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Re: Quotations from great people about archives and archivists



Here are a few that I've collected and used over several years.
Not all of them include specific references to archives or archivists, but the statements can be interpreted to apply to them.

"All Universities wrothy of the name posses three functions:  The storage of knowledge already acquired, the dissemination of knowledge in man's possession, and the search for new knowledge." 

 A. R. Kerr, President of the University of Alberta, 1938.

Archives certainly store knowledge and archivists disseminate it by making it available to researchers and are constantly searching for more knowledge to be added to their collections.

"The future should grow from the past, not obliterate it. . . . The evidence of history, whether it's archives or architecture, is rare and worth kpreserving.  It's relevant, it's useful.  Her, it also happens to be beautiful."

Willam Least Heat Moon in Blue Highways: A Journey into America , p. 382 discussing Greenwich, New Jersey which he visited during his tour of the permiters of the United States while driving primarily on highways colored in blue on maps.

"The Archivist's career . . . is one of service.  He exists in order to make other people's work possible, unknown people for the most part and working very possibly on lines equally unknown to him, some of them in the quite distant future and upon lines as yet unpredictable.  His Creed,  the Sanctity of Evicence; his Task, the conservation of every scrap of Evidence attaching to the Documents committed to his charge; his Aim to provide, without prejudice or thought, for all who wish to know the Means of Knowledge."

Sir Hilary Jenkinson in his ipublished address entitled The English Archivist: A New Profession p. 38.

"My life is spent among the tablets.  I am their protector, and of our people few even know of their existence.  Long ago our rulers came there to study, but it has been generations since one of them has come.  Once we who were Keepers of the Word were called in kcouncil, but it is so no longer.  The Hand may not even remember that we exist."

Tazzock, one of the characters in Louis L'Amour's novel Haunted Mesa, p. 156.  The Hand is the dictator in Tzaaock's civilization.  On page 157 Tazzoc utters a lament that might be a common feeling among modern archivists--"What can I do?  I am but a Keeper of Archives."

"Pictures are loopholes of escape to the soul, leading it to other scenes and spheres, where the fancy, for a moment, may revel, refreshed and delighted.  Pictures are consolers of loneliness, and a relief to the jaded mind, and windows to the improsoned thought; they are books, histories, and sermons--which we can read without the trouble of turning over the leaves."  

Sir John Gilbert, nineteenth century English painter comparing a room without pictures to a room without windows.

Certainly pictures are a significant portion of the collections of many archives.

"Many an ancient archive has been lost in fires, destroyed in seiges, or simply allowed to decay through lack of interest or awareness."

Louis L'Amour in Jubal Sackett p. 57.

"We live in a workd which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little world he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it."

English scientist Thomas H. Huxley.

Shoule this not be the goal of every archivist?

Now for my all time favorite!

"The preservers of history are as heroic as its makers."

Texas Governor and president of Baylor University as well as avid historian Pat M. Neff.  These words are inscrivbed on one side of Pat Neff Hall at Baylor.  The words were included in speeches as governor urging the inauguration of the Texas centennial in 1936.  According to the Baylor University publication Lariat  of February 1, 1940, p. 5, the statemetn "is a tribute to those who, renouncing personal glory, devote their lives to the recording and preservation of the achievements of others, in order that these achievements may enrich civilization i succeeding ages."  What a nice thing for a Governor to say about archivists!

A lfinal favorite is included in my signature below.  
 

Charles R. Schultz, CA
Professor and Clements Archivist
Cushing Library
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX  77843-5000
c-schultz@tamu.edu
979-862-1555
FAX 979-845-1441

State-of-the-art automation will never beat the wastebasket 
when it comes to speeding up efficiency in the office.
Ann Landers Gem of the Day, July 27, 1994

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