From an editorial Monday in The Washington Post:
You could be forgiven for thinking that the archivist job is about ensuring that fading documents behind thick glass are adequately protected from the elements. As important as that is, the position involves far more. The archivist oversees and — in the best of worlds, facilitates, promotes and prods — the release of far less musty government documents, material essential to understanding modern American history. In an age when the amount and type of information are proliferating, the archivist decides what information must be preserved and ultimately made public and how best to make it accessible.
For example, at the dawn of the e-mail age, the archivist had to determine whether an administration’s e-mail messages were government records that had to be maintained for posterity; luckily for historians and the public, it was eventually required that they be saved. The next archivist will inherit a similar question about videoconference tapes and transcripts.