Arhivaari

Arhivaari is a term used in several languages to designate a professional who works with archives and archival materials. An arhivaari is involved in acquiring, arranging, describing, preserving, and providing access to records in public institutions, libraries, corporate archives, and private collections. Core duties include appraising materials for retention, organizing and describing holdings, creating finding aids, cataloging, and implementing preservation measures. With the rise of digital archives, arhivaari also oversee digitization projects, metadata generation, and digital preservation strategies, as well as providing reference services to researchers.

Regional use and linguistic variants: The word has cognates across Eastern Europe and the Balkans, including Romanian arhivar and Serbo-Croatian arhivar, with related forms in other languages. Spelling and specific usage may differ (arhivar, arhivaari, arkivar) and may reflect gendered forms or orthographic conventions.

Education and career: Training typically involves archival science, library or information science, or history. Professional competence is built through coursework in appraisal, arrangement and description, metadata standards, authority control, records management, conservation, and laws governing access and privacy. Many arhivaari participate in regional or international associations and continuing education to stay current with best practices in stewardship and digital preservation.

See also: Archivist, Archival science, Records management, Digital preservation.