I-Schools and Archival Studies


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Richard J. Cox and Ronald L. Larsen 

School of Information Sciences 

University of Pittsburgh 

135 N. Bellefield Avenue 

Pittsburgh, PA 15232 

rjcox111@comcast.net 

rlarsen@mail.sis.pitt.edu 

 

 

  

mailto:Rjcox111@comcast.net


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iSchools and Archival Studies 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  



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Abstract 

Whispers and rumors about the iSchool movement lead some to fear that this represents 

yet another shift away from the valued traditions of library schools, threatening 

something far different than what library science pioneers ever envisioned.  Predating the 

iSchool movement, however, were other programmatic shifts such as those that led to the 

formalization of graduate archival education. This essay argues that such evolution is 

essential to our future, as iSchools tackle the increasingly complex issues confronting a 

digital society.  We consider the mission and history of iSchools and of archival studies, 

the basic elements and concepts of archival studies that are critical to iSchools, and the 

relationship between iSchools and the changing nature of personal and institutional 

archives. 

Keywords 

iSchools, archival studies, archives, library and information science 

 

 

  



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Introduction 

American graduate archives programs have been connected to library schools and 

then library and information science schools for more than a half-century, competing for 

a while with history departments but emerging as fully embedded in the former by the 

1990s (some would argue even before then).  How are graduate programs in archival 

studies affected by the transition of many of the traditional library and library and 

information science (LIS) schools to the newly emerging information or iSchools?  What 

is the place of archival studies programs in iSchools?  Such questions might have 

interesting precedents if we bear in mind that many of the varying definitions of 

information, some in use in the newer iSchools, stem from the traditional variants of 

these schools (for example, Bates 2005; Buckland 1988, 1991; Shera 1965, 1966). 

More importantly, what new possibilities open for enhancing the archival studies 

programs in a time when archivists increasingly are facing working with digitized or 

digitally-born documents? When we originally proposed this paper for the 2008 

iConference, the primary motivation behind it was the sense by some graduate archival 

educators that their role and that of the archival profession was being somehow lost in or 

neglected by the iSchool movement.  However, after due consideration, we are seeing 

how a stronger connection between archivists and the archival profession and iSchools 

could deal with many of the challenges presented by the transition to the digital age.  

There are new and emerging interdisciplinary avenues for those in archival studies 

programs to follow, such as what Seamus Ross is doing at the University of Glasgow 

with the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute or what Anne 



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Gilliland is doing at UCLA with the Center for Information as Evidence. Both Ross and 

Gilliland come from the archives community, and the kind of collaborative work they are 

doing may suggest the future for what archival studies programs become.  We emphasize 

that this essay is a preliminary exploration, intended to start conversation about a 

relationship (given the early formative stage of both archival education and iSchools) that 

is in a nascent developmental stage. 

This paper takes a snapshot of the evolving role of archival studies in an 

increasingly digital world and considers, in particular, the convergence of this evolution 

with the emergence of iSchools. It reflects on the societal and technological context that 

is driving this symbiotic relationship, in the interest of stimulating discussion, debate, and 

further analysis. We begin the discussion by reviewing several foundational definitions, 

some of which remain in a state of flux reflecting the transitional character of the 

disciplines involved. Following the section on definitions, we discuss the historic roots 

and contemporary trends in archival education, building to the dominant theme of the 

paper: strengthening archival studies in iSchools. 

Setting the Scene: Basic Definitions 

Discussing an issue such as archival studies, and all the variation of terms represented by 

the archiving function, can become confusing when we discuss it in the arena of 

information studies. It is important to provide some basic definitions up front so that we 

are all on the same page.  In the transitional era from print to digital, from paper to 

electronic, some basic concepts -- such as archives or archive or archiving -- can get 

confused.  And, as well, in the shifting from library to library and information science to 

iSchools as the past, present, and future home for the education of information 



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professionals such as archivists, professional missions, identities, and partnerships may 

be changing in radically new ways.  In this transitional era, even when friendly and like-

minded professionals, educators, and scholars sit around the table to discuss issues of 

mutual concern and interest, care often must be taken to ensure that everyone understands 

what is being discussed.  Ironically, we often need to be more precise in our definitions 

(such as with records or documents) and broader in how we define the scope of our 

responsibilities (such as in our appraisal work and in the ethical ramifications of such 

work) (see Cox, 2000, 2004, 2006). 

The first thing to understand is that when we write or speak of archives we are not 

referring to backed-up data or old records and information with no other value than as 

some reminder of the past.  Archives encompass organizational, governmental, personal, 

and family records maintained because of continuing or enduring values to their creators, 

particular research clienteles, and society.  These documents are preserved because of 

evidence, information, accountability, and corporate or public memory values.  And 

archives exist in every kind of organization – government agencies, corporations, cultural 

agencies such as libraries and museums, universities, and community groups; they are 

also created and maintained by individuals and families.  The most comprehensive, basic 

glossary, definition for archives is as follows: 

1. Materials created or received by a person, family, or organization, public or 

private, in the conduct of their affairs and preserved because of the enduring value 

contained in the information they contain or as evidence of the functions and 

responsibilities of their creator, especially those materials maintained using the 

principles of provenance, original order, and collective control; permanent 



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records. – 2. The division within an organization responsible for maintaining the 

organization's records of enduring value. – 3. An organization that collects the 

records of individuals, families, or other organizations; a collecting archives. – 4. 

The professional discipline of administering such collections and organizations. – 

5. The building (or portion thereof) housing archival collections. – 6. A published 

collection of scholarly papers, especially as a periodical (Pearce-Moses, 2005). 

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While this definition covers all the bases, at least as traditionally seen within the modern 

archival profession of the past century or so, it also generates some questions. 

 Like library science education, the education of archivists emerged from a world 

of paper records, information systems and technologies generating paper records 

(typewrite and carbon paper to early personal computers and word processing), 

traditional bureaucratic structures characterized by the thinking of Max Weber and 

Frederick Taylor, and compliance systems and information policies geared to paper 

records (such as represented by the Fourth Amendment notion of privacy).  All this is 

being challenged by the networked world of the Web and the post-9/11 world of security, 

transforming notions of government intrusion and control, personal privacy, and portable 

digital information systems – just to consider some aspects.  How do traditional 

principles of archives administration hold up in our emerging digital era?  What is the 

timetable for the complete shift from paper to digital and the implications of this for the 

education of a new generation of archivists?  Are archivists part of the information 

professions, or part of the historical or cultural heritage fields, or all of these and more? 

What is the nature of the knowledge domain of the archivist, and how does it intersect 



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with the information sciences? How is the mission and work of the archivist evolving in 

light of digital recordkeeping and information systems? 

 For many outside of the archives profession, archival work and the mission 

archivists and their programs are associated with is preservation, but even preservation 

management and conservation are also distinct fields, with their own educational issues 

and standards.  Here is a standard definition of preservation as noun and verb:  

n. ~1. The professional discipline of protecting materials by minimizing chemical 

and physical deterioration and damage to minimize the loss of information and to 

extend the life of cultural property. – 2. The act of keeping from harm, injury, 

decay, or destruction, especially through noninvasive treatment. – 3. Law · The 

obligation to protect records and other materials potentially relevant to litigation 

and subject to discovery. v. ~ 4. To keep for some period of time; to set aside for 

future use. – 5. Conservation · To take action to prevent deterioration or loss. – 6. 

