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archival careers, etc.



Jessica Lehr writes, "It depends on your choices within the MLS program.
The School of
Information at the U. of Michigan offers preservation/conservation
coursework, as does Wayne State U.  I'm fairly certain that this is true
of most MLS/Archival programs."

Of course, it is true.  At Pitt archives students take three courses in
preservation.  This periodic discussion of entering the field and graduate
archival education is consistently amusing and disturbing.  People post
messages that suggest something like hey, I really didn't have to know
anything to become an archivist - I just had to show up (and usually these
discussions are followed shortly by laments about poor salary, public
recognition, and status).  The fact is, graduate archival education has
changed considerably over the last twenty years, offering more extensive
coursework and formal preparation.  One of the reason so many archivists
obtain these days an MLIS degree is because of the number of extensive
programs that have developed in these schools, a topic I explored in with
Elizabeth Yakel, David Wallace, Jeannette Bastian, and Jennifer Marshall,
"Archival Education in North American Library and Information Science
Schools," Library Quarterly 71 (April 2001): 141-194 and With Elizabeth
Yakel, David Wallace, Jeannette Bastian, and Jennifer Marshall ,
"Educating Archivists in Library and Information Science Schools,"
Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 42 (Summer 2001):
228-240.  While graduate archival education has a long way to go in
becoming what it needs to be, it is still something that the field (and,
indeed, all disciplines) should support as part of strengthening its work,
mission, public profile, and body of knowledge (extending across practice,
methodology, and theory).

The reality is, of course, that some still enter the field with no formal
preparation.  The reality is also that you can gain the formal preparation
just like most other professions.

Richard J. Cox
Professor
Department of Library and Information Sciences
School of Information Sciences
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Voice:  412-624-3245
FAX:    412-648-7001
e-mail: rcox@mail.sis.pitt.edu
homepage: http://www.lis.pitt.edu/~rjc

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