In light of the many natural and man-made disasters that have happened in the past ten to twenty years (not to mention millennia aforehand), it might be a good practice for an institution’s archives to exist in more places than just the institution’s holdings.  This may be overkill, but if you are a large university, it might be a good idea to keep these types of materials from other cultural institutions in your own holdings, knowing full well that originals or other copies exist in the cultural institutions themselves.

 

Of course, what you collect may be different, but documenting the existence and operations (i.e., business transactions) of these cultural institutions in your area may bode well for the twenty-second century historian who, a century from now, finds that the smaller cultural institutions dissolved and their archives were destroyed or disseminated in some funky fashion, but the rock-solid archives of the large university are intact, complete with materials pertinent to the history of the smaller now-defunct cultural institutions.

 

Having a solid institution like a college, university, or public archival facility that collects materials of other cultural institutions may prove a wise choice in the future.

 

Russell D. James

 

Russell D. James, M.A.
MLIS student

Louisiana State University

 

President, SAA-LSU

Student chapter of the

Society of American Archivists

at Louisiana State University


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