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Re: Daily Bruin piece



-----Original Message-----
From: Arel Lucas [mailto:lucas@LIBRARY.UCSF.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 11:29 AM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Re: Daily Bruin piece

[...]

It's easy to make any field of study sound ridiculous and/or
useless--especially if it's not your own.


[...]


Well said! At the same time we need to remember the importance of public
perception as it relates to the ever-important "F" word ("Funding" for those
of you who were thinking something else). We all know how important
archivists and librarians are but come budget-cutting time some superfluous
yo-yo in Technical Support Services is almost certain to whine "Why do we
need an *archivist* anyway...?". It's tough justifying a decent salary if
other people think all you are is a glorified file clerk.

(I actually have a canned response that I use when confronted with the need
to justify my position. It involves a short but somewhat aggressive lecture
on the moral and legal obligations to provide access to public records and
the cost-effectiveness of using dedicated staff to do it. For punctuation I
use a heavy stick with a nail in the end of it. Very effective.)


Jeff "proselytizing the Infodel since 1995" O'Brien

____________________________________

J. Jeffrey O'Brien
City of Saskatoon Archivist
Tel:  306-975-7811
Fax: 306-975-2612

Email: jeff.obrien@city.saskatoon.sk.ca
URL: http://www.city.saskatoon.sk.ca/org/clerks_office/archives/archives.asp

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