The article reviews a piece titled "Toward a Notion of the Archive of the Future" which examines how archivists can adapt to technological changes. The authors interviewed five archivists who believe greater cooperation is needed to create large, cross-institutional digital collections using stable technology. While important to discuss the digital transition, the article does not fully explain how to implement proposed multi-institution collections which could make materials difficult to find. In conclusion, archivists must adapt to technology being central to research while balancing physical and digital archives.

1. Toward a Notion of the
Archive of the Future
An Article Review by Susan Scott

2. Article Reviewed
• Toward a Notion of the Archive of the Future: Impressions of Practice by
Librarians, Archivists, and Digital Humanities Scholars.
• Authors: Tanya Clement, Wendy Hagenmaier, and Jennie Levine Knies.
• Published: The Library Quarterly, April 2013.

3. Authors’ Credentials
• Tanya Clement is an assistant professor in the School of Information at the
University of Texas.
• Wendy Hagenmaier is the Digital Collections Archivists at the Georgia
Institute of Technology library.
• Jennie Levine Knies is the manager of digital stewardship at the University
of Maryland library.

4. Goal of the Article
• Examine the ways in which archivists can adapt to changes in technology to
better serve their patrons.
• The authors interview five archivists to discover what changes LIS
professionals themselves believe are necessary to keep up with the demands
of archive users

5. Authors’ Solutions
• Greater cooperation among archives to create large, multi-institution, multidiscipline digital collections accessible to researchers from a wide variety of
fields of study.
• Use stable technology that does not become quickly outdated to create and
store these collections.

6. Review: Positives
• Discusses important topic: how archives continue to transition into the
digital age.
• Interviewing archivists and getting their perspective of what changes needs
to be made is the best way to determine how to use technology to best serve
archives’ patrons.
• Important for archivists and LIS students to learn how to create digital
collections to generate greater access of their resources.

7. Review: Negatives
• The creation of multi-institution, multi-discipline digital collections is an
excellent idea, but the authors do not present an argument of how to do so.
• More information in one single collection may make it more difficult for
users to find the material they need.

8. Conclusion
• The article brings forward an important subject: how archives continue to
keep the balance between housing physical resources and creating digital
resources.
• Digital technology is now a fact of life that current and future archivists
must both adapt to and learn how to use to fulfill their obligations to archive
users.
• Because technology is the preferred means of gathering information for
most of the general public, archivists must offer their materials in a digital
format.