Articles: In Search of a Theory of Private Archives: The Foundational Writings of Jenkinson and Schellenberg Revisited

摘要

Archivists of private fonds often blame the absence of private archives from our professional literature on Sir Hilary Jenkinson and T.R. Schellenberg, whose influential works cast archival theory in English in the mould of the archives of national governments. But a careful reading of Jenkinson and Schellenberg shows that they said much about private archives and, in effect, denied archival status or character to what was called, in their day, historical manuscripts. In drawing a clearrndistinction between archives and manuscripts, they, perhaps unwittingly, did much to define the theoretical characteristics of private archives. This article explores their ideas about private archives, its relationship to government archives, and the applicability of their concepts of authenticity, evidence, and value to private archives. Though some of their ideas have not aged well over the intervening years, many of the characteristics of private archives that troubled them still reverberate in the Canadian archival community today, with our present emphasis on accountability and heritage. The article concludes that their thinking about private archives still offers a starting point today for the further development of the theory of private archives.