Archival Units Research Articles

Properly Arranged and Properly Recorded: The Library of Congress Archives

In the 1940s Library of Congress managers began an effort to bring order to the Library’s historic records, and in 1946 the chief of the Manuscripts Division wrote: “Many years ago there was sent to the Division, material of an archival nature, representing old records of the Librarian’s office . . . and I have consistently upheld as wise the establishment of an archival unit in the Library and have noted the advantages that would be derived from the accumulation of such records in one place. . . . I recommend that the care and management of archival holdings be made the duty of one high grade position in the Division of Manuscripts.” 1 St. George Sioussat’s report to the Librarian of Congress was an early appeal for a more systematic approach to record keeping at the Library of Congress—a move away from the informal and haphazard approach of the past. This effort by Library administrators to methodically collect and preserve the Library’s organizational records is a rich tale, reflecting the growth and development of the institution. Library records were not carefully preserved until the end of the nineteenth century, and by then a large body of material had accumulated, such as nineteen volumes of Librarians’ letterbooks (official correspondence), thirteen volumes of incoming correspondence, “a volume of extracts from the minutes of the Joint Committee on the Library, 1861–98, . . . and a group of ledgers, receipts, and correspondence relating to the construction of the Main Building of the Library, 1889–97.” 2 During the administration of Librarian Herbert Putnam (1899–1939) these and other records were for the most part the responsibility of the Library’s Office of the Secretary. During this period that office “not only prepared the Librarian’s correspondence and maintained his files but also carried on much of the Library’s correspondence from memoranda written in the divisions. . . . As time went on the Librarian began more and more to communicate directly with the divisions and these offices began to receive the right to establish their own divisional files.” 3 However, it was not until

No place for Peace-Mongers: Charlie Chaplin, Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Czechoslovak Communist Propaganda

During the escalation of the Cold War, Hollywood stars were framed in Czechoslovak Communist propaganda as possessing two qualities. Firstly, they were perceived in this most Western Soviet satelli...

Legal Recordkeeping in an African Context – The Case of the Rwandan Genocide Archives

Ten years on from the horrors of the civil war in Rwanda in 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [ICTR] has come a long way in terms of its recordkeeping practices. In four years since 2000 many innovative and sustainable practices have been adopted. The main focus of the work of the Judicial Records and Archives Unit has been to provide a service based on satisfying the users’ requirements. The court proceedings are the raison d’etre of the work of all staff at ICTR. We have developed some innovative and feasible solutions to practical problems. This article sketches some of the challenges we faced in managing records of ICTR. ESARBICA Journal Vol.23 2004: 3-16

The Centre for the Study of the Second Vatican Council in Leuven

The goal of this presentation - delivered on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the Centre for the Study of the Second Vatican Council in Leuven - is to provide a description of the centre from three different perspectives. The first offers a summary of its historical development both as a research centre and as a documentation centre. The second briefly outlines the centre's current activities in the field of research: collecting, studying and inventorising archival units concerning Vatican II, and in the field of publishing. The third presents the reader with an overview of the sources available at the centre, providing a description of each archival unit.

The Meanings and Methods of the Construction of People’s Everyday Life Histories Archives

This paper aims to describe the meanings and methods of the construction of archives concerning people’s everyday life histories with the case of Group for the People without history. It seems to be necessary to have a common ground for the researchers who are interested in so-called microhistoric approaches in order to do interdisciplinary studies, and it would be archives preserving various kinds of data from various research sites. The construction of archives in Group for the People without History will be a good example for such a project even though the archives are still being under construction.<BR> Group for the People without History has been working for about three years to collect raw data on people’s life histories, and constructing archives to preserve those data. However, the archives are different from conventional archives in pursuing open archives, which means that the archives are open to informants as well as researchers. It is the main characteristics of the archives, which means that the principle of the archives is toward a process-oriented activity.<BR> Each datum is classified according to its own class number and stored in boxes classified on the basis of media. Each datum has also metadata for the construction of future digital archives. The class numbers are made by the archival committee of the Group. and the metadata format is adapted from the Doublin Core.<BR> However. there are some problems to be solved in the construction of the archives. First. how can we define the role of archivists in this kind of archives? Traditionally. archivists are regarded as archival managers. But in the archives of the Group requires archivists to be record managers as well as researchers. The best solution of the problem at this moment is to educate archival techniques to researchers. Secondly, we have to define archival units of data which have the formats of texts and moving pictures. To preserve the vividness and the richness of the data. each datum should be divided into smaller units called paragraphs or sequences. It may be time-consuming and costly task, but it will be solved if we move to digital archives. The third problem is how to produce a classification system on the basis of indigenous knowledge in order to make the archives more accessible. We need to adopt the method developed by cognitive anthropologists, folk taxonomy. Though it is not easy to apply the method to such a big domain called people’s everyday life histories, it would not be impossible if we subcategorize it into smaller domains.<BR> From the review of the archives of the Group for the People without History, it goes without saying that a construction of archives will provide the researcher of microhistory with a good common ground to communicate one another. Furthermore, the archives will be a source of culture contents, and stimulate the development of culture industries and fulfill popular desires.

