One of the reasons I became an archivist was the opportunity which the profession gives you to be a specialist within a wide variety of organisations. I can't help thinking that the extent to which it is easy to move between the private and public sector depends on us and our willingness as individuals to make that move.
My career has taken me from a university (pre-course year), a local authority, back to the university (a post funded by a private company), HMC (but based in a university), private company and now a second university. I have really enjoyed every job I have had. In my experience companies recruiting archivists want a specialist with good management skills. They value the specialism (as they value good advice on legal issues or health and safety for example) but also value good all-round qualities. We should therefore be prepared to use whatever management skills or tools are relevant for our employers - and have an awareness that management training is a key part of CPD.
There is a link to Katie Norgrove's report on the research from Australia - that archivists there were found to be less strong in "characteristics required of leaders than the average. They were less visionary, less able to conceputalise and generate abstract ideas, and to think strategically." What ever our current job title, we should not think of ourselves as 'local authority archivists' or 'charity archivists' but as an archivist currently working for an organisation which does X. This is partly what gives other specialist professions (eg lawyers) their strength.
I have always defined myself as an archivist first - and then thought about how that role contributes to the organisation I worked for, whether it was a healthcare manufacturer/retailer, or an educator. And the one constant is the 'long view' based on a set of principles and ethics relating to the archives themselves. Combining these two elements is what makes the job interesting.
Judy Burg
University Archivist
Brynmor Jones Library
University of Hull
Hull
HU6 7RX
01482 465265
website: www.hull.ac.uk/arc
-----Original Message-----
From: Archivists, conservators and records managers. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Emmerson
Sent: 10 August 2006 16:22
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Public and Private
My initial reaction to this debate was to see it as one that each generation of archivists has to resolve for itself and not to become involved but since someone even older than I am has joined in...
As Len has suggested this is not a new issue, though now archives, in the public sector at least, has become increasingly, for want of a better word, 'heritageised', it has acquired a sharper edge. Having only worked in the private sector in the UK (though as a consultant much of my work has been with public bodies), I've been struck by how, as a profession, we tend to define ourselves by where we work rather than by what we do. Most of the Society of Archivists special interest groups are related to the sectors in which members work. The exceptions are the Records Management Group and the Conservation and Preservation Group which, rather than being SIGs, are core elements of the Society's claimed area of competence: they represent areas of core professional activity, irrespective of the sector in which they are practised.
We stress the things that divide us rather than those which unite, which is why I opposed the establishment of the Business Records Group as yet another example of this fissile tendency. As a small and, if what contributors have said is true, threatened group, the 'recordkeeping'
profession should focus on our common education, knowledge and technical skills (and I don't mean the ability to translate and read old
documents) as the things which define and distinguish us, while recognising that we may apply those common understandings in different environments, each of which has equal professional value, and which, in turn may mean facing different challenges and imperatives, and justifying our existence in different ways. Ann Pederson's research, to which Katie Norgrove drew attention, recognises that not all of us will feel comfortable in every environment - though there is an element of stereotypical professional self-perpetuation, where we tend to recruit 'people like us'.
It ought also to be possible to move comfortably between sectors - the route from the public to the private sector is certainly well established - and only an assumption that sector experience is more important than professional and managerial competence will prevent it from happening. This is particularly so at more senior levels where, as Jenny Moran has suggested, strategic thinking and the ability to manage resources and people, allied to professional awareness, ought to be the determining factors. Often a different kind of experience may be precisely what is needed to generate new ideas and approaches.
The key message, then, is that there are too few 'proper records people'
to spend time emphasising differences rather than promoting commonalities. It's good to see Liverpool recognising this in the way that they have re-developed their courses. [I presented a paper at the Business Archives Council's Annual Conference in 1988 suggesting that this was the direction that archival education should take, though I'm not claiming any credit for the change!)
Peter Emmerson
Director
Emmerson Consulting Limited
Poplar House
5 School Street
Witton-Le-Wear
County Durham DL14 0AS
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