Reflections on Cooperation Among Professions

Although the archival profession is still young and is therefore still primarily concerned with self-definition and development, economic stringency and technological change are forcing archivists to work with other groups to find solutions to common problems. The differences that previously divided archivists from historians in particular are rooted in practices and perceptions on both sides which the documentation explosion and the historiographical revolution of the recent past have made obsolete. The need to control technology on behalf of scholarship rather than the reverse should unite archivists, librarians, and curators with all those who use such materials. Moreover, as more and more documentation either is originally issued or is transferred for preservation purposes to new formats such as machine-readable tape, microform, and videodisc, the format-based distinctions that have been used to divide librarians from archivists should disappear, leaving both groups to confront anew the underlying problems of intellectual control of and access to information in whatever medium it appears.