Adam
Whilst I have no doubt about your view of museum practice being the correct way to go about things, personally I couldn't care less about how the material got to the archive, but rather more that it should be archived in a responsive way to it's origins that easily enables a researcher to access it. This obviously doesn't happen at the NRM, but given some of their recent decisions I'm hardly surprised. I could rant at length about the standards of museums in the UK, but it would be rather boring.
Martin - it's a reasonable point of view: there is a difference and in the world of those who work in the sector, the difference is fairly fundamental, between composition of museum displays - which I think is what you're referring to and the care and ordering and of collections of records which are maintained and made available to researchers. In the NRM they happen to be housed under the same roof. An archivist - with skills and training specific to that role - is generally a different skill set and training - often a different person - to a curator.
I happen not to like many trends in modern curatorial practise as it's enacted in lots of modern museums (including some of our best-known preservation sites and, for different reasons, some major institutions in other fields) and that's down to personal preference. These are places generally visit for pleasure rather than work.
I
use a lot of archives and understand how they work because it pays the rent in a more interesting way than some things I've done. Hell I even drink with the odd archivist occasionally. In this instance, the archivists privilege/prioritise a different part of the life of that record to the bit that you, as an operator of an obsolete machine described by these records or a modelmaker would like them to. That's their choice because that's their job. In modern archival practise (the last 60 years or so) , the origin is the point the collection arrives at the archive; that's just how they work. The role of the catalogue is to bridge that gap, and let's face it, some are better than others.
The archive is there to hold the documents and to allow access in a way that enables their best preservation. Poor archival practise, by archivists and users, has trashed and continues to trash documents. Digitisation is the ideal, in many ways, but like a lot of things, you can have any two of quick, cheap, comprehensive or user friendly. Three on a good day. You want a catalogue that can be searched by literally anyone for any set of words that they think happen to go together? That's extra and there's naff all money for everyday archival work such as re-cataloguing, especially when researchers want that access (or have a right to expect it, in the case of national collections).
All the above is long and overwrought and worse, off topic. Sorry about that, it's the end of term.
Adam