One encouraging sign of the growing maturity of the archives and recordkeeping profession comes with the appearance of several recent books of extended thematic argument focusing on the nature and purposes of records creation, management and use. Michael Piggott’s volume of ‘Australian essays’ focuses on ‘the historical and societal setting of the Australian archives and records landscape’ (p. 2) as a means of exploring ‘some of the connections between Australian society and its records’ (p. 4). While deeply rooted in a national–continental–societal context, it offers a valuable contribution to the international archival discourse.
As a laureate of the Australian Society of Archivists and a prominent figure in Australian archives and recordkeeping circles for four decades, the author needs no further introduction. This collection of essays brings together disparate writings and presentations (1980–2010) from a variety of archival, library and historical venues with several essays prepared for this publication. Each of the earlier essays has been updated with minor revisions and a new introduction and/or conclusion. In effect, it’s a ‘greatest hits’ album, but re-mastered with added lyrics and new textures (context) of instrumentation.
The concept anchoring this collection of essays is societal provenance. Articulated by Canadian archivist Tom Nesmith, this view emphasises the breadth and depth of records, which ‘reflect and shape societal processes’ (p. 3). Records should thus be examined in the context of their creators, the historical processes behind them, and their multi-level uses, including the imprint of archivists and recordkeepers on the record.
Piggott structures his essays under four headings: history, institutions, formation and debates.
History: In a new essay, Piggott identifies prominent themes illustrating the links between the production and preservation of records and elements of Australian culture, arguing that ‘British Australia was literally conceived in documents’ such as memoranda and letters regarding establishing the colony. The importance of understanding archival history frames re-purposed and updated essays on Schellenberg in Australia, the inflated claim that archives are an ‘indispensable resource’ for historians, and a humorous exploration of the limited power of documentary evidence to undermine the myth that as a graduate student future prime minister Bob Hawke had swum naked in a campus lily pond.
Institutions: Three essays focus on archival organisations. In ‘Libraries and Archives: From Subordination to Partnership’, Piggott explores the tug-of-war in archive–library relations, focusing on Schellenberg’s influence on the 1956 Paton Inquiry, which advocated separating the archival agency from the National Library of Australia. In a coda to this 1988 essay, he links the 1950s debates over the relationship between archives and libraries to recent ‘reversals’ that placed archives in Tasmania and the Northern Territory back under library control, with little discussion. Two other essays focus on the establishment of prime ministerial libraries (with some comparisons to presidential libraries in the United States, and other countries’ efforts to memorialise their political leaders), and the important role of the Australian War Records Section and its head, Dr C E W Bean, as the ‘first formal archives programme’ in the new Australian nation.
Formation: Critical to understanding the societal value of archives is examining how and why records are created and why they have or acquire archival status. The debate over destruction or preservation of name-identified census forms – ‘one of the very few occasions when matters of records appraisal have been thoroughly aired in public’ – leads Piggott to reflect on the inherent conflict between ‘privacy protection’ and ‘the ultimate denial of access’ (p. 147). (The better-known Heiner Affair merits only a brief mention here, and in two later essays.) An essay deploring the limited interest of the archival profession in documenting Australian business and the resulting gap in documenting society echoes similar concerns raised in the United States and other countries. Examining four ways in which Australian archivists have contributed to international discussions of appraisal, Piggott nonetheless offers the blunt assessment that they ‘have contributed little to appraisal theory and method which is genuinely original’ (p. 168). The one exception to this criticism is AS 4390, the Australian standard on records management, which provided the basis for the international standard for recordkeeping.
Debates: The longest and richest section of this volume presents or re-argues several crucial debates within the archival profession: the Records Continuum Model, personal recordkeeping as self-documentation, the role of collecting archives, the ‘poverty’ of recordkeeping history, and modes of indigenous recordkeeping. Each deserves further explication – more than a brief review essay can offer.
