User:Benuski/Archive

For other uses, see User:Benuski/Archive (disambiguation).

An archive (/ˈɑrkaɪv/)is a collection of historical records, as well as the place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the lifetime of a person, family, or organization. The word is derived from the Greek ἀρχή meaning government or order. The word originally developed from the Greek ἀρχεῖον which refers to the home or dwelling of the Archon, in which important official state documents were filed and interpreted under the authority of the Archon. The adjective formed from archive is archival.

In general, archives consist of records that have been selected for permanent or long-term preservation on grounds of their enduring cultural, historical, or evidential value. Archival records are normally unpublished and almost always unique, unlike books or magazines for which many identical copies exist. This means that archival repositories are quite distinct from libraries with regard to their functions and organization, although archival collections can often be found within library buildings.

A person who works in archives is called an archivist. The study and practice of organizing, preserving, and providing access to information and materials in archives is called archival science.

Archivists tend to prefer the term "archives" (with an S) as the correct term to serve as both the singular and plural, since "archive," as a noun or a verb, has acquired meanings related to computer science.

History of Archives

Main article: History of Archives

One of the first archives was discovered in the city of Ebla; the Ebla tablets consist of Sumerian cunieform script and phonetic representations of the previously untranslated Eblaite language. Archives were well developed by the ancient Chinese, the ancient Greeks, and ancient Romans. Modern archival thinking has many roots in the French Revolution. The French National Archives, who possess perhaps the largest archival collection in the world, with records going as far back as A.D. 625, were created in 1790 during the French Revolution from various government, religious, and private archives seized by the revolutionaries.

Users and Use

Historians, genealogists, lawyers, demographers, filmmakers, and others conduct research at archives. The research process at each archive is unique, and depends upon the institution in which the archive is housed. While there are many different kinds of archives, the most recent census of archivists in the United States identified five major types: academic, business (for profit), government, non-profit, and other. There are also four main areas of inquiry involved with archives: material technologies, organizing principles, geographic locations, and tangled embodiments of humans and non-humans. These areas help to further categorize what kind of archive is being created.

Archival Work

Archivists must perform a number of actions upon the records of a person, family, or organization to make them usable by researchers. These records are organized into collections and kept together as a unit; provenance is typically the primary factor that unifies a collection. These actions, as a whole, are often unified under the term "processing." At its most basic, processing requires accessioning the collection and publishing a basic record of the collection, often a MARC record. Other actions that archivists can perform during processing include arrangement, description, preservation, and conservation. Efforts have been made to reduce the amount of time it takes to process archival collections, proposed by such works as "More Product, Less Process." but these efforts have been controversial. Some archivists agree with Greene and Meissner's position and solutions, while others disagree and believe their solutions put too much of a burden on the researchers.

Archives in the Digital World

Born-digital objects

The problem of preserving and making accessible born-digital objects is something with which archivists are currently dealing. Born-digital objects consist of information created in electronic format, as opposed to objects that are digitized by archivists. One method with which archivists are dealing with born-digital objects is the Open Archival Information System reference model. Systems that deal with born-digital objects include Fedora, Greenstone, iRODS, and DSpace, among others.

Web archiving

Main article: Web archiving

The preservation of items created on the Internet, such as web sites, blogs, and social networking sites is another issue with which archivists are dealing. For example, the Library of Congress has acquired the entire collection of publicly available Twitter posts and will make it available for researchers. Also, the Internet Archive crawls websites in order to preserve them and make them available for people who are interested.

Types of Archives

Academic

Charles Sturt University Regional Archives.

Archives in colleges, universities, and other educational facilities are typically housed within a library, and duties may be carried out by an archivist or a librarian. Occasionally, history professors may also run a smaller archive. Academic archives exist to preserve and celebrate the history of their school and academic community. An academic archive may contain items such as papers of former professors and presidents, memorabilia related to school organizations and activities, and items the academic library wishes to remain in a closed-stack setting, such as rare books or thesis copies. Access to the majority of these archives is by appointment only. Users of academic archives are often graduate students and those wishing to view rare or historical documents for research purposes. Many academic archives work closely with alumni relations departments to help raise funds for their library or school. Because of their library setting, a degree certified by the American Library Association is preferred for employment in an academic archive in the United States.

Business (for profit)

Archives located in for-profit institutions are usually those owned by a private business. Examples of prominent business archives in the United States include Coca-Cola (which also owns the separate museum World of Coca-Cola), Procter and Gamble, Motorola Heritage Services and Archives, and Levi Strauss & Co. These corporate archives maintain historic documents and items related to the history of their companies. Business archives serve the purpose of helping their corporations maintain control over their brand by retaining memories of the company's past. Especially in business archives, records management is separate from the historic aspect of archives. Workers in these types of archives may have any combination of training and degrees, from either a history or library background. These archives are typically not open to the public and only used by workers of the owner company, although some will allow approved visitors by appointment. Business archives are concerned with maintaining the integrity of their company, and therefore selective of how their materials may be used.