Oral Tradition and Folkloristics

For a folklorist it is difficult to think about oral tradition other than through the perspectives provided by our discipline. It is oral communication that links people into those small groups who create and re-create folklore, while reading is a solitary activity. Walter Ong has shown how literacy has penetrated our oral discourses, but it is also possible to see elements of orality in written texts (1982). A folklore performance that has been transformed into an archival unit still remains a manifestation of oral tradition. The main problem in reading these texts lies in our ability to discern them as a part of the tradition, which remains invisible. Oral tradition always implies going beyond the borders of individual creation and single performances; it means relying upon the words that have already been spoken and on a dialogical relationship, as noted by Mikhail Bakhtin (1986). Our object of research is not the text as a singular unit but its relationships with the rich phenomena beyond its written form, such as the generic, situational, cultural, and performative contexts. If we are able to perceive and study these contexts, we can also comprehend the textual meanings that are not explicit at first glance. Text is a gateway into these realms, ruled by tradition. There are certain key concepts in folkloristics that mark it as a distinctive, autonomous scholarly discourse, such as “tradition,” “group,” “variant,” “type,” and so on. I find it better not to fossilize them in international folkloristics as technical terms but to reconsider them time and again, that is, to maintain the discussion rather than establish normative definitions. One of the last great projects of the late Lauri Honko was to reinterpret the concept of “variant,” which led to shifts in theory, to “organic variation” as opposed to “phenomenological variation,” to mental text and textualization, to the corpuses of thick materials that are created through “collecting of the repertoires of one or several informants in one community” (2000:15-16). Such endeavors to revitalize traditional concepts are essential for world folkloristics.

Up-beat motion in swinging limbs: new insights into assessing movement in free-living aquatic vertebrates

A new system is presented for assessing the movement of animal limbs including, after suitable calibration, quantification of limb stroke frequency and amplitude, which may be used to derive limb angular velocity and acceleration. The system is based on use of an archival unit logging data from a Hall sensor, itself set to sense magnetic-field strength at frequencies of up to 30 Hz. Typically, the Hall sensor is placed on the animal body adjacent to the limb being monitored, while a small magnet is glued to the limb. Changes in limb position result in variation of the magnetic-field strength perceived by the sensor. Captive trials were successfully performed on a harbour seal (Phoca vitulina), an Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea) and a hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata), as well as on 18 free-living Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus). The unit performed well in almost all cases, illustrating that stroke frequency was relatively invariant in any species tending, however, to be higher in smaller animals and showing that the primary variance was manifest in stroke amplitude. As an example of the utility of the system, the importance of buoyancy was demonstrated in the penguins, which had longer glide phases and lower flipper beat amplitudes at greater depths, because body air was compressed, which reduced upthrust. The small size of the system (ca. 25 g in air) makes it suitable for a wide range of marine vertebrates. Potential problems of system sensitivity, the suitability of particular recording frequencies and the value of appropriate calibration are discussed.

Audio-acoustic proficiency testing device

An audio—acoustic proficiency test method transduces, captures, measures, compares, analyzes, records, and reports on the actual performance of at least one performer's produced orderly sound sequence (pitch and rhythm). It also issues proficiency performance certificates, certified copies of the audio—acoustic performance, performance growth and statistics, or player rewards in game modes, lessons or practice scheduling and training through a transport means selected from the group of the Internet, television, and a computer network. The apparatus comprises a performer or sound generation source, transducer, central processing unit, random access memory, archival storage unit, output printer, user display and user input devices.

