposal program incorporating well developed appraisal criteria and appraisal methodology. Its aim is to ensure that valuable Commonwealth records are preserved and records of temporary value are destroyed when they are no longer required by the public and the Commonwealth government. This disposal regime has been extensively applied to the records of Commonwealth departments and agencies but hitherto not to the personal records created and accumulated by members of Federal Parliament and senior Commonwealth public servants. In recent years the average size of collections of personal records received by the Australian Archives from these depositors has been increasing substantially. In response to this trend the Australian Archives has recently taken steps to ensure that its personal records resources are concentrated on those records of proven enduring value. This article explores a number of issues of theory and practice which the application of appraisal and disposal methodology to personal papers has raised.

Margaret Southcott, Roger Andre & Neil Thomas
Theory, Practice and Pragmatism: Arrangement and description of personal papers in the Mortlock Library of South Australiana
This article looks at how the practice in the Mortlock Library sits with the basic archival theory of respect des fond and original order, and the extent to which practice has been modified, both in light of professional discussion in Australia since 1954 and the expediencies imposed by pragmatism and institutional imperatives. Two case studies then look at the arrangement and description of two record groups in the context of the preceding discussion.

Maryanne Dever
Reading Other People's Mail
This article is about passion and prurience, about those who write love letters and the scholars who subsequently wish to read them. Focusing on the secret eight year relationship between Australian writers Marjorie Barnard (1897‑1987) and Frank Dalby Davison (1893‑1970), it examines some of the practical and textual difficulties that the scholar confronts in attempting to trace an intimate relationship through the fragments Of correspondence which survive in public collections. It confronts some of the interpretive limits that time and distance impose upon individual letters, as well is suggesting some new reading strategies for literary correspondence.

Review Article

Adrian Cunningham
The Mysterious Outside Reader

Review Commentary

Judy English-Ellis
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protocols for Archives

 

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