An archivist’s job is to ‘keep the receipts.’ What happens when they can’t do their job?

Boston Globe [no paywall]: “Several archivists told the Globe they see the president’s actions as a threat to government transparency. To Katherine Wisser, an archivist who teaches at Simmons College in Boston, the National Archives was always more than a mere government agency. It was a standard bearer, embodying the strict code that her profession lives by, of painstakingly preserving the raw material of history and treating it with absolute objectivity. No fact, or ream of data, no journal or letter or historical document was more or less important. Truth, in Wisser’s view, was its only mission. But then President Trump took office this year. Wisser and other archivists across the country watched in horror as he fired the National Archivist Colleen Shogan and gutted the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the main source of federal funding for the National Archives and other archives across the country. He appointed an acting director of the institute, deputy secretary of labor Keith Sonderling, who declared he would reshape the agency to “restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country.” Now, Wisser doesn’t know what to think. “There’s a lot of concern,” she said. “I try not to catastrophize, because I don’t think that’s helpful. I do think that things feel really dire.”