For the Archivist, this role is a result of his obligation to preserve and assure timely and maximum access to our governmental records in the evolving historic saga of the American people.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Thus, the Archivist must display at all times scrupulous independence and a devotion to the laws and principles which govern the responsibilities of the office.
The Archivist of the United States essentially works for the American people across partisan lines and not, regardless of which Administration nominates the person, for a particular President or political party.
The concept of preserving history, collating full archives, making them as usable as possible so the public have access to them, I really feel that it allows the public an ability to engage with their own history.
Not only the Archivist alone but all who work for NARA are designated custodians of America's national memory.
The duty of a historian is simply to understand and then convey that understanding, no more than that.
Perhaps the most important lesson of the New Social Historians is that history belongs to those about whom or whose documents survive.
The increasing legal pressure against archives has created anxieties among researchers, librarians, and journalists. They cite the need to protect sources who wish to make a record for posterity; procuring documents and interviews from those sources will be difficult if the fruits are only one subpoena away from disclosure.
What is a historian, anyway? It is someone who uses facts to record the development of humanity.
In the years that I worked in museums, first as a summer student and eventually as a curator, one of the primary lessons I learned was this: History is shaped by the people who seek to preserve it. We, of the present, decide what to keep, what to put on display, what to put into storage, and what to discard.
I document my life and archive the things that are important and remind me of what my specific energy brings to the world.
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