Protecting rights, asserting professional identity

Abstract

To preserve their professional identity, archivists need to recognize that their core expertise is the protection of evidence for upholding rights, but that any rights framework is historically contingent. Engaging primarily with other activities, in particular with support for historical research, rather than developing and using this specific, specialist expertise, may ultimately be self-defeating if archivists wish to preserve a stable professional identity meriting both societal recognition and support. Taking a historical perspective, using examples of documented archival practice in pre-Revolutionary France, it is argued that contemporary archivists would benefit from acknowledging that their core functions derive not from servicing historical research, but in the protection of legal and property rights, a global societal need throughout recorded history. Taking this long view, the 1948 UN Declaration on Human Rights can be seen as the most recent of a series of rights within which archivists can exercise their profession on behalf of society. The contemporary professional focus on archives and human rights, and on the related (though not coterminous) area of social justice, allows archivists to re-establish firmly a recognizable and discrete role following a period where public understanding of, and therefore support for, archival activity has been somewhat limited.