Archivist

“ When the Archivist considers it to be in the public interest, the Archivist may solicit and accept gifts or bequests of money or other property for the purpose of maintaining, operating, protecting, or improving a Presidential archival depository. ”

“ After serving his native city as secretary and archivist, he became archivist to the national archives in Paris in 1866, and later librarian to the faculty of law. In 1890 he was appointed professor of civil and canon law at the ecole des chartes. ”

“ The Archivist shall deposit all such Presidential records in a Presidential archival depository or another archival facility operated by the United States. The Archivist is authorized to designate, after consultation with the former President, a director at each depository or facility, who shall be responsible for the care and preservation of such records. `` (3) The Archivist is authorized to dispose of such Presidential records which he has appraised and determined to have insufficient administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value to warrant their continued preservation. ”

“ A central office, in which papers from all departments of the Government are lodged after they have passed out of current use, examined, classified, and filed by a staff familiar with their contents, need only be brought into use to become indispensably serviceable in the carrying on of public business; but in addition, the archivist, knowing the contents of the documents in his custody, is able to direct and help in a manner that can not otherwise be done, that portion of the public interested in the information contained in the Government archives. ”

“ Agency heads may conduct internal systematic review programs for classified information originated by their agencies contained in records determined by the Archivist to be permanently valuable but that have not been accessioned into the National Archives of the United States. ”

“ Not only does information become more pervasive through multiple distribution systems, but—thanks to us—it becomes more persistent. That is to say, over the past century and a half, historians and archivists have done an excellent job in demonstrating the value of historical records of all sorts. We have created the age of the archives—the ways and means to save more stuff and for longer periods of time. ”

“ TRIBUNE.—"The pages abound in indispensable corrections of popular and pedagogic errors, and in revelations of new facts. No one could do this so well as Acton, because no historical scholar who ever lived kept himself so well abreast of Continental research or so completely in touch with the world of scholars. All archives were open to him, and all archivists put their knowledge at his disposal; wealth, social position, and leisure gave him advantages denied to almost every other scholar." ”

“ We want more: we must have county archives, kept by trained archivists. We must have more trained archivists at the disposal of the Deputy Keeper of the Rolls, we must have such means as the Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes for full reports of special and minute investigations and discoveries, for hand-lists and the like, before we can be considered as doing as much for history as the heavily taxed French nation does cheerfully, and with a sound confidence that the money it spends wisely in science is in the truest sense money saved. ”

“ In contradistinction those public documents which were issued in closed form under seal were known as “close letters,” litterae clausae.
Such public documents belong to the state archives of their several countries, and are the monuments of administrative and political and domestic history of a nation from one generation to another. In no country has so perfect a series been preserved as in our own. Into the Public Record Office in London have been brought together all the collections of state archives which were formerly stored in different official repositories of the kingdom. ”

“ These, with the legislature itself, are the departments of government in which our archives originate.
Archives we have defined as the records, the business papers, of the province having a permanent value. All archives need not be of historical value in the narrow sense. Public documents may have a business or record value apart from history, yet it would be hard to say that any given document might not be found useful in some way in connection with history. The main value of a document is as an evidence of truth. ”

“ The archives, consisting of papers tied up in loose bundles, had long been the stamping ground of literary thieves. I put at the head of the library Thomas Lynch Montgomery, a trained librarian, who had been in charge of the Wagner Institute in Philadelphia, a member of a family of high social standing and a man of great efficiency. I likewise had arrangements made to have the archives that remained and all of the papers of the departments, prior to a certain early date, repaired, chronologically arranged, bound into volumes and put in the library. ”

“ Damaging or losing archives due to dereliction of duty by archivists.
Article 49
Where the use of archival records of an archival repository constitutes a violation prescribed in Subparagraph (1) , (2) or (4) ofArticle 48
of this Law, the archives administration at or above the county level shall issue a warning, and impose a fine of not less than RMB 10,000 yuan but not more than RMB 100,000 yuan if the offender is an entity, or a fine of not less than RMB 500 yuan but not more than RMB 5,000 yuan in case of an individual. ”

“ The writing of history must be based upon original research and authentic record, but it can no more be directly constructed by the piecing together of bits of original research than by the mere reprinting together of state documents. Individual research furnishes us, as it were, with the private documents and intimate records without which the public archives are incomplete and unintelligible. But by themselves these are wholly out of perspective. It is the consolation of those who produce them to make them so. ”

“ Rolls, records, and documents of all kinds exist in public and private archives, which are not included in these State Papers, but which are equally necessary for the formation of a sound and reliable opinion on the whole story. Besides this vast mass of material, the entire literature of the period demands careful examination, as it must clearly throw great light on the tone and temper of men’s minds, and reveal the origin and growth of popular views and opinions. ”

“ Original research amongst the legal and other documents preserved in the Public Record Office, and similar depositories of ancient archives is a pursuit which our friends politely assume ‘must be very interesting,’ chiefly because they cannot believe that any one would undertake so dull an occupation if it were not interesting. ”

