Reading Response Seven: What's History Got To Do With It?

Tom Nesmith discusses the relevance of historical background knowledge in archives with “What’s History Got to Do With It?  Reconsidering the Place of Historical Knowledge in Archival Work.”  Early on, Nesmith states, “…archivists could draw more deeply on historical information and interest in order to perform better their distinctive archival work and to meet the challenges they face as a distinct profession.”  Understanding more about the history of a record, going even beyond its provenance, may allow an archivist to form conceptual relationships beneficial to institutional memory and historical research.  Through appraisal and the creation of online finding aids, archivists are becoming part of the document history as well.  Nesmith connects the necessity for complete metadata associated with electronic documents with acknowledgement and understanding of the importance of historical relevancy.  In other words, all documents from all eras benefit from framing within the properly associated context.  The movement toward digital repositories creates new challenges but also new means of creating these historical connections.  Archivists are historians—perhaps not in a traditional sense—and a strong knowledge base will not only allow the archivist to better understand the collections present but to also develop a deeper grasp of the gaps in the historical record within the archive.  To refute historical knowledge, to attempt to set learning aside because it is not a specific part of the job description, is heresy.  An archivist’s job is to preserve those records deemed worthy of such treatment.  In doing so, the archivist helps mold the known history, and in doing that, is a part of the history itself.  The least the archivist can do is take the time to understand what brought their institution—and themselves—to today.

Nesmith, Tom. “What’s History Got to Do With It?:  Reconsidering the Place of Historical Knowledge in Archival Work.” Archivaria, Spring 2004.