Surr Carl Newton (1935–2014)

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Notes

^1. Most of the biographical and career information in this piece is derived from Carl's 1997 oral history interview in a programme, Celebrating Memory, carried out as part of the Society of Archivists 50th Anniversary celebrations. The originals of the interviews are in the British Library Sound and Moving Images collection at catalogue number C1181. Transcripts have been uploaded to the Internet Archive by the project leader, Dr Craig Fees, and can be accessed at http://web.archive.org/web/20041103150946/http://www.pettarchiv.org.uk/fsg/soa50.htm and http://web.archive.org/web/20041106025152/http://www.pettarchiv.org.uk/fsg/soa51.htmI'm also grateful to Teresa Blackmore, Michael Cook, Edwin Green, Craig Petts and Helen Simpson for filling in some of the gaps in my knowledge and providing additional information on Carl's life and work and helpful comments on early drafts.

^2. Newton, S. C. and Stewart, A. C. R. V. T. The Londonderry Papers. Catalogue of the Documents Deposited in the Durham County Record Office by the 9th Marquess of Londonderry. Durham: Durham County Council, 1969.

^3. This was my first contact with Carl and his work. Michael Roper, teaching the newly-established Computers in Archives module at UCL in 1973–1974, described the East Sussex system to his students, of whom I was one. This, and Michael's description of PROSPEC and the opportunities that computers provided, certainly fired my own enthusiasm. The rapid development of computers made both systems redundant almost before they had been implemented.

^4. The proceedings of this conference were published as: Bell, L. and Roper, M., eds. Proceedings of an International Seminar on Automatic Data Processing in Archives. London: HMSO, 1975.

^5. Newton, S. C. “Pre-archival Records Control in East Sussex”. Journal of the Society of Archivists 4, no. 7 (1973): 581–587.

^6. A similar pattern was followed in Wales with the ‘discovery’ of the archives of the Welsh steel companies at the Tata Steel records centre. These had been rescued, recorded, packed and shelved by my staff at the British Steel South Wales and Shotton records centres in the early 1980s.

^7. Edwin Green has written a more extensive appreciation of Carl's contribution to the BAC in the Council's Newsletter [Upcoming].

^8. Records Management Group. Office Automation and Records Management: Report of a Working Party. Sheffield: Society of Archivists, Records Management Group, 1981.

^9. Newton, S. C. Strategic Planning for Records Management and Archives. London: Society of Archivists, Records Management Group, RM P 4, 1984.

^10. Anon. “Notes and News.” Journal of the Society of Archivists 7, no. 8 (1985): 557–558. Damning with faint praise, the review goes on to wonder whether the time spent in devising and implementing strategic plans and expressing them in fashionable terminology might not more usefully go on traditional professional activities such as listing, but in the competitive world of commerce a struggle for a role and the resources to carry it out, conducted in a more or less foreign language, may be forced on the archivist or records manager. Nothing could have better illustrated the professional elitism that Carl rejected.

^11. Newton, Carl. “Trumpeting the Voluntary in the United Kingdom.” Records Management Journal 14, no. 3 (2004): 107–110.

^12. Newton, Carl. “Discordant Notes: The Archives of British Music.” Records Management Journal, 18, no. 1 (2008): 61–68.

^13. Newton, Carl. “The Future of Records Management.” In How to Manage Your Records edited by P. Emmerson. Cambridge, ICSA Publishing, 1989.

^14. Schellenberg, T. R. Modern Archives: Principles and Practice, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1956.

^15. National Archives of Australia. DIRKS [Design and Implementation of Recordkeeping Systems]: A Strategic Approach to Managing Business Information. Canberra: National Archives of Australia, 2001.

^16. International Standards Organisation. ISO 15489-1:2001 Information and Documentation – Records Management – Part 1: General. Geneva: International Standards Organisation, 2001.

^17. [Newton, S. C.] (2011:1) “Community Archives: Inspiration or Indictment?” ARC, 259, 32.

^18. [Newton, S. C.] (2011:2) “The Last Totalitarians: Archivists, Archives and the Public”, ARC, 260, 10.

^19. [Newton, S. C.] (2011:3) “Conservation or Consternation? The Saga of the White Gloves”, ARC, 261, 34.

^20. [Newton, S. C.] (2011:4) “The Case for Nationalisation”, ARC, 262, 30.

^21. I was flattered that many colleagues thought that I was the author of these pieces.

^22. A tribute to Carl on the Society's website also mentioned his penchant for points of order at meetings – something which his professional colleagues would remember with a combination of affection and frustration. http://elgar.org/elgarsoc/elgar-society-mourns-loss-carl-newton/.

^23. I have, in my photograph collection, some relatively unflattering ‘inaction’ shots of Carl, myself and others in one of the PRO matches on Ham Common.

^24. Newton, S. C. Rails Across the Weald. Lewes: East Sussex Record Office, 1972.