Stephan's BlogSpace

What is Important?

Archivists could quite possibly have one of the most monumental roles in the world of writing. Few people can boast having a hand in what will be deemed and determined as important for future generations. The definition of importance is so ambiguous and relative that that it cannot be laid on the shoulders of a few to determine. Archivists, however, have that responsibility and luxury as they make it their goal to sort through information and list, categorize, and record items in order to make what is important available to others.

This raises the question: How do Archivists determine what is important? When this fundamental step has been made, how do archivists make their selections public and easily accessible to the people who would be interested in the collected information? This process is called archival description and is defined by Jennifer Nieves of the Allen Memorial Medical Library on the campus of Case Western Reserve University: “The purpose of archival description is to identify and explain the context and content of archival material in order to promote its accessibility.”

This archival material includes letters, tapes, notes, articles, newspapers and anything else that can be archived. These items in a collection are described in a standard format which is supposed to break the contents down into short pieces of categorical writing. The purpose of this writing is to enable ease of access and research. With so much information to sort through archivists are bound to miss a few things here and there as they write and compile archival descriptions.

An example of such a missed piece of information occurred at the Allen Memorial Medical Library during research conducted by a man from Korea studying the history of a late medical professional at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. The researcher from Korea stumbled upon some old film reels that had not been specifically documented in the “Scope and Content Notes” or “Container List” of the collection. These film reels contained recordings of the late doctor’s former estate on the current Severance Town Center property and a rare recording of a Western Reserve College Redcat football game.

I find it amazing how such brittle pieces of history that might not, at a certain instant, be determined as important surface as something incredibly valuable. This once again stresses the importance of the work being done by archivists. Their work, which involves extensive reading of material and compilation writing, is invaluable in the realm of history and even beyond.

Who knows what might be important to someone else. With well written archival descriptions not only will something important be observed and archived, but it will also be easily accessible. Without this integral part of archiving important material might as well just have been lost or destroyed.

The Allen Memorial Medical Library on the campus of Case Western Reserve University

As always, thank you for reading.

STEPHAN NIEUWOUDT