I'm afraid the IT use of "archiving" is now one more casualty in the battle
to prevent the semi-literate denizens of the media destroying the language
in their desperate search for novelty - cf. the use of "culture" for "ethos"
("the compensation culture", "the evaluation culture") and the fascinating
habit of sticking "gate" at the end of any proper noun where they think
there is even the most tenuous parallel with Watergate. Hopefully, anyone?
Over in Oxfordshire we never accepted "archive" as a verb anyway. We
accession, catalogue, acquire, permanently retain, shove it in the
strongrooms, and a host of other activities, but anyone who archives is
almost by definition an administrator or an IT operative, both of whom are
then asked politely, "And is that permanent or limited retention?" Mind you,
I had a serious fight to prevent a link appearing on the Council's website
to ARCHIVES - by which they meant obsolete webpages which people might want
to recheck for some purpose.
Carl Boardman
Oxfordshire Record Office
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