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This is a list of archivists. An archivist is an information professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to records and archives determined to have long-term value. Some of the people listed here were not professional but amateur archivists, although their archivist activities preserved large amounts or important data.
| Image | Name | Birth date | Death date | Country | Archivist activity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Absar Ahmed | May 19, 1988 | - |  Pakistan | Archivist of Pakistani national songs from 1945 to present. | |
| Joaquín Albareda y Ramoneda | February 16, 1892 | July 19, 1966 |  Spain | Archivist of Montserrat monastery and Prefect of the Vatican Library from 1936 to 1962. | |
 | Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville | December 5, 1827 | February, 1910 |  France | Worked at the departmental archives of Aube. |
| Robert-Henri Bautier | April 19, 1922 | October 19, 2010 | France | Worked at the Archives nationales. | |
 | Bep Bijtelaar | 1898 | 1978 |  Netherlands | Saved Old Church artifacts from Nazis |
| Baldassarre Bonifacio | January 5, 1585 | November 17, 1659 |  Italy | ||
| Henri Bourde de La Rogerie | April 8, 1873 | January 31, 1949 | France | ||
| Charles Braibant | March 31, 1889 | April 23, 1976 | France | ||
| Marcel Caya |  Canada | Head of Records Management and Archives program at the Université du Québec à Montréal. [1] [2] | |||
| Marie-Anne Chabin | October 17, 1959 | France | |||
| Émile Campardon | July 7, 1837 | February 23, 1915 | France | ||
 | Armand-Gaston Camus | April 2, 1740 | November 2, 1804 | France | |
 | Paul Conway | September 7, 1953 |  United States | Worked at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and for the Society of American Archivists. He has published extensively on library preservation and conservation issues. | |
| Terry Cook | June 6, 1947 | May 12, 2014 | Canada | Author and theorist. Worked at the Library and Archives Canada and taught at the University of Manitoba. [3] | |
| Barbara L. Craig | Canada | Author and educator. Former university archivist at York University and instructor at University of Toronto Faculty of Information. | |||
| Pierre Claude François Daunou | August 18, 1761 | June 20, 1840 | France | ||
| Robin Darwall-Smith |  United Kingdom | Oxford University College archivist. | |||
 | Arthur Doughty | March 22, 1860 | December 1, 1936 | Canada | Dominion Archivist and Keeper of the Public Records. |
| Jennifer Douglas | Canada | Professor, University of British Columbia iSchool | |||
| Jules Doinel | December 8, 1842 | March 16 or 17, 1903 | France | ||
| Luciana Duranti | Canada | Archival theorist. Helped develop theory of the archival bond. | |||
| Terry Eastwood | 1943 | Canada | |||
| Jean Favier | April 2, 1932 | August 12, 2014 | France | ||
 | Lucie Favier | August 4, 1932 | October 19, 2003 | France | |
| David Ferriero | December 31, 1945 | United States | Archivist of the United States [4] | ||
 | Margaret M. H. Finch | January 6, 1878 | August 3, 1958 | United States | Specialized in the US Revolutionary War and War of 1812 pension and bounty-land records. |
| Helen Forde | United Kingdom | ||||
| Robert Fruin | November 11, 1823 | January 29, 1899 | Netherlands | ||
| Léon Gautier | August 8, 1832 | August 25, 1897 | France | ||
| Arthur Giry | February 29, 1848 | November 13, 1899 | France | ||
| Henny Glarbo | October 12, 1884 | September 9, 1955 |  Denmark | Development of cultural, theatrical and private archives at the Danish National Archives | |
| David B. Gracy II | October 25, 1941 | United States | Worked at the Texas State Archives and taught at the University of Texas at Austin. He also published extensively on Texas history. | ||
| Marie-Claude Guigue | October 16, 1832 | February 8, 1889 | France | ||
| Verne Harris |  South Africa | ||||
 | Michael S. Hart | March 8, 1947 | September 6, 2011 | United States | Father of e-book and founder of Project Gutenberg. |
| Kent Haworth | 1946 | 2003 | Canada | Contributor to establishment of the Rules for Archival Description (RAD), descriptive standard used in Canada | |
 | Judith Hornabrook | October 26, 1928 | July 3, 2011 |  New Zealand | Chief Archivist of New Zealand (1972–1982) |
| J. Franklin Jameson | September 19, 1859 | September 28, 1937 | United States | ||
