自1910年在布鲁塞尔召开的第一次“国际档案工作者与图书管理员大会”至1950年在巴黎召开的“国际档案专家会议”其间经历了40年。这40年,美国的档案管理工作取得了迅猛惊人的发展。1831年,亚历克西、托克维尔访问美国时曾断言:50年以后收集有关美国当今社会形势的具有权威性的文献比寻找法国中世纪时行政机关留下的文献更困难。因为当时美国既没有做文件的收集工作,也没有建立档案馆。然而恰恰是50年以后,“美国历史协会”成立了,并于1899年■立了“公共档案委员会”它的活动对国家的进步和档案事业的发展做出了极大的贡献。当西方大多数国家把档案管理视为政府的需要、官僚政治生活的副产品时,美国的学者,尤其是历史学家,对于美国国家档案馆及许多州档案机构的建立起了重要的作用。然而,在保存联邦和州档案材料的斗争中,美国的学者对于威胁学院档案材 40 years have passed since the first International Archivists and Librarians Conference held in Brussels in 1910 to the International Archives Expert Meeting in Paris in 1950. In these 40 years, the file management work in the United States has witnessed a rapid and dramatic development. When Alexey Tocqueville visited the United States in 1831, he asserted: It is more difficult to collect authoritative literature about the current social situation in the United States 50 years later than the literature left behind by the executive authorities of the Middle Ages in France. Because at that time the United States did neither collect documents nor establish archives. However, it was exactly 50 years later that the American Historical Society was founded and in 1899 established the Public Archives Committee. Its activities have greatly contributed to the progress of the country and the development of the archival work. When most Western countries saw file management as a by-product of government needs and bureaucratic life, American scholars, especially historians, played an important role in establishing the National Archives and many state archivists. However, in the struggle to preserve federal and state archival materials, American scholars have a strong interest in threatening college archives