Joanna Sassoon drew attention today (on the Archives & Records Australia listserv) to this terrific essay pubished in the Literary Review of Canada, January/February 2011 edition.
I am sure the Ning readers will appreciate the essay too.
http://reviewcanada.ca/essays/2011/01/01/national-archives-blues/
From a researcher's point of view, it discusses the role and value of archivists re description and reference services, the need for contextualized research access, the value of serendipity in research, and the perils of digitization as the primary access mode, with attendant reductions in specialist staffing.
I will be sending a copy of this article to my boss and to the senior management of my company, and I suspect many others of you might find it a useful summary of the situation to present to employers in companies and agencies where archives are not the principal business, but nonetheless are a crucial business management tool.
Comments
It is a good article but my take on this is that access via digitisation is not the same as access via a Search/Reading room. At the RAPPSIG Day in Melbourne there was discussion about this and many agreed that while numbers in Search Rooms remain steady, the numbers accessing digitised archives are increasing exponentially. Anecdotally, I would say the type of visitor to a Search Room is more informed about the particular sorts of records available than 10 years ago, due to information and databases being available online, etc. The questions remain - should these sorts of access be compared? Does one negate the other? Will Digital access one day replace the Search Room?
Gerard