Resumo

This paper suggest that we may have entered what might be called the archival stage in the history of knowledge. The uses of archives have become so extraordinarily diverse in the last 30 years or so that it may be possible to say that human knowledge is now being shaped by archival materials as never before. Archives have been used for centuries, of course, but can it be argued that the physical world of nature, human-made objects, and publications of various kinds have been the primary supports for the development of human knowledge, rather than use of archives, and that the rapidly expanding variety of uses of archives has brought us to a new and archival stage in the history of human knowledge? If so, what opportunities does this possibility present for archives? What obstacles remain to hinder their realization?