National Archives Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

A national archive is a government body charged with the storage, preservation, documentation, and general administration of governmental and historical records. National archives may also store and preserve materials of special historic or cultural importance to a country, particularly if those materials are in the form of documents or other paper-based items that require special preservation techniques. The documents collected by the national archives are often kept in a central repository that is open to the public for research and general information; examples of such open repositories include the Public Records Office at Kew in the United Kingdom and the National Archives in Washington, D.C., in the United States. National archives may also have connections to national libraries, and both may even be administered by the same organization, as in the case of the Canadian government’s Library and Archives Canada.

The history of the storage and preservation of important government papers for future reference dates back to the earliest written government records, and governments have been collecting administrative documents in central locations for many centuries. The Portuguese national archive, for instance, was established in Lisbon in the late fourteenth century. Yet the modern concept of national archives dates primarily to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 1785, King Charles III of Spain decreed that all historical documents pertaining to the administration of the Spanish empire in the New World were to be brought to a central location in Seville, collecting the files that had been spread out across a number of other, smaller archives. During the French Revolution, the private and public collections of documents seized by the revolutionaries were brought together in the Archives nationales in Paris, which in 1800 became an autonomous government body. In the United Kingdom, the Public Record Office was established in 1838 to collect various government documents that had been scattered throughout smaller archives of varying quality, from Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London to private houses and collections. The U.S. government centralized record keeping in a newly created National Archives in the 1930s; before then, each federal government department had been responsible for storing its own files and records. Today, most national governments have somebody or organization that is responsible for archival management, though different national archives have differing restrictions on the accessibility and availability of the documents stored in their care.

Viewing documents that are kept in national archives may be as simple as making the journey to the archive in question and obtaining a public researcher’s access card, but access conditions vary depending on the type of document to be viewed. Particularly fragile or delicate documents may require special permission and advance arrangements to ensure that appropriate preservation conditions can be maintained. Files that have specific copyright restrictions may require researchers to have prior clearance before the documents may be viewed or referenced in publicly available research. Documents on matters that are considered politically sensitive—such as classified government files—may also be inaccessible to the general public and available only to those who have been cleared to view them. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the thirty-year rule prevents public access to selected files that are less than thirty years old, though a reappraisal of the sensitivity of the files can be arranged if a researcher submits a review request under the Freedom of Information Act.

Some countries have had to pass special legislation to ensure that government documents of importance and interest to historians and policy makers are preserved by their national archives. In 1974, American president Gerald Ford signed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, which directed the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to take possession of materials from the presidency of Richard Nixon to prevent documents and tape recordings from being destroyed. The ensuing controversy over the question of which of the Nixon materials could be considered government property was only partially settled by the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which laid out more specific distinctions concerning the kinds of presidential documents and materials that NARA was entitled to administer. The role of national archives and archival administration continues to be a topic of debate, especially with regard to freedom of information and public access to the records of government and administration.

Bibliography:

Berner, Richard C. Archival Theory and Practice in the United States: A Historical Analysis. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1983.
Bradsher, James G., ed. Managing Archives and Archival Institutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Chabin, Marie-Anne. Le management de l’archive. Paris: Hermès Science, 2000.
Colwell, Stella. The National Archives: A Practical Guide for Family Historians. Kew, U.K.: National Archives, 2006.
English, John. The Role of the National Archives of Canada and the National Library of Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Heritage, 1999.
McCrank, Lawrence J., ed. Archives and Library Administration: Divergent Traditions and Common Concerns. New York: Haworth Press, 1986.
Schellenberg,T. R. The Management of Archives. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1988.

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