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A. I. DIAMOND
even when the inclination is there, the ability to make sound judgments about what should be preserved in the interests of academic study is often lacking.
Is this to imply that archivists are endowed with a special prescience which enables them infallibly to make the sort of predictions about records which administrators cannot make? No, of course, it is not; but the ability to make consistent and reasonably certain judgments about the research value of archives depends to some extent on a sound knowledge of, and experience in, historiography and research methodology in the person who attempts the business, and these are attributes which archivists may be expected to have if they are properly qualified. Moreover, if an archivist is doing his job properly, he will not rely solely on his own judgment in the selection of records. He will seek the advice of authorities in every academic discipline to which the records he has to consider relate. Even this will not preclude the possibility of mistakes, but it will at least lengthen the odds against them.
In modern governments, where archive services are well developed, the role of archivists in the scheduling of records for disposal is accepted as part of the administrative scheme of things, and generally, well-established lines of communication exist for consultation between archivists and academics in the various fields of study.
I hope that such cooperation will develop between the Public Records Office of Hong Kong and the two Universities. It is doing so already, as a matter of fact. I have had the advice of academic staff on several occasions in the appraisal of records, and I hope that as time goes on, our panel of learned advisors will expand.
Archivists are concerned nowadays not only with the making of disposal schedules but with the execution of them as well.
The prodigious quantities of records produced by archive-making bodies in modern societies and the rising costs of storage for them have combined to encourage the development, particularly by governments, of facilities for shared bulk storage for what are termed "intermediate records".
In the jargon of records management, intermediate records are those which, though no longer in current use by an office, and having no permanent value, are nevertheless required, for legal or