xt7wpz51j92s https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7wpz51j92s/data/mets.xml Alabama Lacy, Dan, 1914-2001. 1940 Other contributors include Historical Records Survey (U.S.) and the Society of American Archivists. 8 l. ; 27 cm. UK holds archival copy for ASERL Collaborative Federal Depository Program libraries. Call number JK2443 .L3 1940. books  English  This digital resource may be freely searched and displayed in accordance with U. S. copyright laws. Alabama Works Progress Administration Publications Administrative history in relation to State archives; a paper read by Dan Lacy, assistant to the director, Historical Records Survey projects, WPA, before the Society of American Archivists, Montgomery, Alabama, November 11, 1940 text Administrative history in relation to State archives; a paper read by Dan Lacy, assistant to the director, Historical Records Survey projects, WPA, before the Society of American Archivists, Montgomery, Alabama, November 11, 1940 1940 1940 2015 true xt7wpz51j92s section xt7wpz51j92s g ,:‘ s' , umvaasm op KENTUCKY
    I     ¢ I(IMIllIIUIIIIIIIIIHIJIIIINIINIUllllllvllIIHI/|I|l cedures which could employ to advantage competent but professionally
untrained personnel. Although these procedures ere not precticel for
! use in their entirety by the smell and generelly professionally
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trained staffs of stete archival establishments, I shell describe them
briefly becapse I believe that uenv elcneats in the rrocvigses we; oe
adapted to the use of state archivists and more partieul;r;y Romance
the results attained by this research will be eveileble to the
archives establishment in each stete.
The structure, functions, and procedures of state governmental
agencies and their colonial and territorisl predecessors ere dvter;nn—
ed by the law of the state, colony, or territory, whether constitu-
tional or statutory in form, es interpreted through edministretivc
action, sttcrney~generel’s rulings, or juticiel decisions; by the low
of e superior government, such Ss the Feierel government or that of the
mother country of e colony; by administrative or executive orders end
regulations; and by practice and custom, To whet sources, then, shell
we turn to discover this corpus of law, regulation, and custom?
The fundamental sources, obviously, are the constitutions end
session laws of the state end of the colony or territory from which
it was crertedp Except for the eorly rol¤n1el ·,·,» period in some states,
these are usually complete and eesily eveileble, The pcriooic com—
piletions of session laws into official codes adopted by the legisla-
ture, or unofficial codes prepared by legal publishing houses are es-
peciclly useful, because of their convenience end their annotations
end becouso new law is sometimes incorporated in the official codes
or obsolete lew repealed merely by the device of omission from them.
The decisions of the Stete Supreme Court are also easily eveileblc.
Attorney General's rulings ere often incorporated in the printed re—
ports of the office, but even more often, especially for en eerlicr
period, are to be found only in manuscript in the files of the office
or of the agency to which the opinion was addressed. The Statutes at
Large end the United Ststes_Supreme Court Reports are always available,
as generally ere the pertinent statutes of England, France, end Spein
for those states which were once their colonies. In these sources
are the law itself and its official interpretations, which constitute
the foundation for administrative history. It is in the use of this
relatively homogeneous body of sources that large scale research
techniqies have been most successful. ‘ V
- The myriad administrative regulations, ordrrs, and instruc-
tions by which the detailed structure of governmcntel egtncies is es—
teblished, the precise functions within the scope of legzl authorize-
tion defined, end the specific procedures of offices set up ere less
easy to come by, and the actual customzry practices of the office
not established by either lew or written orders ere even more diffi—
cult to leern. Yet these ere little less important to the archivist
than the constitutionel and statutory fremework of government itself,
If within e stete department of revenue, for instance, s scpereto sales
tex unit is established to edninister a new levy, its creetion is cpt
to be provided for in an order of the heed of the deprrtment rather
than in any statute. A stete depsrtment of public welfare, unccr 2

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very general statutory authority, may undertake an elaborate milk-
distribution scheme, the operation of which produces a wholly new set
of records, and do so by purely administrative action. The complex
filing system of a state unemployment service may be almost incompre-
hensible to the future archivist who may be charged with the adminis-
tration of its records if he does not have at hand a copy of the fil-
ing manual issued by the services. The significance of many record
series is not apparent to one not familiar with the customary internal
procedure of the office in which it originated. As the structure and
activities of state agencies become more complex, the laws themselves
tend to give a less adeouate picture of their structure and work,‘and
it becomes more and more necessary to rely on such non-legal sources
to supply the details of adnnnistrative history.
