General history of archives in modern scientific and didactic understanding: textbooks of the Department of History and Administration of Archives

This article is a review of the textbook “General History of Archives”, published in the first half of the 2020s. It was written by a team of authors under the guidance of prof. T.I. Khorkhordina, Doctor of Sciences (History), Head of the Department of History and Administration of Archives at the Faculty of Archival Science and Records Management at the Institute for History and Archives of the Russian State University for the Humanities. The structure of this manual is organized by region. Each chapter is devoted to the history and archives administration in a specific country. In preparing their texts, the authors relied on the international regulations regarding archives and records management, as well as on the scholarly works and textbooks devoted to the development of archives administration in Europe and, to some extent, in Asia.
These sources and research papers have not only been used in preparing the chapters but are also presented in the form of the lists that conclude the teaching material. All chapters wind up with the questions that fully reflect their content and are so designed as to provide control over the students’ knowledge. The review also states that the authors of the textbook have successfully utilized the opportunity to move away from the subjective approach to the analysis and interpretation of the facts – the approach which, for many decades, has been predetermined by the application of, first, a formal and then a liberal-Western methodology.
The article notes the prospects for developing the textbooks on the general history of archives. On the one hand, these prospects lie in the expansion of the range of the countries selected as the subjects of study, characterized by the systems of information law distinct from the RomanoGermanic one. On the other hand, they are associated with the opportunity for a more in-depth analysis of international experience in addressing the methodological challenges that Russian archivists still face. These challenges primarily concern the computerization of all stages of work with archival documents, from their acquisition and organization of storage on electronic platforms to the creation of conditions for fruitful access to them from a research perspective. The main conclusion of the review is that, in terms of structure and content, the prepared textbook can be considered the most comprehensive publication on the general history of archives currently available in the world. In acquiring methodological and practical knowledge, the manual will be equally useful for archivists and the specialists in the field of history of foreign countries.

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