Quotes & Sayings About Archivists

There are people who call themselves Archivists ... Back when the Hundred Committee made their selections, the Archivists knew the works that didn't get selected would become a commodity. so they saved some of them. The Archivists have illegal ports, ones they've built themselves, for storing things ... — Allie Condie

Do not become archivists of facts. Try to penetrate to the secret of their occurrence, persistently search for the laws which govern them. — Ivan Pavlov

Ro trails his hands against the wall as he walks. The archivists look at him as he passes. Ro is good at irritating people; he'll find the one thing you don't want him to do, and do it every time. It's one of his many gifts. — Margaret Stohl

He told me that archivists and librarians were opposite personas. True librarians are unsentimental. They're pragmatic, concerned with the newest, cleanest, most popular books. Archivists, on the other hand, are only peripherally interested in what other people like, and much prefer the rare to the useful. — Avi Steinberg

A good deal of time spent researching this book might well have been wasted and valuable opportunities missed if it had not been for the help and suggestions of archivists and librarians. — Antony Beevor

I have 17 full-time archivists working for me who put away in books all the diversity of artwork I do, from drawing to etching to monotypes to prints to lithographs. — Peter Max

What can I say, I'm a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff which despite the light of progress and all that, still vanishes every day like shadows at noon, goings unheralded, passings unourned, well, you get the drift. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Since the first satellites had been orbited, almost fifty years earlier, trillions and quadrillions of pulses of information had been pouring down from space, to be stored against the day when they might contribute to the advance of knowledge. Only a minute fraction of all this raw material would ever be processed; but there was no way of telling what observation some scientist might wish to consult, ten, or fifty, or a hundred years from now. So everything had to be kept on file, stacked in endless airconditioned galleries, triplicated at the [data] centers against the possibility of accidental loss. It was part of the real treasure of mankind, more valuable than all the gold locked uselessly away in bank vaults. — Arthur C. Clarke

My work is whatever I want it to be, and I report to no one regularly. The head librarian
the man in charge of the University's entire collection
is a figurehead, well-to-do and poorly read, with whom I have only perfunctory contact. — Martha Cooley

So where does one go in such a wobbly, elusive, dynamic, confusing age? Wherever the librarians and archivists are.
They're sorting it all out for us. — Marilyn Johnson

Like any dissidents they were neurotic archivists. Agree, disagree, show no interest in or obsess over their narrative of history, you couldn't say their didn't shore it up with footnotes and research. — China Mieville

Most archivists don't like surprises. That's why we work in the past. — Brad Meltzer

I think you're more an archivist than a librarian," he said.
He told me that archivists and librarians were opposite personas. True librarians are unsentimental. They're pragmatic, concerned with the newest, cleanest, most popular books. Archivists, on the other hand, are only peripherally interested in what other people like, and much prefer the rare to the useful.
"They like everything," he said, "gum wrappers as much as books." He said this with a hint of disdain.
"Librarians like throwing away garbage to make space, but archivists," he said, "they're too crazy to throw anything out."
"You're right," I said. "I'm more of an archivist."
"And I'm more of a librarian," he said.
"Can we still be friends? — Avi Steinberg