Archival Certification Is One Piece of the Professionalization Puzzle

Three sources of evidence―Society of American Archivists education directories, job advertisements, and the results of Academy of Certified Archivists examinations―were examined to assess the current state of graduate archival education. These sources reveal that graduate archival education in the United States has not advanced as far as it seems in the past fifteen years. A series of recommendations is made to improve the situation, including refocusing on core archival knowledge, developing and placing more full-time professional archival educators, reconsidering where and how graduate archival education programs are placed, and developing comprehensive graduate archival education programs

The Society of American Archivists' approach to graduate archival education has changed in recent years. Guidelines for education have evolved to the point where the 1994 guidelines endorse master's programs in archival education. The SAA Strategic Plan offers strong support for graduate archival education and research, including archival education at the doctoral level. The 1994 guidelines will now be revised in light of the changes in graduate programs and archival work since they were written.

The author argues that something unanticipated has occurred, graduate archival education has expanded and matured and graduate educators have assumed leadership in the continued development of this aspect of the profession. These developments create new tensions about where graduate education is heading and the role of professional associations such as the Society of American Archivists. The author considers options for how educators ought to work on nurturing graduate archival education, believing that no matter what options are selected, the future of graduate archival education rests primarily with what graduate educators deem it to be.

To date, debate over graduate archival education has centered on the need for, and the nature of, the professional knowledge base to be imparted through master's education. A new emphasis on the acquisition of research skills and the conduct of research within graduate archival education at the master's and doctoral levels significantly extends this debate. Drawing on the experiences of the Archives and Preservation Management specialization at UCLA, this paper discusses issues associated with integrating research requirements and opportunities at master's and doctoral levels in graduate archival education. The paper concludes with a discussion of the need for increased pluralism in archival education.

The Society of American Archivists (SAA) has long involved itself with graduate-level archival education. It has sponsored committees and subcommittees, guidelines, roundtables/sections, student chapters, and pre-conferences. But limited empirical evidence exists regarding faculty members' view of SAA's involvement with graduate archival education. This exploratory qualitative case study employs semistructured interviews with full-time, tenure-track archival faculty. We address the ways in which SAA contributes to faculty members' teaching, faculty members' encouragement of students to join SAA, SAA student chapters and faculty advising, and how SAA might promote better communication, coordination, and collaboration between graduate archival education programs and practitioners. We contend that despite decades of effort on both sides, the relationship between graduate archival education programs and the Society of American Archivists remains disjointed, ultimately limiting the field's development. We offer recommendations and suggestions for future research to strengthen this relationship in the interest of improving student experience and the health of the profession.

Since the 1936 founding of the Society of American Archivists, the archival field has struggled with the challenges inhering in professionalization, namely the merits or demerits of institutional or individual accreditation or certification. In 1989, SAA helped establish the Academy of Certified Archivists (ACA), which confers individual certification by written examination. In 1993, ACA modified its bylaws to require graduate education to be eligible for the exam. But, although a relationship clearly exists between certification and education, scholars have not explored, much less profited from, the insights of archival educators. This qualitative case study uses semistructured interviews with thirty-three tenure-track or tenured faculty program directors from graduate archival programs across North America to understand how educators perceive and address certification. Findings reveal that educators are ambivalent about certification, its relationship to graduate education, and its vocational value. The authors discuss the implications of these findings and offer suggestions for research and practice.

We conduct an experiment to examine investment professionals’ use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures when making personal investment decisions or investment recommendations to clients. We predict and find that investment professionals are more willing to personally invest and recommend investment to a client when a firm discloses positive CSR performance than when it makes no CSR disclosures. Investment professionals’ decisions and recommendations are influenced by CSR disclosures both because, on average, they believe that better CSR performance results in better current and longer-term financial performance and because they value the societal benefits of CSR activities. We also find that investment professionals’ general beliefs regarding whether CSR activities benefit society affect how they assess firms’ CSR performance and their view of the relation between CSR performance and financial performance. Finally, investment professionals’ experience appears to protect them from the potential biasing effect of appealing pictures that accompany many CSR disclosures.

Investment Professionalss Use of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures

Based on historical research, personal files, and survey data, this article begins with a pragmatic description of the present state of archival education for automation. The author acknowledges the propriety of technical instruction but argues for such training within the broader context of graduate education. Basic confusion exists in defining continuing education and differences between workshops and formal course work for archivists. The Society of American Archivists has played a pivotal but often contradictory role and is now being complemented by a new cadre of full-time archival educators. Given the immensity and confusing terminology of the ongoing computer revolution, the author argues that archivists need to take a step back to develop a clear pedagogical vision on automation and graduate archival education

The author explores the need for the Master of Archival Studies (M.A.S.) degree in the United States and its expression through the Society of American Archivists' Guidelines for the Development of a Curriculum for a Master of Archival Studies. He contends that the substantial and distinct body of archival knowledge, coupled with the emergence of new information technologies that have changed the way archives are created, maintained, and used, make an autonomous two-year degree curriculum necessary. The article examines SAA's history in educational guidelines development, the Canadian experience with educational guidelines and twelve years of M.A.S. degree programs, the growth of U.S. graduate archival education during the 1980s, and major features of the 1993 draft M.A.S. guidelines.

