Factors in the administration and use of Australian departmental archives

Abstract

It is one of the great misfortunes of the archivist that the majority of his professional problems are not universal. In fact, his is an occupation which is particularly confined by national boundaries and national traditions. The universality of most natural science is a bye-word; even librarians the world over have the advantages of a common language. But not so the archivists. It is not so much that they lack a means of communication, as that there exist a number of largely domestic languages. That this should be the case is due partly to accidents of development but mainly to the different circumstances, both historical and administrative, by which the archives have been brought into being. Without some means of equating one term with another, the use of familiar words in unfamiliar ways and the description of unfamiliar practices by familiar words creates the danger that some differences will remain more apparent than real while others are more real than is readily apparent. Consequently, ideas and practices cannot travel easily from one group of institutions to another. Show more