ARHIVSKI VJESNIK 42. (ZAGREB, 1999.)

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P. Cadell, Financing of archives, Arh. vjesn., god. 42(1999), str. 93-102 normally takes far less time to do some minor work to a single document than it does to repair a badly damaged volume. Yet both are a single item. You may say that these matters are not related to funding, and of course in professional terms they are not. But if we are to justify the work of a national archive service, if we are to be able to argue for increased funding, and in particular if we are to justify the money spent on the service when set against all the other important things that a government has to do, then a very clear notion of the cost of our activities is essential. If we can also say that these costs are calculated according to internationally recognised rules, then, we will be in a much stronger position to argue our case. As I said at the beginning, national archives services are unique, and we suffer to a certain extent from the fact that we cannot justify our costs and our work by direct comparison with other organisations within the government of which we are a part. Though international comparisons can never be exact, they do at least offer a measure of support, some proper validation for what we do, and a way in which the value of our work can be independently assessed. When Dr Kolanović asked me to speak about the funding of archive services, I did not think that the subject would be particularly difficult. I felt certain that it would be possible to find some common features. I am afraid I was completely wrong. All I have done over the last 20 minutes is to demonstrate that variety in this area is infinite. I hope however that it may be possible to give some thought to the terms we use, to a clear definition of what we measure, and to a degree of co-ordination in the way which we produce statistics, so that comparisons can be made internationally, and perhaps so that, eventually, appropriate standards can be set. Summary FINANCING OF ARCHIVES The International Council on Archives brings together over 150 different countries, and when their national archivists meet and compare what there do, there seem to be as many different ways of running national archive services and managing their funding. Much of this variation derives from national traditions, from the general level of prosperity and development, from the size of the archive service, from the department of which it is a part, and although this is always less obvious, from the range of government activities for which the archive is in fact responsible. The same is true at a local level, though here the matter is complicated by the extent to which the national archive service is itself responsible for regional or local archives. In many ways the interest in discussing this subject at an international meeting is precisely the ex101