Archival science in Spain between 1975 and 2005: a review

Abstract

We will analyse the evolution of Spanish Archivistics, as a joint study of records management and archives administration, in a period of thirty years as the title indicates. Continuity can be traced by means of professional and academic bibliography. Due to the growing number of professionals, associations and publications, archivistics techniques and principles generalisation, standardisation, new technologies, archivistics in the University, and University research on archivistics matters we can verify a considerable advance in theory. The result is a proliferation of archivistics handbooks, and of publications that show the development of specialised archivistics, the mechanisation of archivistic operations, and the concern about basic matters such as documental selection, studies on documental typologies, the diverse models of archival classification with an application of organic-functional criteria, an application of ISAD(G) to documental description, the legal problems of access to documents and the conservation of heritage, and the newest of the electronic documents. To sum up, there is a strong advance in archivistics theory and practice among archivistics professionals, although the existence of a specific academic degree is still pending.