Thoughts on a State Records Program

"Archives! Who needs them?!" This comment was attributed to a consultant working under the direction of a team of businessmen charged with recommending efficiencies and economies in the operations of a state government in New England. The team recommended abolishing the state archives and records management program as a "marginal luxury" of state government.1 Officials in that state disregarded this recommendation, but the attitude that government records programs are a "marginal luxury" still exists among some governmental decision makers and many members of the public. It reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of government records in society. It also reveals a shortcoming of government archivists who fail to articulate the role of government records and the need for an active state records program. That state archives and records management programs are under-supported, not fully utilized, and misunderstood is documented by Edwin C. Bridges in his analysis of reports on state archives programs from the initial round of the NHPRC-funded state historical records assessment and reporting projects.2 Analysis of reports from the second round of these projects does nothing to refute his conclusion that "American state archives are in an impoverished condition and are currently unable to provide adequate care for their records."3 "The image of state records administrators that emerges from these reports," writes Bridges, "is of a small, haggard band of defenders surrounded by forces that threaten to overwhelm them and desperately struggling just to survive."4 His use of the cliche, "the cycle of poverty," aptly describes conditions in many state programs. If this is the situation, then why have a state records program anyway? Is it a "marginal luxury?" In times of fiscal constraint, can a state afford to support its state archives program? What is the role of records in state government? The answer to this last question is the key to answering the others. It is to this question that archivists must thoughtfully respond so that government decision makers, the citizens who elect them, and the bureaucracy that serves them, can vividly understand the reasons to support a state archives and records management program. "Government is the one institution that in one way or another, at one time or another, touches the lives of every single individual within its jurisdiction. It not only affects the lives of all citizens, but inherent in that contact between government and citizen is a complex interdependence of rights and obligations, of mutual responsibility and accountability."5 The