| Hilary Jenkinson | November 1, 1882 | March 5, 1961 | United Kingdom | ||
 | Phyllis Mander-Jones | January 2, 1896 | February 19, 1984 |  Australia | State Librarian, New South Wales, known for her work with promoting and establishing a separate archives association in Australia and for her work on the Australian Joint Copying Project |
 | Brewster Kahle | October 22, 1960 | United States | Founder of Internet Archive. (See TED Talk: A free digital library) | |
| Rita Keegan | 1949 | United States | Founder of Women Artists of Colour Index at the Women Artists' Slide Library and former Director of the African and Asian Visual Arts Archive | ||
| Arthur de La Borderie | October 5, 1827 | February 17, 1901 | France | ||
| William Kaye Lamb | 1904 | 1999 | Canada | Dominion Archivist of Canada (1948–1953?), first National Librarian of Canada from 1953-1967. [5] | |
| Gustave Lanctot | Canada | ||||
| Charles-Victor Langlois | France | ||||
| Henri Langlois | November 13, 1914 | January 13, 1977 | France | French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema. | |
| Abel Lefranc | France | ||||
| Waldo Gifford Leland | United States | ||||
| David Lemieux | November 8, 1970 | Canada | Archivist (audio/video) for the Grateful Dead rock band | ||
| Mollie Lukis | August 13, 1912 | August 1, 2009 | Australia | First State Archivist in Western Australia | |
| Heather MacNeil | Canada | Archival theorist. Helped develop theory of the archival bond. | |||
| Joseph Marmette | Canada | ||||
| Paul Mawhinney | United States | He collected vinyl records. When the collection grew up to thousands, he created the shop Record-Rama. Then, he started to archive a copy of every sold album. In 2003, his music archive held 2 million items, twice the size of the Library of Congress similar collection. When the store was closed in 2008, there were 3 million items. (See documentary: The Archive) | |||
| Sue McKemmish | Australia | Co-founder of the Records Continuum Research Group and academic at Monash University (Professor) in archival systems. Contributed to the development of the Records Continuum Model | |||
| Hermine Moquette | April 25, 1869 | December 17, 1945 | Netherlands | Rotterdam Municipal Archives | |
 | Anahera Morehu | New Zealand | Chief Archivist of New Zealand (2023–) | ||
| P. K. Nair | April 6, 1933 | March 4, 2016 |  India | Indian film archivist and film scholar, who was the founder and director of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in 1964. | |
| Malcolm Neesam | June 28, 1946 | June 28, 2022 | United Kingdom | Archivist for the Duchy of Lancaster, and co-creator of the Walker-Neesam archive of research papers at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, England. | |
| Margaret Cross Norton | United States | Co-founder of the Society of American Archivists | |||
| Mary Ellis Peltz | May 4, 1896 | October 24, 1981 | United States | creator of Opera News, and founder of the Metropolitan Opera archives | |
| Juan Menéndez Pidal | Spain | ||||
| Régine Pernoud | France | Worked at the Archives nationales in Paris | |||
| Seymour Pomrenze | United States | First director of the Offenbach Archival Depot | |||
| Ernst Posner | United States | ||||
| Mila Rechcigl | United States | Archivist of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). | |||
| Stella Rimington | United Kingdom | Former Director General of MI5. | |||
| Helen Willa Samuels | United States | Archivist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology | |||
| Celia Sánchez |  Cuba | Archived many documents of Cuban Revolution. | |||
 | Jason Scott Sadofsky | September 13, 1970 | United States | Creator and maintainer of textfiles.com, a web site which archives files from historic bulletin board systems; founder of Archive Team, a group to preserving copies of websites that close down (e.g. GeoCities); and filmmaker of BBS: The Documentary and GET LAMP . (See talk: ARCHIVE TEAM: A Distributed Preservation of Service Attack) | |
| T. R. Schellenberg | United States | ||||
 | Henry Spencer | 1955 | Canada | Preserved more than 2 million Usenet messages onto magnetic tapes. The contents were imported into Google's archives. | |
| Marion Stokes | November 25, 1929 | December 14, 2012 | United States | Recorded hundreds of thousands of hours of television news footage spanning 35 years. After her death, the collection was given to Internet Archive. | |
