Historical and information approaches in archival studies

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the content of historical and information approaches which will make it possible to carry out research on different aspects of archival work. The study proves that, in combination, the two approaches provide a possibility to discover and then to analyze important problems of history, theory and practice of archives administration and of the work of professional archivists. At the same time, concrete examples show that these approaches have specific features for forming the direction of the specialists’ creative activity and are also oriented to their own expert problems. Along with the presentation of the content of these methodological directions for the study of history, theory and practice of archival work, the article unfolds the most important historiographical sources in which these directions have become the objects of approbation.

As an example of the areas studied from a historical perspective, the current paper defines the processes and facts of the foundation and functioning of archival institutions and services in different periods, discusses the development of scientific thought in the sphere of archival science and also scrutinizes the methodological documents for archival work created before the emergence of the elements of a postindustrial society. Among the directions studied from the position of information approach, the article presents the establishment and development of archives as information systems; displays the practice of application of contemporary computer archival technologies in a standalone quality and compared to the traditional technologies; shows the origin of electronic documents and the development of ways to work with them.