Archivists, Recordkeeping, and the Declassification of Records: What We Can Learn from Contemporary Histories

Over the past fifteen years, the Reviews section of the American Archivist has seen a preponderance of commentaries analyzing guides, manuals, indexes, documentary collections, inventories, and surveys. To a lesser extent, one also finds reviews of texts on archival management, functions, and theory. Although the second of these two groups of writings merits serious and current attention, the former group has been emphasized at the expense of works that can contribute enormously to our understanding of users and recordkeeping systems. This negligence limits our understanding of users, recordkeeping systems, and access issues and minimizes the significance of records as both agent, surrogate, and remnant of human activity and communication. Three recently published volumes from this ignored genre of literature are examined here. These writings contain material relevant to the archival community, and the authors' narratives highlight important archival issues such as access; records creation, destruction, and ownership; accountability; accuracy and authenticity; and document form.