An even later entry to the recent debate. 

Divided? Well sadly I have to agree with Maria that as a profession we
are becoming more and more fragmented. When I began there was the BAC,
BRA and SOA. In my 26 years I have seen the Profession divide with the
introduction of ACA, now ACALG, the RMS, the new conservation bodies,
and the development of the NCA, as an umbrella body. Whilst all of these
have very good reasons for their development, in my opinion, combined
they have diluted our voice and made advocacy for the profession so much
harder.  

I am concerned that there is a widening gap between all the components
of our profession. The Archive and conservation one is well known. The
local government and private sector has always been with us but in
recent years it has widened as, despite having the same aim in life, the
preservation of our records and their availability to our selected
audiences, requirements in the public sector for inclusion, outreach,
bidding for external funds, etc have differentiated the sector from the
private sector. Equally the private sector has had to contend with
issues arising out of the Enron collapse the BAT ruling in Australia and
a range of other legislative requirements, both national and
international. As such there is more of a feel that the sectors are
different, which is probably correct, although all the items mentioned
above can be applied to both sectors, but each sector still needs the
same basic skills and its only the add ons for each sector which need to
be learnt. So this should not prevent a healthy cross over between the
sectors but it is more and more perceived as doing so. 

Then there is the widening gap between records managers and archivists.
Whilst I am very pleased to see the establishment of records management
as a truly independent and respected profession, which it was not when I
started my career. It must be remembered that the records it identifies
as permanently to be retained need to go somewhere. It therefore needs
its Archive to provide a home for these records and equally the Archive
needs to be advising the Records management programme on the materials
which will fall into these categories. So they do need to work closely
together to provide a complete service, as they do over the requirements
of Data Protection and Freedom of Information.

Invisibility? I think we have come a very long way since I joined the
profession in 1980. Compared to them we are highly visible. We are now
on government agendas on a much wider scale than just the TNA. We are
now seen as contributing and even asked to contribute to those agendas
and providing support to a number of government initiatives. We can now
compete for external funding both from Government and other external
bodies on an equal footing with our sister professions. 

We appear as experts on a range of questions such as when important
documents / collections come up for sale. I can remember when the Secret
Treaty of Dover came up for sale at the start of my career and the press
and TV interviewed a Librarian on the sale, with not an archivist in
site. We appear on the BBC equivalent of reality shows The History of my
House, Who do you think you are etc as experts in our fields. 

So over all our visibility has risen considerably. We still and always
will suffer from being a small profession and therefore have to work
harder at maintaining and increasing our visibility but we are doing
this. We will never be able to compete for visitor numbers, and
therefore political importance, with libraries and museums but we can
and do compete on the quality and satisfaction of each visit and that
should be made to be equally important.   

On the question of skills we cannot all have the same skills and
knowledge base. As in any profession there will be those who want to
stay at the level where they have a hands on day to day contact with
Archives and Records Management material, and why not, after all that is
why we all joined the profession in the first place. Equally there will
be those who crave the satisfaction which can only be obtained by inter
acting with the public either directly in the seachroom or by the myriad
of new ways provided by outreach and social inclusion programmes. 

There will also be a smaller number who by natural talent and a bent for
that sort of career who will rise to manage Archive and Records
Management Services and they will either give up operational involvement
in the Archives / Records Management or will only indulge themselves as
and when they can. There is also a growing band of Archivists / Records
Managers who work as singleton services where they have to do
everything, I include myself in this category, and the joy comes from
prioritising and managing the workload so that you do spend time on
everything from listing and cataloguing to bidding for the necessary
funds to make the service viable etc, etc.
  
So overall we are visible and constantly increasing that visibility. We
all have the same basic skills but need to recognise that like any
profession each job will need a different set of add on skills but these
can be learnt. Finally we are one profession with one common aim, the
preservation and making available of the written past, and we must use
that as our common voice even as we each pursue our individual
specialisms.

A few lunch time thoughts

Cheers

Nigel

Nigel Hardman
Group Archives
DBRS Warehouse
Bootle

Phone : 8812 6501 or 0151 522 6501
Fax   : 8812 6506 or 0151 522 6506
E mail: [log in to unmask]



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