Examining Percy Grainger’s seemingly obsessive desire to document his own life leads Piggott to intriguing speculations on the role of personal recordkeeping, the nature of records as a form of artificial memory, and the ‘parallel and complementary provenances’ of records and personal memory. Archival theory, he argues, needs to accept and incorporate ‘the idea of an oral record’ (p. 212).
In ‘Alchemist Magpies? Collecting Archivists and their Critics’, Piggott rejects the argument that collecting archives lie outside the defined borders of professional archival practice. Among other justifications for collecting private records, he posits the growing scholarly and public interest in the private lives of ‘forgotten people’ and ‘ordinary Australians’ (p. 231). Greater attention to such documentation would counter-balance Australian archival practice, which he terms ‘massively biased in favour of government records’ (p. 229) and ensure a more comprehensive record of society.
‘The Poverty of Australia’s Recordkeeping History’ (first published in 1996) might well have anchored this volume’s section on history. More than 15 years on, Piggott concludes that his earlier analysis that too little is known about the history of recordkeeping and the archival profession ‘remains largely and regrettably valid’ (p. 236). In one of the book’s most forceful evocations of ‘societal provenance’, he concludes that ‘the historical sociology of recordkeeping … has yet to be satisfactorily defined’ (p. 246). He challenges his colleagues to begin.
Two essays, the first and last in the ‘debates’ section, deserve special consideration. In ‘Two Cheers for the Records Continuum’, Piggott commends this Australian construct as ‘the world’s most inclusive model for archives’, but judges that ‘it falls short of a “three cheers” accolade’ (p. 187). He concludes that it does not provide a needed ‘theory for a sociology of recordkeeping’ and that the model fails to represent ‘the innumerable contexts of document and record creation and non-creation’ (p. 188). Yet, in the end, he suggests that, as one writer said about French philosophy, the Records Continuum should be treated like poetry – ‘as essentially unparaphrasable and never fully explicable’ (p. 189). It seems likely that this essay will please very few. Continuum supporters will find his praise half-hearted at best. Critics (of whom there seem to be few in Australia, he points out) will argue that he pulls too many punches.
Piggott’s boldest contribution to archival debates, ‘Acknowledging Indigenous Recordkeeping’, argues that the 50,000-year history of Indigenous stories, knowledge and cultural recordkeeping systems ‘should be acknowledged, understood and supported’ (p. 251). Three examples support his analysis: the tanderrum agreement ceremony, contracts inscribed on message sticks and the cognitive recordkeeping illustrated by ‘Dreaming archives’ (p. 260). Quoting Deborah Bird Rose’s appeal for anthropology to be a thorn discomforting ‘those who like their worlds neatly packaged’ (pp. 262–3), Piggott suggests a similar role for archival science. He concludes that archivists must stop treating Indigenous recordkeeping as ‘out of scope’, and challenges his colleagues to summon ‘the will to imagine a new, culturally inclusive, truly Australian archival science’ (p. 265). This is a challenge equally for American archivists and for others around the globe.
In an exploratory ‘Epilogue’ Piggott offers some tantalising, but not fully realised, thoughts about the connections between archival records and death, including the ‘archival afterlife’ created by documentation of otherwise unknown individuals. There is much food here for digestion in future.
Although largely addressed to Australian archivists, this volume of essays offers rich and nuanced themes for consideration by archivists everywhere. One admires Piggott’s effort to update and revise previously published essays and to group them under the concept of societal provenance. Nevertheless, one would like to see a stronger thematic development of this concept – perhaps in chapter conclusions – showing how they reflect societal provenance, and developing more clearly the context of his four central themes. Much of the volume’s value lies in sub-text. The reader must deduce the analytical points, linkages and underlying arguments. Piggott offers some of this, but more would be useful. On the other hand, perhaps we can all benefit from having to think over these important issues for ourselves. This may be Michael Piggott’s greatest contribution, encouraging his colleagues to consider new ways of thinking about archives and recordkeeping.
Randall C. JimersonWestern Washington University
© 2013, Randall C. Jimerson
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01576895.2013.842280