Other forms: archivists
An archivist is the person who keeps and organises historical records. The county archivist, ask the archivist, trained as an archivist.
The job is appraisal as much as storage: deciding what to keep, because keeping everything is impossible and choosing wrongly is irreversible. Archivists also decide access, arrangement and preservation conditions. It differs from a librarian in dealing with unique unpublished material rather than published copies. Note archive, both noun and verb; and that digital archiving is now the harder half of the profession.
1nounarchivistThe person who keeps and organises historical records.
“The archivist brought out a box of old letters and laid them carefully on the table.”
archivist is a keeper of records.
French
archive
English
archive
English, today
archivist
Built from
From archive + -ist. archive Borrowed from French archive. The is borrowed from French archive, archif, from Latin archīvum, archīum (“archive; room containing an archive; public record office”), from Ancient Greek ἀρχεῖον (“office of a magistrate; public building or office; town hall; (in the plural) archives; public records”), a noun use of the form of ἀρχεῖος (“relating to an office”), from ᾰ̓ρχή (“beginning, origin; authority, sovereignty”) (from ἄρχω (“to begin; to govern, rule”); further etymology uncertain, possibly from Proto-Indo-European h₂er- (“to fit; to fix; to put together”), or h₂ergʰ- (“to begin; to command; to rule”)) + -ῐος. The is derived from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA