“Traditional” skills needed by archivists today include
arrangement, description and an understanding of the importance of original
order. Applying all three skills/theories when repackaging and cataloguing a
series can lead to issues when original order is being kept to but does not fit
with the original order of the collection (you can find out more about
collections and series and their structure here). However this can be easily
solved with some Quantum Archiving (as thought of by our Archivist). In this week’s blog we look at what Quantum
Archiving is and how this has been applied in the Royal Voluntary Service
Archive & Heritage Collection.
Quantum Archiving is similar to the second interpretation of
Quantum theory known as the many-worlds or multiverse theory; where an object
can exist in many states in a number of parallel universes. In archiving, a collection could exist in
many states: analogue; digital or a reconstructed version e.g. in a transcript
to name a few. These formats would be in different places (universes) such as a
store room, a server or a database. Over
the years we have been working on preserving and making accessible the 300,000
fragile pieces of paper which hold the hidden histories of millions of women
and men who have given their time as volunteers to WVS and WRVS between 1938
and 1996 also known as the Narrative Reports. In 2018 we started work on more
recent reports written in 1980s and 1990s however this part of the series is
very different from earlier reports.
By 1980s the geographical structure of WRVS had changed from
being organised into twelve regions following the Civil Defence Corps
organisational structure to the follow Local Authorities restructured in 1974.
This meant WRVS was split into districts rather than centres, thus fewer
reports were produced and less frequently from monthly to quarterly and finally
biannually. As well as writing monthly narrative reports areas particularly
counties wrote annual reports. These reports were usually kept separately in
the archive’s collections from the Narrative Reports however when the 1980s
annual reports for some counties and districts arrived at HQ they were stored
with the Narrative Reports for those areas.
When volunteers started working on the reports carrying out
basic preservation and giving sub series reference numbers they noticed that
sat on top were some annual reports. The team then discussed what we should do
and how they should be ordered. Should they
be classed as Narrative Reports? Should they be moved to the collection of annual
reports? It was decided that the physical order should be kept as the
original order while the catalogue record, reference and description would
reflect the order of the rest of the archive’s theoretical structure e.g.
fonds, series and files. Therefore the annual reports exist in two different states
in two different “universes”; the physical and the theoretical. To further
complicate matters the 1980s and 1990s reports are ordered differently to the
1938-1979 reports. Earlier reports are ordered by region then date then county
then centre but after 1980 they have been ordered by region then county then
centre then date. A slight difference but means that they are physically stored
in their original state but described and referenced as the rest of the series
was intended.
In conclusion arrangement and description (including
reference) do not always fall in to line in archiving. Therefore a collection
can exist in two different states in a physical and theoretical/digital world. This
example is just one of many and I’m sure we will continue receiving surprises
from the Narrative Report collection which makes us look at the different ways
it can exist.