 The role passes to a new Archive when the previous Archive dies.While the current Archive (named "Ivy" by Harry, when the child revealed she does not have a name) originally claimed that the passing of knowledge happens at birth and left the previous Archive in a permanent vegetative state, as all the previous Archives' accumulated knowledge is passed to her daughter, it is later revealed that this was an attempt to conceal her mother's suicide from Harry Dresden.In keeping with one of the Dresden Files' central themes that knowledge is power; this immense store of information translates to power greater than the strongest wizards.