Archivists have their day in the sunSay no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay At first glance, the work of an archivist seems so mundane and boring that no one pays much attention to it. However, archivists play an essential role within society, as recently highlighted by a news item announcing the opening of an investigation into the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. I do not mention this news item to boost my ego or that of my colleagues, but just to make the general public understand that although archivists often tend to be taken for granted, our work has immense value to society. The Hillsborough disaster is one of the worst disasters in British sporting history, in which more than 95 lives were lost and there were dozens injured. The opening of an investigation into this disaster was only made possible thanks to the tireless work of a group of archivists whose task was to catalog and make available more than 450,000 documents relating to this tragic incident. The work of these archivists, alongside that of the independent Hillsborough Committee, revealed terrible truths that had been hidden for decades. As I read the report submitted by the committee, I was ashamed to realize how ignorant I was of what actually transpired in this disaster. The general idea ingrained in our heads since childhood was that it was the Liverpool fans themselves who were responsible for the disaster that befell them. If I had grown up on the north side of the city I'm sure I wouldn't have been so ignorant, but living in the south I was alienated from the truth and sometimes even subject to the deliberate misinformation available in the media of the time. Thanks to the work of archivists, the Independent Group for the first time had access to original, unaltered, unedited documents, whereas previously the only documents available were those that had been heavily edited with a particular bias in mind. . While it is true that almost all written materials have inherent biases based on the opinions or beliefs of the author, these biases are usually unconscious and very different from a deliberate attempt to purge or alter the materials in such a way as to discredit the author. actions of only one party, without paying attention to the bigger picture. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a personalized article from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Given the important role archivists play in society, it is imperative that we uphold high ethical standards – that we always report the facts as they are and that we do not allow ourselves to be corrupted or intimidated into support a particular version of events. Although it is not unusual to take this type of ethical standard for archivists for granted, there is always a small possibility that someone could falsify the records in exchange for financial or political gain. This may seem far-fetched, but I'm sure there are examples of archivists who have behaved poorly in this way.!