22.Work processes, information processes and accessibility

Information that is bound to work processes has necessarily also a process like character itself. In the transaction of business, records change in function and therefore often in form. Stages of transmission pass one into another: by being signed, a draft letter becomes an authentic document. A record can progress from one form of material to the next: by adding a disposition, an authority can convert a request to a decree. Files support consecutive phases of the same work process (preparation, execution and evaluation for example) and can also be used in other work processes. Files are added to, tidied up and rearranged whilst they are being worked on. Whilst their functions change, their relationships with other documents and files change as well. Whole series can change in function and therefore also in structure. In countries Europe, baptism, marriage and funeral registers, which have been generated and structured by church-related functions and which were incorporated in church archives, have acquired the new function of precedents to the register of population and have been incorporated in the public records. Archives are usually less dynamic than the work processes through which they are generated. The more time passes, the less their physical structure is an adequate reflection of those work processes. Components of the archive that retain their original structure, and which are generally the older and less up-to-date components, can after a while no longer be retrieved on the basis of the structure of current work processes. If the difference in structure between non-current and current records becomes a serious problem, then measures will have to be taken to resolve the problems involved. In this situation, physical re-arrangement of the archive, undertaken as the first and supposedly most logical remedy, easily can decontextualize records by detaching them from the context of their generating work processes and link them to other, more current work processes, an operation which inevitably changes their meaning. Missions, functions, and work processes can and do change in the modem world, with the result that the arrangement and organisation of records changes to reflect changes in functions and work processes. As a result, the formalised logical structure of the filing system must be altered to reflect these changes. The filing system chosen is then no longer adequate and the archive loses functionality. When this loss is great enough, parallel information structures evolve in order to meet the needs of the organization arise of a more spontaneous, but also more adequate character (usually within the boundaries of the physical structure of the desk drawer). Ultimately the filing system itself is revised. Finally, the work processes, which have generated the records and in which the records have been used, come to an end. From then onwards the chance increases rapidly that the archive will end up in disarray, change structure and lose its character as a representation of the original work processes. Reorganisation from a point-of-view that lies outside the archive can then easily degrade the archive to no more than a collection of historical documents.