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Jobs



I recently published a study of entry-level job advertisements for
archivists (comparing such advertisements from the mid 1970s to the late
1990s) as "Employing Records Professionals in the
Information Age: A Research Study," INFORMATION MANAGEMENT JOURNAL 34
(January 2000): 18-33.  IMJ is the former Records Management Jounral.
This might be of some use to individuals discussing how to enter the
profession.

As a few have pointed out, experience is only part of the equation.
There is now stronger graduate archival education programs and a growing
group of individuals doing doctoral programs with a focus on teaching.
Here is an excerpt from a study I am a co-author of, concerning the
status of graduate archival education in LIS school, demonstrating a bit
of the changing nature of graduate archival education:  "At the end of
the 1970s there were seven full-time archival educators in the United
States, three in LIS and four in history. . . .  By 1989, there were 22
full-time archival educators, 12 in LIS and nine in history. . . .  The
1990s brought an even more accelerated pace as a number of schools
(Pittsburgh, Michigan, Toronto) expanded to have multiple faculty
teaching in the archives area (joining British Columbia and Maryland as
the only schools to support multiple faculty programs).  At the end of
the millennium, there are 37 full-time archival educators in North
America; 26 in LIS schools and 11 in history departments"  Quoted from
Richard J. Cox, Elizabeth Yakel, David Wallace, Jeannette Bastian, and
Jennifer Marshall, "Archival Education in North American Library and
Information Science Schools: A Status Report," December 1999 [submitted
for publication and being reviewed].  Add to this that one US school --
University of Wisconsin Milwuakee -- has approved an MAS degree -- and
another school -- University of Pittsburgh -- has a taskfroce working on
a Masters in Archives and Records Studies (approved in principle by the
Department of Library and Information Science) and we see that graduate
archival education is changing.

So, my point is, if an individual wants to prepare for a career in
archives, why not go study in a graduate program -- just like many other
professions do?  Those programs also build in experience as well.

Richard J. Cox
Associate Professor
Department of Library and Information Sciences
School of Information Sciences
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Voice:  412-624-3245
FAX:    412-648-7001
e-mail: rjc@lis.pitt.edu
homepage: http://www.lis.pitt.edu/~rjc

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