So here we are, once again ready to do what has become a holiday tradition here at NewArchivist, the celebration of that which makes the cockles of my archivist heart glow warm and fuzzy (confession: I just wanted to write “cockles”).
Archival Grassroots I have written more than once on what an awesome group of archivists are on web 2.0, but man, there are a lot of awesome archivists on web 2.0 right now. A case in point: Kate Theimer suggested that archivists should band together and provide Spontaneous Scholarships for folks who needed some assistance attending the 2011 SAA conference. Well, we banded together and provided money to help 26 archivists engage in the profession, many of the donations coming from people on Facebook or Twitter. Getting an early start on next year, Alison Smith and Rebecca Goldman put together Closed Stacks, Open Shutters: An Archivist Photobook with all of the proceeds going to the scholarship fund.
Besides illustrating that archivist are willing to show some skin for a good cause, this grassroots effort also illustrates how archivists engaging each other on social media are beginning to band together to not only point out concerns with the profession, but to provide some real solutions. This is an exciting time to be involved with such a great group.
Digital Preservation Doers The world of digital preservation is developing by leaps and bounds. There are currently countless projects focusing on the further development of policy, software, and best practice solutions to providing long-term access to important digital assets. Many of these projects are funded by large grants and are hosted at universities and government agencies. For archivists grappling with preserving digital content for the first time, there are some great opportunities to learn about these solutions. Conferences now abound with sessions dealing with digital preservation. The Library of Congress’s digital preservation collaborative NDIPP provides a lot of great resources, including its very active blog The Signal. There is also the Digital Preservation Management Workshop, which I had the pleasure of working on as part of my first professional position.
While I am thankful for all of these wonderful projects and training opportunities, I am REALLY appreciative for are the folks who do this kind of thing as part of their normal work then share either the knowledge or tools with others. One example of this is the Data Accessioner tool from Duke University Archives. Designed by archivist Seth Shaw, the program packages together several other tools for doing things like checksum and file format validation, among others. The Data Accessioner is free for download, and the source code has also been made available. We implemented it in our own workflow and are very happy with the results, even developing some of our own tools for using the XML generated from the Accessioner to get information into our institutional CMS.
A great example of someone sharing knowledge is Chris Prom from the University of Illinois who, among other things, is co-director of the Archon project and is currently a member of the technical team for ArchiveSpace. His blog Practical E-Records shares his knowledge of digital records management and archives. Even though I think of myself as being well-versed in the area of digital preservation, I consult Practical E-Records often for tool evaluations and general advice on implementation. Most importantly, Chris applies his recommendations to small shops and folks without a ton of technical knowledge or resources. In my book, the ability to outline a “rudimentary” OAIS compliant system based on a simple Windows directory structure and open-source tools is a thing of beauty.
Thanks to Seth, Chris, and the many others who are committed to helping create and share solutions for the entire archival community.
Grandma So, those of you who usually read my blog will know that I don’t usually talk about personal stuff. But this time I am going to indulge myself a bit, as I just can’t write about what I am thankful for in my life and not mention my grandma, Helen Fowler. Grandma passed away over Thanksgiving weekend at the age of 93. I learned a lot from her, including how those of us in a position to lend a helping hand should do so, whether that hand extends to family, friends, neighbors, or strangers. She also taught me the valuable lesson that a day that does not start with a nice cup of coffee, will not be much of a day.
Grandma’s love was unconditional and her support was unwavering. In thinking about her this past week, I could not help also thinking about how important the support of my family has been in my life and my profession. Grandma, my parents, brother, nephews, and especially my wife’s support was so vital in giving me the confidence and ability to go back to school and become an archivist. You and I are in a field where fame and fortune are hard to come by. I have had times (about the time student loans are payed, coincidentally) when I wonder why the hell I did not become some type of business-dude or programer, where the jobs pay better and are more stable. But, I have people to tell me that I am an archivist because I am following my passion, because I get to do something I love every day. I bet many of us have those kind of people in our lives, and I know you are as thankful for them as I am, even if some of them are no longer with us.
The following is an expanded version of a presentation I gave in Session 105, “Pay It Forward: Interns, Volunteers, and the Development of New Archivists and the Archives Profession” at the 2011 Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting (slides embedded below and on SlideShare). My initial presentation was WAY longer than my allotted time, and because of this I talk about some things in this post that are not included in the embedded presentation.
