[The archivist] 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 perhaps in the quite distant future and upon lines as yet unpredictable. His Creed, the Sanctity of Evidence; his Task, the Conservation of every scrap of Evidence attaching to the Documents committed to his charge; his Aim, to provide, without prejudice or afterthought, for all who wish to know the Means of Knowledge.
- Hilary Jenkinson (1948)
In 2011 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, better known as UNESCO, formally adopted the International Council on Archives' (ICA) Universal Declaration on Archives. The Declaration was first written by archivists in Quebec. It was further developed by the ICA who made it available in 20 languages.
What does it mean?? The Declaration and UNESCO's adoption of it is important because it gives world-wide recognition to the roles of archives and archivists in society:
as memory keepers,
as instruments of transparency and accountability,
for retaining corporate knowledge,
and for informing future decision making
"Our mission is crucial" - Meet the warrior librarians (and archivists) in Ukraine.
"We are moving into an era where much of what we know today, much of what is coded and written electronically, will be lost forever. We are, to my mind, living in the midst of digital Dark Ages . . ."
- Terry Kuny, "Digital Dark Ages? Challenges in the Preservation of Electronic Information" (IFLA, 1997)
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