Writing on archival arrangement - as with archival writing generally - has featured a number of colourful metaphors and analogies used to convey the spirit of the archivist's mission. Most commonly, the archivist is said to be "the keeper of society's collective memory" - a responsibility to be undertaken only with the greatest objectivity, if one wished to indeed be a keeper, rather than a creator or interpreter. Hence, to the Dutch archivists Muller, Feith and Fruin, archives were comparable to the fossilized skeleton of a dinosaur, to be painstakingly reconstructed by the archivist-as-palaeontologist. And in the late 20th century the prevalent metaphor seems to be that of archival arrangement as archaeology, the practitioner striving to peel back (or plough through heedlessly, depending on one's point of view) the most recent layers to reveal the truths that lie below.

This paper will not be an attempt to document and analyse the use of metaphor in writing in the field of archival studies. The use of scientific metaphors, however, is an accompaniment to an aspect of the theory and methodology of archives that this paper will examine: an increasing concern for objectivity(1) in methodology and practice expressed by writers in this field, as they have attempted to grapple with the meaning, significance and practical implications of the principle of "original order" and its relationship with the more general principle of respect des fonds. To the extent that these methodological principles are, necessarily, a "janus-faced intermediary" between a theory of archives (that is, ideas concerning the characteristics of archival documents and the value that may be derived from them) on the one hand, and the practice of the archival profession, on the other, their content and meaning will change as developments in one sphere inform the other.(2) One of most notable of these developments in archival practice is the application of computer technology, which has facilitated the recording and presentation of documentary and administrative relationships.

Archival theory views the documents produced by a person or organisation in the course of its life as a source of unique - and, it might be added, uniquely objective(3) - information about not only that agency, but also the society of which it is a part. This is because archives, as the theorists say, are "created and received in the course of personal or organisational activity", and are thereby "interrelated as to meaning"; "authentic as to procedure"; and "impartial as to creation".(4) An action such as the creation of a document is invariably affected by considerations of form that are dictated by the legal and social context - the same legal and social context, of course, in which the actors involved in the document's creation exist. By considering a document in broad context, including the complex of relations it possesses with the other documents created by the same entity or "creator", archival theory holds that its informational and probative value is of singular significance. If removed from the documentary context in which it was created - if, when it is no longer of use to its creator, custody of it passes into other hands, and in the process its position within the total body of documents of its creator ( the "fonds") is changed - much of this value, it is thought, may be lost.

Hence, in reaction against the institutional practice that scattered the fonds of private companies, individuals and government agencies across subject categories and other classifications, respect des fonds, as articulated as a principle of archival practice by the French in the mid-19th century, directed the maintenance of archives as discreet bodies of documents associated solely with their creator. This idea had been expressed elsewhere, under other names; the Italians called it metodo storico, for example. However, as developed and expressed elsewhere, particularly, but not exclusively, in Italy, theory concerning the nature of archival documents contained the idea that the preservation of the context of documentary creation required more than assuring that the documents of different creators would not be combined.(5)

According to this additional aspect of the theory of archival fonds, it was thought that archival documents derived their qualities from all of the circumstances of their creation, including their relationships - in space, time, function, activity, and other regards - with the other documents of their creator. Preserving the bond that archives shared by virtue of their common origins in the activities of one creator was only part of the picture. In creating documents a person or organisation carried out myriad activities in the context of many different functions and responsibilities, and logically, such variation in circumstances would be reflected in the significance and meaning of each document. The key to preserving this documentary context was the preservation of the order or structure of the fonds - the patterns of creation and use that formed through time, manifesting interrelationships between document, activity, function and form, an appreciation of which was essential to realising the full value of archives.

Stated in such terms, as a mere theoretical pronouncement on the nature of archival documents, the principle of original order - as official methodology of the 1990's has come to consider it(6) -- appears to be a logical extension of the ideas underlying respect des fonds. Historically, as methodology - as a principle, based on theory, which is used to inspire, direct and shape practice - it has received different interpretations. Such interpretations have tended to produce great potential for confusion: Was it a principle solely applicable to arrangement of archival documents that, during their active life, were subjected to an integrated and centralised system of arrangement encompassing the fonds of many independent agencies, as in the case of the registry systems of Northern Europe, for example?(7) Or was it independent of a central registry context, being not merely an aspect of administrative theory but instead grounded in a theory of document creation more fundamental in nature and of much broader application?

