The Archival Edge

Abstract

Our most important and intellectually demanding task as archivists is to make an informed selection of information that will provide the future with a representative record of human experience in our time. But why must we do it so badly? Is there any other field of information gathering that has such a broad mandate with a selection process so random, so fragmented, so uncoordinated, and even so often accidental? Some archivists will admit the process is a bit out of kilter. They say a simple formula of more cooperation, less competition, increased governmental largess, and bigger and better records surveys a logistical device we often mistake for an acquisitions strategy should be sufficient to produce a national mosaic that will bequeath to the future an eminently useable past. A handful of critics, however, have suggested that something is fundamentally wrong: our methods are inadequate to achieve our objective, and our passivity and perceptions produce a biased and distorted archival record. In 1970, Howard Zinn told an SAA audience that the archival record in the United States is biased towards the