‘The archivist is not and ought not to be a historian.’ Christopher Brooke has referred to this aphorism in his own article with some scepticism, and not without good reason, for David's career at the Borthwick is evidence of the falsity of the dictum. It was, however, coined with care, in the early days of the professional development of archivists, and in a laudable attempt to draw a distinction between archives and history. History, well established, with a career structure, commonly accepted methods of entry into the profession and characteristic techniques; and archives, very new, with no career structure (unless you include the Public Record Office) and few prospects, no established method of entry, and with few, if any, commonly shared and characteristic techniques. As archivists asserted their professional identity from the mid-1950s onwards, history and archives have apparently drawn further apart, until today the courses that train archivists can contemplate dropping that core discipline, palaeography, and county record offices are commonly bereft of anyone who can read anything in Latin, or earlier than the seventeenth century. The rather bad-tempered recent exchanges in the Journal of the Society of Archivists illustrate how entrenched the positions of the two sides have become, in stark contrast to the prevailing ethos at the Borthwick, where, under David Smith, the links between these two branches of the one profession have been strengthened.

The archives have always been at the centre of David's thoughts, not as a quarry for him to exploit (as most historians view them), but as a resource for others, now and in the future. The Borthwick and its records were, of course, well known before David's arrival. Canon Purvis, the founding director, was a prolific writer and publisher, and established also a series of summer schools, using the archives as teaching material. Purvis's interests, however, were concentrated securely on the Tudor period. His Tudor Parish Documents was a ground-breaking source book, and was supported by a number of other publications in the same area.