Archival Practice Quotes

“The sphere of ‘historical research’ does not readily or exactly correspond with that of ‘archival practice’ but the notion that even if a single component of the latter is omitted from the former that that then validates the profession’s collective defenestration of all issues historical fails to appreciate the complexity of all arguments.


R. E. Stansfield-Cudworth, ‘Archivists and Historians: Perspectives on the Place of Historical Research in Archival Practice’ (2015), p. 41.”
― Robert E. Stansfield-Cudworth

“A view of archivists as historians’ handmaidens accepts subservience, infers disciplinary subordination, and implies professional inferiority, which does not realise the scale and extent of archivists’ true accumulated expertise. Consequently, if we invert the proposition to pose not whether historians make better archivists but whether archivists make better historians, it is possible to consider not whether archivists should be scholars and engage in historical research but whether the realm of historical scholarship should incorporate archivists and archival activities.


R. E. Stansfield-Cudworth, ‘Archivists and Historians: Perspectives on the Place of Historical Research in Archival Practice’ (2015), p. 46.”
― Robert E. Stansfield-Cudworth