14
A. I. DIAMOND
So much for the sorry image of the archivist. Now what are the realities. What are archives and what do archivists do? Most people, if asked what archives are, will say that they are old documents of historical interest, or the records of some person or institution which have value for research purposes.
This is true enough as far as it goes. Many archives, of course, are old and historically interesting, but neither of these attributes is necessary for documents to qualify as archives. For example, an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament, the original instrument, bearing the seal and sign manual of the Sovereign is undoubtedly an archive, and it is so whether it was passed yesterday or five hundred years ago. Its age has nothing to do with its archival quality. And since, as soon as it receives the Royal assent, copies of it are generally published and distributed in their thousands, one could hardly claim that the original itself was of much interest to the historian. It has value, of course. An authenticated Act of Parliament is the final source of Government's authority for certain of its actions; but it is not this either which makes it an archive.
Documents acquire archival quality from the manner in which they have been created and kept. The eminent English authority on archives, Sir Hilary Jenkinson, defines them as follows: "A document which may be said to belong to the class of Archives is one which was drawn up or used in the course of an administrative or executive transaction (whether public or private) of which itself formed a part; and subsequently preserved in their own custody for their own information by the person or persons responsible for that transaction and their legitimate successors”.*
Archives, then, are the totality of the documents produced or received by an office or other agency in the course of its business and which have been retained for action or reference.
It is sometimes supposed that the term "archives" applies specifically, or at any rate more properly, to government records; but this is not the case. The term is equally applicable to the records of banks, insurance houses, churches, clubs and any other forms of association or enterprise. And if it comes to that even families or private individuals may accumulate them. What makes a body of documents archives is not who accumulated it but how it was done.
* Jenkinson, Sir Hilary. "A Manual of Archive Administration." (Percy Lund, Humphries & Co. Ltd., London), p. 11.