Address:

 

Department of Media Studies
(Archives and Information Studies)
University of Amsterdam 

 

Turfdraagsterpad 9

 

NL 1012 XT AMSTERDAM

The Netherlands

Phone and voicemail        + 31 20 525 2013
Fax                                 +31 20 525 4599

E-mail ketelaar@uva.nl


What is archivistics or archival science?

Archival science is a science in the European sense of Wissenschaft. To avoid, however, confusion with the natural sciences in the Anglo-Saxon meaning, I personally use the term archivistics, being the equivalent to the Dutch archivistiek, the German Archivistik, the French archivistique, the Italian and Spanish archivistica

Records are always created and used on account of work-processes and actions that give the archives their context and structure. These elements determine the form of the documents. Archivistics focuses itself on context, structure, and form as determined by these processes and not on the contents of the document.

Archivistics is concerned with basic questions as: what makes a society or an organization create and maintain records and archives the way it does and will a better understanding of the way people in organizations create and maintain records and archives enable us to make statements about an efficient and effective way of creating records?1 We therefore look at societies, organizations and people that create archives. This, I have named social and cultural archivistics. Its object is the continuum of records creation, processing, and use.

Traditionally, the object of archival science was the body of archives once they had crossed the threshold of the repository. The archivist used to be a mere custodian or keeper, at the receiving end, dependent upon what the administration had created and passed on.

But recently the archivist's focus has shifted from the inactive stage of the life of recorded information to the front-end of the records continuum. There, he or she has a contribution to make even before documents are captured by a record-keeping system. To be able to develop the information strategy and the record-keeping system of an organization, the archivistics professional has to understand the way people create and maintain records and archives. To arrive at such an understanding, one should also take into account the stage that precedes archiving. That is what I have called recently: archivalization - the conscious or unconscious choice (determined by social and cultural factors) to consider something worth archiving.2

Archiving and archivalization are influenced by social, religious, cultural, political and economic contexts. These may vary in any given time and in any given place. That challenges archivistics to be a comparative science.3 Comparative archivistics is more than treating and teaching a subject from an international and multicultural perspective, since it asks for ethnography followed by ethnology, for 'what' followed by 'why'. Comparative research should be carried out in the present, cross-cultural and cross-societal, but also in the past.

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1 Frank G. Burke, The future course of archival theory in the United States, American Archivist 44 (1981) 42-43.

 

2 F.C.J. Ketelaar, Archivalisering en archivering. Rede uitgesproken bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van hoogleraar in de archiefwetenschap aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op vrijdag 23 oktober 1998 (Samsom, Alphen aan den Rijn 1998); Eric Ketelaar, Archivalisation and Archiving, Archives and manuscripts 27 (1999) 54-61; Eric Ketelaar, Archivistics Research Saving the Profession, American Archivist 63 (2000) 322-340.

 
3 Eric Ketelaar, The difference best postponed? Cultures and comparative archival science, Archivaria 44 (1997) 142-148,  repr. in P.J. Horsman – F.C.J. Ketelaar – T.H.P.M. Thomassen (eds.), Naar een nieuw paradigma in de archivistiek. Jaarboek 1999 Stichting Archiefpublicaties (Stichting Archiefpublicaties, ’s-Gravenhage 1999) 21-27.