“ In 1879 Congress called for a report on the value of the collection, and received a lucid statement from the Librarian of Congress. No practical results followed. [8]
Aside from the Archives Force is best remembered for four volumes of Tracts published from 1836 to 1846. They were mostly reprints of rare pamphlets relating to the earliest period of American history, and their publication was accomplished with financial sacrifices. “Whenever I found a little more money in my purse than I absolutely needed,” he said, “I printed a volume of Tracts.” ”

“ They collect the materials from which the great narrative of events is, in due time, to be framed. The transactions of public bodies, local histories, memoirs of all kinds, statistics, laws ordinances, public debates and discussions, works of periodical literature, and the public journals, whether of political events, or commerce, literature, or the arts, all find their places in the collections of historical societies. But these collections are not history; they are only elements of history. History is a higher name, and imports literary productions of the first order. ”

“ Since entries are based on responses to a questionnaire, descriptions, especially of holdings and collections, inevitably vary in thoroughness and specificity. Concludes with three appendixes: organizations whose archives are deposited elsewhere; organizations without archives; and organizations on whose archives the editors could supply no information. Two indexes: repository names, organizations, and collections ”

“ The spreading desire to know something of paleography is very remarkable, and is much to be commended. For all persons who interest themselves in the documents to which they may have access in the possession of private persons, or in repositories not generally known, are helping in the grand work of making clear the laws and customs and mode of living of our ancestors, and thus constantly come across information, not to be found in our more public collections of records, which often throws light on many dark passages of history. ”

“ The advantages to students and historians will be immeasurable. Instead of dry and misleading accounts, tinged with the exaggerations of the chroniclers' minds, our archives will be enriched by the vitalized pictures of great national scenes, instinct with all the glowing personalities which characterized them. ”

“ Public archives have been made accessible, a generous freedom of use accorded by private owners of papers; and pride of ancestry has contributed its share to the ever increasing quantity of product. If only certain possessors of material could appreciate how far they are like the ostrich, and what damage their aloofness is working on their pet admirations! ”

“ But now, what with the sometimes increased, sometimes diminished number of assessors, what with the many interruptions, what with the removal of the court from one place to another, these arrears, these records necessarily increased [Pg 458] to an infinite extent. Now, in the distress of war, a part of the archives was sent for safety from Spire to Aschaffenburg, a part to Worms, the third fell into the hands of the French, who thought they had gained the state-archives, but would afterwards have been glad to get rid of such a chaos of paper, if any one would but have furnished the carriages. ”

“ The editors of the “Memoirs of Everybody” affirmed, in 1835, that the original of this document still existed in the archives of the Minister of Foreign Affairs; and this statement has never been contradicted. It is natural that this document, supposing it to be authentic, should be in the archives of that department rather than of any other, as it would, in all probability, have been sent by the writer to some foreign place for safety, and would be brought back thence by some agent of the French government. ”

“ In this article, however, we are only concerned with documentary records, or archives. In its accurate sense a record is a document regularly drawn up for a legal or administrative purpose and preserved in proper custody to perpetuate the memory of the transaction described in it; for the most part it forms a link in a complicated process, and unless the connexion between it and the other documents making up the process has been preserved, a portion of its meaning will have perished. ”

“ State organs, groups, enterprises, public institutions, other organizations, and citizens may, according to the need for economic development, building of national defense, education, scientific research, and other work, access to restricted archives of archival repositories and archives in the custody of organs, groups, enterprises, public institutions, and other organizations pursuant to relevant regulations of the state. ”

“ Contemporary writers make themselves the judges of what is important to record; documents preserved in public or private archives relate only to such events as need or command the written record or instrument, or to those which have interested some of the actors and their families. ”

“ As in civil history we consult deeds, seek for coins, or decipher antique inscriptions in order to determine the epochs of human revolutions and fix the date of moral events, so, in natural history, we must search the archives of the world, recover old monuments from the bowels of the earth, collect their fragmentary remains, and gather into one body of evidence all the signs of physical change which may enable us to look back upon the different ages of nature. ”

“ There are immense numbers of documents, some of them dating back to Norman and even earlier times, still in existence. The Record Office, in London, has many thousands of documents connected with the king's business; the borough towns and cities and the monasteries each had their own records, but most of these latter records disappeared in the sixteenth century; every old estate has such documents; and many of the old manors have still records going back many centuries. ”

“ In 1833 he originated the idea of compiling and publishing a documentary history of the country, under the title of the American Archives, and issued a number of large folio volumes, the profits going to the politicians who secured the necessary appropriations from Congress. He was emphatically a gentleman—tall, stalwart, with bushy black hair, and large, expressive eyes, which would beam with joy whenever a friend brought him a rare autograph or pamphlet. ”

“ Facts that have been preserved because of their local import, and have been buried in local records far from the scene of his interest, rumours and legends that continue to exist in connection with some individual who finds no place in his main theme, casual remarks of accidental observers, inferences deduced from half-forgotten customs and from dying myths, carefully kept records which, either wilfully or by chance, are designed to give a false impression unless read in the light of some apparently irrelevant circumstance—such are the materials on which the antiquary depends. ”