Law · To protect from spoliation (Pearce-Moses, 2005). 

What this translates into is the idea that preservation is really a commitment to maintain 

information, evidence, or an artifact over time whatever it is made of or how it is 

originally created; while this has often been seen as synonymous with the concept of 

permanence, archivists themselves have debated about whether it implies continuing 

(meaning as long as there is some reason for keeping) or enduring (meaning as long as 

possible) (O‟Toole, 1989). Such debates have only accelerated in intensity as we have 

moved from paper to digital sources (considering such issues as record reliability, 

authenticity, and other traditional concerns expressed by archivists about records and 

recordkeeping). Preservation also encompasses the function of conservation and 



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restoration (including hands-on treatment and repair), but the focus is on preservation 

management with responsibilities ranging from facilities conditions to proper storage and 

handling procedures and to making decisions about reformatting (digitizing, 

microfilming, and migrating or emulating).  Preservation is generally seen to be the crux 

or end result of archival work (although archivists destroy more than they save – a fact 

that surprises many outside of the field, as well as a good number within), and it is a 

focus archivists share with librarians and museum curators. Preservation is a reality-

check against all the hype of the wonders of creating, harnessing, and using more 

information than any other era in world history. 

There has been a tension between the possibility, promoted by futurists and 

pundits, of saving everything that is produced digitally.  This is usually based on the 

increasing power and capability of information technology and the decreasing costs of the 

technology, while ignoring social, political, cultural, and other issues.  However, it is 

certainly the case that what archivists have traditionally worked with is shifting from 

paper systems (and an emphasis on records as artifacts) to the digital (and an emphasis on 

the virtual).  While there will always be a need for conservators, for example, to work 

with historical documents and other artifacts, the increasing efforts to digitize traditional 

holdings to lessen wear on originals and to increase remote access also suggest that 

matters like knowledge of digital technologies, new research and experimentation on 

issues like appraisal and selection, and new approaches to ensure reliability and 

authenticity of both digitized and digitally-born records suggests the need for continuous 

revamping of graduate archival education and perhaps hints at why such education in 

new iSchools has great promise. 



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The digital era has brought with it all sorts of new questions and challenges for 

those interested in preservation matters.  How has the concept of preservation been 

challenged or transformed with the growing use of and dependence on digital systems?  

Are digital advocates still arguing that all information sources can be saved and 

effectively used?  What is the ideal weighting between traditional and digital preservation 

in educating archivists (and preservation administrators)?  Christine Borgman, in her 

important new book on digital scholarship, casts it in this manner: “Preservation and 

management of digital content are probably the most difficult challenges to be addressed 

in building an advanced information infrastructure for scholarly applications” (Borgman, 

2007, p. 7). Her use of “curation” may not be necessary as a replacement for 

preservation, but at least it serves as a useful mechanism for representing preservation as 

a function extending from traditional documentary and artifactual sources to their digital 

surrogates.  The digital curation conference held at the University of North Carolina 

School of Information and Library Science in April 2007 and its ongoing project to build 

a digital curation curriculum may be another example of how traditional LIS schools are 

shifting to support new archives education venues (for information, see 

http://www.ils.unc.edu/digccurr2007/).  

Even archivists have tended to be fairly loose in their definitions.  The increasing 

creation, maintenance, and use of records in electronic information systems have pushed 

archivists to try to be more precise.  However, at the same time, these systems and the 

Internet/World Wide Web have introduced more complex record genres pushing standard 

definitions or concepts derived from best practices and new needs. The work of the 

archivist has always been centered about the identification, preservation, and providing 



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access to “records” possessing archival value, but there has been a growing recognition 

that the notion of records has shifted and expanded.  A record has been defined as a  

n. ~ 1. A written or printed work of a legal or official nature that may be used as 

evidence or proof; a document. – 2. Data or information that has been fixed on 

some medium; that has content, context, and structure; and that is used as an 

extension of human memory or to demonstrate accountability. – 3. Data or 

information in a fixed form that is created or received in the course of individual 

or institutional activity and set aside (preserved) as evidence of that activity for 

future reference. – 4. An instrument filed for public notice (constructive notice); 

see recordation. – 5. Audio · A phonograph record. – 6. Computing · A collection 

of related data elements treated as a unit, such as the fields in a row in a database 

table.– 7. Description · An entry describing a work in a catalog; a catalog record 

(Pearce-Moses, 2005).  

Some archivists adhere to a notion of archival science, based on the seventeenth century 

emergence of diplomatics, derived from Jean Mabillon's De Re Diplomatica (1681) and 

mostly fixated on determining whether a document is authentic or a forgery or a copy by 

examining internal and external characteristics.  In North American practice, the notion 

of records was largely taken for granted, following general definitions created in 

government laws or best practices in corporate and other organizational settings.  

However, the increasing use of information technology led to the need to revisit basic 

definitions and to re-engineer the uses of older archival sciences such as “diplomatics” 

(see, for example, Duranti, 1998). 

After a generation of largely ignoring the implications of the computer for the 



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creation and maintenance of archival sources, archivists found themselves engaged in 

defining more precisely the notion of a record, the elements of recordkeeping systems, 

the concept of evidence, and other such matters.  Some major research projects, and a 

considerable amount of debate within the archival community, generated a large literature 

on the nature of the record.  However, the establishment of the World Wide Web, other 

concepts of information documents, postmodern scholarship on the idea of the “archive,” 

and high profile legal cases all seemed to broaden the idea of the record far beyond what 

anyone could have imagined.  Cell phones, digital cameras, and other portable devices 

contributed to a broadening notion of how records could be used and what records 

represented.  Such changes and their implications for archives and recordkeeping, and the 

educational and scholarly reactions to these changes, may reflect some of the differences 

between the notion of archival studies (mostly seen as an all encompassing term for the 

knowledge supporting basic – some might say traditional - archival functions and 

practices) and archival science (based on the centuries-old concepts deriving from 

diplomatics and the reliability and authenticity of texts, now directed at digital systems).  

With many disciplines studying archives, and applying new theories and models to 

archives and recordkeeping, it may be that neither umbrella term is completely useful or 

meaningful at the present time (see, for example, Cook, 2000 and 2001) – and this may 

be yet another reason for the potential of archival programs located in iSchools (where 

other useful sciences reside and where additional research, reflection, and reformulation 

may occur).  

