The Agency of Archivers

Abstract

Abstract Very seldom users of archives reflect on the agency of the archivist. They simply describe their encounter with the archive. However, the archive is created and recreated by the archivist, through appraisal, arrangement, description, providing access and reference service, preservation and digitization. Each of these practices of archival mediation is discussed in this chapter. The archivist is only one of the many ‘archivers’: authors, clerks, registrars, antiquarians, record managers, keepers, website builders, genealogists, and other users. Each archiver participates in the recursive production and mediation of the archive. In other words: the production of the archive (or archive formation) throughout the continuum happens through interactions by a host of archivers who shape the archive and are shaped by the archive. What, then, is the difference between the archivist and his or her fellow archivers?

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