I might be a lone voice, but I would still advocate for pre-course work
experience and say that our efforts ought to be directed towards ways of
providing it rather than ways of abolishing it.

1. Employers will always want someone experienced over someone
completely new: enabling more people to qualify without experience will
simply advantage those who have it at the job-seeking stage. As an
employer, I want to employ someone who does not need to learn the
absolute basics of archive work "the yellow slip replaces the document
in the box..." before they can be useful. Anyone who has previous
experience is likely to outstrip others during the recruitment process.

2. I still think the experience requirement means that those going on to
the professional qualification have a more realistic idea of what the
job entails. Not only do I not want someone who has no idea about
archive work, but having put a lot of effort into training them, they
decide they don't want to do it after all.

3. The leap from unqualified to qualified is one of the biggest you are
likely to make in your career. As an assistant you are likely to be one
of the more junior members of staff, as an archivist, one of the more
senior or even the only one. If you have never worked in archives before
how will this be accomplished successfully? (see point 1). It is likely
to lead to a stressful and difficult time in the early years as a
professional: hardly ideal as an introduction to record-keeping. 

4. If not through previous experience and learning how are courses to
decide who will make the best archivists? Again, I might be a lone
voice, but being an archivist is not an academic discipline: there are
many skills required and the ability to catalogue is only one. I know
plenty of people who can catalogue title deeds well but can't help
people in the searchroom, direct the work of archives assistants or give
a talk. You might have a third class degree but be an excellent
archivist; you might have  Phd and be hopeless.

We need to look at the skills required and the ways they can be acquired
rather than to simply say that in hard times certain requirements can be
dropped. We wouldn't want to create a hierarchy of qualifications where
those who qualified between certain dates (or from certain courses) are
seen as less good because they didn't have to have work experience to
get accepted.

I sympathise with those trying to find work experience and hope we can
all try to provide it. But I don't see the solution as saying it's not
needed.

Jenny Moran
Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland

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