The Surgical Research Society of Australasia.

The Surgical Research Society of Australasia (SRS) was established in 1961. The main intent was to promote surgical research, especially by young surgeons. The 50th Scientific Meeting of the SRS is due to be held in 2002. Selected information was extracted from the programme books for the scientific meetings of the SRS, while historical material was retrieved from the Records and Archives Unit of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. There have been 48 scientific meetings of the SRS between 1962 and 2000 inclusive, which have included the presentation of 1627 free papers. Forty-one percent of the presenters (325/784) have done so on more than one occasion. The content of the presentations reflects the changing nature of surgical research during the last several decades. The SRS has achieved its original intent of promoting surgical research.

Autocracy under siege: security police and opposition in Russia, 1866-1905

Jonathan W. Daly. Autocracy under Siege: Security Police and Opposition in 1866-1905. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998. xi, 260 pp. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. $38.00, cloth. In this well written and judiciously argued volume, Jonathan Daly, Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, opens a fascinating window on the inner workings of the security police administration in tsarist Russia. He argues that the central government developed a security police system only in response to terrorist attacks against government officials that began in the late 1870s. government confronted such attacks by granting itself emergency powers to close meetings, arrest suspected terrorists, try them in special judicial proceedings under the direct control of the government, and send suspected oppositionists to internal exile in Siberia. government also created a specialized security police force that ran a spy ring and conducted direct surveillance over revolutionary groups. Yet by 1904 a variety of factors had weakened the government's ability to compete with an increasingly complex array of political foes and left it vulnerable to the Revolution of 1905. These factors included competition within the security police apparatus, competition between regular police and security police officials, popular reaction against repressive police procedures, staunch opposition from a variety of opponents, and the October 1903 dismissal of the linchpin of this system, Sergei Zubatov. Daly supports this thesis with rich detail drawn from an extensive range of archival and published sources. He claims his work is only the second book published on security policing since the Soviet government began in 1989 to declassify 6,900 of the most politically sensitive archival units related to the use of secret informants (p. ix). Daly makes extensive use of security police files in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) and published materials, which, when combined with documents in the Central State Historical Archive of the city of Moscow and files from the Paris Security Bureau Collection, allow him to draw a fairly complete description of how Russia's security police system functioned. chronological and thematic organization of Autocracy under Siege makes the volume accessible even to undergraduate students who are new to the subject. Chapter One, The Origins of a Modern Security Police in Russia, assesses the Third Section's response to opposition movements in the 1870s, the creation of the Department of State Police and a parallel Moscow security bureau in 1880, and the security law of 1881. In Chapter Two, The Security Police System, Daly describes the structure of the gendarmes, the St. Petersburg and Moscow security bureaus, and the interaction of these units with regular police. …

Reliability of stomach temperature changes in determining feeding characteristics of seabirds

We examined the accuracy of stomach temperature archival units (STAUs), which are typically used to determine feeding activity in marine endotherms, with regard to determination of the time of prey ingestion as well as the number of prey items ingested and their masses. Units were deployed in nine species of free-living seabirds, where feeding conditions were uncontrolled, eight species of captive seabirds, where feeding conditions could be partially controlled, and in laboratory stomach simulations, where variables could be strictly controlled. The quality of data obtained on the timing of feeding, the mass ingested and the number of prey items ingested was subject to two main sources of error (i) those induced by changes in animal activity and (ii) those resulting from the physical form of the STAUs themselves. Animal activity factors considered important included the following: variability in (a) body temperature, (b) stomach blood perfusion, (c) consistency of stomach contents and (d) stomach churning and changes in body orientation. The physical form (size and buoyancy) of the STAU affected the location of the unit within the stomach, and thus the likelihood that ingested prey comes into contact with the sensor. The timing of prey ingestion can generally be determined accurately; however, considerable errors in mass estimates can occur if data acquired using STAUs are not critically assessed. An understanding of these sources of errors will allow researchers to construct STAUs appropriate to the species being studied and to analyze data critically so that errors are reduced.

The Solander Box: Its varieties and its role as an archival unit of storage for prints and drawings in a museum, archive or gallery

The Solander Box: Its varieties and its role as an archival unit of storage for prints and drawings in a museum, archive or gallery

The solander box: Its varieties and its role as an archival unit of storage for prints and drawings in a museum, archive or gallery

The solander box: Its varieties and its role as an archival unit of storage for prints and drawings in a museum, archive or gallery

L'article dans les répertoires : élément de cotation ou élément de rangement ?

