La Perspective du Continuum des archives illustré par l'exemple d'un document personnel

The Continuum theory developed in Australia may appear complex and hard to apply to concrete cases. Some of its core writings are dense and complicated, and there are not many practical examples of its applications in the archival literature. In countries where the main language is not English, the situation is compounded by problems of translations and by the paucity of texts written by authors who position themselves in the Continuum tradition. This article, written by a Francophone author who has studied and taught the Continuum in Australia, aims to address this gap in the Francophone literature. It presents an explanation of the Records Continuum illustrated by a simple example, that of a family photograph. It discusses multiple uses of the photograph by multiple users in different times and places and with different aims in order to illustrate how a Continuum perspective can be applied to personal records as well as to business records and how it can foster a records management system that is effective and forward-looking and that will meet the needs of all the users.