Cross reference heaven: The abandonment of the fonds as the primary level of arrangement for Ontario government records

Archivaria

Volumn 48, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 131-153

  Krawczyk, Bob ^a  

^a Archives of Ontario ^*  (Canada)

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EID: 39049128816     PISSN: 03186954     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. The problem of administrative change is, of course, not limited to the Ontario government or even to governmental organizations, and it is hoped that comments or insights in this paper may find their application to other complex organizational structures. However, the series approach as practised at the Archives of Ontario arises purely from our experience with the records keeping environment of the government of Ontario, and therefore comments and examples in this paper are purely from that context.
2. Michel Duchein, "Theoretical Principles and Practical Problems of Respect des fonds in Archival Science, " Archivaria 16 (Summer 1983), p. 67.
3. Bureau of Canadian Archivists, Toward Descriptive Standards: Report and Recommendations of the Canadian Working Group on Archival Descriptive Standards (Ottawa, 1986), p. 57.
4. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
5. National Archives of Canada, Criteria for the Establishment of Fonds for the Records of the Government of Canada (Ottawa, 1995), p. 15. Although I am critical of many elements of this report throughout this article, I am still indebted to it. This is reflected in the number of times I refer to it in this article. I suspect, if the National Archives can claim in their report that "although programs and even main functions are shifted amongst departments, most are relatively stable, " (p. 18) then the situation of the federal government is perhaps rather different than that of Ontario, which may be the reason for our differing approaches to arrangement.
6. Terry Cook, "The Concept of the Archival Fonds in the Post-Custodial Era: Theory, Problems and Solutions, " Archivaria 35 (Spring 1993), p. 24.
7. In this paper, the term "agency" is used to refer to any corporate body within government, that is, "an organization or association of persons that is identified by a particular name and that acts, or may act, as an entity" (Bureau of Canadian Archivists, Rules for Archival Description, Appendix D03). Agencies may be departments or ministries, sections of these, boards or commissions, corporations, or other institutions. The term "fonds-creating body" is used to indicate those agencies of government whose records may constitute a fonds following the application of specified criteria.
8. National Archives of Canada, Criteria for the Establishment of Fonds, p. 27.
9. National Council on Archives, Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, (London, 1998), p. 24.
10. For instance, the Ontario Department of the Provincial Secretary received all functions relating to citizenship in 1959, and a Citizenship Division was established. In 1961, in belated recognition of this fact, the name of the Department was changed to "Department of the Provincial Secretary and Citizenship. " No other changes to the administration occurred in 1961. This raises the question of the relationship between name changes and functional changes. We can probably agree that a new body had been created.
11. For instance, the Department of Labour was renamed the Ministry of Labour in a governmentwide restructuring in 1972. All former "Departments" were re-named "Ministries. " Only one small functional change accompanied the Ministry of Labour's change of name: a single branch was removed from the jurisdiction of the old Department. Was this a new body?
12. Duchein, "Theoretical Principles. "
13. P.J. Scott et al., "Archives and Administrative Change-Some Methods and Approaches, " Archives and Manuscripts 7 (August 1978), pp. 115-27.
14. Duchein, "Theoretical Principles, " p. 70.
15. No act was ever passed specifically establishing the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation. The enabling legislation of the ministry consisted, respectively, of The Ministry of Citizenship and Culture Act and the Ministry of Tourism and Recreation Act. The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation was created in 1993, but the Ministry of Tourism and Recreation Act and the Ministry of Citizenship and Culture Act were passed in 1982. Furthermore, the Ministry of Citizenship and Culture had ceased to exist in 1987, having been replaced with the Ministry of Citizenship and the Ministry of Culture and Communications. Therefore, the two acts passed in 1982 have served as the enabling legislation for four or more subsequent ministries.
16. On 3 February 1993, the Ministry of the Solicitor General and the Ministry of Correctional Services were merged to form the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services. As with the previous example, the acts which originally established the two ministries were never amended. The only document bringing the new ministry into existence was an order-incouncil which simply appointed a member of the Executive Council as Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services (Executive Council of Ontario, Order-in-Council 357/93). The ministry itself was never mentioned in official documents. When it was subsequently redivided in August 1999, the order-in-council simply made reference to the appointment of a separate Solicitor General and Ministry of Correctional Services (Executive Council of Ontario, Order-in-Council 1507/99).
