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)
3. Session/Séance: Marcoux - Huyda, Coordinating Research in archivai Science 1970s was a kind of Middle Ages for Canadian archives. The Canadian archival scene at that time was „a huge undeveloped territory dotted with patches of civilization, with a few distant kingdoms of federal and provincial archives“. However, the 1970s marked the ended of self-absorption and the dawn of an era based on the free movement of ideas, interdependence, and communication. Those years saw a number of big events and meetings involving all interested circles (academic, professional, institutional) which, through their actions and lobbying of government authorities, brought about the creation of the Canadian Council of Archives in 1985. The reasons given for creating this Council were simple:- the need for a national archival information system operating in a coordinated manner;- the need to share responsibilities for conservation, distribution, and developing standards;- and the urgency of setting up a coherent, stable program to get financial support for certain projects in archival science28. In the space of barely fifteen years, in fact, unanimity coalesced around the key needs of joint action, coordination, cooperation, and joint financing. Today, the Canadian Council of Archives (CCA) is made up of a series of councils representing all archival institutions wishing to belong to a provincial/territorial archive network. This decentralized structure reflects the federal government structure with these different levels of public authority. It is one of the CCA’s strengths, because it enables local bodies to be represented at the prime decisionmaking level. The CCA also has representatives from the Bureau of Canadian Archivists, which give it the viewpoint of the professional associations. The CCA is an autonomous body, independent of the federal government29. In terms of research in archival science and the dissemination of professional information, the CCA’s field of action is essentially the activities and labours of its various committees and their different publications. Up to now, using these committees, the CCA has coordinated research at the national level and ensured the distribution of research results in the Canadian archival community in areas a varied as the establishment of national and regional goals and priorities, standards for the description of archival documents, the control of authorities for dealing with proper names in archival science, institutional and general standards for small archive services, plans and methods for the physical conservation of documents, and acquisition policies. Obviously, we’re not familiar with all the national archival systems and their coordinating bodies. However, from what we are able to grasp of the systems described on the microfiches accompanying the proceedings of the Second European ConIbidem, p. 6. Khan, Marta: Le développement des archives canadiennes, in: L’Archiviste 19 (1992) n° 2, p. 5. 242