For such orders, regulations, and practices, several sources
are available. Perhaps the most convenient are the annual or bien-
nial reports of the departments or offices concerned. In these, the
types of work done by the department are described (a matter of great
importance when the functions of an office are defined by statute only
in very general terms), often something of its procedures is irdicated,
and important changes in structure or organization effected by admin-
istrative action are generally summarized. Next, and perhaps most im-
portant of all, are the archives themselves of the department. Here»
one may expect to find the written record of such administrative ac-
tions as we have been describing: organization charts, procedural
bulletins or circulars, filing instructions, and the like. lf the
agency is controlled by a board, such as the state board of health or
the boa§d of trustees of a state university, the minutes of that body
will be indispensable source for the internal administrative history
of the agency. Not only from the content of the archives, but from
their vtry form and arrangement as well, much may be learned, especial-
ly concerning the actual procedures of the office. A convenient and
obvious source of information concerning present or recent organization
and procedure is, of course, personal interviews with the department
heads and chief clerks.
ln addition to these primary sources, these expressions of leg-
islative and administrative will, which determine the form and function
of governmental agencies, many descriptions of such agencies exist which
are useful to the student of administrative history. These include a
wide variety: colonial governor‘s reports such as William Tryon's
“A View of the Polity of  he Province of North Carolina in the Year
l767“; lngislrtivc committcc's reports, transcripts of budget hearings,
studios by the Brookings Institution end similar agencies, and mono-
graphs on various functions of state government, such_as taxation, in-
ternal improvements, and public schools. Unfortunately, much of the
veluc of this last type of study is lost for the archivist because of
its emphasis on the subject matter rather than the machinery of govern-
mental operation.

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The total of the materials useful for the study of stat; ad-
ministrative history so briefly sketched above — and ir+n by no means
even touches upon all the important sources — is stsgeeriny indeed. We
have attempted to attack this moss of material by establishing controls
in the form of card indexes or abs;racts. The legal material is first
approached in the attempt to note a) every constitutional provision,
statute, supreme court opinion, cr attorncy~g?neral‘s ruling which
creates or affects the manner or appointment, qualifications, and tenure,
of a state officer or vduch rstrbliehrs or effects the structure and
organization of a state drpartmrnt or institution; which defines or
changes the functions of the office, daprrtment, or institution; which
prescribes tht procedure to be followed in the execution of those func-
tions; or which requires the keeping of any record or the submission of .
any report; and b) every law which a state agency is required to en-
force. In searching these we mfke e page—by-page examination, beginning
moth the most recent constitution, and following in order with the
most recent code, the statutes enacted since that code, the earlier con-
stitutions, beginning with the most recent, the earlier codes, begin-
ning with the most recent, the supreme court decisions referred to in
the annotations of the appropriate sections of the various codes, and
the session laws enacted prior to the most recent code, beginning
again with the most recent. Statutes of the mother country of a colony ,
attoniey-general's rulings, and federal statutes are not generally
searched psga—by—page, but are used only as annotations may lead the
workers to them or as there may bo evidence in any given instance that
they might contain material of value. ln some instances an offort is -
made to abstract the provisions of the various laws; in others only the
subject of the provision and a citation are included on thc card which
is prepared; a few basic acts and constitutional provisions may be
transcribed in full. Rhich of these rethods is used depends on the
size and competence of the staff available, the case of access to the
original wetcrial (for instance, volumes of statutes available in the
project office, arc usually only indexed; those less easily available
j are abstracted), and on the nature of the material. A separate card is
filled out for each agency affected oy each provision of the act being
abstracted. Th2 cards are filed by agency; then under detailed topical
headings; and thereunder chronologically. This work is done for all
state agencies at one time, and is carried through by certified person-
, nel of the highest competence available on the project.