Government

Government archives include those run on a local and state level as well as those run by the national (or federal) government. Anyone may use a government archive, and frequent users include reporters, genealogists, writers, historians, students, and people wanting information on the history of their home or region. Many government archives are open to the public and no appointment is required to visit.

In the United States, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) maintains central archival facilities in the District of Columbia and College Park, Maryland, with regional facilities distributed throughout the United States. Some city or local governments may have repositories, but their organization and accessibility varies widely. State or province archives typically require at least a bachelor's degree in history for employment, although some ask for certification by test (government or association) as well.

In the UK the National Archives [2], formerly known as the Public Record Office, is the government archive for England and Wales. The National Monuments Record is the public archive of English Heritage. The National Archives of Scotland [3], located in Edinburgh, serve that country while the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland [4] in Belfast is the government archive for Northern Ireland.

A network of local authority-run record offices and archives exists throughout England, Wales and Scotland and holds many important collections, including local government, landed estates, church and business records. Many archives have contributed catalogues to the national Access 2 Archives [5] programme and online searching across collections is possible.

In France, the Directorate of the Archives of France (Direction des Archives de France) in the Ministry of Culture manages the National Archives (Archives nationales) which possess 364 km. (226 miles) of archives as of 2004 (the total length of occupied shelves put next to each other), with original records going as far back as A.D. 625, as well as the departmental archives (archives départementales), located in the préfectures of each of the 100 départements of France, which possess 1,901 km. (1,181 miles) of archives (as of 2004), and also the local city archives, about 600 in total, which possess 449 km. (279 miles) of archives (as of 2004). Put together, the total volume of archives under the supervision of the Directorate of the Archives of France is the largest in the world.

In India the National Archives are located in New Delhi.

In Taiwan the National Archives Administration [6] are located in Taipei.

Most intergovernmental organisations keep their own historical archives. However, a number of European organisations, including the European Commission, choose to deposit their archives with the European University Institute in Florence.

Church

The most famous Church Archives is the Vatican Secret Archive. The collections of the Church Archives include Archdioceses, dioceses and parishes archives in the Roman Catholic and Episcopalian Churches and another kinds of archives in the different denominations of the Christian Churches, manuscripts, Church records, local Church records, photographs, oral histories, audiovisual materials, and architectural drawings.

Non-profit

Non-profit archives include those in historical societies, not-for-profit businesses such as hospitals, and the repositories within foundations. Non-profit archives are typically set up with private funds from donors to preserve the papers and history of specific persons or places. Often these institutions rely on grant funding from the government as well as the private funds. Depending on the funds available, non-profit archives may be as small as the historical society in a rural town to as big as a state historical society that rivals a government archives. Users of this type of archive may vary as much as the institutions that hold them. Employees of non-profit archives may be professional archivists, para-professionals, or volunteers, as the education required for a position at a non-profit archive varies with the demands of the collection's user base.

Other

Some archives defy categorization. There are tribal archives within the Native American nations in North America, and there are archives that exist within the papers of private individuals. Many museums keep archives in order to prove the provenance of their pieces. Any institution or persons wishing to keep their significant papers in an organized fashion that employs the most basic principles of archival science may have an archive. In the 2004 census of archivists taken in the United States, 2.7% of archivists were employed in institutions that defied categorization. This was a separate figure from the 1.3% that identified themselves as self-employed.

Another type of archive is public secrets [7]. This is an interactive testimonial in which women incarcerated in the California State Prison System reveal their stories about what happened to them. The function of the archive is to unfold the stories of the women who want to express themselves and want their stories to be heard. This collection of stories includes the women's direct speeches and also a recording of the women saying their speech.

The archives of an individual may include letters, papers, photographs, computer files, scrapbooks, financial records or diaries created or collected by the individual – regardless of media or format. The archives of an organization (such as a corporation or government) tend to contain other types of records, such as administrative files, business records, memos, official correspondence and meeting minutes.

Standardization

The International Council on Archives has developed a number of standards on archival description including the General International Standard Archival Description ISAD(G). ISAD(G) is meant to be used in conjuction with national standards or as a basis for nations to build their own standards. In the United States, ISAD(G) is implemented through Describing Archives: A Content Standard, popularly known as DACS. In Canada, ISAD(G) is implemented through Rules for Archival Description, also known as RAD.

ISO is currently working on standards.

See also

• Archival informatics
• Archival research
• Archival science
• Archive Fever (book by Jacques Derrida)
• Archivist
• BS 5454
• Collection (museum)
• Computer data storage
• Data proliferation
• Digital preservation
• Discovered text (archaeology)
• Greenstone (software)
• Information repository
• Internet Archive
• International Council on Archives
• List of archives
• Manuscript processing
• Preservation (library and archival science)
• Web archiving
• Database

External links

• UNESCO Archives Portal - over 8000 links worldwide
• International Council on Archives
• InterPARES Project — international research project on the long-term preservation of authentic digital records
• Archivopedia - archives wiki
• Society of American Archivists