Even those involved in some of the research projects have questioned some of 

their presuppositions and assumptions, while still remaining committed to the notion that 



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records are important to society, institutions, and citizens.  David Bearman recently 

revisited the University of Pittsburgh project of the early 1990s on the functional 

requirements for evidence in recordkeeping and concluded that the basic structure for 

preserving essential evidence in digital systems is sound but not implemented by any 

archives (Bearman, 2007). Heather MacNeill has shifted away from some of the 

authoritarian perspectives reflected in the InterPARES project, and in one essay she 

considers the strengths and weaknesses of modern diplomatics, concluding that the 

diplomatics approach does not reflect the reality of electronic recordkeeping but provides 

a useful conceptual model for evaluating such recordkeeping.  In her opinion, the projects 

utilizing diplomatics suggest that the reality of these electronic systems is that they are 

“too complex and diffuse for any one method to capture.” As a result, the archival 

community is left with lots of questions to ponder.  Are new digital forms of records still 

functioning as transactions of business with the elements of warrant, structure, content, 

and context still relevant?  Are researchers and others needing access to records still 

concerned about matters of authenticity and reliability as they once used to be?  Are new 

means of providing access to more complex digital information sources trumping issues 

of definition and maintenance? Have the continuously emerging digital documentary 

forms eased the way for more postmodern notions of evidence and information?  

Although practitioners may wring their hands over such matters, they represent 

wonderfully engaging and challenging issues to theorize about, conduct research about, 

and speculate about solutions in the future (such as the predictions about the emergence 

of the paperless office) (Anderson, 2008). 

This brings us to the definitional issues surrounding iSchools. Just what are they 



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and how do they differ from library and information science schools? While the 

emergence of iSchools as a consortium is relatively recent, their origins reflect a more 

sustained dialogue among faculty and deans of a number of library and information 

science and related programs around the broader implications of information technologies 

on their curricula, their institutions, and the information professions. A summary of this 

dialogue (Larsen, 2010) concluded: “Informed by decades of debate and responding to 

exceptionally rapid changes in technology and uncertainty in public policy, iSchools 

foster the development of an intellectual space where true interdisciplinarity plays out. In 

so doing, they introduce a range of challenges to traditional university structures and 

practices … as they create an environment where issues of information are addressed 

systematically, regardless of disciplinary heritage or presumed 'ownership'.  In this way, 

iSchools respond to the salient issues of the time by stressing the production of strong 

results. They are in a constant state of adaptation within their core competencies, while 

building necessary bridges among disciplines.” Archival studies is clearly a vital 

participant in this interdisciplinary dialogue.  

Education and the Formation of Archival Knowledge 

 It is easy for professional schools, often burdened with immediate concerns such 

as practitioner competencies and the sometimes political matters of credentialing and 

program accreditation, to ignore their own histories (Labaree, 2004; Khurana, 2007). 

Archival studies or science programs are no exception.  Archives are ancient, and there 

were formal training programs for scribes in the ancient world.  The modern archives 

profession is about a century old, dating to the late 19th century in Europe and slightly 

younger in North America.  The formal education of archivists emerged slowly, also 



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grew slowly, and today it has a finger hold in library and information science schools 

and, to a lesser extent, in history departments.  Where are these programs going? 

 The evolution of the education of archivists has followed a pretty clear path.  

Initially, in the early twentieth century, individuals entered the field basically through a 

kind of informal apprenticeship or on-the-job training; some still enter the field in this 

manner.  Single graduate courses began to appear in history departments and library 

schools in the 1930s, and this remained the prevalent avenue for any graduate education 

until the 1970s.  In the 1970s, a three course sequence appeared, mostly situated in what 

had become Library and Information Science schools; this set of courses – usually an 

introductory course, an issues seminar of some sort, and a fieldwork or practicum – was 

endorsed by the first Society of American Archivists education guidelines in 1977.  Also 

in the middle part of the twentieth century, we witnessed a proliferation of institutes, 

probably a reflection of the lack of comprehensive graduate programs and the preference 

by the field for skills training.  The emergence and decline of public history programs, in 

the 1970s to early 1990s, including some coursework on archival studies, both enriched 

the discussion about the education of archivists and provided a distraction from ramping 

up the quality of graduate archival education programs.  It is rather difficult even to argue 

that there was anything approaching what could be termed a comprehensive education 

“program” in this period. 

 All of this began to change in the 1980s, when universities, mostly in LIS schools, 

began to hire regular, tenure stream faculty to teach in the archival studies area.  Soon, 

the SAA guidelines began to concern more comprehensive education.  Within a decade, 

there were schools, again mostly in LIS programs, hosting multiple faculty specializing in 



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archives and related disciplines such as preservation and records management; this 

represented a remarkable shift from just the decade before when few thought there would 

ever be schools supporting one such faculty member.  Even more remarkable has been 

the growth of programs supporting doctoral students in the archives field; in 2008, when 

this essay was first written, for example, Richard Cox had eight such students and Anne 

Gilliland at UCLA had thirteen, more between these individuals than the entire field 

could boast two decades before. 

This is a very impressionistic sense of the evolution of graduate archival education 

programs, but there are some obvious characteristics we can point to in where we are 

today.  While we have a number of programs with impressive clusters of courses and 

faculty, we have only a couple of separate masters degree programs, the preparation of 

new faculty members is not keeping pace with demand, and archival studies or science is 

seen as an uncertain appendage of information sciences or historical studies.  Even when 

new archival masters degrees have been announced, the focus seems to be more on 

teaching and professional mentoring than on research and knowledge creation (such as 

the recent creation of an online Masters in Archives and Records Administration at the 

San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science). Professional 

support for graduate education is unsteady by the professional associations, which seem 

as much oriented to apprenticeship training and lowest common denominator concerns 

(as reflected in certification programs in SAA and ARMA).  With the exception of a few 

programs, preservation education is even more tenuous.  How LIS programs or iSchools 

can proceed with educating the next generation of information professionals without 

some attention to the long-term maintenance of sources deemed to possess archival value 



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and requiring preservation seems questionable if not foolhardy.  Will we digitize other 

materials only to see these digital surrogates disappear relatively quickly (when 

compared to how long older formats lasted)?  Will we continue to build information 

systems without being able to preserve records and their evidence or information needed 

over the long haul? 

It is not incorrect to suggest that most graduate archives program are small, 

conservative affairs doing the best they can to orient students to the field.  When you are 

limited in faculty and the number of courses, you face challenges in dealing with the fast-

paced change of digital information technologies. This is doubly difficult given the 

interests many students bring with them based on their exposure to archives as 

undergraduates often working with older records in museums, university special 

collections, and historical societies or historic sites.  This is changing as students are 

learning about various technologies or growing up with them.  However, it is a great leap 

we are still facing to get into newer areas of digital scholarship, electronic records 

management, and other such areas, partly because of strides such traditional repositories 

are making in dealing with digital systems.  For example, a student interested in museums 

must know or may be quickly exposed to the uses of information technologies by these 

repositories.  Paul Marty hints at this, writing, “Museum informatics is the study of the 

sociotechnical interactions that take place at the intersection of people, information, and 

technology in museums” (Marty, 2008, p. 3). In fact, the various authors in this 

compilation of essays argue that information science and technology “have changed the 

very nature of museums, both what it is to work in one, and what it is to visit one” (Marty 

and Jones, 2008, p. xii). These technologies are providing new ways to study documents 



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and artifacts as well as the means to provide different and more compelling 

interpretations both in the institution and by remote access.  We see the same trends in 

archives and in other institutions – corporate, museum, and library – employing 

archivists.  The very nature of archival work is changing, and we need individuals who 

are intellectually engaged by the challenges the digital technologies are bringing to 

records and information systems; graduate archival programs situated in iSchools might 

attract such individuals tomorrow where the traditional LIS school tended to attract 

individuals interested in traditional records forms and the cultural and historical aspects 

of recordkeeping. 