Thanks to my fellow presenters, Linda Sellars, Taffey Hall, and Laura K. Starratt. I learned a lot from your presentations. A special thanks to session chair Erin Lawrimore, who invited me to speak without having ever met me. Also, thanks to all those in the Twitterverse who helped share our session with those who could not be there.
Invariably, someone will tell a student or person thinking about entering the archival profession some version of the following: “Oh, you need to get some experience, you should volunteer at an archive!” Also, more and more graduate programs are requiring internships and practical engagement as a requirement to graduation. The benefits of gaining experience in a working archive are obvious. My first position upon graduation directly stemmed from an unpaid internship. However, have we as a profession really thought through the consequences and ethics of requiring unpaid work? How does unpaid work compound serious issues facing the profession? This presentation and blog post are my effort to discuss some these questions.
The Financial Issue: I think most readers of this blog will have intimate experience with the financial challenges faced by many of us. We as a profession have basically stated that to be a professional archivist, you must obtain a Masters degree (A*CENSUS, pg. 406). Graduate school is an expensive proposition, with many of the top programs costing upwards of $40,000 for instate tuition alone. Also, most programs have a very limited number of scholarship opportunities. This means that most of us have or will be paying for graduate school with loans, the burden of which weighs heavily right after we graduate. While in school, it can become very difficult to find relevant paid experience. Many programs require that students earn “practical” credit, and it certainly helps the resume. This leads many students to have to choose between relevant experience and positions that pay, requiring even more loans and debt which makes saving for lean times during a job search nearly impossible.
The time frame of that job search poses another challenge, as many new professionals face a prolonged job search. In her excellent presentation at the 2009 SAA conference, “Professional Sustainability: The Elephant in the Archives,” Dana Miller states that the average job search for a new graduate lasts 6-months. One of the causes of this prolonged search, Miller states, is there are currently many more job seekers than positions. This situation will probably not change anytime soon. The feeling by some that there will be a plethora of job openings when the current generation of senior management retires (what I like to call the “Great Retirement” Myth) has not proved true. With the current state of the economy encouraging people to work past retirement age and institutions not replacing exiting staff, this feeling will likely stay in the realm of the make believe.
It is a valid question to ask if unpaid positions are actually compounding the job situation. This concern was wonderfully expressed by Beth, in her comment to the Manifesto post on this blog:
“[Volunteering] can create a troubling cycle where less paid positions are available because others are doing the work for free. It creates this Catch-22. As a new archivist, you need to do volunteer work/internships to be competitive, but this work may actually limit the amount of paid positions that are offered.”
This profession seems to have a large gulf between paid and unpaid positions, with no real middle ground for paraprofessionals or others seeking experience with pay. I think Beth’s concerns speak to the fact that perhaps putting more and more duties in the unpaid category widens this gulf and makes entry level positions even more scarce.
Upon graduation, many job seekers are advised to get additional experience by volunteering while searching for that elusive professional position. While this makes sense, it also makes an assumption that people can actually afford to work for free for what could be an extended time period. I will talk more of the possible effects of this later, but it is clear that we could be losing valuable people during this time period.
The Diversity Issue: While I have outlined some of the things at may be stopping people from joining our ranks, my other concern is who those people are. Following on the heels of the findings that we are not a racially diverse profession (A*CENSUS, pg. 482). SAA made a clear statement that diversity is a core value for which we must strive:
“The relevance of archives to society and the completeness of the documentary record hinge on the profession’s success in ensuring that its members, the holdings that they collect and manage, and the users that they serve reflect the diversity of society as a whole” (SAA Statement on Diversity).
I think most people will agree that diversity includes not only people of different racial and ethic backgrounds, but people of different economic backgrounds and experiences. However, at the same time we are giving a lot of lip service to diversity, we are also constructing roadblocks to achieving those goals. As I have already mentioned, expensive educational costs and the prolonged job search are financial roadblocks for many. In addition, we are saying as a profession that experience, much of it in the form of unpaid work, is also a requirement. My questions is: are we making the price of admission into the archival field too expensive? By trying to build a perfect mix of education and experience requirements for professional positions, are we making the candidate pool less diverse? Are we doing more harm than good here?
Other fields are facing these same challenges and questions. In a general critique of the internship system in higher education, an opinion piece from the New York Times states:
“… the internship boom gives the well-to-do a foot in the door while consigning the less well-off to dead-end temporary jobs. Colleges have turned internships into a prerequisite for the professional world but have neither ensured equal access to these opportunities, nor insisted on fair wages for honest work” (Ross Perlin, “Unpaid Interns, Complicit Colleges,” New York Times, April 2, 2011).
