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Museums and documents



I think Lee is right in asking what kind of archival training most curators receive.  In my experience it seems to be very little.  This doesn't mean that the curators are fundamentally opposed to our procedures--they just don't know.  It's actually a little odd since most small historical societies seem to start their collections with old photos and diaries.  The whole concept of professional education and training could be revisited with an eye toward what we do similarly (preservation, acquisition, storage) and on what we differ (arrangement and description).
 
I was recently involved in a hiring committee that was looking for an assistant archivist for a small historical society.  We sent the announcement to both the archives and the museum listservs as the position was entry-level and we were open to many different backgrounds (library, history, public history degrees).  What we discovered in the nearly 75 applications was that those trained in public history/museum programs not only had no experience in archives but were completely unfamiliar with the concepts.  In describing their "archives" experience, most of these candidates listed inventories and other item level work.  None seemed to have ever read a basic archives manual since they did not use any of our lingo (processing, guides/finding aids, reference).  We didn't expect the candidates to have a great deal of experience but we had expected that if they were applying for an archives position they would have taken the time to find out what it was.  Instead, these candidates seemed to equate the word and the work with that of a museum registrar.
 
I've begun to argue that most small museums and historical societies (with money for only one position) should hire an archivist first and then a curator.  In a previous position, most of my work was attempting to reconstruct archival control over collections that had been treated as artifacts.  A curator had been hired about five years before the archivist and ALL of the archival collections had been divided up into individual items and described and stored accordingly (diary box, letter box, photo box, etc.)!  It seems to me (albeit from an archivists' view) that it is much easier for a curator to take over the artifacts from where an archivist has left off than it is the other way around.
 
I think it comes down to education.  Our college has proposed a heritage preservation degree that would go beyond the traditional programs in historic preservation, archives, cultural studies, art history, and museum studies and provide broad training across these disciplines.  While only in the planning stages, I think the idea has great promise.
 
Anne L. Foster
Archival Fellow
Center of Southwest Studies
Fort Lewis College
1000 Rim Dr.
Durango CO 81301
foster_a@fortlewis.edu
www.fortlewis.edu/acad-aff/swcenter/
phone: 970.247.7456
fax: 970.247.7422
 
"my opinions are my own"