Archivists play one of, if not the most important parts when it comes to preserving history. The archives are where historians run to in order to find material for their books, studies, etc. Archives are defined as , “… the official or organized records of governments, public and private institutions and organizations, groups of people and individuals, whatever their date, form and material appearance, which are no longer needed to conduct current business, but are preserved, either as evidence of origins, structures, functions, and activities or because of the value of the information they contain, whether or not they have been transferred to an archival institution.”[1].  I chose this long definition because I believe it encapsulates all that archives are, especially the later half. These archives may not be relevant to modern doings of a given institution, but the ability to reach back into the history of one is important. Reaching into the past in order to build upon the present is an important practice that everyday people should employ, but so should our institutions that control us.

With the importance of archives being stated, what is or is not inside of the archives is just as important. Our society is based on white supremacy and that seeps into every institution just as much as it seeps into our day-to-day social interactions. This is because these institutions are run by a mostly white population that historically are not penalized if they don’t check their biases and assumptions. Leading to only white stories being told from their perspectives. And on the other end, we have an underwhelming amount of BIPOC and Queer records that tell their story from their perspectives. This was not done by accident.

The erasure of American history was not done by accident. Americas foundation was based upon exploitation and oppression. A depressing foundation that if taught and shown, would change people’s perception of society radically. In this source about Black bibliophiles it says, “Another reason the bibliophiles collected books was to correct the record of American history, to rescue… ‘the missing pages of history’…”[2]. There is a whole history of Black people having to archive their own history because the dominant institutions didn’t consider it worthwhile. They would throw it away because it didn’t fit narratives of a great white race or that negroes were dumb.

And that is the power of archives. It needs to represent the total population, so that when we reach back to build upon the present, we get the whole story.