archivists and historians need to collaborate

For my first blog response, I wanted to discuss last week's guest and topic, Mark Cooper and Institutions/Archives. As the only member of the Moving Image Archiving Program present (I was unable to attend an extended program field trip to Rochester), I feel like I need to represent my archivist peeps.
It was very refreshing to have readings and discussions about archives, albeit a more theoretical and less practical perspective of them. While we looked at ways that archivists and historians can work together to create new venues of research and interpretation of archival material, as this is a Cinema Studies class, it was naturally focused on the cinema studies' viewpoint.
Basically I just want to reiterate that archivists and historians need to collaborate. I highly encourage Cinema Studies students to take the Introduction to Moving Image Archiving class in the fall semester. We MIAPers get a very in depth look into the way that historians use archives through numerous CS classes that we are required to take. While I think this is extremely important to becoming a better archivist, I believe that it is just as important for historians to know what archivists have to go through in their daily grind.
Each profession would not exist without the other; each has their own tribulations and joys that define them. As an example, it would help a historian to understand generally how archives might organize a collection, or how intense and expensive a preservation project is. They each could be advocates for the other, and with joined voices be slightly louder than if they had gone it alone and worried only about their specific problems.
Mark Cooper was a great guest to have in class to illustrate the importance of this subject. It was so interesting to hear how a historian who is now working in an archive has used these new experiences towards his research and writing. In the end, it is important for historians and archivists to know what the other needs and wants; that way we are all speaking the same language, and ideas and suggestions for the betterment of each profession does not fall on deaf ears.
Siobhan C. Hagan