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 - Thibodeau, Sharon: The Pitfalls of Terminology and linguistic Barriers / Pieges de la Terminologie et Barrieres linguistiques (english 207 - français 217)

3. Session/Séance: Thibodeau, Pitfalls of Terminology and linguistic Barriers

implementation) of the principle of provenance. In those cases where provenance is understood to mean „the office or person of origin of archives; that is, the particular person, family, or corporate body that created and/or accumulated and used the documents in the conduct of personal or corporate activity“, the fonds are „the whole of the documents, regardless of form or medium, organically created and/or accumulated and used by a particular person, family, or corporate body in the conduct of personal or corporate activities“15. In those cases where provenance is understood to mean „functional provenance“16, however, the fonds are considered „the record stock or total documentary resource, regardless of form or medium, made up of the documents created or accumulated by the corporate bodies, families or people of a particular jurisdiction or functional grouping“17.

Consider the difference between these two interpretations of the concept of the fonds. In the first case, the fonds are the records belonging to a particular person or corporate body; in the second case, the fonds are the records resulting from a particular function or activity. The first definition is the traditional one. It can be argued that the need for an alternate has arisen because modern recordkeepers create and maintain file systems without any awareness of the archival principle of „respect des fonds“. While it is true that some (possibly most) recordkeeping systems are „naturally generated and/or accumulated by a particular person, family, or corporate body“, and never „mixed or combined with the documents of another individual or corporate body“; other recordkeeping systems (apparently an increasing number) are generated and/or accumulated by a succession of corporate bodies and are characterized by interfiling of documents. The records resulting from a given type of action or transaction, and often the recordkeepers, move smoothly from corporate body to corporate body; and the losing corporate body continues to co-exist with the gaining corporate body18.

Reviewers of the Statement of Principles Regarding Archival Description point out that if they are to serve the purpose for which they are intended, they must reflect

15 The definitions quoted here are those included in the glossary of the statement of Principles Regarding Archival Description. They hardly differ from the definitions of provenance and fonds provided in the second revised edition ofthe ICA D ict ion ary of Archival Terminology.

16 This phrase is defined in the ICA Dictionary of Archival Terminology (second edition, München 1988) as „the concept that, with a transfer of functions from ane authority to another as a result of political or administrative change, relevant records or copies thereof are also transferred to assure administrative continuity“.

17 This definition of the fonds is taken from comments prepared by the Australian Society of Archivists and forwarded to the Ad-Hoc-Commission on Descriptive Standards on June 24, 1991. The comments addressed several aspects of the Statement of Principles Regarding Archival Description, but, in particular, expressed concern about the concept of the fonds.

18 See the „provenance as partner“ example in the Appendix A [Annex to the french translation of this paper] for discussion of the kind of transfer of function that leads to interfiling of records and represents a challenge to allocation to organizational fonds. The registration of merchant ships is another, longer-lived, example of a recordkeeping activity that has moved among several federal government agencies in the United States, including the US Customs Service (1789-1884 and 1942-1967), the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation (1884-1942), and the US Coast Guard (1967-date), and presents difficulties for the allocation of vessel documentation to organizational fonds.

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