Summary

A key concept in the archival environment regards the role of records and recordkeeping. Both historically and today, records and recordkeeping have been used to preserve memory, transmit information, serve as evidence and enable the accumulation of knowledge and the management of monumental social and material undertakings that transcend localized societies and cultures (EGAD, 2016). This concept is highly relevant to the Records in Context - Conceptual Model, with the model aiming to cater to a broad range of recordkeeping practitioners working with a broad range of records. Specifically, the model must be flexible enough to apply in different contexts where records serve different roles, but the model must also be explicit and fixed so that standardisation can occur and that the standards are easy to understand and use.

Details

The Records in Context: A Conceptual Model for Archival Description, Consultation Draft v0.1 (2016) explores this concept, examining the history and role of records and recordkeeping:

"The making, use, and keeping of records began approximately 4000 years before the invention of writing. The earliest evidence of record keeping coincided with the emergence of agriculture in Mesopotamia around 8000 BCE. Tokens of various shapes were used to represent both quantities and kinds of agricultural products. Fixing this information in enduring forms made it possible to extend the limits of human memory and make the information reliably recoverable.

With the advent of writing, record keeping further enabled the accumulation of memory and knowledge, and thereby enabled the development and management of large, complex social structures and monumental collective undertakings.* The invention of writing in the late fourth millennium BCE coincided with the rapid emergence of city-states, of complex social hierarchies, of hierarchies of authority and power, and of highly differentiated labor tied to one's position in the social hierarchy. Record making and keeping emerged together with increasingly organized, large, ranked groups of individuals fulfilling different roles, with the former playing an essential role in enabling the ongoing development of the latter. With the advent of written language, the roles and purposes of record making expanded, as the range and depth of what could be recorded and communicated vastly exceeded the limited semantic repertoire of tokens.

The bond between records and the ongoing development of ever more complex social and material human existence represents a continuous history from the eighth millennium BCE down to the present day. Both peaceful and hostile relations among different communities produced an increasingly global social and documentary network, since human activity and records have been and continue to be inextricably intertwined. Records emerge within a social and documentary context, and the immediate context is itself within a broader spatial and temporal context.

The primary function of records and record keeping, the enabling of highly organized, large-scale social and material existence, has remained more or less constant over history. In particular, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries archives were considered primarily "arsenal de l'authorité" and were jealously kept and used almost exclusively in the interest of political and administrative authorities. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries not only current but also historical archives were sometimes classified according to topics and subject rather than preserving the arrangement that emerged in and documented the context of creation and use. With the emergence of antiquarian and historical interest in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe, records became valuable for more than their immediate utility, as after their practical usefulness was exhausted they become useful as historical evidence. The nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of nation-states, national archives, and modern history that emphasized narratives based on reliable evidence. It was at this time that it was recognized that arrangement based on pertinence, while it may benefit certain types of practical and even antiquarian interests, diminished if not destroyed the inherent interrelations and interdependence of records, and thereby diminished their evidentiary value and undermined scholarly understanding and interpretation. Such practices de-contextualized records. The establishment of the Principle of Provenance was intended to correct these practices" (EGAD, 2016, pp. 3-4).

Related entries

Published resources

Reports

• ICA Experts Group on Archival Description, Records in Context: A Conceptual Model for Archival Description, Consultation Draft v0.1 September 2016, International Council on Archives, Paris, September 2016, 116 pp. Also available at https://www.ica.org/en/egad-ric-conceptual-model. Details