Samipya 2006 Vol 23 Ank 03 04

Author(s): R P Mehta, R T Savalia
Publisher: Bholabhai Jeshingbhai Adhyayan Sanshodhan Vidyabhavan

Page 17

Readable Archives, computerization giving rise to archival networks in the countries, automation, various types of microforms, data banks will result into the laying of emphasis on research and the role of the archivist as a mere custodian processor and records manager will be alienated from his role as a finder of aids. There is a possiblity that he may end himself up as a Reference Archivist or a Consultant or as an expert or specialist in communication date processes or formats. In future, his role or traditional archivist may look antiquarian because he may have to collaborate actively with the system analyst, librarian, information scientist, policy maker or planner and the changing bureaucrat. The archical operations in the coming centuries will have such a multifarous dimensions and multipurpose utilities that the joint ventures in the form of achival networks will be the need of the hour. The larger archives will have to collaborate and cooperate with smaller ones to satisfy the 21st century scholar who will expect to obtain the material by sitting in his research room and not going to the archives. The most advanced system of today like that of TELEFAC by which the document copy is obtained by merely phoning the archivist concerned will be not only a boon to the scholars but also will take the servicing of the historians.
Nevertheless, automation will have a deep impact on the management of records, traditional archival theory and the occupation and will create unimaginable tremendous responsibilities. Interactions between the nations will have to be broad-based so as to facilitate the easy access to records in microforms. The legal and diplomatic hurdles will have to be ironed out. The wider use of Machine Readable Date Files on a global scale will have the archives an universal dimension which the archivist of tomorrow will have to copy up with by a planned and systematic action for archival development.
The end results of the communication technology, miniturisation, multilingual translation system, supercomputers will be fantastically farreaching which appears phantasm today and the creation of records therefrom will make the task of the future archivist more and more complex inviting together the new dimensions to the methodologies of preparing inventories, appriasal, classification, indexing and the use. This obviously make will make him aware of the necessity for widerscale applicability and to bring about uniformity in archival approaches. The date processing techiques and for its servicing, the archivist will have to share more burden than the researcher or the user of the time. And therefore, the traditional search for archival material will be rather the joint effort of the archivist and the researcher. We may imagine today that it may be a, mechanical tyranny to which the future archivist will be subjected to, but if he thinks to survive, he will have no other alternative than to struggle because the custodians of the books i.e. the librarians, communication or information scientists will go far ahead of him in the automative race.
The impact of the automation may have no museums as well. While the museums may have artifacts as of today, iconographic archivist may deal with the photographic archives of these objects. While cartographic collection have military and stratagic values, far more accurate data that collection of aerial photography and satellite pictures will have more ૧૨
HuHu: zulsel. 2008 - U21, 2009