Historians and Archivists: A Rationale for Cooperation

Abstract

InJuly 1992 a small team of historians and archivists gathered at the Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We had assembled to review graduate history education. As the team considered practical questions about training history graduate students to do research, its members realized that recent developments have greatly complicated those questions. We recognized that major changes are taking place in both the historical and the archival professions. We believe the changes warrant a rethinking both of training for archival research and of the missions of the two professions and the connections between them. This article is based on the report of the team. It reviews the shared past of the two fields, the changes underway in each, and the ways historians and archivists have cooperated. It suggests ways they might renew cooperative efforts to advance their common interest in creating, preserving, and interpreting the documentary record. In recent decades a series of interrelated events has eroded our confidence in universal rules for preserving and telling stories about the past. No longer do people within the historical and archival professions agree that certain principles will ensure good history and good archival practices. Amid the disagreements and debates, both professions are reassessing their role in society. At a fundamental level, the issues and concerns challenging historians and archivists today appear to have many common characteristics. Both professions may therefore benefit from shared analyses of those challenges, and from common efforts to address them. There is a natural partnership between those who decide what evidence will be available and those who decide how to interpret it. We believe that the kind of history that historians now do would be enriched by renewing the partnership that once existed between historians and archivists. And we believe that the work of ar-