The importance of records revealed in the movies

I love watching scary science fiction films, particularly if you can see the zipper on the swamp-creature’s costume.

As an archivist, it’s gratifying when records play pivotal roles in plot development. Last night I watched a quality film called Mosquito Man. At one point, this poor municipal sewer worker discovered a grisly murder scene. Luckily, he just happened to have brought with him to work that day a blue print of the underground passages beneath the city park. This was good news for the hero, who needed those drawings to track the mutant insect. Without them, he’d’ve been foolish to venture into the maze-like tunnels. The plot would’ve floundered and the ultimate fight against bad guys (or in this case, monsters) would’ve had an unhappy and somewhat gruesome ending.

This got me thinking about how records allow the narrative of our days to move forward. Ephemeral items like bus timetables provide important information to physically get us moving. Pay packets give us our motivation while weighty documents such as job descriptions provide the script. I also like to think of archives, and the archival profession, as contributing to the ongoing fight between goodness and bad things. Archival theory often looks at the imperatives of democracy, human rights, etc, so this is not a difficult framework to maintain