This thesis surveys the efforts made by Canadian and American records
administrators, both records managers and archivists, to ensure that records are
created, received, stored, used, preserved, and disposed of in a manner which is both
efficient and effective. Beginning with the French Revolution and continuing to
modern times, it investigates how approaches in North American archival thinking,
government records programs, and applicable records legislation were often flawed
because of fundamental misconceptions of the nature of the records themselves.
The thesis traces how the most widely accepted approach for administering
records, which called for the division of responsibilities amongst records
professionals according to the records' "life status" — active, semi-active, or inactive —
was incorrect because it was not compatible with the reality that records exist as a
conceptual whole and are best administered in a manner which reflects this realization.
The records, which should have been managed as a coherent and complete fonds of an
institution, suffered from these divisions which had eventually led to the evolution of
separate records occupations: those who looked after active records, called records
managers, and those who handled inactive ones, labelled archivists.
What was required was an "integrated" or "unified" approach such as that
articulated by the Canadian archivist Jay Atherton. Like others, he called for the
management of records in a manner which reflected the singular nature of the records,
an approach which did not make arbitrary divisions where none existed, but instead
viewed records from a wider and more complete perspective. Support for this
approach amongst some records administrators was precipitated by a number of
factors, not the least of which were the demands of handling information in modern
society. The thesis concludes by examining what is required for the integrated ideas to
be implemented as part of a practical model in today's institutions. It suggests that for
the best results to be achieved, records administrators will have to learn to work with
others in related information professions, or risk losing the ability to make valid
contributions in the modern information age.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/4106 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Eamer-Goult, Jason Christopher |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
Page generated in 0.0028 seconds