While this quote is probably a bit more inflammatory than I would go with, I do agree with the general point. I would really like to see more research done in this area, addressing if indeed these economic roadblocks are pushing people out of the profession, and how this effects our diversity. In my opinion, these questions are too critical to continue to ignore, as a less diverse profession hurts our central mission of understanding and preserving our history.
The Value Issue I did not have time to address this in my presentation, but I think ways that unpaid positions can reflect on the perceived value of archival work creates a third challenge. This is well illustrated by a 2010 Ethicist column. A person asks the following question about volunteering at their local library:
“Community members have responded to our town’s tight budget by volunteering at the library, so much so that the library laid off several long-term full-time employees, people who are our friends and neighbors… Should town residents consider that before volunteering?”
Randy Cohen’s answer:
“Consider it? Certainly. I’m pro-thought. But not even those unfortunate and unintended consequences you cite should automatically forestall volunteers.
Many library jobs require trained professionals, work no mere civilian can do. But for those tasks an amateur can handle, go to it. There is no shortage of work to be done by skilled municipal employees… All your community needs are the will and the funds to undertake such things. My optimistic view is that the money that library volunteers save will be applied to the infinite number of things to be done only by trained professionals or those workers who perform difficult or unpleasant jobs nobody will do without pay. And not just at the library. Ideally, volunteers are not eliminating a job but transferring it. The money saved by a volunteer who shelves books can pay a sanitation worker to help keep you and your neighbors healthy. I suspect that few of your fellow citizens are volunteering to work the garbage trucks, that demanding and essential task… There are winners and losers here. And it would be unfortunate if this upsurge of civic virtue resulted in only a tiny reduction in some people’s property taxes, an outcome that thwarts the noble motives of those volunteers: to promote civic betterment by reallocating limited resources” (Randy Cohen, “The Ethicist: Library Volunteers,” New York Times, August 27, 2010).
Hmmm, I get his point. By having volunteers do work, a municipality is free to use those resources to fund less desirable but equally important tasks. He also acknowledges that some jobs can only be done by library professionals. What I find troubling here is the seemingly strong connection between unpaid and unprofessional. Any “amateur” can shelve books, so why should a city be paying for a professional to do it when a volunteer is willing, right? This leads me to wonder if the skills that we are delegating to unpaid workers are being devalued in the process. Why are we paying to have someone create a finding aid when this place over here is having a volunteer do it? Again, volunteers play a vital role in libraries and archives, but I am damn sure the work I do requires the set of developed skills and experience of a career track professional. I bet your job is the same. We need to do a much better job of communicating that, as well as stop tolerating volunteer or internship positions that require professional level work and credentials. If not, down the road it may be our positions that are traded in for more efficient garbage service.*
What Can We Do So I have outlined a lot of problems here, most of them requiring much more thought than a couple of SAA presentations and a blog post. However, I think there are some things we can implement right away that can at least help the situation and create “ethical” internships that are helpful to both the intern and the profession.
I told the people who saw my presentation that if there was one thing I hope they took away was the idea that unpaid positions do not equal profession positions without pay. Budget cuts or other challenges are not an excuse to strip a position of its pay and slap the word “intern” on it. This does a disservice to the intern by lacking key mentorship and learning components, and does a disservice to the profession by devaluing our education and skills. Don’t do it. If you see it done, call it out.
Some additional guidance for creating quality internships:
Ensure work is appropriate for an internship
Is it archival in nature? Just because the work takes place in an archive does not mean it has skills that are transferable to professional positions
If it requires a lot of training, it is probably better suited for a part-time paid position and not a student
Internships must have educational component
This is not only ethical, but most minimum wage laws require it. Check your local laws to make sure you are following the rules!
If possible, work with educational institutions
Universities must provide resources for those placing interns
Provide Mentorship activities
Resume reviews and mock interviews are very helpful for students
Make sure to include honest critique and guidance
See slides 10 and 11 of the imbedded presentation below for an example on how to improve a volunteer position. Sadly, the posting I used for this example is based on an all-to-real posting that was posted to the listserv. I changed some of the wording to protect the innocent (and by innocent I mean horribly guilty). We all have a role in creating internships and volunteer opportunities that are fair. Here is my take on the responsibilities of those employers providing internships, educators giving credit for them, and students looking for them (I did not have time to include most of these in my presentation):
Employer responsibilities
Ensure intern/volunteers are gaining marketable experience and learning
Encourage feedback from interns on how to improve your internship program
Work with schools to find a good match and ensure you are proving a good educational experience
Remember, a tight budget is not an excuse for short-changing new professionals and students!
