17 Mar
2007
17 Mar
'07
5:50 p.m.
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007, Jules Richardson wrote:
I'm not going to disagree and say that there
aren't archivists who can answer
things like that within some narrow area of expertise - but I suspect the vast
majority out there make no claim to know everything; the bulk of them will
simply archive material in a responsible fashion.
I intended those rhetorical questions not as things to KNOW, but instead
as examples of the kinds of questions that somebody with a decent archive
can research and find out from their archive.
Sometimes the answer merely requires doing the same operation on each and
every version and looking at the results, or even just making a list of
what's there.
There are OTHER questions that require extensive knowledge and/or
experience.
I mean, even the Mac is a pretty big field - I doubt
any archivist is going to
know all there is to know about the Mac, and unless they're paid for their
work they likely won't have the time or inclination to research every question
that gets asked. What they *can* do though is present their archive material
in as flexible form as possible so that in the majority of cases users who do
need a specific piece of material can easily find what they need for themselves.
Hex Star wants to help; let him do some of the time consuming searching
that occasionally needs to be done.