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I seem to have missed a chunk of the discussion re letters, but here goes. 1. Does anyone else think that MARM is a suspicious acronym? I'm trying to decide what to put on my department business card, and Mrs A Locker MARM sounds a little silly. MA MARM sounds even worse. 2. I think any move to add letters to the end of our names to reinforce our self-worth and exclude others is a very bad idea. Academic qualifications are important, as is CPD, but there is a danger of thinking that archival work is a mysterious activity that requires high levels of esoteric knowledge. It is not. Most of it is common sense, and there are just too few academic/professional/knowledge principals to restrict the activity to a privileged few. I thought the profession was aiming to expand and become more open, enabling people to understand what we do and what we think is important. How can archivists achieve this on their own?? We had to have one of the IT support people up to the office to sort out a problem. He said, "So, this is archives. What exactly do you do in here?" I'm sure many archivists working on their own or as part of a small team recognise the problem of educating people about archives and archival activities. Reinforcing our sense of worth amongst ourselves doesn't really help. Anne Locker Anne Locker - Archives Institution of Electrical Engineers,Savoy Place,LONDON,WC2R 0BL Email: [log in to unmask] Telephone: +44 (0)171 344 8407 Fax: +44 (0)171 344 5395 World Wide Web: http://www.iee.org.uk/ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%