Information Ecology and the Archives of the 1980s

Abstract

StCphane MallarmC once wrote, "To define is to kill: to suggest is t o create," and I hope you will not be disappointed if at the outset I fail to define "ecology of information."Ecology is something of a buzzword these days, but it suggests a non-aggressive stewardship, a sensitive interplay, and a n ongoing enrichment of resources in contrast to those exploitive analogies with which we are all so familiar.I therefore make no apologies for using it, for it lies behind much of our work today.The theme of this issue of Archivaria is "Archives and the Law," and I would remind you that, in the public sector, law as popularly understood generates bureaucracy and bureaucracy creates the record.Law and the evidence of government became locked into forms of words and language, but in preliterate societies it was the poet and the shaman, the Greek mnemon and the Celtic bard, who recalled and rehearsed the customs and traditions of their people "when the memory of men runneth not to the contrary," to use a mediaeval phrase.Words then did not have specific meanings, but were closely related to their context and to actions arising from that context.Speech and action, attested by witnesses if need be, constituted the record to be retained in the memory.With the emergence of writing and the creation of documents, the ancient practice gradually changed, though not without considerable resistance.'For the greater part of the scribal age, actions remained a part of transactions; the document was merely the "copy" of the event which might include deeds, gifts of crosses, and symbolic transfers of turf.Vestiges of this still remain in the red spots serving as seals on title deeds, and in ground-breaking or rope-cutting ceremonies.The reality and importance of the signum, the act, over the document may be illustrated by the demand of bank tellers that your cheque be signed in their presence.We need to bear this principle in mind when we seek to answer questions concerning "originals" and "copies" which may involve two different media of record and communication as in machine-readable archives where we speak of the "memory" in which the original is stored over against the paper print-out.These are analogies which must not be pushed too far but, as we shall see, the nature of the record has an important bearing on the role of the archivist and the centrality of that function to the conduct of affairs.

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