In the past, these graduate archival education programs have been severely limited 

in their scope and flexibility.  They have been generally focused on traditional records 

systems and archival principles built on or deriving from such systems, usually because 

of limited resources and faculties stretched often to teach in other areas as well as to try 

to provide service to the professional community.  The traditional focus also occurs 

because so many of the incoming students have developed interests in archives and 

preservation through their orientation to cultural organizations such as historical 

societies, museums, and historic sites, such interests often prompted by their own 

undergraduate careers primarily in the humanities.  Obviously, we can detect a shift in 

this as well as these younger students grow up and mature with more sophisticated 

knowledge about and experience with digital information technologies and their 

undergraduate disciplines and the cultural institutions they visit reflect more involvement 

with a greater array of technologies. Just as the quest for an understanding of the past 

(even if it is the most antiquarian of interests) engages these individuals, a growing 



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preoccupation with the nature of information technologies and their potential use in 

harvesting historical data or re-creating the look, feel, and sound of the past also will 

cause them to demand a greater presence of technologies in the archives and preservation 

curriculum. We may ultimately see the kind of emotional attachment to the digital 

systems as we have been accustomed to seeing with the look of printed books, the feel of 

paper documents, and the touch of artifacts – sentiments that have often attracted certain 

people to the archives and preservation management programs in the LIS schools or 

history departments.  While Alberto Manguel gushes, “My books hold between their 

covers every story I’ve ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may 

one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices,” (Manguel, 

2008, p. 14) there is no reason to think that we couldn’t say the same about the computers 

we carry with us or surround ourselves.  

There are, of course, still challenges in developing an archives and preservation 

curriculum that fully integrates digital technology.  While there has been increasing 

attention to electronic records management issues, usually presented either in a dedicated 

course or integrated throughout curriculum, this has proved to be only one of many such 

issues needing to be confronted.  There is also the need to teach about the historical 

evolution of records and recordkeeping systems and all the other core functional or 

knowledge areas (and their principles and applications) of reference and access, 

preservation, public programming and outreach, management, legal issues – just to 

provide a sample of such other concerns.  Understanding records and recordkeeping 

systems and technologies requires an understanding of nearly all the cultural, economic, 

political, historical, and other factors affecting the nature of these information or evidence 



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systems.  Perhaps the greatest problem in dealing with such matters derives from the 

limitations posed by small faculties, adjunct reliance, the nature of archives in the 

immediate area of the university offering these courses, and other similar factors.  It is 

truly difficult to build comprehensive archival education programs when there are only 

one or two specialized faculty with regular appointments (who have a greater array of 

responsibilities than just teaching) or when archives and preservation programs in the 

immediate geographic area of the school are sparse or limited in their own scope of 

activities (how many graduate archival education programs have the opportunity to work 

with an archives program supporting a full-fledged electronic records operation?).  There 

is no question that the archival community missed the boat in establishing archival 

education programs in an earlier era when there were more resources and a greater 

willingness to establish and populate such programs.  And, to a certain extent, the identity 

of the existing programs is mostly shaped by their affiliation with a history department or 

library and information science school rather than their own sense of professional mission 

or disciplinary scope.  Such issues prompt even more self-reflection about what the future 

holds as LIS programs evolve into iSchools. 

It is not as simple as just worrying about how to orient traditional archival studies to 

new and emerging digital document and information forms.  The notion of archives and 

the “archive” is becoming far more complex than how we used to imagine it.  Scholars 

from a wide range of disciplines -- literary and cultural studies, anthropology, history, 

sociology, political science, and other fields -- are studying archives or the “archive” and 

adding new understanding to what ought to be included in archival studies (some of this 

is reflected in some of the present graduate archival education programs, but there is 



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reason to expect that the emerging interdisciplinary iSchools also will encourage such 

research and scholarship).  We have new and challenging notions of what a document 

represents and of how archives create and sustain public or collective memory; teaching 

in such an interdisciplinary way also pressures archives faculty to expand their own 

horizons of scholarly endeavor or to build new partnerships for collaborative research and 

teaching.  To educate the next generation of working archivists requires more than merely 

teaching from basic practice manuals or assigning articles from the half-dozen or so 

leading archival journals.  We need to immerse our students into a very large and deep 

ocean of interdisciplinary studies on the archive, ranging from academically-trendy 

cultural studies to the generally more staid information sciences. 

This broad and expanding scholarship represents a great range of notions about 

archives, archival documents, and archivists.  While some archivists ignore this literature, 

or dispute its relevance for their own work, it is clear that this scholarly work is enriching 

our knowledge of the records archivists work with; it is easy for individuals working 

closely with personal papers, literary manuscripts, family records, and institutional 

documentation to take for granted the veracity, reliability, and usefulness of the materials 

(reading scholarly and other accounts about the nature and use of such documentation 

provides other useful perspectives enriching how we read and interpret these sources).  

This literature is also beginning to study archives and archivists in new ways, such as 

with the rich and deep literature on the idea of public or collective memory, an area 

where scholars of all sorts are studying not just museums, libraries, and historic sites, but 

archives (the records, the building, the institution, and the discipline) as well.  For 

example, for several generations archivists clung to concepts of objectivity in their tasks 



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of appraising and describing records.  Now, many archivists are far more aware of the 

ways in which they deliberately or inadvertently shape the documentary heritage.  New 

insights, from literary and cultural studies scholars, have made archivists (at least some of 

them) more open to new forms of collaboration with both records creators and records 

users.  

New forms of scholarship -- embracing digital means of collaboration and access -- 

are also suggesting new uses of archives (both digitally born and digitized). 

Recordkeeping, and the scholarship on it, represents, according to Alistair Tough and 

Michael Moss, a “relatively new field of study.  The boundaries of the field are poorly 

defined and porous.  This is characteristic of emerging disciplines and need not be a 

cause of professional insecurity” (Tough and Moss, 2006, p. ix). But it is even more 

complicated than merely an emerging discipline.  Maria Economou suggests the 

differences in considering real rather than virtual sources, arguing, --“although viewing 

the digital version will never replace the experience of examining the original, in certain 

cases this is the only way to provide access to important objects that would have 

otherwise remained known only to a few scholars . . . .   In this way, new technologies 

offer a medium which circumvents often-arbitrary limitations and boundaries imposed by 

the history of the collections, the vision of academic disciplines, practical consideration 

of space, or just chance” (Economou, 2008, p. 149). Integrating traditional, emerging, 

and new records or archival technologies is a difficult, but necessary, task for all archival 

educators.  It requires them not only to contend with the problems of the present, but also 

to grapple with what has happened in the past and to examine comfortably the 

possibilities of the future. 