Gilles Héon, The archival " article " : a reference number for fiding aids, or just for physical location ? Assuming that the reference number — whose configuration is reflecting the level of description — is unique and assigned to facilitate the research on the archives, the author analyses several works done in France and in Quebec to define the concept of article, a component of the archivai fonds. He argues that the article, identified by a specific reference number in an archival répertoire, is not just a container but a true archival unit with its own identity based on the nature of the documents or on their — alphabetical, numerical or chronological — arrangement.

Compliance with the New Food and Drug Administration Regulations: An Approach by Industry

Good Laboratory Practice regulations became effective on June 20, 1979. The regulations provide guidance for the proper conduct and reporting of nonclinical laboratory studies on articles regulated by the United States Food and Drug Administration. A fundamental requirement of the regulations is the establishment of a quality assurance unit within each research facility to ensure the utilization and maintenance of good laboratory practices. A second significant feature is the requirement for an archival unit responsible for maintaining all raw data, documentation, protocols, specimens, and final reports. Experience with the regulations has been mixed. The quality of reports has been upgraded dramatically. Protocols contain more information than ever, data recording is more extensive and more carefully executed, and reports are prepared more carefully and edited more thoroughly. Conversely, there is no real evidence that quality of science has been improved, and costs have increased markedly.

Transfer of the public documents library to the National Archives

The Library of the Public Documents Department, generally considered to comprise the most nearly complete collection of federal government publications in existence, was transferred as an archival unit to the National Archives during the year 1972. Reasons for this relocation were given as the need to preserve the collection and to alleviate the critical problem of space at the former facility. A principal benefit of the transfer was the provision of reference service for scholars desiring access to the materials. This report deals with the problems and progress of the relocation which, at this writing, had not been wholly resolved or concluded. Recommendations for future surveys are proffered. The on-site research for this report was made possible by a small grant-in-aid from the Research Foundation of the State University of New York.

Characteristics of the archival fond of „Konvento Polonia aktai” from the Wróblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences

After World War II documentation of archive of the Konwent Polonia was dispersed. Currently, it is gathered in three institutions: The Archdiocesan Archive of Warsaw, The Wro-blewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in Vilnius and The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London. This study presents a Vilnius collection – both structure of the archival fond and the information value of gathered archival units. It is extremely useful for researchers – particularly in the context of the lack of online inventories, as well as factual mistakes committed during the archival description of the records gathered there.&#x0D; This archival fond consists of 404 units and it is one of the most important sources for the history of both the Konwent Polonia and polish fraternities. Especially that most of fraternities archives were destroyed, and the total number of members of all academic fraternities until the outbreak of World War II was at least over a twelve thousand

The Archives Program of the United Nations

IS now just about two years since the National Archives document Proposal for a United Nations Archives became the first professionally prepared, carefully constructed statement of what the United Nations archives program ought to be. During the past twelve months the development of such a program has been constant and, I believe, consistent both with the exigencies of the unit's position in a fast growing organization of tremendous responsibilities, and with the archival profession's desire to see, as part of the world's topmost political agency, an archives unit embodying the best of the older and the most fruitful of the newer theories and practices of archival economy. The United Nations Archives has, I think, come nearer to fulfilling its function as a service agency to the Secretariat than it has to realizing the larger hopes of the profession; this is a source not of regret, however, but of eager enthusiasm for the future. The first responsibility of any United Nations service unit must be to contribute as competently as possible to the effective functioning of other offices. When that is accomplished, attention can be devoted to the specialized activities of our own field. The planners of the United Nations at Dumbarton Oaks and at San Francisco in 1945 did not make provision for the establishment of an archives or at least did not mention it as an administrative unit. Possibly they were concerned with more important matters. The international secretariat set up by the host government at San Francisco did, however, contain an archives unit which operated as part of the documents service. Its task was the filing and custody of four record copies of all the mimeographed official documents of the Conference, together with the original drafts. The conclusion of the Conference, on June 26, 1945, was marked by the formal signing of two documents, the Charter of the United Nations and the Statute of the International Court of Justice (com-