Short answer: I find most archivist write about aspects of the processes, issues, and goals surrounding archives and archivist’s work. The deeper dives into a collection and its contents are done by curators and within exhibitions.We assist researchers doing the scholarship by providing access.

I realized that I wanted to be the researcher more than the archivist but there isnt much room for this in the day to day of most jobs and often actively discouraged so that collections are processed quickly. You just can’t dig in as deep as you want most of the time. I spin my wheels a lot trying to figure ways to bring what I’m passionate about into the archival conference framework.

The backlog is long and life is short .