MUNICIPALIDAD PROVINCIAL DE PUNO

If Doughty’s interest in manuscripts ceased as soon as they were received, his interest in government records ceased even before the records were identified. In his thirty years as Dominion Archivist Doughty seemed to have undertaken virtually no action on the management o f government records. Almost no mention is made o f government records work in Doughty’s reports, and virtually no evidence can be found that suggests he initiated any programmes for the care o f public records. This was ironic given the original intention, with Doughty’s appointment, to transform the poorly defined and overlapping archival work o f several departments into a functioning English-style public record office.

Doughty’s emphasis on to acquisition, and his inattention to government records, did not go unnoticed by the federal government. In 1912, Doughty was appointed as one o f three members o f a royal commission investigating the state o f public records. The Commission was established because the government argued that ‘there is reason to

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Fraser to Milner, 28 August 1923, Archives of Ontario Records, s. 15.

D. Parker, ‘Memorandum to Dr. Doughty on the classification of the records of government departments (1760-1867) in the Manuscript Room,’ NAC Records, vol. 303, File: PAC History, p. 6.

believe that historical material exists among departmental records.’ The Commission came to essentially the same conclusions as had its predecessor in 1897: public records were not organised, and action was required to rescue the records ‘from their present unsatisfactory condition.’ Several recommendations were made. These included, yet again, the creation o f a public record office, the transfer o f all records more than twenty- five years old to the new record office, the enlargement o f the archives’ building, the safe storage o f any records presently in physical danger, and the creation o f a reference library for government publications."^^

In spite o f the government’s concern for public records, it did not question the archives’ role in the acquisition o f private records. The copying done by Brymner, and the acquisitions by Doughty, were valuable steps in the preservation o f Canada’s history. The government accepted its role in the process. With the passage o f the Public Archives Act in 1912, the government explicitly sanctioned public responsibility for the acquisition o f non-govemment records and the copying, printing, and publication o f historical materials. It also confirmed a definition o f archival records that emphasised their historical significance over their institutional importance.

Two key clauses defined the broad scope o f the activities o f the new Public Archives. The first confirmed that the repository had a duty to preserve not only public records but also any other historical materials:

The Public Archives shall consist o f all such public records, documents and other historical material o f every kind, nature and description as, under this act, or under the authority o f any order in council made by virtue

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Canada, Report o f the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the State o f the Records o f the Public Departments o f the Dominion o f Canada (Ottawa, ON: King’s Printer, 1914). In 1926 the government authorised the establishment o f another Public Records Commission, chaired by Doughty, to report to the government on issues relating to public records, particularly those ‘which related to an increased usefulness of the department to all parts o f the Dominion.’ As Chairman, Doughty was to receive $3,000 per annum. However, according to a 1943 government memo, ‘the Commission was never set up, never met, and ... no reports to government were made.’ It was suggested in the memorandum that the Commission may have existed in part as a means to provide Doughty a salary; it clearly did not guide his public records work. W.E.D. Halliday, ‘The Public Records Commission,’ 17 February 1943, Canada, Public Records Committee Records, RG 35/7, NAC, vol. 4.

thereof, are placed under the care, custody and control o f the Dominion Archivist/^

Thus, items taken into custody by the Dominion Archivist were, by virtue o f their acquisition, considered part o f the archives. Their medium, form, or origins were inconsequential. By this definition, the government had the right to acquire documents, art, publications, artifacts, and other materials, all o f which would form part o f the Dominion Archives.^^

The second key clause clarified the authority o f the Dominion Archivist to acquire records outside o f the government sphere. He was given a free hand in the selection o f materials:

The Dominion Archivist, under the direction o f the Minister, may acquire for the Public Archives all such original records, documents and other material as he deems necessary or desirable to secure therefor[e], or he may acquire copies thereof, and all such originals or copies so acquired shall form part o f the Public Archives.^^

Again, materials were defined as archival by virtue o f their acquisition, not by their form or medium or by the nature or method o f their creation. Records from non-govemment agencies were equally as archival as public records; copies were equally as archival as originals. For example, the historian Adam Shortt, editor o f a wide range o f historical documents, confirmed that ‘as sources o f historical information, accurate copies are quite as valuable as original documents, and commonly much more l e g i b l e . T h e idea that copying would ensure the preservation o f the information, and that the information was

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Canada, An Act Respecting the Public Archives, 1912. Shortly after the passage o f the Act, the Privy Council transferred responsibility for the archives and the commission from the Minister o f Agriculture to the Department of Secretary of State. See Canada, Privy Council, ‘Report o f the Committee o f the Privy Council,’ 6 June 1912, NAC Records, vol. 303, File: PAC History, part 2. D. Parker, in the introduction to his 1913 Guide to the Materials fo r United States History in Canadian Archives, commented on the evolution o f the Canadian national archives, stating that ‘The Dominion Archivist [Brymner] had no archives, in the strict sense o f that term, to

administer.’ D. Parker, Guide to the Materials fo r United States History in Canadian Archives

(Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution o f Washington, 1913), p. 3. Canada. An Act Respecting the Public Archives.

