Resumo

The current transformation from the industrial to the information society is a transformation from a hierarchically structured society into network society. Archivists are in the process of adapting principles and concepts of their discipline that guide the theory and practice of their knowledge area to the conditions of the information revolution. On the other hand, they seem to be quite hesitant in moving away from their traditional points of departure. They still tend to depart from mission statements they have formulated for their National Archives and others archival institutions, rather than from the reasons and motives of individuals and communities for documenting or not documenting their thoughts and activities. They try to put the new wine of distributed information, archives and heritage production and use in the old wineskins of standardized and centralized institutional control. By clutching to their institutional power positions in the field of the creation of social memory, they can not appropriately prevent themselves nor the archives under their custody from politicization and particularly from official memory and heritage politics. It might be more promising, challenging and in conformity with their professional duties and autonomy if they would revise relevant issues underlying the episteme of Archival Science in conjunction themselves not primarily spokesmen of society as large but as professional provides of services to institutional and private customers, who need professional assistance in solving the dilemmas they face in documenting their lives for themselves and for posterity. Such an approach would promote further professionalisation and move archival ethics away from a moral claim on social justice to a quality assurance to all their potential customers.