Dear Deborah
Your note to the listserv is interesting, partly because we in Gwynedd are
about to purchase CALM2000 if our present enquiries about the system prove
positive. We have always looked at County Council records as a management
group [level 1] rather than a fonds, although I would agree that strictly
speaking they are all one fonds, each department creating a sub-fonds. We
have however the complication that we have inherited 3 county councils, then
been split into 3 different county areas, and as, by now, unitary
authorities we have also inherited district council records pre and post
1974. There are also records of boards of guardians, etc., which are really
part of the same fonds as the counties were their successor authorities.
Pragmatism has taken over, and therefore the records of each local authority
whose modern successor is Gwynedd Council is regarded as a separate fonds,
and the records of each department of the various county -but not district -
councils are similarly treated as discrete fonds. I think the public
understand this better, and there is a danger of abstract archive theory
obscuring simple realities otherwise.
One thing that still worries me about CALM is the seeming insistence on
sticking to their multilevel numbering system; we had this problem with the
now-defunct ARCHWAY. I don't believe that a reference code that displays the
whole organic provenance of a document is particularly helpful, and we have
been moving away from such a scheme over the years, to through-numbering or
a stripped down system giving fonds, series and item identifiers only in the
code. Have you understood that CALM would not allow such a reduced system?
If that is the case, we will have to revise our numbering system, or look
for other software.
I don't want to do that, since CALM is obviously becoming the standard CRO
package. Your decision to go for it certainly reinforces our impression that
we should join up or risk being left behind. Good luck with it, anyway!
Gareth Haulfryn Williams
Gwynedd Council
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