Ontario, Archives, Report (1903), p. 34. Two years after Shortt made this statement, the Library o f Congress in the United States instituted its own programme to copy records in foreign repositories, particularly in Great Britain, France, Germany, and Spain, relating to American history. This is mentioned in W.K. Lamb, ‘Liberalization of Restrictions on Access to Archives: General Survey,’ International Council on Archives, Extraordinary Congress, 9-13 May 1966, NAC Records, CD 25 15 B9 1966, volume 1, File: ICA Congress/Lamb.

equally as valuable as the original record, was still strong in archivists’ and historians’ minds.

The definition o f archives embodied in the Public Archives Act bore little relationship to the theory o f archival management evolving in England and Europe. In 1922, ten years after passage o f the Public Archives Act in Canada, Clarendon Press in England published Hilary Jenkinson’s textbook on archives, A Manual o f Archive Administration: Including the Problems o f War Archives and Archive Making.

Jenkinson’s text provided the first concrete statement o f archival theory widely available to English-language archivists. His discussion ‘What are Archives?’ defined archival repositories in a manner quite distinct from Canadian practice:

A document which may be said to belong to the class o f Archives is one which was drawn up or used in the course o f an administrative or executive transaction (whether public or private) o f which itself formed a part; and subsequently preserved in their own custody for their own information by the person or persons responsible for that transaction and their legitimate successors .... archives were not drawn up on the interest or for the information o f Posterity.

Jenkinson wrote from the perspective o f the Public Record Office, which had a clear mandate to manage the vast quantities o f extant records o f the government o f the United Kingdom. In England, university libraries, the British Museum, and other institutions had long existed, actively acquiring private records. Jenkinson did not reject the legitimacy o f acquiring historical materials, and he did not question the validity o f acquisition-oriented institutions. He simply argued that archival records were the natural product o f actions and transactions, and to retain their integrity they must be retained as an organic whole, with the history o f their custody and management clearly identified. Unlike publications or artifacts, archival records were not to be managed as items, nor were they to be grouped into artificial collections.

Jenkinson emphasised the difference between the archivist and the historian, arguing that the archivist must not make acquisition decisions based on personal

H. Jenkinson, A Manual o f Archive Administration: Including the Problems o f War Archives and Archive Making (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1922): p. 11.

judgments or modem research interests. The archivist’s duty was to preserve the records, as impartial evidence o f the past, without judgment or prejudice. He opposed involving the archivist in appraisal decisions, arguing instead that the administrator should be the 'sole agent for the selection and destruction o f his own documents.

Jenkinson’s definition o f archives would have been an anathema to Doughty. However, there is no hard evidence that Doughty considered this theory. Having travelled to England a number o f times, he would probably have met a prominent archival figure such as Jenkinson at some point. And he would have had access to the American journals reviewing the book. But it does not seem that Doughty considered these new theories applicable to his own situation; he certainly seems not to have written or spoken o f them publicly, even to refute them. There is evidence that in 1937, James Kenney, Acting Dominion Archivist after Doughty’s retirement, wrote to England to order two copies o f the second edition o f Jenkinson’s book, after he discovered that the first edition was no longer available for sale. This suggests that there was no copy o f the first edition in the Public Archives.^^ Whether by ignorance or by choice. Doughty did not avail himself o f the ideas o f his English colleague. Instead, Doughty preferred the company o f his associates in Canadian history.

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Ibid., pp. 128-30. Jenkinson's views were not embraced wholeheartedly by North American archivists. Several Americans who reviewed the Manual questioned Jenkinson’s rigid definition o f archives. Theodore Pease asked ‘where among these sources do archives leave off and historical manuscripts begin?’ Randolph G. Adams argued that ‘archives which are not in official custody are archives none the less.’ Curtis Garrison summarised the practical American view: ‘Americans are never going to be ruled by bureaucratic definitions, and if a state archivist sees a good manuscript collection disintegrating, or in danger, I hope he will rescue it.’ It was at this time that the terms ‘papers’ and ‘manuscripts’ began appearing in North American archival discussion, to distinguish private records from public records. See T.C. Pease, ‘Review, A Manual o f Archive Administration, ’ The American Archivist 1, 1 (January 1938): 25; R.G. Adams, ‘The Character and Extent o f Fugitive Archival Material,’ The American Archivist 2 ,2 (April 1939): 87; and C.W. Garrison, ‘The Relation o f Historical Manuscripts to Archival Materials,’ ibid., p. 101. Kenney to Biggar, 24 February 1937, NAC Records, vol. 7, File: 21.