We recognize that this procedure is open to certain objoct—
ions, especially in that the legal materials are searched in reverse
chronological order. This order is recommended to the projects, how-
ever, because of the fact that the majority of state agencies are of
relatively recent origin; and legal research for each of these can be
soon completed if research is begun with the more recent legislation.
Quite obviously, to carry through this program of legal re-
search in its entirety demands so large a staff as to be impractical
for almost all state archival agencies and for many Historical Records

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Survey projects. Two short cuts are sveilsble in such cases. One of
these cells for aoendoninq the puge—by-page examination of the legal
sources and relying upon indeies, ceptione, end code annotations to lead
the worker to the desired material. This does save s vest deelof tine;
but due to the fsct that indexes end other controls over legel ms—
terisls ere not adopted to the purposes of historical research, the re-
sults, while useful, leeve something te be desired in the wey of com»
pleteness. The other ie to orosecute the research for one department
or egency et a tine. This makes possible the very much more rapid come
pletion of research for the particular agency, but creates s greet deal
of waste in going over end over the same material if such research is
ultimately to be prosecuted for all or s greet many agencies.
When this primary legal research is completed, the project
editors heve eveileole at least e fremevork of the administrative his-
tory of the stste government. They know what state sgencies have been
created, the dates of their existence, end their functions end pro-
cedures so fer as they were defined by law. As our eerlier discussion
hss indiceted, however, the legel definition of the functions end pro-
cedures of state agencies is usually so general that research must be
carried much ferdier.
For this additional research, however, no effort is made to
prescribe e uniform procedure, and the research for each agency is
undertaken seperately. ln almost every case, however, the following
steps ere taken: l) Bibliogrrphics ere searched to discover secondary
studies of the agency or of the function which it executes; 2) the
periodic printed reports and other publications of the agency ere
searched and pertinent references abstracted; 3) if the agency is e
department of institution governed by s board, the minutes of the
board ere searched for ordinances or odier acts, which ere abstracted
es would be the session lens of the legislature; 4) the field workers
in surveying the archives of the agency ere instructed to note orgeni~
zetionel charts, regulations of the egsncy, keys to files, end other
materials of the sort. lf these have been printed or mimeogrephed,
copies are secured, whenever possible, for the use of the editors, if
not pertinent information is abstracted for their use; end 5) if the
agency is still in existence, or hes been only recently sbolished, its
heed and such other officials as may be of assistance ere interviewed
in order to secure en explanation of the internal organization, pro-
cedures, and records system es they ere et present end have existed in
the recent past.
Other special research undertekings may be dicteted by the
neture end history of the rgency. For instence a careful search may
heve to be made of die printed collection of coloniel documents of e
state in order to secure such fragments of information es may be ob- ‘
teined concerning es obscure office of the colonial period, or resort
may be necessary to such compiletions of bnglish sources es the

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- Calendar of State Papers. Or it may be necessary to turn to the Offic-
ial Records of the War of the Rebellion in order to learn the fate of a
Southern state institution located within occupied territory. More in-
volved research technique may be required at times; for instance, in
order to reconstruct the provisions cf a North Carolina court act of
1738, of which only the title is extant, it was necessary among other
things to make careful comgarison of the handwriting in which the
A minutes of two courts were recorded in an effort to determine whether
the clerk of one was ex—officio clerk of the other.
The information asscmoled as a result of all this research is
used by the supervisors and editors in the direction and checking of
the actual inventory of the archives of each department, and from it
an essay to accompany the inventory is prepared. This essay is itself
designed to be as adequate an edninistrative history of the agency as
the staff can prepare, covering as it does the development of the
office’s structure, of its internal organization, of its functions, and
of the procedures by which it executes them, with special attention to
the records systems.
