In the ideal case archives are the official places or institutions where all the biographical, bibliographical, published and unpublished material of one or several authors are collected and presented as well as their correspondencies, material belonging to them or their families, secondary literature etc. As there is hardly any ideal archive to be found some archives - more or less related to Austrian Philosophy - and their work are sketched and a rough scheme for the order of the literary estate of some author is suggested. By the example of the Meinong-Gesamtausgabe a fruitful combination of archival and editorial work is presented and finally some problems concerning present philosophical editions (Franz Brentano and Ludwig Wittgenstein) are discussed