Sonderband 2. International Council on Archives. Dritte Europäische Archivkonferenz, Wien 11. bis 15. Mai 1993. Tagungsprotokolle (1996)
3. Session / Séance. Sharing of Experience and Exchange of Staff / Partage d’Expériences et Echange des Personnes - Huyda, Richard: Coordination Research in Archival Sience and Dissemination of Professional Information / Coordination de la recherche en archivistique et diffusion de l’information professionnelle (english 231 - français 251)
As for the methodological approaches used for research in archival science, they have all been developed for one primary purpose: managing organic information to be preserved for various reasons that are not necessarily connected with the reasons for which it was generated. All of these approaches are also derived from the scientific method handed down to us from the nineteenth century and based on observing and analysing facts and expressing conclusions in the form of assertions or models14. As has already been emphasized, this research customarily uses induction when it is applied to the solution of practical problems. Deduction is used when the research concentrates on the definition of general principles. Finally, given the preeminently utilitarian and complementary nature of archival science, research in this area borrows widely from methodological procedures developed in other disciplines in the social or physical sciences. Here is what one could call the multidisciplinary aspect of archival-science research procedures. Persons and circles involved In a conference of the Interdisciplinary research group in archival science, Louise Gagnon-Arguin, who had been asked to identify the ins and outs of research in this discipline, identified two distinct researcher categories: theoreticians and practitioners. These roles would normally, and respectively, fall to professionals pursuing university careers in teaching and research and to those involved in the practice of archival science. Since the number of professors teaching archival science in universities is fairly limited in Canada, however, Mrs. Arguin emphasized that theoretical thinking was not their exclusive prerogative. Actually, many archivists running archive services in this country feel the need to translate their immediate practice into more general thoughts about their field of activity. The traditional distinction between „basic research“ and „applied research“, therefore, does not coincide with what could be identified as two separate socio-professional groups: university researchers and persons involved in practising the profession15 16. Elsewhere, Mary Sue Stephenson dwells on this fact of a happy marriage between theory and practice by pointing out: The major writers, thinkers, leaders and researchers in the field have tended to be practitioners who have also contributed substantially to the education of members of the profession. Those few individuals who have been living mostly on the academic side of the profession have maintained excellent connections with both practitioners as a group and the microcosm of the workplace . 3. Session/Séance: Marcoux - Huyda, Coordinating Research in archivai Science See: Dam pi er, William Cecil: La science et la pensée philosophique au XIXe siècle, in: Histoire de la science et de ses rapports avec la philosophie et la religion. Paris 1951, p. 351-387. 15 Gagnon-Arguin, Louise: La recherche en archivistique, in: Symposium en archivistique (GIRA), 1990, p. 261-262. 16 Mary Sue Stephenson, in: Symposium en archivistique (GIRA), 1990, p. 149. 234
