(Re)Appraising Our Archival Identity: Demystifying the Process and Changing the Dialogue about Promotion and Tenure for Academic Archivists

Abstract

ABSTRACT Within the archival discourse, there has been minimal research or dialogue about the processes and experiences for academic archivists associated with earning promotion and tenure. Recent reviews of the literature suggest that this topic remains largely unexplored in archivists’ professional and scholarly conversations, despite its pivotal influence on job security, advancement, and identity for those working in academia. This article intends to explain and demystify the procedures and best practices for navigating promotion and tenure by providing guidance and insight for archivists throughout their careers. Furthermore, the authors aim to expose the culture of silence surrounding the promotion and tenure process for archivists while also underscoring the power dynamics involved in evaluation activities. This research explores how these actions have impacted historically underserved and marginalized groups and encourages our archives community to counter these forces through professional awareness and by embracing and applying diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and accessibility principles. The authors advocate for a framework that solidifies, clarifies, and encourages increased transparency in the promotion and tenure process and offer profession-wide recommendations to help make this change. Finally, this article serves as a call to action for rethinking our professional identity by championing our collective contributions to the higher education landscape and distinguishing the specialized expertise of archivists from that of our librarian colleagues in the academy.