" The date which will bc assembled along the lines l have indi-
cated to enable the various WPA Historical Records Survey projects to
prepare accurate and intelligent inventories of state records, will be
also available to the state archivist in his tasks of arranging,
classifying, cataloging, and providing reference service for the same
records. The possibilities of fruitful co—oper:tion between the His-
torical Records Survey project in each state and the state archivist
are obvious. The professional guidance and technical advice of the
archivist's staff will be of great value to the project's editorial
staff, especially in the more difficult grcblems of research in the
early history of territorial or colonial government; conversely, the
men—power available to the projects makes possible the undertaking of
research in the more recent legislation with a thoroughness and upon a
scale which would be impractical for most state archival establishments.
I should especially like to urge such co—oparation in one matter: the
establishment and maintenance of a file of currently released regula-
tions, procedures, manuals, reports end similar material from each
state agency, which will constitute sources for the study of adminis-
trative history. This wmterial, when it has been used by the project,
should pass into the permanent files of the state archival institution,
which should establish the regular collection of such material from
every agency as a matter of continuing policy. Wherever possible, en
effort should bc made to reduce to writing for inclusion in this file,
either in the form of interviews or of memoranda, significant organi-
zational or procedural changes which are not made the subject of regule—
tions, manuals, or similar departmental releases. While it is true that
the state archival agency may not for a greet many years be charged with
the administration of the records which will be created as 2 result of
such changes, when ··.* they do come into the custody of the agency, its
task will be enormously facilitated through its having undertaken the

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systematic collection oi sources for eoministretive historyn The es—
sombling of such e colltctien currently offers no greet problem; but
to grthor ephemeral materials of this sort fifty years hence would be
extremely difficult if not clteg< 40 m. with a max- t ere Ore, f at f € g 0SSy wares were the products of a Comp e
imum height in excess of 6 m. Near its summit were found the single factory which for some reason ceased production _ nary ht
remains of two small kilns which seem quite insufficient to sooner than did other Early Christian kilns. The glossy over, st
a€€0¤¤l fer the q¤anlllY nf ash and eeramle refuse eeverlns the wares were evidently not made at any of the centers that f large. 1
mound. Purther trenching would probably have revealed addi- novo boon found and oxcavafod; they may have Colne 5) mea
tlenal Stnletlllest Pelhees nt tl gleetel depth Pnlnw tlle S“lteee· from somewhere farther to the north. All of these wares and Gl
letgfnnn 3- n nnnll nnnnn nt nn nnnnl Contnnnn n nnsn nfs appear to be more abundant at onn lbrirn than at any nr equal l
The Serra kilns were clearly of the same cylindrical, double- tho known Sooo In oudooooo Noble V (Room
chamber plan and the same general size as those at Paras, Whlelt
l)ebeira, and Gezira Dabarosa, although so much damaged that THE F AR AS POTTERIES Pleseh
in no case was any portion of the upper chamber preserved. The Slalrwa
characteristic buttresses which supported the arched canopy The most spectacular and certainly the best preserved of Roor
over the furnace chamber were, however, presentto help identi- Nubian factories was the Paras Potteries (Site 24-E-21), . easterr
16 CERAMIC llvousmlss or MEDIEVAL NUBIA K

  gg first discovered and partially excavated by the Oxford excavation, various traces of painted decoration could still
i  Expedition in 1911-12,l3 and re-excavated by the Sudan be seen here and elsewhere (by 1960 few of these traces
'  Antiquities Service in 1960.l‘l Unlike the sites thus far were still visible). A portion of Griffith’s description fol-
  discussed, the Potteries was not originally designed as a lows:l8
  manufacturing center but converted from some earlier
  user perhaps as a monastery Room 6 [our Room 10] may have been a chapel or oratory.
i  Although tho donno is far frorn nrooioo/15 tho Paras sito There is no trace of an altar in it, btit the east end is raised a step
r  appears to have boon ooonpiod trorn tho oarly oiohth higrnea than the rest.i9 In the middle of the east wall lwas an
a century to some time in the tenth eentury; ite aiateiy ggde eljllge glermpfjve Fl; lleee glljfe hlgh· 89 Wee eee
  thus spans most of the Early Christian period and the Sorngirnatrg