 right|thumb|an archivist surveying an unprocessed collection of materials. surveying is commonly done to determine priorities for preservation and/or conservation of materials before an archivist begins arrangement and description. an archivist (ar-kiv-ist or ar-kive-ist) is an information professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to records and archives determined to have long-term value. the records maintained by an archivist can be any form of media (photographs, video or sound recordings, letters, documents, electronic records, etc.). as richard pearce-moses wrote: :"archivists keep records that have enduring value as reliable memories of the past, and they help people find and understand the information they need in those records."pearce-moses, richard. "identity and diversity: what is an archivist?" archival outlook, march/april 2006. determining what records have enduring value can be challenging. archivists must also select records valuable enough to justify the costs of storage and preservation, plus the labor-intensive expenses of arrangement, description, and reference service. the theory and scholarly work underpinning archives practices is called archival science. although both are concerned with managing information, the occupation of archivist is quite distinct from that of librarian. the two occupations have separate courses of training, adhere to separate and distinct principles, and are represented by separate professional organizations. in broad terms, the librarian tends to deal with published media (of which the metadata, such as author, title, and date of publication may be readily apparent and can be presented in standardized form), whereas the archivist deals with unpublished media (which has different challenges such as the metadata not always being immediately apparent, containing complications and variety, and more likely to depend on provenance). in addition, because archival records are frequently unique, some archivist may be as much concerned with the preservation and custody of the information carrier (i.e. the physical document) as with its informational content; in this regard, some would argue the archivist may occasionally have more in common with those of the museum curator than with those of the librarian. the occupation of archivist is also frequently distinguished from that of records manager, although in this case the distinction is less absolute: the archivist is 
Archival_science Humanities_occupations