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Ouch!

Can I nominate "Neither of the persons appointed has any professional
archival qualifications or experience (though I am sure they have
practical records management experience)" for the Back-Handed
Compliment Of The Year Award?

And I'm not going to say anything about "(apologies to people who have
worked in records management, but I'm tired of explaining ISAD(G) etc
and what HMC does each time one of you asks for help)".

Mark Weaver
Nottinghamshire

> Sorry but I can't resist throwing this little lot in...
>
> I was intending to raise this problem at the next SRG meeting but
all the
> discussion on the need for proper publicity for who we are and what
we do
> has rather pre-empted any such need, I suspect. The problem is also
clearly
> of relevance to us all, not just SRG members. The gist of what I
have
> already unofficially discussed with the SRG is as follows...
>
> In the past 3 weeks alone I've been approached (as I'm sure have
many of you
> over the years) for help by 2 individuals who have been appointed as
> "archivists" to sort, weed, list, classify and find a repository
for, the
> entire surviving archives of two quite differing organisations.
Neither of
> the persons appointed has any professional archival qualifications
or
> experience (though I am sure they have practical records management
> experience).  In addition, I've been advised that two quite
different
> organisations have recently employed very expensive consultants to
advise
> them as to what to do with their records.  You will be interested to
hear
> that one of the consulting firms advised passing the job to the
> organisation's reference library.  Yes.
>
>
> With deepest apologies to all those non-archivists out there doing
amazing
> archival work against all odds in the service of their
organisations, and I
> know there are many of you doing a brilliant job, how on earth do we
> persuade said organisations to employ archivists (apologies to
people who
> have worked in records management, but I'm tired of explaining
ISAD(G) etc
> and what HMC does each time one of you asks for help)?  Should we be
> advertising in business journals that we are cheaper and better than
> consultancy firms (again, with apologies to those firms which do
employ
> archivists to carry out this work - do they exist?  if so, I would
like to
> hear from them)?  And should we be pleading - here openeth the can
of worms
> - with librarians to tell their firms if they are asked to do this
sort of
> work from scratch that they can't do the job as well as archivists?
>
> Clare Cowling
> RCOG and IALS Archivist
>



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