Comma Revues

Although the principal task of Comma is to showcase the work of ICA Sections and Regions, and to disseminate at least a selection of ICA Congress and Conference papers, this issue is devoted to articles written primarily by individual members. It derives from a suggestion made during the Comma membership survey (which reported in 2009), which led to a call for papers issued through the ICA website. That call resulted in a substantial response, and members of the editorial board subsequently worked with a number of authors whose papers now appear here.

One of the paradoxes of local, municipal and territorial archives is that although they cover very different activities from country to country, there are recognisable common features to all of them. This special edition of Comma, dedicated to local, municipal and territorial archives (LMTs), invites the reader to explore both the differences and the commonalities of these archives.

The 17th quadrennial International Council on Archives (ICA) Congress was hosted by the National Archives of Australia. In August 2012 one thousand delegates representing 79 countries converged in Brisbane, Australia for 5 days of networking, decision-making, professional development and inspiration. The ICA’s international congresses bring together ICA members and the wider international archival and records management communities. While we all participate in virtual and digital professional engagement, regular professional gatherings such as quadrennialcongresses and annual conferences continue to be critical events in our calendars. Often, as with the 2012 Congress, virtual and actual participation operate in parallel. Within a day of the Congress opening ceremony the Congress was ‘trending’ on twitter, and social media activity remained high throughout the event.

This issue of Comma focuses on government recordkeeping in sub-Saharan Africa. It is arranged into four sections that reflect four broad areas of current research, though these areas overlap in various ways throughout the issue. The articles in the first section are concerned, to a greater or lesser extent, with administrative history and the legacies of colonialism. In the second section, the authors concentrate on present-day national archives. The capacity of national archives to provide services to government is a significant component of the regulatory framework that must be in place if public sector records are to be managed well, especially in the hybrid paper/digital environment, and in the context of Open Government. The third section comprises articles about digital records. Digital technologies are changing the way that many African governments are working, but much more needs to be done to build the infrastructure and capacity that will be needed to manage digital records over time. The articles in the fourth section concern concepts that have become increasing important to our profession: professional solidarity, good governance, and accountability.

Standards are looked on in different ways – as frustrating, limiting, worthwhile – to name a few, but however they are perceived, standards are a broad topic. In ICA’s definition they include precise technical standards as well as manuals, guidelines, models of best practice, principles, legislation, terminology, computer software and so on. They are related to a wide range of functions and specialisations that are either carried out by archivists or managed in archival institutions. The standards archivists use come into existence by many routes. Some are developed locally, some are borrowed from other professions or developed jointly with them, some are driven by the marketplace, some result from the work of experts in areas that archivists administer, and some are the exclusive domain of the archivist.[...]

Paradise, isolation, indigeneity, settler colonialism, remoteness, orality, micro-states, pragmatism, ingenuity – these are just some of the words and phrases that spring to mind whenone contemplates the territories and peoples of Australasia and Oceania. The often double- edged concepts embodied in these words have shaped archival identities in the region. More recently, the particular flavour of archiving that has developed in the region has in turn started to shape the global recordkeeping discourse. Arguably, this is because of a growing recognition that narrow, traditional Eurocentric concepts of archival endeavour provide an inadequate frame of reference for the complex, contingent and pluralistic realities of the twenty-first century. This theme issue of Comma aims to provide a snapshot reflection of this refiguring of archival identities, where the global periphery is now, for better or worse, setting much of the agenda for a profession that hitherto has been squarely European in orientation and perspective. [...]

This edition of Comma has one single objective, to concentrate on Ibero-American archives, but it has been developed on the basis of having multiple functions. On the one hand, it will be of use to archivists in Ibero-American countries. On the other, it will spread awareness of archival theory and practice in those countries within the Ibero-American linguistic area to the international community. Overall by concentrating on one area, Ibero-America, which produces significant scientific output within the archival field, the Editorial Committeeof the Journal hopes to give weight to the principle of linguistic and cultural diversity which underpins the Strategic Directions of the International Council on Archives, to develop communications between institutions and professionals from different linguistic backgrounds and to promote archives and professional development of archivists. [...]

The ICA has always recognised the crucial importance of professional education and training, and this volume of Comma is dedicated to that topic. The volume brings together some of the papers presented at CITRA in 2009 together with others especially written for the volume by members of the ICA Section on Archival Education and Training (ICA/SAE). The Editorial Board of Comma would like to thank CITRA secretary Didier Grange,and ICA/SAE Secretary Marian Hoy, for all their work in co-ordinating, commissioning and editing the contributions.