Records Group. The problem of fonds in the American archival studies

Abstract

The term record group means a group of fonds (records) and it is a type of archival fonds rarely described in Polish archival literature. Most often it is associated with the complex archival fonds, due to its comlicated structure and blurred borderlines – an effect of administrative system varying from the Polish one. The post-war attempts to modify and broaden the meaning of the complex fonds caused its resemblance to the term record group. Irena Radtke in her paper given during the 6th Archival Methods Conference in Warsaw in 1970 proposed, that the complex fonds should be one comprising records of foreign provenance that are an effect of passive succession. Bohdan Ryszewski, addressing Radtke’s idea, noticed that passive succession might be a source of complications. However, this conceptualization of the definition of the complex fonds did not correspond with the American understanding of it as an above-fonds structure.
Bogdan Kroll has touched the core of the problem; he noticed that an archival construction comprising materials of various provenances cannot be seen neither as an archival fonds, nor as a complex fonds. He saw a discrepancy between the structure and partition of archival holdings and archival theory; thus Kroll proposed abandoning the term complex fonds and implementation of the term archival complex. The archival complex was supposed to be archival materials of various origins merged (in or outside of an archive) into fonds, or parts of archival fonds of different institutions having the same characteristic – function. The complex was supposed to make up a separate entity in logic structure of archival holdings, comprising of all archival fonds and/or their pieces being parts of the main fonds of the complex. The problem of lack of above-fonds forms in the Polish archival theory has been also noticed by Józef Siemieński, who has formulated the term of higher-order fonds. According to his idea the higher-order fonds was a fonds of archival fonds created by various authorities and agencies (in one system) that constituted separate hierarchy. In this article the Author used translation of the term record group into Polish grupa zespołów (akt). The term was defined in 1941 by Solon Justus Buck, in charge of the National Archives in Washington. The term record group was understood as a unit of logical division of archival holdings, set up in arbitrary way, which size and character was convenient for its processing and providing access to, while respecting the principle of provenance.