The ICA and Technical Assistance to Developing Countries

While international archival affairs have played a relatively minor role in the activities of the SAA, it is interesting to recall that the Society was involved in the two most significant decisions in the history of the International Council on Archives its founding in 1948 and its decision in 1966 to give the highest priority to technical assistance for archives in developing countries. Both decisions are related to meetings in Washington. The first, in 1946, has been described by Oliver Holmes who had a significant involvement in the founding of ICA, and the second in 1966 by Morris Rieger, one of the organizers of the Extraordinary Congress and an active participant in the subsequent history of ICA. One of the most significant features of the Extraordinary Congress in 1966 was the worldwide representation made possible by travel grants from the Council on Library Resources. Thus, the impact of representatives from developing countries was felt for the first time, with a resulting emphasis on their needs. The author of a report to the SAA on the congress observed that "the Congress appears to have wandered quite far from its basic theme of scholarly access. The resolutions were much less concerned with this than with the urgent need for archival technical assistance to the underdeveloped regions of the world."1 These resolutions included recommendations 1 ) that UNESCO make regular provision in its budgets for technical assistance to developing countries; 2) that a permanent joint ICA-UNESCO technical assistance planning and coordinating group be established; 3) that there be compiled an international roster of archivists competent to undertake technical assistance missions, as a sort of archival peace corps; 4) that regional archival pilot projects be established in East and West Africa; 5) that a study of film preservation in the tropics be undertaken by ICA; and 6) that regional branches of ICA be set up in Southeast Asia and Africa. Most of the resolutions were based on a report on the activities and problems of ICA by Charles Kecskemeti, executive secretary of ICA. He stressed the importance of technical assistance to developing countries and the need to create regional branches of ICA, which were provided for in the constitution but had not been established because of the lack of financial resources. He reviewed the progress of publications relating to developing countries, chiefly the series of Guides to the Sources of the History of Nations, commenced in 1959 with a subsidy from UNESCO, and manuals on archives in the tropics (Y. Perotin, 1966), archives in Latin America (A. Tanodi, 1961), and on archival buildings and equipment (M. Duchein, 1966). He reported a project in the UNESCO program for a pilot project to create a model archives service in an African country. He referred to studies on