| Tonia Sutherland | United States | She is an assistant professor in the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies and an expert in Black archival studies. | |||
| Shelley Sweeney | 1959 | Canada | She is the Head of the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections. | ||
| Gerhard Tausche | 1957 |  Germany | |||
| Hugh Taylor | 1920 | 2005 | Canada | Author and theorist. Founding Provincial Archivist of the Provincial Archives of Alberta. [6] | |
| Édith Thomas | France | Worked at the Archives nationales in Paris | |||
 | Dragan Espenschied | 1975 | Germany / United States | Directs the Rhizome digital preservation program, which oversees 2000+ born-digital artworks, as well as the creation of a suite of archiving tools. | |
 | Paul Marie Viollet | October 24, 1840 | November 22, 1914 | France | Worked at the Archives nationales in Paris. |
| Rinskje Visscher | December 10, 1868 | March 26, 1950 | Netherlands | First female municipal archivist in the Netherlands | |
| Natalis de Wailly | May 10, 1805 | December 4, 1886 | France | Head of the Administrative Section of the Archives de l'Empire. | |
 | Jean-Pierre Wallot | May 22, 1935 | August 30, 2010 | Canada | Former National Archivist of Canada |
| Edward Weldon | 1936 | United States | First State Archivist of New York State Archives (1974–1980), Deputy Archivist of the United States National Archives and Records Administration (1980–1982), State Archivist of Georgia Archives (1982–2000) | ||
| Anita Wilson | 1943 | 2006 | United Kingdom | Established Tuvalu's archive in 1978. Archivist for Government of Hong Kong (1986–1997). Archivist at British royal family archive (2001–2006) | |
| Ian E. Wilson | 1943 | Canada | Former Librarian and Archivist of Canada [7] | ||
| Gladys Hansen | 1925 | March 5, 2017 | United States | Expert on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake | |
 | Meredith Evans | United States | Director of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum | ||
 | Herman Vandenburg Ames | August 7, 1865 | February 7, 1935 | United States | helped guide the widespread establishment of government archives throughout the United States |
 | Alexander Fraser (archivist) | 1860 | 1936 | Canada | First Provincial Archivist of Ontario (1903–1935) |
| Laureano Macedo | 1978 |  Portugal | portuguese scholar. | ||
| Rebecka Sheffield | 1976 | Canada | LGBTQ2+ community-based archives | ||
| Guddu | Pakistan | Archivist of film posters and photographs | |||
William Kaye Lamb was a Canadian historian, archivist, librarian, and civil servant.
Archival science, or archival studies, is the study and theory of building and curating archives, which are collections of documents, recordings, photographs and various other materials in physical or digital formats.
In archival science and archive administration, appraisal is a process usually conducted by members of the record-holding institution in which a body of records is examined to determine its value for that institution. It also involves determining how long this value will last. The activity is one of the central tasks of an archivist, to determine the archival value of specific records. When it occurs prior to acquisition, the appraisal process involves assessing records for inclusion in the archives. In connection with an institution's collecting policy, appraisal "represents a doorway into the archives through which all records must pass". Some considerations when conducting appraisal include how to meet the record-granting body's organizational needs, how to uphold requirements of organizational accountability, and how to meet the expectations of the record-using community.
Shelley Sweeney is a Canadian archivist. She was university archivist at the University of Regina from 1983 to 1998, and the Head of the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections from 1998 to 2020. She helped found two regional archival organizations, the Saskatchewan Council of Archives and the Saskatchewan Archivists Society, and the University and Research Institutions section of the International Council on Archives. Sweeney is a charter member of the Academy of Certified Archivists and, with colleagues, wrote the first code of ethics for the Canadian archival profession.
