February 16, 2007

Let Us Now Praise Archivists

To the Editor:

The historian Richard Hofstadter considered archival work to be tedious drudgery, best left to "archive rats." For those of us who are "archive rats," Christopher Phelps's advocacy for "My Dream Archive" (Careers, January 5) was very welcome.

I have two candidates for his list of good archives: the beautifully appointed University of Virginia archive, and my own university's archive, also beautifully appointed — and how about 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. for