Resources

Understanding and Using Archives
(this guide is provided courtesy of the Australian Society of Archivists Inc)

Knowing what information is available, where to find it and how to extract it from the places where it resides, are skills that seem to be more and more important these days.

Archives are among the information resources that are available to answer the questions we wish to ask. We may wish to find out (for example) how and when our grandparents arrived in Australia, why a particular government decision was made, what Banjo Patterson thought of Henry Lawson, or the nature of responses to the AIDS epidemic. We may be pursuing a family history hobby, working on an academic research project, documenting a legal claim, writing a book. Whatever the motivation for the research interest, it is possible that the information we seek is to be found in archives.

This leaflet has been prepared by the Australian Society of Archivists Inc (ASA) to assist researchers who are unfamiliar with archives so that they can make the best possible use of archives in their research.

The leaflet explains what archives are, why they are different from other sorts of research information, and what implications this has for undertaking successful research.

What are archives?

Archives are documents made or received and accumulated by a person or organisation in the course of the conduct of affairs and preserved because of their continuing value.

The word 'Archives' (with a capital 'A') is also used to mean the building or agency responsible for caring for the archives.

All individuals and organisations accumulate documents (or records). Individuals and families accumulate household bills and accounts, family letters and photographs, insurance policies and bank statements. Organisations accumulate official letters received and sent, notes from one person to another within the organisation, financial and personnel records, minutes of meetings and so on.

Documents (and therefore archives) need not be written on paper. They could be films and videotapes, audio cassettes, computer records, maps and plans, photographs.

Not all such documents survive. Most personal and family documents, for example, are discarded when they are no longer of use. Documents that end up as archives may have been deliberately selected for their continuing value, by archivists or by the organisation or person that accumulated them, or they may have survived quite by chance. Not all documents originally accumulated will become archives.

How are archives different?

Archives share some unusual properties that set them apart from other categories of information. To make the best use of archives, and to help develop research competency, it is important to understand these properties.

• Uniqueness
  Archives are 'one of a kind' information sources. They are 'original' or 'primary' information sources, unavailable elsewhere except perhaps as copies. If lost or damaged they cannot be replaced.

• Provenance
  Archives are organised according to the organisation or person that accumulated them. The records of different organisations are not mixed together even though they might both relate to your exact research topic. All documents written by one person and sent to another will normally be among the documents of the recipient, not the sender (though the sender may have kept a copy of course!).
  

• Functions
  Because archives are accumulated by a person or organisation in the course of the conduct of affairs, they always reflect the activities or functions (and only those activities and functions) with which that person or organisation was concerned. For example, documents about naming of streets in your suburb or town would most likely be found in the archives of the local Council (if it is responsible for this matter). You would not expect to find them in archives of the High Court of Australia.

• Original order
  Archives are also arranged in the same order as was used by the person or organisation that accumulated them and made use of them. This means that original filing systems are preserved, even if sometimes they can be exasperating to use.

• Context
  It is difficult to understand fully an archival document by studying it in isolation. It may refer to other documents, or be filed with others, and will almost always have invisible yet vital links to other archives with the same provenance and relating to the same function. The sum of these links is the 'context' of the document.

Archives are evidence

Why do archivists bother with provenance, original order etc., when it may all seem like an obstacle to getting the information you need?

First, the properties of archives, particularly their natural accumulation as part of the normal conduct of personal or business affairs, have some important implications. It means they are evidence for what the person or organisation that accumulated them has done in the past and why they acted as they did.

Secondly, if the documents were rearranged in a way that would help answer your questions, the same rearrangement might be useless for the next researcher who has quite different and unforeseeable questions to ask. On balance, the most effective way to get at the evidence in archival documents is to preserve their provenance and original order.

Evidence needs to be evaluated, tested and compared and not accepted uncritically. But archival documents are as close as you can get to what a person or organisation actually thought or did at the time the document was created.

As you study archival documents, you are almost leaning over the shoulder of the civil servant who wrote the memorandum, the clergyman who filled in the register, the great-aunt who wrote the letter, or the cartographer who made the map.

What will these differences mean for my research?

The unique nature of archival documents has implications for researchers who wish to make use of them. Researchers who may be familiar with libraries and 'secondary' information sources such as published books, will need to modify their research strategies and expectations accordingly.

Here are some of the main differences to take into account:-

• Access to the archives
  You will usually be asked to provide identification when you visit the Archives, and may have to fill in a form giving personal information, and state the purpose of your research.

  It is not possible to browse the shelves as in a library. You will have to discuss your area of research interest with an archivist and consult 'finding aids' (which is what archivists call their catalogues, indexes and guides). When you have selected the archives you want to see, they will be fetched for you from the repository.

  Some archives may be unavailable for research, for reasons of confidentiality, or because they are being repaired. There is no general and unrestricted right of public access to archives. Access rules are usually set by law, or the person or organisation that originally accumulated the documents.

• Subject enquiries become provenance enquiries
  Most researchers come to the Archives with a 'subject-oriented' enquiry - they want evidence about a particular event, person, object, decision, trend. The arrangement of archives according to 'provenance' and 'original order' means that subject enquiries have to be reoriented if the archives are to yield evidence.

  You will need to work out which person or organisation would have had an interest in or functional responsibility for your subject area, and what records they might have therefore created about it. Archivists find this is one of the hardest things about archives for researchers to remember, so here are a couple of real life examples from one Archives:

Archivists at Sydney City Council are often asked to help people find out when their old terrace houses were built. There were no documents specifically accumulated on the subject, because it was of no official interest to the Council. But reorienting the enquiry as 'What Council departments or functions might have been concerned with details of individual properties last century?' yields the answer: The Council has accumulated assessment-books since the 1840s, and these documents, originally made for financial reasons, can be used to deduce construction dates from changes in assessment patterns.

Sydney City Council has (unlike some other local governments) never been officially responsible for the function of managing cemeteries. Therefore, the Council has never accumulated documents about cemeteries, so the Council's archives do not contain much evidence about early Sydney burial grounds.

'In-house' Archives and 'Collecting' Archives

Generally speaking here are two kinds of Archives. Some are 'in-house' Archives, responsible for caring only for the archival documents of their own organisations. These include the Archives offices of governments (Commonwealth, State and local), businesses, schools, churches, community groups and so on.

Other Archives 'collect' documents from outside their own walls, in order to build up useful research collections. These include State library manuscript departments. 'Collecting' Archives often try to specialise: for example in documents of literary figures or scientists or business.

Making the most of archives

If you have not undertaken research in a Archives before, these tips will help you to get the best results -

• Understand your topic
  Before starting on the archival documents, study the published 'secondary' sources of information in your area of interest.

• Formulate your questions
  Identify the scope of your enquiry as precisely as possible. Are you interested in convicts generally, or in finding a particular convict ancestor, or in the convict system in NSW before 1827? Of course, one question can lead to another!

• Think archivally
  Find out about the research rules (opening hours, any charges, copying facilities etc) of the Archives you plan to visit. Try to view your topic from a 'provenance' and 'function' point of view, with the help of an archivist. This will mean spending some time finding out about which persons or organisations accumulated relevant records.

• Allow enough time
  It always takes much longer than you expect! Archives are not an instant source of facts on every conceivable topic. They provide in-depth evidence. You may need patience and application to extract it. If you approach archive documents with a looming deadline, unless you are a very experienced researcher in Archives, you have a recipe for disappointment.

WARNING!
Doing research in Archives can become addictive. Beware and enjoy!

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