This essay considers the role of archives and archivists against a backdrop of the contemporary debate on identity, illustrated by research on the establishment and early years

Abstract. This essay compares thinking about anthropology and archives, in light of recent postmodem analysis. While many in the social sciences and humanities have been considering issues of representation, objectivity, and power, archival thinking has remained largely isolated from this broader intellectual landscape, and archival practice has remained curiously bound up in modes of thought and practice distinctly rooted in nineteenth-century positivism. Archivists have even resisted the efforts of those within their own ranks to challenge this isolation and re-situate the premises of archival identity in this newer and larger intellectual context. This essay suggests that archivists can draw meaningful comparisons by reading outside their field in disciplines, such as anthropology, with which archives shares key features, such as concern with issues of representation, description, and culture. In this essay, select anthropological writings throughout the last century are examined against a backdrop of trends in archival thinking, contrasting the tumultuous epistemological debate within anthropology with the relative calm in the archival profession. This contrast is strikingly embodied by the coincidence of the publication, in 1922, and both in London, of leading theorists from both fields: Bronislaw Malinowski and Hilary Jenkinson. The essay suggests that, in order to remain relevant and conversant with their partners and stakeholders, archivists must take the matter of their isolation seriously, exercise more comparative self-reflection, and devise practical ways to do archival work without the positivist blinders of the past.

In this essay, CBI's former and current archivists reflect on the history and evolution of the CBI archives. Bruce H. Bruemmer, CBI's first professional archivist, served in that capacity from 1984 to 1997. Elisabeth Kaplan was appointed CBI archivist in July 1999.

ACM has developed a rich and varied history over its first six decades. Preserving that history in an open and plentiful archive is key to helping future historians tell the ACM story.