The International Council on Archives: Its First Quarter Century

Abstract

Although actually founded in 1948 in Pans at a preliminary meeting that was the culmination of at least two years of preparatory effort, the International Council on Archives (ICA) did not become truly operational until the first International Archives Congress of 1950, also held in Paris. During the ensuing quarter century, ICA has functioned in close affiliation with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as the world organization of the archival profession. From the outset its membership has been composed of public archival authorities on the international, national, and subnational levels; private archival institutions of every description; professional associations; and individual archivists. Symbolic of the organization's growth since its establishment is the increase in its Category A membership (i.e., national archival authorities) from fourteen in 1950, centered overwhelmingly in Europe, to just over one hundred in 1976, distributed throughout the world. Regardless of many changes in its constitution over the years, ICA's several constitutional objectives have remained the same and have amounted essentially to one: the worldwide elevation of standards of archival administration and practice. According to the constitution, this fundamental objective was to be achieved, on the international level with which ICA is primarily concerned, by a wide variety of methods including the maintenance of close professional relations between archivists and archival institutions everywhere; the encouragement of a continuing interchange of ideas and information bearing on the solution of archival problems; the support of archival development and training in all countries; the promotion of measures necessary to insure the physical preservation of mankind's archival heritage; the facilitation of user access to archival sources; the undertaking of professionally useful projects; and, finally, the fostering of cooperative working relationships with other organizations concerned with cognate forms of documentation. In its early years ICA sought to accomplish its objectives by means conventional to organizations of its kind. It held open international congresses (beginning in 1950), at first triennially and later quadrennially, which provided a forum for the interchange of professional information. These were soon supplemented (from 1953), annually in the years between the congresses, by the International Archival Round Table Conferences where substantial professional questions were discussed by the world's archival leaders. In 1951 ICA began publication of its annual journal, Archivum, in which have since appeared regularly the proceedings of the congresses as well as articles, documents, bibliography, and other reference matter of