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回复: Chinese archivists.



Title: Chinese archivists.
Hi,
 
There are many elements which could be used as critera to judge whether archivists are a profession .You may understand how archivists are a profession in China according to different  criteria. According to my view, only these three are enough to give the conclusion that archivists are a profession in China literally.
 
First, China has a centralised and independent national archival administrative system from central level to provincial level, muncipal level, city level, county level, district level. There are independent archival administrations at different levels within different locality. China has a unified Archival Law which guides archival work of the whole country covering all the e.g.sectors, government, institution, business; public and private.
 
Second,China has complete and independent archival education programs covering different levels from Ph.D,  MA, BA,to secondary school education. It has independent Archival College, Archival Department, Archival Major in university .
 
Third, China has independent archival  personnel management systems for upgrading and assessing the qualifications of archivists and their professional titles e.g assistant archivists,archivists, senior archivists etc.
 
However, it is worth to mention that archival profession are not highly respected in socitey compared with librarians and information managers in China. You can not judge the respect according to facilities equiped in archival repository. Since archival work are different from library work, the importance of archives determines it deserves the particular better physical environment and facility than books.
 
In practice,  though archivists are a profession in practice, archival work in China  has just on a normalised and legalised way, archival work are  not to the standard of professional work like lawyers , architect, etc. which are much independent and objective judged by professional codes. In china, most citizens have very little archival conciousness, they know books but seldom archives. The same is archivist and librarian. Librarian may seems more close to citizen's work and life and have been looked as contributors to the knowledge of humankind. Well, archivist may seems only close to leaders or government, archivists may still looks as custodians of  confidential materials of whom in power. At the same time, there are many difficulties and obstacles for archivists to have real  archival authority for archival work.It is very hard for archivists to implement their collecting and acquisition policies in real world.  
 
It is my opinion that  Chinese archivists have tried very hard to be a real profession both in theory and practice. It could be saying that it is a profession in theory, but it is not a real profession in real world yet.
 
发件人: Maclin, Susan <Susan.Maclin@AIG.COM>
收件人: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU <ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU>
日期: 2000年4月28日 18:48
主题: Chinese archivists.

Colleagues,

When I attended ICA Congress in Beijing four years ago, as I recall, one of the interesting points that was made during the conference was that archivists outnumber librarians in China by almost 5:1.  Another was that hosting the Congress was considered an honor due to the fact that it was about such a highly respected profession. 

My question is: Is it true that archivists outnumber librarians in China by such a ratio?   Are there any professional texts I could look at that would further enlighten how archivists are viewed as a profession in China?

Thank you for your assistance.  You should email me directly as I am only on the busarch listserv.

Susan

Susan C. Maclin, CA (formerly Box)
Corporate Archivist and
Curator of Special Properties
72 Wall St., 10th Floor
NYC, NY  10005
PH:  (212)770-6039
Fax: (212)797-5460
email: susan.maclin@aig.com