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Re: Certification Discussion



Hi all,

At present ALA is working to redevelop its acceditation program. ALA's new
program would be operated outside of ALA and would include professionals
from other organizations including ALA who would participate in
accrediting visits and also assist in developing criteria for programs.
One of the reasons the Committee for Education and Professional Developed
had hoped for more comments on the new guidelines for graduate level
education is because those guidelines might be used in the accrediting of
archival programs in history, library science or other venues. (one of the
reasons ALA is changing its accreditation is to meet the needs of other
kinds of educational programs such as archives or information science who
use ALA accreditation.)

SAA could do accreditation of archival programs but it would be incredibly
expensive to do. (I've seen the ALA budget for the new accrediting program
and it is not cheap.) It would also require at least one additional staff
member and probably more. And that doesn't include training the
accrediting teams and paying for travel and other support services for the
accrediting teams.

As for certification most of the long time members of this list know that
I have written at least two histories of the certification process, one
which included discussion on the history of education of archivists. (both
are unpublished but one was presented at MARAC several years ago.) I am
not certified for a number of reasons. However when newbies to the
profession ask me about certification I tell them to go ahead and take the
test. It is entirely possible that in ten years or so that certification
may be the gold standard especially as more newbies get into upper level
positions. It is also possible that certification may fade into the dust
if ALA accreditation of archival programs is accepted as the way to
determine if someone is truly an archivists.

Certification is and continues to be a hot button topic for both
archivists and records managers. I know that when I was writing my first
paper on certification the debate on the archives list was down right
scary. On top of that I asked about certification on the Records Managment
list and also included my concerns about a discussion on how section five
(which is an essay) is graded and how subjective (and from the messages I
read some what nasty) the comments and grades were. I nearly got my head
torn off. Perhaps some day we'll come to agreement on how to determine
what makes someone an archivist.  But for now certification and a masters
degree with archival coursework is what many in the archival profession
consider the benchmark.

Hope this provides some clarification. Danna Bell-Russel
National Digital Library Learning Center, Library of Congress

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