How Are Archives Different from Libraries

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Library Sciences Personal Reflection

My thoughts and impressions about archives and archival work have changed substantially since the beginning of the semester. Originally, I thought of it as a job where you sat isolated away from humanity in a closed room, pouring over boxes and boxes of old manuscripts, documenting each one endlessly while the world went on day to day outside. After this course, I have to say my interest in archival work has grown considerably. As Somers (2017) notes, for instance, in a big archive, there is simply not enough man power to go through all the records, piece by piece. A lot of what it stored is not really known in detail but only in a superficial—a manner that allows for records to be categorized but not really known in much depth. (That is why it is important for researchers to go into archives with a critical framework and investigate records so that the truth of history can be made known to the public when the researcher goes back to the world to publish his or her findings). The task of being charged with archiving the texts that society deems relevant, the role of ethics in the decision-making process, and the fact that the archivist is not really pouring over every text—all of that opened my eyes about the actual job.

If libraries are like sources where the public can go for their information and entertainment needs, archives are like the places they go to store, preserve and investigate history. Archivists are like the gatekeepers to history: they decide what goes in, which gives them a great deal of power in terms of preserving documents for posterity. What future generations might wish to research about our age or a previous age will all depend on what they are able to find in archives, where materials are collected. In many cases, there will be boxes of donated items that no researcher will have ever looked into before. So in this sense, the archive is the last unexplored place in the world.

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If one wants to be an explorer, one could turn to an archive to find what no one else may have ever come across before.

Aspects of the class that surprised me were the resources we were presented with on archival work. I had no idea there was so much that went into it. I imagined it was just like cultivating a collection in a library—but the two are very different and there are different ethical approaches as well. One way they are different is this: the materials in an archive may not be leant out to the public; on the contrary, the public must go to the archive to see the material (Society of American Archivists, 2017). A library is much freer with its collection because most of it is easily replaceable if it gets lost or damaged. This is not the case in an archive. An archive is filled with one-of-a-kind documents and texts that have no copies in existence anywhere else. It truly is like a treasure vault.

I would like to explore in more detail a real archive, or maybe several, so I could get an even better sense of how they operate and what goes on there. I’ll admit it does sound a little intimidating—an archive—the place were real research is done. It is also amazing to me that archivists are tasked with cataloguing the archive to help researchers know what is in there, when the reality is that even the archivists only have a limited sense of what is in there. So really the archivist essentially makes a catalogue that is like a rough treasure map and passes the map to the researcher who says, “Ah, yes, I would like to dig here!”

Archivists also have to try to collect records that have enduring value (Module #2: Archival Appraisal and Acquisition, n.d.).

My knowledge of archival practice might benefit me….....

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