How do Archivists fare as archers?
Having played an Archivist archer before my old group switched over to 4.0, I can field that one!
1. Knowledge Devotion + Dark Tactics = fun, makes up for the poor BAB.
2. Rangers spells are pretty bangin' for an archer, and an Archivist can get them without dipping into Prestige Ranger, which costs a caster level and some feats at best, and is totally not allowed by your DM at worst.
3. Elves make sorta crappy* Archivists. There goes your main way of getting weapon proficiency, I guess!
4. In general, Archivists are WAY more pressed for feats than their closest analogue, the Cloistered Cleric.
5. No DMM without multiclassing - but DMM is stupid and broken and I hate it, so that's OK.
*
I say sorta crappy, because Elf Dilettante is pretty cool. But you're playing an Archivist archer! Where the hell did you find an extra feat to take Elf Dilettante??SUMMARY: Decent archer, but not earth-shattering without a lot of work. The Cloistered Cleric is definitely better earlier thanks to domains (you can front-load your feats, at a bare minimum getting Knowledge Devotion for free, and possibly picking up Travel Devotion, PBS, metamagic, or weapon proficiencies). I'd argue that once you've taken the major feats, the Archivist catches up and maybe even surpasses the CC. That is, unless you're using DMM, in which case you either PrC out to Sacred Exorcist, or you watch as the Cloistered Cleric laughs in your face.
When I played my Archivist, I came in at level 6, and so I was able to start with some decent feats in place and longbow proficiency (in my case, via the Ruathar prestige class). I was playing a human, because I always play humans, but an Uurkrau Illumian would probably have been even better. I also had a DM who didn't make it too difficult to obtain Ranger and Paladin spells, which certainly helped.
The character was a pretty bangin' archer. However, he wouldn't have been a particularly good archer at, say, any level prior to the one he started at. He still would have been a solid character, don't get me wrong - after all, he still would have had five levels in Archivist. But archery in particular would have been worse than a fighter or a ranger (yuck!).