CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND TO THE PROBLEM
It is incredible but true that the generality of people including some educated elites do not know what archives are, some associated archives with artifacts, monuments, and others believe that the word is derived from archeology. At best, a good number of people think that archives are the old and use less staff meant for the incinerator. This ignorance permeates some an official publication in which archives is mentioned in casual reference to art and culture.
The word “Archive” is pronounced “Arkive”. An ordinary meaning of the word Archive is public or government records and the place for keeping them. This is to say that the word has a dual meaning of being public or government records as well as being a place where such records are housed. They are kept officially or privately but the documents are exclusive.
According to the Italian Archivist Casanova defined “Archives” as the orderly accumulation of documents which were created in the course of its activity by an institution or an individual, and which are preserved for the accomplishment of its political, legal or cultural purposes by such an institution or individuals. The essential elements in this definition relates to the reasons why materials were produced or accumulated.
To be archives, materials must have been created or accumulated to accomplish some purpose. In a government agency, the purpose is the accomplishment of its official business. Casanova stressed their creation to accomplish “Political, Cultural or legal purposes.
In professional parlance, Archives are document drawn up or used in the course of administrative or executive transaction (whether public or private) which formed a part and which are subsequently preserved (in their own information) by the person or persons responsible for that transaction or their legitimate successors.
Originally, the term “Archive” is derived from Greek word “(Acheron) which means that archives belongs to an office. They are generally used to designate agencies or administrative units, responsible for identifying, appraising, accessioning, preserving, arranging, describing and providing reference services on archives materials and for approving the destruction of records of transitory values.
When archivists accept holdings into their repositories, they are taking responsibility for the custody for these materials. All their efforts may come to naught if the archives are lost as a result of a disaster or breach in security. Security and disaster management are the key to the protection of archival materials from human and natural causes. However, many incidents which can be described as disaster have destroyed or seriously damaged parts of archives collections and building. An early account of damage to a book is a pious account of the loss of Queen Margaret’s gospels by a careless priest who dropped the book into a deep and fast flowing river. The story tells us that due to divine intervention, the book was located on the river bed and recovered undamaged and that this minor miracle occurred because the original owner was a saint. Since few of us are saints, we can take little comfort from this.