Terence M. Eastwood is best known for his pioneering roles in archival education internationally and the creation of archival descriptive standards in Canada. He has published widely on a number of topics of importance to the development of archival theory and has lectured and presented throughout the world. His work supervising archival studies students helped craft a whole new generation of archivists who themselves have gone on to make important contributions to the field.
Kent M. Haworth (1946–2003) was a Canadian archivist, best known for his pioneering role in the creation of archival descriptive standards in Canada. He published widely on a number of topics of importance to the development of archival theory, lectured and presented throughout the world, and was a contributing member of many national and international archival committees and associations.
The Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA), established in 1975, is a national not-for-profit organization representing over 600 archivists in Canada. With headquarters in Ottawa, the ACA's mandate is to provide leadership to the archival profession and to increase an understanding and appreciation of Canada's archival heritage.
Archivaria is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA), covering the scholarly investigation of archives, including the history, nature, theory, and use of archives. The journal contains essays, case studies, in-depth perspectives, book reviews, and exhibition reviews.
Original order is a concept in archival theory that a group of records should be maintained in the same order as they were placed by the record's creator. Along with provenance, original order is a core tenet of the archival concept of respect des fonds. A primary goal of keeping records in their original order is to preserve additional contextual information about the records' creator and the environment of their creation. Original order also encourages the archivist to remain neutral as opposed to applying any interpretation to the records.
Terry Cook was a noted Canadian archivist and scholar in archival studies.
Luciana Duranti is an archival theorist and Professor Emerita on post-retirement appointment in the fields of archival science and diplomatics at the University of British Columbia School of Library, Archival and Information Studies in Vancouver, Canada. She is a noted expert on diplomatics and electronic records. Since 1998, she has been the director of the electronic records research project, InterPARES. She has disclosed the concept of the archival bond originally initiated by Italian archivist Giorgio Cencetti in 1937.
Hugh Alexander Taylor was an English-born Canadian archivist, archival theorist and educator.
Barbara L. Craig is an archivist, archival educator and scholar. She has contributed to the scholarly literature of archival theory and professional practice in the areas of appraisal, the ethnographic study of practicing archivists and users of archives, and the history of archives in her study of the impact of technology on the record-keeping practices of the British Civil Service before 1960. She has an MA in history from McMaster University, a certificate in Principles and Administration of Archives from Library and Archives Canada, and a Certificate in Records Management from the Government of Ontario. In 1989 she completed a PhD in Archival Studies from the University of London. Her dissertation was titled "Hospital Records in London, England and the Province of Ontario, Canada, 1880 to 1950."
Laura Agnes Millar is an independent consultant and scholar in records, archives, and information management who has also worked in publishing and distance education. She has consulted with governments, universities, colleges, professional associations, non-profit organizations, and other agencies in Canada and around the world.
Judith Sidney Hornabrook was the Chief Archivist of New Zealand at the Archives New Zealand from 1972 until 1982.
Susan Tucker is an American archivist. She was the Curator of Books and Records for the Newcomb Archives and Vorhoff Library at Newcomb College of Tulane University for over 30 years. She retired in 2015. She is a longtime member of the Society of American Archivists and is active in the Women's Collection Roundtable. She is now an archival consultant specializing in genealogy and family records.
Jennifer Douglas is a Canadian archivist and academic who researches the creation of personal archives and their place within with traditional archival practice.
Michelle Caswell is an American archivist and academic known for her work regarding community archives and approaches to archival practice rooted in anti-racism and anti-oppression. She is an associate professor of archival studies in the Department of Information Studies at University of California, Los Angeles and is the director of the school's Community Archives Lab.
Shirley Spragge was a Canadian archivist and academic who served as the head of the Queen's University Archives from 1992 to 1994.
Ricardo L. Punzalan is a Filipino American archivist who is an Associate Professor of Information at the University of Michigan School of Information. He has shaped the fields of archival science, virtual reunification, repatriation, reparative description, and has studied the nature of collections in both museums and archives. He holds undergraduate and Masters degrees from the University of the Philippines and a doctorate in information science from the University of Michigan.
