ARCHIVAL SCIENCE. - It is the discipline that studies the arrangement, administration, and preservation of archives, while at the same time teaching how to understand their history, nature, and structure. Given the breadth of its scope, archival science must necessarily draw upon the assistance of other disciplines, such as palaeography, useful for reading ancient writings; diplomatics, for classifying documents; sigillography, for understanding seals; the history of law and institutions, for the legal interpretation of records; and finally chemistry, in order to provide suitable remedies for the preservation and restoration of parchments and papers.
Archival science, understood as a body of rules governing the movement and life of archives, has a somewhat remote origin; understood instead as a discipline concerned with the scientific treatment of related problems, it is no more than three centuries old. In fact, in its modern content, it arose alongside palaeography and diplomatics at the end of the seventeenth century, when scholars began to turn their discussions toward archives.
Having gone beyond the bounds of the purely internal arrangement of the material preserved in archives—which nevertheless continues to constitute the foundation of the present science—archival science today also directs particular attention to the solution of all those problems involving the external organization of an archive. It therefore recommends the criteria to be followed in choosing the site and building ground; in constructing the building; in distributing and arranging the rooms; and in establishing their systems of lighting and heating. It likewise gives instructions for furnishing the storage areas, rooms intended for the public, and offices. Archival science must also devote special care to the maintenance both of the premises and of the furnishings contained therein, prescribing for this purpose a whole series of measures designed to ensure their hygiene.
The proper object of archival science nevertheless remains the internal organization of an archive. Accordingly, for an established archive it examines the contents in order to arrange them and facilitate their practical use by scholars.
Archival material may be considered from a dual point of view: formal and scientific. Viewed from the first standpoint, it is divided into three categories: parchments, which, given their importance and antiquity, constitute the most substantial portion of an archive; volumes, the principal types of which are represented by registers, containing copies of documents issued by an institution; cartularies, containing instead copies of documents received; protocols, which contain together the registration of documents issued and received; and loose papers, consisting of drafts of letters sent, letters received, and various enclosures (reports, accounts, plans, etc.), grouped in different ways.
Examined from the scientific point of view, archival material is likewise divided into three categories: documents, records, and writings. By documents is meant, in the broad sense, any written text that provides information about a fact; by records, those writings that precede and follow a document (e.g. drafts), intended to remain at the issuing office and to account for the stages through which the handling of a matter has passed; by writings, those texts that do not partake of the nature of either of the two preceding categories (e.g. correspondence, private letters, accounts, etc.).
This classification of archival material is necessary for the purposes of arrangement, which is carried out on the basis of different systems: some of material application, such as the chronological and alphabetical systems; others based on the internal study of the subject matter, such as the decimal and subject systems.
The chronological system, which gathers all writings according to the absolute order of their dates, regarded as the principal element, presents at times serious disadvantages that consequently counsel against its use. It is enough to mention the fact that not all documents are dated and not all are separate, as well as the distortion of documents resulting from the loss of connection among various documents that concern a single matter but do not belong to the same year. The alphabetical system arranges records according to the initial letter of an index word, which may be a common, personal, or geographical name. Although it offers a slight advantage over the preceding system, it too is not free from disadvantages, such as, for example, the different spellings under which the same name may sometimes appear. M. Dewey’s decimal system, based on variously combined numerical symbols, lends itself to a theoretical but not a practical placement of documents. The subject system, which is fairly artificial, distributes the material under specific headings.
Once the archival material has been arranged and placed according to one of the systems just mentioned, an inventory is compiled. Its purpose is to provide a complete list of all the parchments, volumes, and loose papers, previously catalogued and numbered, found in a particular location. Hence derives the practical usefulness of an inventory, which is necessary for materially proving the existence of an archival item; it is therefore useful to divide it into as many sections as there are sections into which an archive is divided. The inventory, which may be prepared wholly or partly during the arrangement of the material itself, serves to give a general indication of what an archive contains. It therefore does not provide descriptions of the individual items preserved, a need instead met by the repertory, which, in summary form, gives the user specific knowledge of the contents of the documents, while indicating in which archival fonds documents on a given subject are to be found. Nevertheless, in every inventory care will be taken to indicate for each document whether it is an original or a copy, specifying in the latter case its nature—that is, whether it is a simple copy or a figurative copy, an authenticated copy (vidimus), a notarial copy, an issued copy, or a confirmation.
The indications provided by the inventory are supplemented by regesta, which furnish, in summary form and for documents whose importance warrants it, their essential features. Besides assisting the scholar in research, the regest also constitutes a guarantee for the preservation of archival material by limiting its handling.
In general archives, formed through the deposit of several special archives, it becomes necessary to compile a single index of the various inventories, regesta, and repertories, providing the scholar with current indications and suitable references to the earlier ones. An excellent example is offered by the Vatican Secret Archive through the publication of the two volumes of Sussidi per la consultazione dell'Archivio Vaticano, included in the Studi e Testi collection of the Vatican Apostolic Library, 45 and 55 (Rome 1926 and Vatican City 1931).
Niccolò Del Re