Final Thoughts....Role of an Archivist

"[The archivist] exists in order to make other people's work possible, unknown people for the most part and working very possibly on lines equally unknown to him: some of them perhaps in the quite distant future and upon lines as yet unpredictable. His Creed, the Sanctity of Evidence; his Task, the Conservation of every scrap of Evidence attaching to the Documents committed to his charge; his Aim, to provide, without prejudice or afterthought, for all who wish to know the Means of Knowledge." (Jenkins, 1948). I loved this quote about archiving.

Over the past two months, my role has been to demonstrate the role of archiving on this blog. I learned a lot along the way and hope that you did too! I appreciate all who have visited this blog and commented. For my final entry, I have created my model of archiving. I wonder if anyone will archive this blog?

Jenkins, J. (1948) The societal role of archives. Retrieved April 14, 2008, from

http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub89/role.html

Let's Hear It for the Pack Rats!

I was in the airport returing from my vacation and I overheard an interesting conversation. A woman was trying to loan her friend a video (VHS) tape of her wedding to watch. The friend laughed and told her that she no longer had a VCR, she donated it years ago and now she could only view DVD's. The first woman said she is a pack rat and saves everything. She even had some old 45's. Wow, how quickly things become obsolete. I realized that I no longer own a VCR either and I have a whole box of VHS tapes in the attic that I wouldn't be able to see. I know I could (and should) have them transfered to DVD, but I never seem to get around to it. I wish my grandparents had taken the time to transfer their reel movies to another format. This made me think about archivers and how useful pack rats could be to them. Sometimes things change very quickly and before you realize it they are gone. I am sure archivist are thankful for the pack rats of our society. It gives them one more opportunity to find and perserve items before they are gone forever. Are you a pack rat? Don't worry about the clutter, you could actually be providing a valuable service!

Majority Loses

Another poll has closed and thanks to all who have voted. In this case, the majority lost. According to the National Archives, "Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the Federal Government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept by us forever." (National Archives, 2008). Frankly, I was really surprised with this statistic. As mentioned in a previous post, the National Archive contains over 6 billion pieces of paper in the Washington archive alone. Think about all the billions of pieces of paper that didn't make the cut. What an overwhelming job the archivist must have deciding what to keep! I thought about this in terms of my own personal office. How much paper do I personally archive? Are my documents really more important than those generated by the government? Do I need to save more than 1%-3% for legal or other purposes? I decided, probably not. So, off to purge I go. If the national archivist can do it, so can I. Can you?

National Archives. (2008). About the National Archives. Retrived on April 10, 2008, from http://www.archives.gov/about/