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Re: career for the curious?



I would emphasize an earlier posting that there is a great deal of variety
and needs by institutions within the archival world. A previous job I held
was with a brewery, and it's needs were somewhat different. A large part of
the job was research, for the legal department and for the advertising
department, we would have to prepare "brand" histories -- as a particular
brand might have been bought and sold many times and we would have to trace
it back to it's original brewery. Sometimes, the only thing had for research
was the beer label. Needless to say, you learn a lot about U.S. history when
you study beer/breweries and it was a lot of fun. We also had to catalog
thousands of beer commercials, some were on film and before TV, and then
there were the print ads dating from the 1860's on. If you have to do any
analysis, you quickly notice how ads were a mirror of the culture at the
time, and the changes from one decade to another was fascinating. In the
mid-1800s, children were used in beer ads, in the mid-thirties vitamins were
discovered and beer was marketed as a "healthy" drink, in the 50's it was
marketed to women as a way to make your husband happy and be a good wife,
etc.,  The history of prohibition was another fascinating area we had to
research (who knew it was so convoluted?).

In my case a corporate archive did just serve as a heritage, but a necessary
tool, and it provided the chance to constantly learn about social/cultural
history as well as the corporate histories of many, many breweries. Since
the beer we know today in the U.S. is usually German style beer, and most of
the old breweries were begun by German immigrants, it was a virtual mirror
into America's past. It was very satisfying, interesting work.

Jacquelyn Saturley



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