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The Management Team and Archival Appraisal
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Lambert, James |
| Copyright Year | 2005 |
| Abstract | In appraising documents, the archivist must aim for a “just” selection of an institution’s recorded information. In Edgar Morin’s words, this means a selection which makes the link between “precision,” “fairness,” a document’s “dying a natural death,” and its “being forever forgotten due to cultural selection.” Since an institution can be conceived, built, and perceived in different ways, selection of information should be able to mirror these different views of reality. It is only by a “just” selection of the institution’s recorded information that the management of the institution can find in its archives the “meaningful vestiges” which give a sense to current reality and which inform the road to the future. Speaking at a GIRA (Groupe interdisciplinaire de recherche en archivistique) symposium on archives in 1990, Jacques Boucher stated that, in respect to the contents of institutional records, managers “cannot, should not, see everything, know everything.” He added that “the volume of information a manager must process invariably causes a critical problem ... and archivists must assume a leadership role to hold in check the wave of paper that engulfs us [managers].” That archivists would accept this invitation, which resembles a cry for help, seems self-evident. However, the subject matter discussed in this article is not aimed at defining the precise criteria needed for selecting information as requested by Boucher. Rather, the article will attempt to outline a number of general principles that can be followed in order to ensure a “just” selection of recorded information. A few years ago during a discussion with Henri Atlan on the subject of the just selection of information, Edgar Morin made the following comments: A vast number of important documents disappear or disintegrate. This is unjust because it is not right. There are also important works and thoughts that may never come to fruition. This is unjust because it is not fair. Things are unjust from the point of view of rightness and things are unjust from the point of view of equity! The term “selection” can become atrocious like at Auschwitz. Certainly, sooner or later, all is doomed to be forgotten. However, there is a forgetting that results from natural death and a forgetting imposed by cultural selection. Archival appraisal for the purposes of selection is necessarily a cultural act because it implies the assigning of value. At the same time, the vast majority of documents created retain, after a period of time, only a theoretical or limited value, at least for their creator; their disposal, from his or her perspective, constitutes a natural death. Natural death and cultural selection are not, there3 Jacques Boucher, “L’administrateur et l’archiviste: au-dela de l’acces, l’intelligibilite des documents,” in Groupe interdisciplinaire de recherche en archivistique (GIRA), La place de l’archivistique dans la gestion de l’information: perspectives de recherche, Symposium en archivistique, Archives nationales du Quebec a Montreal, 2–3 February 1990, pp. 146, 149. 4 Henri Atlan and Edgar Morin, “Selection, rejection (Dialogue),” Communications 49 (Special thematic issue entitled “La memoire ou l’oubli”) (1989), pp. 125–35. The Management Team and Archival Appraisal 111 fore, always mutually exclusive. As well archives should be capable of being, as Felix Torres said of public history, “adjustable mirrors,” adaptable to the needs of those who use or will use them, because archives have differing and sometimes opposing values for users. In Images of Organization, Gareth Morgan uses various metaphors to demonstrate how the phenomenon we call an organization can be simultaneously conceived, built, and perceived in different manners, even from the inside. “Thus a person in a dingy factory may find obvious credibility in the idea that organizations are instruments of domination, while a manager in a comfortable office may be more enthusiastic about understanding the organization as a kind of organism faced with the problem of survival, or as a pattern of culture and subculture.” There comes a time, however, when organizations, like societies, as Jacques Mathieu observed, “reach a common point where all stakeholders converge, despite their differing interests in the nature of documents or in the way in which those documents are created or used. Each stakeholder subscribes in varying and changeable degrees to a cultural system. No one can avoid this crossroads. It is here that objectives and current cultural and human preoccupations meet.” The common cultural system that constitutes an organization, regardless of how the organization is perceived, must be reflected in the most “just” way possible by its archives. These must serve the function of an adjustable mirror of the organization, flexible to the needs of all users. Finally, it is the potential use of archives – for whatever purpose – which gives them their value. This use must be seen in a very broad sense. As Jacques Mathieu stated: “The relation to the past resembles more a search for meaning than a search for knowledge.” Among other functions, archives mediate the relation to the past; their use facilitates the search for meaning. Here Jacques Boucher, the administrator, joins with the historian when he states: “We must offer the historian the elements already identified as needed to understand the system, its actors, its dynamics. When making documents available, archivists do not do their work properly if they do not provide the keys that will enable the user to understand 5 Felix Torres, “Retour vers l’avenir: l’histoire dans l’entreprise,” in Maurice Hamon and Felix Torres, eds., Memoire d’avenir. L’histoire dans l’entreprise (Paris, 1987), p. 38. 6 Gareth Morgan, Images of Organization (Thousand Oaks, CA, c1997), pp. 340–41. 7 Jacques Mathieu, “Les mediations du passe: a la recherche d’un carrefour,” in Jacques Mathieu, ed., Les dynamismes de la recherche au Quebec (Sainte-Foy, 1991), p. 51. 8 In Images of Organization, Morgan may go so far as to say that when there is no real common cultural system, at least none that is identifiable, no organizational metaphor is authoritative. We cannot explore that notion in this article. We can only establish that archives must offer evidence as fairly as possible on the phenomenon known as the organization, regardless of the image conveyed. 9 Mathieu, “Les mediations du passe,” p. 56. |
| Starting Page | 109 |
| Ending Page | 117 |
| Page Count | 9 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Volume Number | 59 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/download/12503/13626 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
