Discovery of records management in France and its consequences

Curator,

French Records and Archives Directorate

Abstract
Paris city archivist Yves Pérotin first identified records management practices for France during fact-finding visits to the U.S. and Britain in the 1960’s. His reports back to the Prefect of the Seine laid the foundations for French national archival practice and put archivists firmly in charge of recordkeeping in the republic. The author, a curator at the French Records and Archives Directorate of the Ministry of Culture in Paris, outlines the unique history of the French development in this 1999 paper he presented to an archives and records management seminar in Melbourne, Australia.

Discovery of US & UK RM by French pioneer archivist

It is thanks to two fundamental articles by Yves Pérotin, archivist of the City of Paris, that French archivists discovered records management. The first was the report of a professional trip to the United States that Yves Pérotin, then Director of the Archives of the Seine (Paris), made on behalf of the Prefect of the Seine (Paris) in October 1961. The aim of the trip was to study solutions implemented in America to manage current and semi-current records.

When he came back, Pérotin wrote "Records management and the American administration of archives" which was published in 1962. Less than two years later, in January 1963, Pérotin went to London, again on behalf of the Prefect of the Seine, with the same object as the previous trip. He summed up his experience in a second article, published in the Gazette des Archives in 1964: "Records management and the English administration of archives".

These two texts, although written more than thirty years ago, are certainly the best presentation of records management as a whole in French language to this day. It is not easy to summarise the conclusions that Pérotin drew from his two experiences. So much of his observation of the methods of records management is precise and detailed.

It is obvious, however, that Yves Pérotin wished to see France follow the example of England and the United States on three points: the intermediate storage, the control by archivists of current records and the responsibilities of the records creators. These three lessons are among the most important French archivists have learned from the 60’s. They have been a crucial foundation to the history of records management in France.

Around the end of the 60’s and the beginning of the 70’s they also produced much theoretical debate when intermediate storage was at the centre of French reflection on records management. Among a rich bibliography, one can mention a chapter of the Manuel d’archivistique, a reference book for archivists published in 1970, entitled: " The creation of the records and the intermediate storage ".

The intermediate storage

Intermediate storage is the aspect of records management that most influenced Yves Pérotin. The wide place that he dedicates to it in his articles testifies to this. It quickly aroused great interest amongst French archivists who saw in the techniques a solution to the problem of dealing with the ever-increasing masses of paper produced by administrations and companies. This interest explains why France decided to build a records centre large enough to welcome the semi-current records produced by the various ministries.

Thus, the Cité Interministérielle des Archives was created in 1967 in Fontainebleau, near Paris. This huge records centre, dedicated in the beginning exclusively to intermediate storage, had its aims and objectives extended later on and is now devoted only to historical records from 1958. The semi-current records produced by administrations are nowadays stored in repositories close by in order to avoid waste of transportation time and cost.

Controlling management of current records

The control by archivists of the management of current records within creating organisations appears among the fundamental principles of records management. French archivists are more and more convinced that the creation of historical archives usable by researchers depends on a supervision exercised upstream, while documents are still in offices. If current records are not properly managed, they can produce only difficult, extra work for archivists who are forced to reconstitute a coherence compromised by the disorder in which documents reach them.

Now, so that control can be exercised effectively, it is imperative that the field of intervention by archivist increases. Their job must not be just the final link in the chain of the world of the work, the only responsibility being the charge of documents when they are not of use any more to those who produce them. On the contrary, archivists must be able to exercise a right to oversee and give advice on the management of current records.

Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication

One of the proofs of this evolution within the profession appears in Article 2 of the Decree of December 3, 1979 (one of the decrees of application of the law of January 3, 1979 on records and archives) which explains that the French Directorate of Records and Archives at the Ministry of Culture is tasked with "the control of the keeping of the current records in the premises of services, establishments and public organisations, including the public or ministerial offices, that produced or received them". Thus, the control of the current records has been given a statutory value in the field of the public records since then.

Responsibilities of the record creator

The responsibility of the record creator is the most problematic area of records management in France today. Unlike Germany, for example, France has no tradition of registration or of classification of documents by those who produce them. This results in extreme contrasting situations, going from total carelessness to the most pushed attention, as within the police force, for instance. Throughout the country, control by record creators varies according to administrations or companies.

Establishing the responsibilities of the records creators is a hard task in this context. Nevertheless, since the end of the 60’s, great improvements have been made, mostly at the instigation of Government Ministry archive curators who have been able to give evidence of the efficiencies to be gained.

So, the naming of officers in charge of records within organisations constitutes a fruitful initiative. It gives the archivist someone to speak to, someone who knows about questions connected with records and is responsible for their treatment. Also, the creation of records schedules and classification schemes, often created by negotiation between the archivist and the staff of an office, raises awareness that good management of records is profitable to all.

The archivist demonstrates that he helps improve the efficiency of the work of each. Finally, the production of brochures giving practical advice on treatment of current records within offices contributes in a substantial way to a better understanding of those who produce documents.

From this point of view, the existence of an international standard giving guidelines for records management within organisations will be very useful in a country like France. It will certainly make the work of French records managers and archivists easier.

That’s why the whole profession takes a great interest in the work being done by the International Standards Organisation Sub-committee SC11 in preparing the Records Management Standard ISO15489 and looks forward to its publication in due course.

The Author

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Parisian Philippe Barbat was educated as an archivist and palaeographer at the Ecole Nationale des Chartes in Paris. He studied records management and the archives administration at the National Heritage School. Since 1997, he has worked for the French Records and Archives directorate at the Ministry of Culture, where he is responsible for developing records schedules for police and justice administrations. He is a member of the editorial committee of the ISO Records Management Standard, ISO15489. Recently, he was appointed co-ordinator of a study leading to a new French law for records and archives.

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