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Re: "Underpaid...and not Well Understood"
Some nice ideas for promoting archives and, by extension, archivists.
On the "underpaid" theme, however, what ** should ** archivists be paid?
For example, I have three graduate degrees (including a masters in a subject field, a PhD in a subject field, and an MLS with emphasis on archives); I have published a book on local history; and I have worked in various archives, including my current position at a large municipal archives, for five years (my decision to become an archivist was a mid-career shift).
How much "should " I be paid?
Should I / we be compared to academics, lawyers, or nurses? I get paid less than urban planners, policemen, and other mid-range municipal employees. I don't think that's "right" ... but what do others think?
Personally, I think that archivists should get paid significantly more than librarians (who would also claim to be "underpaid and not well understood"), since our work is inherently more complicated (e.g., describing records is far more complex than cataloguing a book; providing archival reference is also significantly more complicated than providing library reference services) and, arguably, more socially significant (e.g., if we destroy primary sources, nobody will ever know what they contained and "history" altered; if a librarian destroys a book - unless s/he's a rare book librarian - or fails to add a book to the collection ... the error tends not to be irreversible) .
But how should we rank compared to others? (That's the only way to decide whether, and to what extent we may be "underpaid.")
Personally, I think we are moving into an era when archivists should have two masters degrees in order to do their work competently - one in a subject field and one in archives or libraries. Obviously, such education and training should receive compensation. But what would be adequate?
Sally
********************************************************
Sally Gibson
Archivist
City of Toronto Archives
255 Spadina Road
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5R 2V3
tel.: (416) 392-5561
fax: (416) 392-9685
email: sgibson0@city.toronto.on.ca
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