Year: 1965
Type: article
Abstract: "Knowledge exists in two forms: (1) ""active knowledge,"" meaning that to be found in the brains of living human individuals and therefore available to them at any given moment as bases for actions, and (2) ""passive (or potential) knowledge,"" which exists in the great reservoir of documents in which have been recorded the experiences, observations, thoughts, and discoveries of other men, chiefly those of the past. The custody of this great, and ever increasing, reservoir of passive knowledge is the responsibility of the archivist and the librarian. They must preserve it safely and impartially, and they must ever seek better ways to make it increasingly available to mankind so that it becomes part of the active knowledge by which they are guided."
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes
Language: English
Subfield: Conservation
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W72440317