If you think of a record as evidence of a state of nature that can be used by a person removed from the state by time or space to gain an approximate understanding of it, then my grandfather's stories of walking to school in the snow are records.

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John Montana <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Having thought about it overnight, I think they might, in some cases, be 
>records.  In some non-literate societies, the oral historian is the 
>official keeper of records, including all sorts of things we'd delegate 
>to a government agency -- births, deaths, lineages, property records, 
>etc.  The oral historian is, for all practical purposes, the county 
>clerk and recorder, marriage registry and state archives, all rolled 
>into one.  Their history is THE record, relied upon for all purposes, 
>and taken as the official version of the events therein.  Call it best 
>evidence, call it a record, call it whatever, but it's operating like an 
>official record.
>
>English common law used to have a similar thing for land transfers.  In 
>pre-literate (insofar as commoners were concerned) England, upon 
>transfer of title to land, they'd have what was called an enfeoffment 
>ceremony wherein a clod of dirt from the land would be pressed into the 
>hand of the new owner by the old owner. The purpose of this was to 
>create a record of the eventin the minds of participants and observers, 
>since there was no written record as we know it. Then, they would give 
>the children who witnessed the ceremony a beating.  The reason for this 
>is that a record in the mind of an old person was not sufficiently 
>durable and longlasting for something like a land title transfer, so 
>they created a more long-lasting and prominently labeled record in the 
>minds of the children, thus ensuring a readily available record of the 
>event long after the passing of the adults present at the ceremony.
>
>David T. Macknet wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hmm. Part of the discussion has centred around the evidenciary standing
>> of oral history, which may give them the standing as if they were
>> records, but I'm not sure that I'd call them records in and of
>> themselves. Oral histories are records, certainly, in a sense - an
>> historical record, in a way. But my gut feeling (for whatever it's
>> worth) is that there's something about what RM has considered "a record"
>> which involves the explicit act of preservation, in durable form.
>> Certainly, the explicit act of preservation is present within oral
>> histories ... but the durability of the form is in question. Also,
>> because there is no possibility of destruction / retention decisions
>> being made in the same way as what RM considers records, I think there
>> is some (not irreconcilable) philosophical difference between the two.
>>
>> -D
>>
>> -------------------------
>>
>> DR. DAVID T. MACKNET
>>   MCP, MCSD, BA, MSc, MLitt, PhD
>>
>>   email: [log in to unmask]
>>   Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wishiwerebaking/ [1]
>>   Blog: http://davimack.members.sonic.net/blog/ [2]
>>   LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmacknet [3]
>>   Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/users/6850/david-t-macknet [4]
>>
>>
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/wishiwerebaking/
>> [2] http://davimack.members.sonic.net/blog/
>> [3] http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmacknet
>> [4] http://stackoverflow.com/users/6850/david-t-macknet
>>
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>-- 
>Best regards,
>
>John
>John Montaña
>Montaña & Associates
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