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Re: A rose by any other name? I don't think so!



Due to online system maintenance, I haven't been able to check my e-mail for some time (and just hope this goes out...), so I'm answering this a little late, and without having read the answers that have come in so far.  I can give a personal perspective on this question of the difference between librarians and archivists.

I spent a large number of years as a librarian before I also became an archivist. Many of those years, I  worked for a multi-type library system. In 1996, the system got funding for a ½ time "Regional Archivist" from the NY State Documentary Heritage Program. After exploring various alternatives, my boss basically said to me, "You're a genealogist, so you know all about archives, so I'm going to cut out half the work from your current positon [ha!] and give you this half-time position."

I set to work figuring out what it was that I was supposed to do with this position, and soon realized that while archivists and librarians do many things the same, there are many things they do differently: both arrangement and description, for instance, and that I had better get some coursework in order to learn about the differences. As a result, I took 15 credits from Long Island University to earn a graduate Certificate in Archives. So I can say, no they are not the same thing, although there is a certain amount of overlap in what they do. The training I had to become a librarian did not prepare me fully to be an archivist.

Now I'll look to see how others have answered the question!



Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer
Special Collections Librarian/Archivist

Culinary Institute of America
1946 Campus Drive
Hyde Park, NY  12538
(845) 451-1757
c_crawfo@culinary.edu

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