17. The Public Accounts of Ontario, on the other hand, reveal enough inconsistencies regarding which agencies receive a separate appropriation from year to year that they were not thought to serve as clear a purpose.
18. Ontario, Management Board of Cabinet, Classification and Position Administration Directive (Toronto, January 1991).
19. It is probable that records and copies of records originating in the branch will have found their way into other records series elsewhere in the hierarchy, particularly in the divisional and min isterial level. It is no less probable that administrators within the Libraries and Community Information Branch would have drawn upon series of records elsewhere in the exercise of their official activities.
20. National Archives of Canada, Criteria for the Establishment of Fonds, p. 26.
21. Duchein, "Theoretical Principles, " pp. 72-73.
22. Cook, "The Concept of the Archival Fonds, " p. 31.
23. This pattern of transfer to the Archives is typical. In fact, an automated system was implemented for managing record disposals within the records centres some time ago.
24. Bureau of Canadian Archivists, Rules for Archival Description (Ottawa, 1990-1996), p. D-4.
25. An example of a poly-hierarchical relationship is provided by the creation, in 1997, of the "Integrated Justice Corporate Services Division, " a merger of the corporate services divisions of the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services. The ministries continued to exist as separate entities. The division's existence is noted under both ministries in government telephone directories and other sources. Of course, it would be possible to define and apply criteria to make a decision about within which "fonds" the records of the division may be located, but to do so seems more a distortion of the provenance required by a fonds-based approach to arrangement than a decision that, in fact, arises from the provenance of the records-that is, unless the records of the division itself are said to constitute a fonds.
26. As a challenge to those who would apply a fonds-based approach to Series D, however, I would ask the following question: assuming that Series D has been described as part of the Ministry of Culture and Communications, and assuming that the fonds-level description contains a history of that ministry, what information would we include in the administrative history for this series? Would we include information about all three branches which contributed to the creation of the series? If not, how would researchers divine the origins of the files created between 1971 and 1979? If the information is included, imagine the workflow that would stem from a description of just the four series of government records in Figure Three. Furthermore, how would researchers be made aware that these records were created in the context of five separate ministries and departments? The complexities of the circumstances surrounding the creation of this series defy, in my experience, attempts to simplify them by placing them in one fonds. The only solution, it seems to me, comes with multi-level, repeatable provenance access points.
27. Max J. Evans, "Authority Control: An Alternative to the Record Group Concept, " American Archivist 45 (Spring 1982), pp. 249-61.
28. Cook, "The Concept of the Archival Fonds, " p. 33.
29. The database also contains sub-series descriptions, and could potentially contain lower level descriptions (although file and item level descriptions using RAD are not generally created at the Archives of Ontario), but for government records the series is the highest level of description. Of course, the database also contains fonds and lower level descriptions for private records.
30. The Rules for Archival Description notes, "If the authority files and descriptive records... do not automatically show together, it is strongly recommended that the archivist provide an abbreviated sketch. " In the context of government records, it is felt, the context of creation is complex enough so that all an abbreviated sketch can contain is an indication of the creators of the records over time, accompanied by links to those creators where more contextual information is present. Bureau of Canadian Archivists, Rules for Archival Description (Ottawa, 1990-1996), p. 1-47, footnote.
31. Obviously, language is a problem in this area. The words "primary" or "controlling agency" have been used in very much the sense that it might be used to define a "fonds-creating body. " That is, ministries and departments are primary agencies, as are boards and commissions, royal commissions, interdepartmental committees, and institutions such as jails, hospitals, and educational facilities directly administered by the Ontario government. Although we have developed criteria to assist in the definition of these, for obvious reasons the criteria are applied on a case-by-case basis. "Secondary" or "subordinate agencies" are any other organizational grouping.
32. Bureau of Canadian Archivists, Toward Descriptive Standards, p. 59.