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"Lucy Young" response



Below is my letter to the editor of the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
_______________________________________________________________

Dear Editor:

It is clear from Lucy Young's article (Losing Status: A Former Faculty
Member Takes a Staff Job, January 29, 2002) that she has an unimaginative
supervisor and that she works in a stifling corporate culture.  I used to
work for the government, so I understand her feelings.

I fear, however, that those feelings will give those unfamiliar with
archives the wrong impression.  Her feelings are not the result of working
in an archives, nor indeed, of holding a non-faculty job at a
university.  I, for example, am an archivist with a great boss, a
stimulating work environment, and a career I love.

She holds an entry-level staff job; no wonder she finds the work
monotonous.  She is starting a new career at the bottom; no wonder she sees
her status as degraded.  Her chosen path is thwarted; no wonder she is unhappy.

The wonder is that, with so little experience, she proposes these feelings
result from conditions endemic among universities.



______________________________________________
Kate Bowers
Processing Archivist
Harvard University Archives
Cambridge, MA 02138
voice:  (617) 495-2461
fax:    (617) 495-8011
email:  kate_bowers@harvard.edu

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