22 

 

We have conflicting views (probably many conflicting views) of our present 

Information or Digital Age, both within the archival community and outside of it.  For the 

moment, let‟s just consider some dramatically contrasting perspectives.  Mark Herring 

writes, “if we define knowledge as any bit of datum, right or wrong, factual or not, 

fraudulent or accurate,” then the digital world is fine, but “if this is the definition of 

information that we want, then, yes, the Web should replace all libraries.  On the other 

hand, if knowledge includes something about accuracy, appropriateness, balance and 

value then the Web cannot arrogate to itself a place of preeminence to knowledge-

seekers” (Herring, 2007, p. 27). This captures a huge literature of speculation about the 

perverse effects of the digital universe on reading, publishing, and knowledge, or, and 

maybe more accurately, a growing nostalgia for the printed book and other traditional 

information sources. What gets lost in the position espoused here, however, is a basic 

understanding of what the Web is, vs. a website, or an institutional repository, or a digital 

library. Jeff Gomez, in his discussion about the future of the book, strikes a somewhat 

different chord: “And so to expect future generations to be satisfied with printed books is 

like expecting the Blackberry users of today to start communicating by writing letters, 

stuffing envelopes and licking stamps” (Gomez, 2008, p. 78). Gomez makes a good 

point, one that many would attest to today, including the authors of this essay.  Not a day 

passes that we don‟t read from print, search on the Web, and receive and respond to e-

mail. 

It is even more complex than a belief or lack of faith in technology.  Well-known 

cultural historian Anthony Grafton suggests how we are in a complicated transitional 

area, a road with many wrong turns and misleading signage. “For now and for the 



23 

 

foreseeable future,” Grafton argues, “any serious reader will have to know how to travel 

down two very different roads simultaneously.  No one should avoid the broad, smooth, 

and open road that leads through the screen.”  Grafton also believes we need to be able to 

continue to examine original documents, taking what he calls the “narrow path”: “The 

narrow path still leads, as it must, to crowded public rooms where the sunlight gleams on 

varnished tables, and knowledge is embodied in millions of dusty, crumbling, smelly, 

irreplaceable documents and books” (Grafton, 2007, p. 54). In other words, there will 

always be some of us who want to touch as well as see, to experience as well as ingest, 

what they read. 

This has interesting implications for how we think about archives and, certainly, 

how we educate the next generation of archivists.  A quarter century ago, leading 

archivist F. Gerald Ham, hinted at the relationship between what archivists do and what 

they work with: “I subscribe also to the notion that our work, and indeed our behavior as 

archivists, is determined by the nature of the material we deal with: we are what we 

accession and process” (this is the theme of Ham, 1981). At the moment the majority of 

archivists seem inclined to deal with traditional paper records, but there is a decided shift 

(and need) for working with digital records.  Fortunately, while the need is real, we may 

have some time to build the kinds of educational programs we need.  Christine Borgman, 

considering the emerging area of cyberscholarship, writes, “We are currently in the early 

stages of inventing an e-Research infrastructure for scholarship in the digital age.  It may 

take twenty, forty, or sixty years to realize that vision, by which time the technology and 

tools will be quite different from today” (Borgman, 2007, p. 245). While we must resist 

lulling ourselves into complacency, we can afford to understand that we have ample room 



24 

 

for experimentation and exploration.  

Nevertheless, archivists have struggled, over the past couple of decades, with the 

implications and products of new electronic information systems influencing the creation 

of records.  In a recent survey about electronic records management, Robert Williams and 

Lori J. Ashley conclude, “Most organizations have serious operational shortfalls 

regarding the processes by which they manage electronic records, one of their most 

important assets” (Williams and Ashley, 2007, p. 45). Richard Pearce-Moses, while he 

was President of the Society of American Archivists, declared, “As we face the 

challenges of electronic records, we must also face our need for new knowledge.  We 

need new tools for new materials.  Where to begin?” (Pearce-Moses, 2006, p. 3). Ken 

Thibodeau, of the U.S. National Archives, added, “While we are still at the dawn of the 

digital era, before too many cultural assets are lost, and before the technology has raced 

utterly beyond our ability to catch up, we need to construct concepts, methods and 

operational systems that can preserve and provide access to digital information” 

(Thibodeau, 2006, p. 6). 

These sentiments reflect a consistent notion that archivists are always, somehow, 

behind the 8-ball when it comes to dealing with electronic records and recordkeeping 

systems. However, archivists may be climbing out of this pit, as Joanna Sassoon suggests 

in the emerging of a “new culture within the archival profession”: “This culture would 

acknowledge that all formats in archival custody have specific needs which require 

specialist knowledge.  These new specialists would be educated and trained using a new 

range of texts which build format specific understandings of archival material, their 

research potential and their requirements to preserve their „recordness‟.  This approach 



25 

 

may be embedded into our professional culture through creating an understanding that, 

like the new archival format of electronic records, all archival formats require specialist 

knowledge and skills” (Sassoon, 2007, p. 143). What better way to help jump-start the 

creation of this new culture than by embedding archival studies programs in the emerging 

iSchools?  Will it happen, actually, if we don‟t work to make sure archives programs are 

within iSchools, new ones or ones emerging from older traditional forms? 

Strengthening Archival Studies in iSchools 

 As we have tried to demonstrate, graduate archival programs have been 

traditionally located in history departments and library and information science schools.  

Over the past two decades especially, these programs have mostly shifted to the LIS 

programs where some have developed fairly expansive curricular offerings and employed 

two or more regular faculty with the expectations of this faculty contributing to the 

broader research, teaching, and service missions of these schools (Cox, Yakel, Wallace, 

Bastian, and Marshall, 2001). However, as some LIS Schools evolve into iSchools, what 

does this suggest about what prospective archivists ought to be learning?  Given that 

students presently preparing to be archivists may be working far more with digitally-born 

documentary sources or making digitization decisions about traditional records (or, for 

some, exclusively working with digital materials within the next decade or so), it stands 

to reason that present students ought to be more fully grounded in the electronic 

information and recordkeeping systems while still learning about critical archival 

principles and where, why, and how these principles may be challenged by the new 

digital documents.  



26 

 

 This rationale correlates with the early motivations that led to the formation of 

iSchools. Many of the founding iSchools (see www.ischools.org) originated as schools of 

library and information science, for which the dominant focus had been on information 

and how people use information, while other iSchools came from a tradition more closely 

aligned with computer science, in which the dominant focus was on technology and how 

technology serves human needs and interests. The iSchools evolved in response to 

students’, employers’ and society’s needs becoming increasingly holistic in relation to 

information and information technologies. The curricula, the research, and, indeed, the 

schools’ missions, were expanding to address more explicitly the relationship between 

information, technology, and people.  Schools from both historic traditions recognized 

their convergence through a mutual commitment to learning and understanding the role 

of information supported by advancing technology in human endeavors.  

