Archives and the Tribal Mind

摘要

As I took my first step, a year and a half ago, towards disengaging myself from a full-time professional involvement with archives, I began, like anyone else in that position, to turn my thoughts to what had changed and what had remained the same over nearly four decades of involvement. On the change side, the slow demise of the index card is one of the first things that came to mind. Then there is the arrival of the bag locker, scales for weighing documents and the dedicated tea-room, each of them a very telling indicator of the changing relationship between ourselves and our users. And—I nearly forgot—the computer and the Internet.