Recent official pronouncements by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and the exhortations of recent SAA presidents highlight the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and social justice in the archival enterprise. Graduate archival education programs have immense influence in readying students for practice. Faculty members therefore have an opportunity—and a responsibility—to embed DEI and social justice in the curriculum to ensure that students are prepared to promote DEI and social justice in their professional work. This exploratory mixed-methods case study relies on semistructured interviews with 33 tenured or tenure-track graduate archival faculty and a survey of 406 students and new archival professionals (SNPs) (those with five or fewer years in the field) to explore the prevalence of DEI and social justice content in the current graduate archival curriculum. Findings suggest, first, that faculty members integrate DEI/SJ into curriculum in numerous ways but could do so more robustly and consistently. Second, SNPs did not necessarily see DEI and social justice as topics essential to optimal professional preparation. Moreover, many students were not exposed to DEI and social justice issues during their graduate education. We discuss the implications of these findings, offer recommendations for practice, and provide suggestions for further research in this underdeveloped area.

In this article the author contends that as professional associations plan archival education programs they often do so from too narrow a perspective and without sufficient thought as to how their efforts mesh with those of other associations or with graduate archival education programs. He also argues that, because of the murky distinction between preappointment and postappointment education, both SAA and the regional archival associations share a common primary mission: to fill the gaps that exist in the present network of graduate archival education opportunities. To do so, archival associations need to (1) pay closer attention to the graduate programs and learn where gaps exist, (2) examine more closely some of their past assumptions concerning archival education in light of recent information, and (3) take a broader view of how their efforts may contribute to the development of the archival profession generally in addition to serving the needs of their primary constituency.

As the archival profession seeks a wider role in the field of information science, the need to prepare students for careers in a rapidly changing world requires multidisciplinary education, greater emphasis on core archival knowledge, and fully articulated graduate programs combining structured course sequences with practical experience and sophisticated research projects. The Society of American Archivists is currently considering new “Guidelines for a graduate program in archival studies”. This case study of the graduate program in archives and records management at Western Washington University provides one example of the diverse offerings available for archival students. The six key aspects of the Western Washington University curriculum include: linking history and archives, integrating archives and records management, emphasizing information technology, incorporating management principles, including practical experience, and requiring research for a master’s thesis.

In recent years, the United States archival community has been striving to build a rigorous and recognized interdisciplinary foundation for graduate archival programs that is also responsive to emerging aspects of archival theory and practice. Such efforts have failed to achieve optimal results, however, because they have lacked the knowledge that can be constructed by employing a systems perspective and strategically gathered data. This paper examines data published over the past decade relating to the state of archival placement and the educational base of members of the archival profession, together with previously unpublished data gathered from a survey of archival educators and recent graduates of archival education programs. The author finds that these data, while suggestive, are able to provide little more than static, decontextualized snapshots. She suggests how a systems approach might be applied to identify and understand the complexity of the systems of which archival education is a part, thus yielding knowledge that could be used in the strategic development of archival education.

Most curriculum components of archival graduate programmes consist of contextual knowledge, archival knowledge, complementary knowledge, practicum, and scholarly research. The practicum, now commonly known as experiential learning in the global hub, is now widely accepted in library and information studies (LIS) education as necessary and important. It is through experiential learning that, over and above the theoretical aspects of a profession, students are provided with the opportunity to learn by doing in a workplace environment. The University of Botswana’s Master’s in Archives and Records Management (MARM) programme has a six weeks experiential learning programme whose purpose is to expose prospective archivists and/or records managers to the real archival world in terms of practice as informed by archival theory. The main objective of the study was to determine the extent to which the University of Botswana’s experiential learning component exposes students to real-life archival work to put into practice theoretical aspects learnt in the classroom as intended by the university guidelines. This study adopted a qualitative research design and collected data through interviews from participants selected through purposive and snowball sampling strategies. Documentary review supplemented the interviews. The data collected were analysed thematically in line with research objectives. The study determined that experiential learning does indeed expose students to the real world of work. It thus helps to bridge the gap between archival theory and practice for students without archives and records management work experience. For those with prior archival experience, experiential learning does not add value. This study recommends that students with prior archives and records management experience should rather, as an alternative to experiential learning, undertake supervised research, and write a research essay in a chosen thematic area in archives and records management.