 Central to the evolutionary development of iSchools has been the conviction that 

expertise in the management and use of all forms of information is required for progress 

in virtually any endeavor in science, business, education, or culture.  Information 

professionals’ core competencies must include both a sophisticated understanding of how 

humanity uses information (from the individual through society in the large) as well as 

proficiency in the enabling technologies and their applications.  

In other words, there is nothing in the new iSchools that suggests exclusion of the 

archival realm; indeed, the kinds of elements being defined for these schools suggest an 

exciting new way to deal with the challenges of electronic records issues that have long 

challenged the archival community.  The focus by archivists on evidence can be seen as 

merely a component of the information and information systems these schools are 

http://www.ischools.org/


27 

 

interested in.  There is another promise here.  As iSchools evolve and their partnerships 

grow by encompassing other schools far removed from the traditional LIS realm, there 

may be new opportunities to expand the archival area into other sectors.  Archivists have 

long expressed the desire, captured in the writings by individuals like David Bearman, 

Terry Cook, and Margaret Hedstrom, (see, for example, Bearman, 1994) to influence 

software designers and vendors, corporate entities, government regulatory agencies, and 

other creators and sustainers of records and information systems; could iSchools 

represent a better venue for accomplishing this goal by equipping a group of new 

archivists well-versed in both archival principles and information technologies? 

What we might be seeking is the regaining of the ancient status of scribes, as 

models for archivists functioning as scholars of both recordkeeping and digital records 

and information systems.  Karel Van Der Toorn contends that in the ancient world, the 

“scribes were not merely penman and copyists but intellectuals,” but the “academics of 

their time.” In ancient Israel, scribes were part of an exclusive group: “The skills of the 

scribes – of reading, understanding, and interpreting – commanded general respect.  The 

scribes held the key to the symbolic capital of the nation” (Van Der Toorn, pp. 57, 106). 

Philip Brooks, more than three decades before this study of ancient scribes, provides a 

glimpse into how many archivists hoped to see their professional community function in 

a way that is much more vital to society and scholarly disciplines:  “A competent 

archivist is to be looked upon as a scholarly colleague of the researcher, far more than 

solely a preserver and a caretaker.  His knowledge of the sources can contribute 

materially to the user‟s evaluation and understanding of them” (Brooks, 1969, p. 36). 

At present, some in the archival world have lost this sense of the archivist in society 



28 

 

or the archival mission.  Most archivists complain either that they are invisible to society 

or that society and its organizations hold images of archivists as low-level clerks.  Some 

of this derives from misperceptions of records and recordkeeping as simply fodder for 

bureaucratic inertia or obstacles to be overcome.  Records as important safeguards for 

accountability, vessels of essential evidence, and foundations for social and corporate 

memory have been lost because archivists sometimes seem to portray the notion that they 

are merely antiquarians concerned in preserving documentary debris for the use of a few 

scholars, genealogists, and local historians.  Might this also be the result of how LIS 

schools have been traditionally seen by many, and why library science has been 

supplemented by information science and why iSchools have emerged with an even 

broader agenda and mission? 

Teaching (and researching) about archival studies may provide a kind of liberating 

perspective for what we have had over the past half century or so as reflected in history 

departments and library and information science programs.  Seamus Ross, as one 

example, suggests that, “Digital archives combined with new technologies will liberalize 

scholarship.  They will enable simultaneous access to a range of sources (both local and 

distant) and facilitate the use of research methods not possible with conventionally 

printed or hand written records.”  Ross perceives “digital information” as a “cultural 

product.  As we think of physical products of culture as artifacts, so we should also be 

thinking of digital and electronic products as d-facts (or e-facts).  These new products 

form an essential fragment of our cultural record” (Ross, 2000, pp. 3, 12). And this can 

only occur in a new collaborative environment, as Diane Zorich argues: “No one can 

work in isolation on digital preservation and access issues because the needs and 



29 

 

requirements are too great. We all benefit from (and generate) economies of scale, pooled 

expertise, larger funding, and more robust infrastructure when we collaborate. And 

collaboration means not just crossing over our museum/library/archives divisions, but 

entering whole new communities such as science, engineering, and the commercial 

sector.”  Zorich continues, “We cannot preserve a digital object or a digital collection in 

isolation: we must preserve the entire digital ecosystem where the object or collection is 

found” (Zorich, 2007). 

 This is where the iSchools become such a relevant part of the solution. Archival 

scholars and iSchools’ academics may be independently converging on a synergistic set 

of needs and objectives. The iSchools proponents advocate a holistic perspective 

inclusive of society, information and technology. This is built on a foundation of 

principles, traditions, and values that are the product of more than a century of practice in 

librarianship and, perhaps, half that in the advancement of computing and 

communications technologies. A broad base of technologies, standards, and policies has 

emerged, from MARC, AACR2 and Z39.50 supporting traditional library operations to 

TCP/IP, XML, and OAI/ORE enabling broader network-based access to information. The 

Cyberinfrastructure program (to which the iSchools have contributed substantial 

intellectual substance) is largely a federal acknowledgement of the emerging synergies 

that necessitate the development of information infrastructure on behalf of society in the 

large, of regional and disciplinary communities, and of individuals.  

 The iSchools arguably provide the one forum on campus where interdisciplinary 

scholarship can engage disciplinary scholars (e.g., biology, chemistry, history, 

humanities, social sciences) with information scholars (iSchool faculty and researchers) 



30 

 

in a coherent and scalable manner. The iSchools enable scholarly attention to the issues 

of information selection, curation, retention, and preservation that are of lesser interest to 

most disciplinary scholars, while also advancing the state of knowledge in these areas, 

fueled by the diversity of issues, traditions, and requirements of the separate disciplines. 

These interdisciplinary projects could easily evolve into an array of joint degree 

programs, minors, and related interdisciplinary educational opportunities that have been 

barely envisioned, but could redefine the image of information-intensive, multi-

disciplinary scholarship. 

So why should archival educators care about the iSchools, beyond the fact that 

many of them have evolved from more traditional LIS schools? As has become clear, 

archives in a digital world introduce an entire new range of questions, challenges, and 

opportunities. But the challenges are not ones of mission or role, but ones of 

instantiation… what does it mean in the 21
st
 century to preserve the “records” of a digital 

society? The iSchools are the only places in academia that are prepared to approach these 

questions from a holistic perspective; indeed, this is the basic mission of the iSchools – 

 to explore, interpret, and advance society‟s understanding and use of information as a 

“record” of its achievement.  

But just as information is meaningless without structure, organization, and context, 

archives needs a disciplinary context.  Are iSchools a more logical venue for archival 

studies than LIS schools, as they extend their reach through interdisciplinary relationships 

with other disciplines? LIS schools that retain a focus on the centrality of the library as a 

service organization, while a valuable societal construct, are likely to be less relevant to 

archival studies that must engage each of the disciplines directly (especially as so much 



31 

 

scholarship about archives or the archive has come from other disciplines or in a true 

interdisciplinary format).  The iSchools‟ efforts to not only develop a new image, but to 

also transform themselves into organizations that illuminate the future for information-

intensive institutions (like our universities) are responding to the same motives and forces 

that are impacting the archival community, but they may be a bit ahead of the archival 

community, increasing the value returned to the archival community. Could this be a 

natural alliance in which the total is, indeed, greater than the sum of the parts? 

