Archivist vs Historical Research

While I wouldn’t say it’s changed my process for finding primary sources drastically, I do consider certain elements of the sources that I didn’t before reading about archivism and doing the archival work. The time we spent looking through and sorting material, and making decisions about where the material belongs, has made me consider the decisions that archivists make regarding primary sources in general.
Even though primary sources themselves tend to be direct evidence, it doesn’t mean that the place and manner in which the evidence is kept and distributed was without intervention. The other evidence with which a primary source is kept can have a significant impact on the way the information is perceived by researchers. For example, an origial draft of The Gospel of Wealth will likely be perceived very differently by researchers in a collection of the works of late 19th century philanthropists than it would a collection of personal correspondence or writings by those involved in the Homestead strikes. That difference in perception is one reason why the decisions of archivists matter to researchers, and why as a researcher in the future I will need to consider the mediating human element of the archivist in evaluating primary sources.
In the case of my annotated bibliography, my primary source came from Hane’s Reflections on the Way to the Gallows: Rebel Women in Prewar Japan, and Hane is serving the role not just of a translator but in a way an archivist as well. By translating processing the material, not only has he chosen which material he wanted to draw attention to and signify as important to anglophone researchers, he also made decisions regarding which memoirs or essays were not and how to present the material he did. For that reason, I’ve borne in mind the fact that Hane served as a mediator of information in much the same way as an archivist, and that his expertise has been crucial in supporting all of the literature that grew out of his work.