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Re: Report of Surveys



Charles,

I've read through your document, and I congratulate you and Peter K. for the
hard work in putting this together.  I have a few comments, in no particular
order.

Your basic suggestion seems to be to push the idea of archives week and
related events to the public as a means of increasing  awareness of what we
do.  I wholeheartedly support the idea, and I have to say that NYART, the NY
City area group (of which I am a member, and webmaster for their website)
has been actively running AW programs for many years.  I can't say for a
fact that we're making an impact, but the attempt is there.  The mayor's
office issues a proclomation pronouncing AW, so we are getting a certain
amount of gov't acknowledgement.

That said, I support a national/intl AW as a concept, but I quite frankly
think there are so many official "Weeks" promulgated by various governments
that I'm not sure it will have the desired impact.  It should be done anyway
as a means to promote & celebrate the work we do, but I believe it will take
a bit more than that to get what we're after.

This leads me to a second point.  One of the features of NYARTs website is
an entire section devoted to our AW events.  We've also  posted a detailed
web exhibit on Technology & NY.  My point is not to tout NYARTs work, only
that it suggests that the web is one of the better ways of promoting
Archives.  Many of us are already using the web as a means to promote our
materials and our work, though there's nothing coordinated about it, so I'm
not sure it's helping promote archives as a whole.  I think it is important
for us to realize the impact the web can have, and perhaps turn our websites
into archival advocacy pages along with their stated goals of promoting the
individual institution.  (The recent spate of articles on the Dred Scott
papers was a big boost, I think, but they had the good fortune to be dealing
with a case everyone's heard about)

Third, you mentioned the lack of confidence in SAA and other national
groups.  This raises a very important question for me - what are we paying
them for?  I am NOT, I repeat NOT calling for the end of SAA; I would ask
whether we need to have the organization put more effort into raising the
profile of the profession, if that is something they should be doing (I
think it is).  Bearing in mind that "we have met the enemy, they are us", as
a smart possum once remarked - we are SAA, and if there's a failure, it's up
to the membership to correct it.  If we want more from them on this point,
its up to us to ask/insist/force them to try.  I admit I'm stumped for how
to do it, short of lobbying senators for...something?  I wouldn't even know
what to ask for.

My last point, and then I'll finish this enormous diatribe (I wasn't going
to write this much, honest) - we're going to have to learn to live with our
low profile to a certain extent.  Nobody wants to seem insignificant, but in
the grand scheme of the universe (as currently constituted), archives are
lower on the totem pole.  I've written this before from the perspective of a
corporate archivist - the bean counters & suits that run the modern American
corporation really could care less about the work we do - they've got
"important" things on their minds, never mind that we could probably save
them from doing something stupid.  It's lousy to hear, but that's the way it
is.  Things are a little different here in the non-profit world, but only a
little.  People still don't get it, though they seem more appreciative
(though they keep confusing me with offsite storage - "where do I send my
patient records?" "not here, lady"), and I'm less concerned about them
deciding to cut my job.

Let's face it - if we wanted to be understood and appreciated, we would have
become firemen or circus clowns.  I think this is safer, and there's no
funny clothes involved.

DS


______________________________________
Daniel Sokolow, Archives Coordinator
David Taylor Archives
North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System
155 Community Drive
Great Neck, NY 11021
mailto:dsokolow@nshs.edu

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