In Muller, Feith and Fruin's 1898 manual of archival arrangement and description original order is advocated in the context of the registry system. In the Dutch manual the fonds (the "archief") was "the whole of the written documents, drawings and printed matter, officially received or produced by an administrative body or one of its officials".(8) The registry would appear to have been integral to this process, an arm or organ of or within the creator, that interprets function, action and documentation relationships so as to create the patterns that the principles of arrangement are to respect and preserve. Under the registry system fonds possessed a backbone, a main series of documents to which, once restored, most other documents could be related and grouped as subsidiary series.

Critics of the manual's ideas on original order asserted that this concentration on the restoration of the registry order of archives was to engage in museum work, valuing the original order as an end in itself, and that the original order was often much less useful to the conduct of research than arrangement by subject. . Not so, countered the authors; while an organisation of records by subject heading may be helpful to some users for some purposes, an arrangement of archival documents "according to their organisation in a registry provides a satisfactory basis for making searches under an innumerable variety of subjects and can be consistently applied."(9) Furthermore, under this system, they said, arrangement is based on the work of registrars, who had worked with the documents and had understood their nature, and whose practice was designed to meet the requirements of preservation and use.

In the Dutch manual, and within the context of the central registry system, original order appears to have referred, in a general and all-encompassing way, to the pattern of arrangement within the fonds.(10) Similarly, Hilary Jenkinson wrote that arrangement within the fonds or "archive group" (or sub-group) required one to "get back to the original order designed for our Archives by their compiler, the ordre primitif".(11) T.R. Schellenberg, however, used "arrangement by provenance" or "principle of provenance" at this level of analysis, reserving "original order" for arrangement within series, or what he terms "filing order".

Within the record group or subgroup (the latter seeming to designate a administrative division with sufficient independence to justify status as an independent creator for the purposes of arrangement by provenance, i.e., by administrative origin) there were to be records of a single provenance. The archivist, Schellenberg said, must not mix the records of one group or subgroup with those of another. Agency by agency, bureau by bureau, office by office - by administrative division or subgroup -- is the guiding principle of arrangement.(12) Within the group or subgroup were record series, the discrete outpourings of administrative units; they were not to be broken up into subject or other subjective categories, for to do so would violate both the principle of provenance and of original order.(13)

But, ultimately, arrangement need only respect - if you will - "parallel" provenance:

The principle of provenance has no bearing on the placement of series in relation to one another. The way series are arranged in relation to one another is important mainly from the point of view of their usability, not from the point of view of their integrity as evidence of organisation and function.(14)

There were apparently no horizontal linkages, no way in which file units adhered to each other as series in ways significant other than by virtue of the connection each possessed independently, along vertical lines of authority, function, and activity to and through the whole. There could be related series, but these were not "organic" relationships. It was as if the children of a family were bound together only by the fact of their common parentage, not, additionally, by their bonds to each other as siblings of varying age and sex.

Schellenberg did recognise the possibility of a connection between file-level arrangement or filing order and activity and function, and thought that logically, if the original filing order within a series is reflective of "organic activity" - if "it has any value" in this regard - "the original order should by all means be preserved."(15) But it is difficult to reconcile much of what he says elsewhere with this recognition (and this would include his treatment of series arrangement discussed above). For example, the principal of original order, said Schellenberg, was founded on the registry principle, and "(t)his principle can be applied whenever records are properly arranged before their release to the archival institution (as they are in German registry offices)." But he goes on:

In most modern filing systems, the original order given record items contributes little to an understanding of organic activity, and an archivist should therefore preserve the order only if it is useful... (N)o modern (filing) system reflects fully the activities of the body that produced the records organised by it... (T)he arrangement of the individual record items does not contribute to an understanding of the activity that is reflected in the series a whole... Methods of filing are unimportant to an archivist, except from the point of view of their utility in making records accessible...(16)