The perspective adopted by the iSchools in reflecting on their mission expands on 

the historic traditions of LIS schools by thinking more broadly about society‟s use of 

technology to generate, disseminate, utilize, and manage information. Peter Lyman‟s 

2003 report (Lyman and Varian, 2003) estimated the world‟s information output as 5 

exabytes. A related study conducted four years later (Gantz, et al, 2008) estimated the 

2007 output to be 281 exabytes, suggesting a growth rate approaching 60% per year by 

2011 in humanity‟s generation of information of all sorts. To place this in context, if you 

were to read one book a day for 70 years, it would total about 25 gigabytes (one ten-

billionth of the information generated in 2007). And if the estimates of the San Diego 

Supercomputer Center are applied (Moore, et al, 2007), the cost of saving one online 

copy of all the information generated in 2006 plus three tape backups, using 

contemporary storage and server technology, would approach the national debt. Clearly 

there is an ongoing need for curation and some careful consideration given to what is 

worth saving in an increasingly digital information society.  

Many institutions anticipated that institutional repositories could provide a 

sufficient solution to the problem of preserving the intellectual output of their 



32 

 

organizations, and eagerly installed popular open-source repository software packages 

such as Fedora or DSpace. Many of these same institutions were subsequently 

disappointed when such efforts were not rewarded by faculty enthusiastically depositing 

all of their papers, data sets, and related scholarly materials. Despite the fact that research 

and scholarly communication is increasingly dependent on datasets so large that they 

evade human understanding and must be analyzed by machine, the infrastructure to 

support such communication through space and time remains to be developed. Is this not 

a challenge made to order for the iSchools and the archival profession? 

And here the archival profession offers something to iSchools.  The concept of 

archival appraisal, the identification of documentary sources with enough continuing 

value to merit their ongoing maintenance, may offer lots of value for grappling with the 

information glut.  Archivists can demonstrate that the challenge is not saving everything 

but saving the right stuff.  In some cases, where data can be entirely regenerated, it may 

be preferable to avoid saving it in the first place. For archivists the challenge mostly in 

recent years has been the business of figuring out how to save the new digital documents 

and information systems.  However, for information scientists and other professionals, 

the challenge may have been trying to figure out how to maintain everything.  Indeed, 

several prominent researchers have suggested that the cost of manual metadata generation 

makes it cheaper to save everything than to curate and catalog it. A partnership seems in 

order, and iSchools perhaps provide the vehicle for this.  For example, archivists are well 

aware that their legacy holdings in traditional formats can’t all be digitized due to issues 

of resources and other responsibilities.  Do information scientists really understand that 

they probably can’t save everything?  Even the Internet Archive is only taking periodic 



33 

 

snapshots of the Web and not even capturing the largest portion of the Web, the deep 

Web (see Arms and Larsen, 2007). 

The evolving demands of eScience and other data-intensive domains clearly 

require disciplined attention to the development of curation and preservation strategies 

appropriate to the time. Irreproducible primary data and evidence, for example, should be 

routinely captured at the source through an infrastructure that can be tailored to specific 

needs, interests, and preferences, but does not require subsequent overt attention by its 

users. Metadata should, to the greatest extent possible, be generated automatically at the 

point of data capture. In addition, though, social networking experiences have 

demonstrated the value of enriching data through the annotations of users (including their 

profiles). The intention here goes beyond organizing the vast and growing collection of 

digital content for access and usage by humans, to include the even more challenging, 

and potentially more valuable, access and analysis by computers. As Rick Luce observes 

(see Arms and Larsen, 2007), we need “applications that support not just links between 

authors and papers but relationships between users, data and information repositories, and 

communities. What is required is a mechanism to support these relationships that leads to 

information exchange, adaptation, and recombination.”  

Rather than debate or delay the inevitable necessity of dealing with pervasive 

digitization, ubiquitous access to information by both humans and computers, and at-risk 

digital content, archivists working with (or through) iSchools can proactively help society 

not only understand the urgency and importance of these issues, but also to develop long 

term solutions. These solutions, while enabled by technology, must go far beyond the 

technical infrastructure to also address issues of policy, human needs and motivations, 



34 

 

intellectual property rights, economics, privacy, security, and a host of related concerns. 

Dealing with challenges such as these relate to how archivists have played around 

with the life-cycle concept of records.  The life-cycle concept developed as a means of 

visualizing how and when archivists might work with the records.  At its earliest point, 

the concept suggested that archivists deal with records at the end of their life and that 

their colleagues (the records managers) deal with the records at earlier stages.  With the 

growing use of electronic records, many archivists began to advocate for archivists to be 

much farther up in the cycle, even helping with the design of records systems to ensure 

that archival records could be captured.  Some even thought that the records life cycle 

was obsolete and suggested the records continuum concept allowing for systems to 

capture archival records from beginning to preservation, even suggesting that many 

electronic records do not go into an inactive stage but are always active.  Anyway, the 

issues outlined here suggest that iSchools could enable a new kind of curriculum for 

archival studies whereby a good deal of focus could be placed on such design issues and 

with how to work with designers, vendors, and other information professionals. 

 The curriculum might build on the notion of “content” becoming a recognized 

component of “infrastructure,” as described in the NSF/JISC Cyberscholarship report 

(see Arms and Larsen, 2007, p. 1). Given this broad construct, one can then identify a 

range of value-added services to which users could subscribe. Gregory Crane (see Arms 

and Larsen, 2007, p. 5) identified a family of such services that would be of particular 

value to the Humanities, including services (1) to automatically catalog discrete objects 

within collections, (2) to recognize semantically significant elements embedded within 

collection objects, (3) to customize the selection and presentation of materials to the 



35 

 

needs and interests of a particular user, and (4) to support structured user contributions 

such as those emerging in social networking websites. 

 The curriculum would also need to reconsider curation itself, moving into realms 

beyond the physical artifact. The UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has 

taken some initial steps in this direction by fostering the development of “data journals” 

as a new form of scholarly publication (Overlay Journal project, 2007-present). A data 

journal is a peer-reviewed, reputable vehicle for scholarly communication that explicitly 

recognizes the intellectual challenges and value in creating credible sources of high 

quality data. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has supported similar efforts in the 

Humanities (Nowviskie and McGann, 2005) and Archaeology (see SAVE). These 

pioneering projects and others like them are fundamental to developing an understanding 

of the challenges in developing large-scale, coherent and consistent collections operating 

on robust and reliable systems, providing access and services to a large and distributed 

clientele.  

There are opportunities for leverage here. As we have seen, the issues confronting 

iSchools, in general, and archival studies, in particular, share much in common, and each 

has a lot to do with the overwhelming impact of digital technologies. These broader sets 

of issues have attracted much attention, from the NSF’s Blue Ribbon Panel on 

Cyberinfrastructure and the ACLS’s study of Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and 

Social Sciences to the NSF’s formation of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure. If anything, 

the European emphasis has been even stronger through their Framework Programmes in 

eScience.  

