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Diplomatic analysis of technical drawings: developing new theory for practical application

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Abstract

This paper draws on aspects of research into technical drawings in archives. Undertaken between 2006 and 2011, the research investigated how this often-problematic type of record could be made more understandable to archivists, and thus more accessible to researchers. The main intellectual difficulty was found to lie in the substantially different patterns of communication employed by original-use technical communities and subsequent archival communities. A solution to this language barrier was sought using an innovative extension of diplomatic theory. Discussed here are the findings that reconceptualize the ways in which archival technical drawings can be interpreted using that new theory. The ultimate aim is to produce well-founded practical guidance for archivists and researchers who encounter technical drawings. Descriptive language for technical drawings was mapped across the technical and archival communities using diplomatics’ precise and granular terminological principles. A coherent vocabulary for the archival description of technical drawings was developed as an Interdisciplinary Data Definition Model. Created deductively in the first instance from the literature, the model was then inductively developed during a survey of a statistical sample of technical drawings. The model now provides the theoretical underpinning for the future drafting of specialist practical guidance for the archival processing and description of technical drawings. Diplomatic theory has thus been successfully shown to be capable of development and application to the analysis of technical drawings, as an exemplar of graphical records.

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Acknowledgments

The research upon which this paper is based was funded by a full-time postgraduate award for doctoral study from the Arts & Humanities Research Council, which I gratefully acknowledge. I also sincerely thank my award application referees; my doctoral supervisors, Margaret Procter, Caroline Williams, and Professor Brigitte Resl; and my thesis examiners. The referees of an earlier draft of this paper offered much helpful advice; thank you. Any remaining errors or omissions are, of course, my own responsibility. I am equally grateful to Bruce Jackson, former Lancashire County Archivist; the Trustees and Director of the British Commercial Vehicle Museum (BCVM), for kindly granting me access to the technical drawings, and permitting me to draw a sample of them; and to the Project Archivist, Richard Myring. The BCVM Archives Project was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. I thank Dr. Dan Canada for his kind assistance with the references to theoretical frameworks, sourced from drafts of his doctoral dissertation.

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Appendix: Outline of conceptual framework

Appendix: Outline of conceptual framework

See Tables 1, 2, and 3.

Table 1 Outline of diplomatic analysis of a technical drawing: physical concepts and characteristics
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Table 2 Outline of diplomatic analysis of a technical drawing: intellectual concepts and characteristics not within Internal Articulation
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Table 3 Outline of diplomatic analysis of a technical drawing: intellectual concepts and characteristics within Internal Articulation
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Sillitoe, P.J. Diplomatic analysis of technical drawings: developing new theory for practical application. Arch Sci 14, 125–168 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-013-9206-9

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