[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Certification Discussion



I looked briefly at the CA web pages a while back, and they had a lot of text on them that seemed to be setting people up to be prepared to fail the exam the first time (or two or three) that they take it. So what happens if an archivist gaily sets off to take the exam and fails? It seems that a person would do well not to mention to a supervisor that they plan to take the exam. If they then have to report that they failed, it could have unpleasant consequences for their job.

I paid a large amount of money to take five courses to get a Graduate Certificate in Archives from Long Island University (on top of the MLS I had earned many years before), so I resent the idea that people in the field think I need to pay yet another sum of money to prove that I am competent. No one asks college or university professors to take an exam to prove that they are competent; their degrees are accepted as proof. Someone used the example of an MBA needing to take an exam to become a CPA, but those are two different animals. My cousin who had only two years of college took a CPA exam. I doubt that my brother-in-law with an MBA would feel it was necessary. There are many other professions where a degree is accepted as proof of competence. There is a certain amount of historical material on the test that is totally unrelated to job performance, and there are questions relating to work practices that, if I didn't know the answer when I needed to know it, I could look up.



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

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to listserv@listserv.muohio.edu
      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
                    *or*:  UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to archives@listserv.muohio.edu

Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>