These considerations have also led to fundamental questions regarding what 



36 

 

constitutes the scholarly record, a question that by now you will recognize as one that has 

occurred to archivists before. As research increasingly draws on (and generates) vast 

quantities of data, we have seen that data, itself, become part of the archival record of 

scholarly accomplishment.  While well-known pioneering projects are forging new paths 

and new forms of scholarship, we have yet to reflect on these projects from the 

perspective of archival requirements. Who will do this?  Genomists? Astronomers? 

Physicists or chemists?  Not likely on their own, and not likely archivists on their own. 

The necessary partnerships are yet to be forged through teams that include discipline 

specialists and archivists. Is this not a natural direction for the iSchools with archival 

programs? Might it even be a reason for others to develop them? 

The challenges inherent in this venture are multifold, spanning issues that are 

purely technical to ones that impact directly on public policy, economics, and the 

traditions of various scholarly communities. In the technical arena, for example, the 

variety reflected in the scale, structure and internal complexity of materials as diverse as 

digitized books, scientific data, web pages, courseware, and annotated Greek manuscripts 

can too easily lead to a perceived need for custom approaches that fall short of being 

considered “infrastructure.” On the other hand, this same variety effectively precludes a 

single approach for all categories of content. Some middle ground must be found that 

accommodates a wide variety of content through a manageably small set of approaches.  

The magnitude of the transformation that seems inevitable to some of us will 

likely impact directly on our most-cherished human organizations, their traditions, 

motivations, incentives, economics, and legal frameworks. How will we sort out the 

nature of this transformation, if not through a colloquy between those most 



37 

 

knowledgeable about the core issues and those most knowledgeable about the 

disciplinary cultures? Are not the iSchools and their archival scholars placed well to 

consider the core issues? 

There are alternative models to consider in managing the growing scale and 

complexity of the scholarly record. Where should the locus of responsibility fall? Will the 

traditional model of scholarly publishing, led by a few industry giants, adapt to the 

competing interests of profitability and more open access? Might the role of 

supercomputer centers, which were initially established in response to the accelerating 

need for computational power, expand their mission to become superdata centers in 

response to the accelerating growth of information? How will scholars, students, and the 

general public be assured of access to not only the publications that have traditionally 

supported creativity, entrepreneurship, and intellectual advancement, but also to the 

multimedia resources, models, simulations, software, primary data, statistical records, 

and other diverse information resources that are now part of these endeavors?  

Increasingly restrictive intellectual property rights (IPR) provisions and aggressive 

business practices suggest this will continue to be a difficult and complex challenge. 

Whatever approaches ultimately prevail will need to include consideration of 

stability and sustainability. An infrastructure, by definition, must satisfy this attribute, 

and it must apply not only to the technology, but also to the content (the data) and to the 

organizations engaged. These are formidable but not necessarily overwhelming 

challenges that could benefit from the long term sustained attention of iSchools and 

archivists. 

If anything, as the challenges grow more and more complex, they increasingly 



38 

 

move into areas that archivists (not to mention information scientists and librarians) have 

not had to spend too much time worrying about in the past. But now the variety of issues 

is growing quite complex, from the technical issues of managing immense volumes of 

data with intricate structures and complex interactions to legal issues that impact directly 

on individual use of information resources to the economic interests that arise around the 

commercial potential (real or imagined) of information resources. Then there are the 

differing traditions among disciplines regarding their information, those for whom the 

monograph is dominant, for example, versus those for whom immediate additions to a 

shared database represent valued scholarly contributions, and those where new media are 

the venue for establishing records of creativity. 

Few of our institutions, organizations, policies, and traditions welcome and adapt 

quickly to fundamental change. Resistance is natural, if not futile (to recall an aphorism 

from the not too distant past).  The landscape of scholarly communication is being 

transformed by digital media, though, and we need to get ahead of this trend and position 

our iSchools as true thought leaders. We may need, for example, to be less sanguine 

about the industrial takeover (by Google, for example, or perhaps you prefer Elsevier) of 

our creative outputs. While the current focus may be on documents, copyright, and fair 

use, one can easily imagine this debate growing to include models, simulations, and data, 

for example. When the nation felt challenged by international competitors in high end 

computing, the federal government saw fit to compete head on by establishing 

supercomputing centers and investing in high end computing research. Now that research 

is becoming increasingly dependent on voluminous data resources, should we be building 

superdata centers? If so, does this not suggest a role for a new generation of archivists 



39 

 

and new archival theory? 

Might it not be the case that the staid (some might say stodgy) discipline known 

as archival studies might, in fact, provide a window to our future? Having matured 

beyond the fantasies of storing everything, it is the archivists who have thought the most 

rigorously about clearing out our attics, of preserving the necessary evidence of our 

existence, and of representing the essence of our disciplines through appropriate models. 

It is the archivists who have clarified our understanding of both the best (the “hero 

stories”) and the worst (the “horror stories”) through illustrative and analytical case 

studies. Despite the magnitude of the transformation brought about by digital 

technologies, it is the archivists (and, yes, the librarians), who have made a career out of 

understanding, whether analog or digital, that it is all information, and there are a set of 

principles and practices that transcend the medium. 

Closing Thoughts 

So we have spent some time exploring the domain of archival studies and the 

changing landscape of scholarly communication, all with an eye toward the iSchools. 

And if we come away somewhat persuaded that the iSchools are a reasonable (if not 

logical) home for archival studies, do the archival studies bring a larger value proposition 

to the iSchools?  It well may be the case that the values and vision that have developed in 

archival studies over the past century can inform our broader path in the 21
st
 century. The 

difficult issues of digital preservation have been recognized in the iSchool community for 

some time, but perhaps we need to pay greater attention to related issues of selection and 

curation. We may find case studies buried in the archival experience to provide dramatic 

insight into choices yet to be made regarding digital archives. At the very least, there is 



40 

 

value in recognizing and appreciating the perspective and foundations of one of our niche 

sub-disciplines that may well become of greater significance than many would expect… 

perhaps even contributing to the transformation of our digital futures and (who can say), 

maybe even elevating the practitioners of that sub-discipline back to the status they 

enjoyed in the ancient world. 

References 

Anderson, E (2008) Time to get serious about the paperless office. Ubiquity 9. Available 

at http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/volume_9/v9i13_andersen.html. Accessed April 1, 2008 

Arms, W Y and Larsen, R L (2007) The future of scholarly communication: Building the 

infrastructure for cyberscholarship. Report of a NSF/JISC workshop, available at 

www.sis.pitt.edu/~repwkshop 

Bates, M (2005) Information and knowledge: An evolutionary framework for information 

science. Inform Research 10. Available at http://informationr.net/ir/10-4/paper239.html. 

Accessed 1 April 2008 

Bearman, D (1994) Electronic evidence: Strategies for managing records in 

contemporary organizations. Archives & Museum Informatics, Pittsburgh 

Bearman, D (2007) Moments of risk: Identifying threats to electronic records. Archivaria 

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