Presumably, other than the work involved in applying a rational and purposive (and hence subjective) filing order to a series, there was nothing lost if the order in which the files were kept while they were active was lost irretrievably. The series was composed of pieces of non-organic material that would fit together many different ways (filing system) to form a single unit. But, if the connection of each series to the living organism (administrative context) and, in turn, the connection of the organism to the environment (the documentary context and the actual activities as performed, i.e., historical fact or the actual interactions of the organism with the society of which it was a part) were to be maintained, the material of which any given series was composed could not be allowed to mix with that of any other series.

Schellenberg's series - which were based, in order of descending priority, on arrangement, record type, and activity - do not appear to have allowed for the inter-series relationships that might be discerned where the links between administrative structure, function and activity are ambiguous. Schellenberg's critics - their number, it seems, are legion - have suggested that the identification of series by documentary form suggests the possibility of the designation of false series and, even by Schellenberg's standard, the violation of the principle of original order.

The designation of series based on documentary form or record type may also serve to break apart "natural" series based on function.(17) Archival documents "follow" administrative function - they acquire their significant characteristics through their inter-relatedness within the context of creation in activity linked to certain functions.(18) The important relationships between administration and documents are formed by function, and function therefore must be the lens through which we understand archival documents. According to Dan Zelenyj, today's definitions of series, owing much to Schellenberg, are overly broad. We should be concerned about this, because incorrect designation of series has two effects, the first unfortunate, the second rather tragic: firstly, we will unable to understand the picture that archives project because our view is out of focus (and we will be ascribing to the information or evidence based on the archives a probative value that it did not possess, insofar as the presentation or description assumed a substantial alteration to original order); secondly, if incorrect designation results in the irreparable physical alteration of original order (by a failure to record the physical arrangement of documents at the time of accessioning) the information that might have been gleaned through them will be lost forever. Unless we are able to perceive the original order of the documents correctly (which, it must be said, may not be possible, as so many commentators have been at pains to point out), before arranging them, their full value as archives will not be realised.(19)

Such post-Schellenberg archival theory points to a kind of document archaeology in which, if one's methodology is less than scrupulously attuned to rigorous standards of proof, valuable knowledge will be lost. The practice of physical arrangement of documents, like archaeology, is a destructive process; as one digs through the layers, the context is destroyed. Peter Horsman counsels the investigation and analysis of original order not as a two-dimensional concept attuned to the point of document creation, but as process of uncovering all of the variations in internal structure that the fonds may have featured in its active existence.(20)

Pursuing the archaeology metaphor further (to a kind of post-archaeology of the future, where sites are explored not by digging through the layers with pick and shovel, but with advanced electronic imaging equipment) the application of respect des fonds and original order has come under fire for being insufficiently attuned toward the preservation of the full value of archives. If, says Debra Barr(21), we counsel the restoration of the original order, do we not risk obscuring or even destroying valuable evidence of organic activity taking place after the point in time at which the original order came into existence? This risk becomes real, say Barr, where there are multiple accessions from the same creator. If the policy of an institution is to establish original order for a fonds, and to physically arrange the documents in accordance with it, there is a tendency for archivists receiving subsequent accessions to inter-file the documents of the latter into the series already established. In the process, unless the latter accession is subjected to item-by-item numbering to record the order of the documents at the time of their deposit - something often dispensed with for lack of labour resources - the information contained in accumulation taking place after the point in time at which original order is restored will be lost.(22)

Underlying Barr's point is an even greater emphasis on the need for an objective methodology for the arrangement of archival documents. Her conclusion - that respect for original order is insufficient, that to preserve evidence of all organic activity inherent in archival documents we must instead respect the order of documents throughout their active life - necessarily implies that accession order should be kept physically intact; all arrangement should be performed in an intellectual or "virtual" sense only, to prevent the destruction of information.

