An archivist is someone who works in an archive: the old papers, photos, recordings, and files that a government, a company, a family, or a library keeps so they are not lost. The job is more than putting boxes on a shelf. An archivist decides what to keep, how to label it, who may see it, and how to find one letter in a mountain of paper — or, these days, one file on a disk. It is a job title, slightly formal. You will hear it in museums, government offices, and universities. Though actually, people mix the job with a librarian’s. A librarian looks after books people still read and borrow; an archivist looks after records kept as evidence of the past. The two jobs can sit in the same building, but they are not the same. It is also easy, from the sound, to hear architect — a person who designs buildings. That is a completely different word.