Never having worked in a business archive I have been more or less neutral on this proposal. However, moves towards breaking down a completely false division between the local government sector and all the rest may be a good thing. As Sarah Flynn's latest message points out, there is diversity of interest between different kinds of business archivist, and community of interest between them and many state-funded custodians of business archives.
I think Richard Taylor's contribution is extremely helpful, but I would take issue with his assertion that the SoA is still at heart the Society of Local Archivists. I have worked in the university sector, in local government and now in a national museum; I haven't found the Society any less relevant to my work or less representative of my interests when I'm in the "specialist repositories" sector.
One disadvantage of everyone outside local government crowding into the Specialist Repositories Group is that it does nothing to lessen a common attitude of resentment towards local authority archivists on the part of "specialist repository" members. Personally, I can't see much justification for what in some cases (not Richard's, I'm sure) seems to be pure bigotry .
SRG's great strength, however, is that it does give a voice to a number of pretty small employment sectors (including, it seems, business archives), and we need to consider carefully the implications of basing the Society around several (4, 6, a dozen?) new sectoral groups.
Love, Christopher.
Christopher Marsden
Assistant Museum Archivist
V&A Museum Archives, Blythe House, 23 Blythe Road, London W14 0QF
tel: 020 7602 8832; fax: 020 7602 0980; e-mail [log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|