The second implication or corollary of Barr's position is of greater significance. It is that respect des fonds, as a methodological principle - at least as interpreted and espoused by Michel Duchein and others - must be modified. Following, in essence, the direction taken by Peter Scott and his followers in Australia, she has given priority to the series and the natural and organic order within it. Natural document series may have multi-creator provenance. Functional series - again, established only "on paper" - are not broken up in response to shifts in external structure(23), not even if this involves the transfer of their functional essence to a different creator. By following the series - by examining through its history the various linkages with administrative structure and successive document orderings, using descriptive techniques and finding aids that can relate multi-creator provenance - rather than dismembering it, the amount of information drawn from it can, say Barr and others, be maximised.(24)

The concept of the fonds as a an "organic" entity consisting of the documents of a single creator, the principle of document order as a methodological concept relating to a point in time rather than through time and, most importantly, a habit of thinking of the document arrangement as first and foremost a physical process, have perhaps acted together to obscure more fundamental principles, concerning the nature of archival accumulation and accumulations, that are in fact held in broad consensus. It appears that original order as a concept based in the registry principle, and "original order" as a term referring to natural patterns of archival accumulation that are not manifestations of a discreet and overarching ordering function (order imposed) but rather of activity itself (inherent or natural order), are quite distinct and quite incompatible. Schellenberg's writing reflects a kind of lip service to the latter while adopting the former as paramount and overriding. Later writing by Terry Eastwood may represent an internalisation of the natural order idea and a coming to grips with its implications. As our methods of analysis and presentation of archives become more sophisticated, particularly under the influence of technology, arrangement principles as understood in the past will necessarily evolve to reflect changes in the values emphasised.

*  *  *

Notes

1 I have in mind here a sensitivity toward bias and high standards for the justification of belief.

2 Trevor Livelton, Archival Theory, Records, and the Public (Lanham, Maryland & London: The Society of American Archivists and The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1996): 33

3 Not, as Terry Eastwood says, "that their creators and authors are free from prejudice", rather, the circumstances of their creation tend to rule out an attention to one's historical legacy. Terry Eastwood, "What is Archival Theory and Why is it Important?," Archivaria 37 (Winter 1994) : 127.

4 Ibid. 127-128. See also Heather MacNeil, "Archival Theory and Practice: Between Two Paradigms," Archivaria 37 (Winter 1994) : 9

5 See, for example, Livelton, 28-29

6 Bureau of Canadian Archivists. Planning Committee on Descriptive Standards (Ottawa: The Bureau, 1990)

7 As I understand it, the "registry principle"( registraturprinzip) dictated that records produced by a particular unit of government were to be kept, in the archival institution, in the order they were maintained in when they were active.

8 Quoted in T.R. Schellenberg, Modern Archives (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1956): 12.

9 ibid. 176

10 ibid.

11 Hilary Jenkinson, A Manual of Archive Administration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922), 87

12 T.R. Schellenberg, The Management of Archives (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1965), 95

13 ibid. 95

14 ibid. 100

15 ibid. 100-101

16 ibid. 101-102

17 Dan Zelenyj, "Linchpin Imperilled: The Functional Interpretation of Series and the Principle of Respect des Fonds," Archivaria 42 (Fall 1996): 126-36

18 ibid. 129

19 ibid. 130

20 Peter Horsman, "Taming the Elephant: An Orthodox Approach to the Principle of Provenance," In The Principle of Provenance: Report from the First Stockholm Conference on the Archival Principle of Provenance, 2-3 September 1993 (Stockholm: Swedish National Archives, 1994)

21 "Protecting Provenance: Response to the Report of the Working Group on Description at the Fonds Level," Archivaria 28 (Summer 1989), 141-145

22 ibid. 143

23 "Introduction." In The Archival Fonds: From Theory to Practice, ed. Terry Eastwood (Ottawa: Bureau of Canadian Archivists, 1992),

24 Colin Smith, "A Case for Abandonment of 'Respect'," Archives and Manuscripts 14 (No.1) 154-168; 15 (No.2) 20-28.

Robert Edwards has degrees in history and law from the University of Alberta. Before entering the Master of Archival Studies program at UBC in 1999, he worked as a labour lawyer and a freelance writer and editor.

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© 2001 Archives Association of British Columbia