Educator responsibilities
Institutions need help!
Guidance on credit requirements
Help match students with opportunities
Offer classroom components
Guide students through any problems or questions
Can catch early signs of trouble and ensure a successful experience for both students and employers
Vet internships and discourage students from taking inappropriate work
Let employers know why you are recommending students not take their positions
Student and new professional responsibilities
Remember, interviews are two way streets
Ask what will you be learning
Ask what mentorship opportunities are provided?
Ask placement office/other students about opportunities
Have past internships from this employer been successful?
Ask yourself how will this make me more marketable?
Do not take inappropriate work!
Finally, more than any other profession I can think of, we are concerned with the longevity of our work. Ensuring that we have a robust workforce to continue our work is vital. In light of this, let’s commit ourselves to better understanding the costs associated with unpaid work, to provide ethical internships that provide real value, and make any unethical employment or educational practice unacceptable. Furthermore, let’s make it part of our core function as a profession to properly provide for the training and encouragement of our new professionals, and continue to pay it forward.
Well hello, Internet, I have missed you! I am sure you have forgotten all about little ol’ me. I am that dude that sometimes (like every 8 months or so) writes something about being a new archivist. As you may have noticed, I have been kinda blog-MIA lately. While I have been super busy, that has not been the only reason for my lack of posting. I have also been suffering from part blogger-block and part identity crisis. Well, a blogging identity crisis anyway.
You see, I just don’t feel that new anymore. Oh sure, I have only been out of grad school for a little over two years, and I know I have a lot, a ton, to learn about our complex profession. However, I have also recently found myself thinking a lot more about general archival questions than questions specific to just us new professionals. I think a lot of this is based on how rewarding I am finding my current job, and the fact that I am working on some complicated questions and treated as a colleague, not a newbie.
To be honest, this has made me feel a bit guilty about writing blog posts. Even though I mentioned earlier that I want to write about some wider issues, I was not sure what the reaction would be. “Who does this guy think he is,” I had you saying in my head. But, I had an epiphany while working on my presentation for SAA on internships. I realized that I was not viewing my presentation as one aimed at new professionals or students, but all archivists. Issues that face new archivists are issues that face the profession as a whole, and vice versa. So what is my problem?
So, I want to get back to writing on this blog. I find it so rewarding, and I miss it greatly. If something comes into my head, I am going to write about it and leave it up to you, readers, if you read it or not. That is what this is all about in the first place, right? I will also continue to write about challenges facing students and new professionals. In fact, in addition to presenting at SAA on the impacts and ethics of internships and unpaid labor, I am also part of a team working on getting your feedback on starting a SAA roundtable for new archivists. Please check our blog! And, as always, I encourage anyone and everyone to contact me if you are interested in writing a guest post.
Thank you for reading, and for sticking with me during my downtime.
*For you young’uns out there, the title of this post is in reference to this song. And, just as Sir Elton says, it is not referring to anyone in the audience, but me
Last year’s inaugural SAA Tweetup was a huge success, with Zoo Bar in D.C. taken over by archivists. Yes, I know that sounds awkward, but it was a blast! Mark Matienzo (@anarchivist) and Hillel Arnold (@helrond) have generously taken over the planning of the 2011 version. Here are the details, via Mark’s post:
We’re holding this year’s Tweetup on Thursday, August 25, starting at 9 PM, at the Clark Street Ale House, which is about a mile from the conference hotel and easily walkable and accessible by public transportation. Feel free to join us after the alumni mixers – and please join us even if you don’t use Twitter.
I tried to get this story to fit in a tweet and could not make it in 140, so I am writing it here. My wife and I went to the local credit union to open an account. Everything went smoothly until the account manager, who was very nice, asked the following:
Bank Person: What do you do, Lance? Me: I am an archivist. Bank Person: A what? Me: I am an archivist at The Henry Ford. Bank Person: Could you spell that? Me: A-R-C-H-I-V-I-S-T. Bank Person: Oh, just like it sounds. Me: Yeah. Bank Person: So, what do you do, put small parts in cars? Me: Yes, yes I do.
I actually did explain what I do for real, and she said that it sounded very interesting, but I think she was covering at that point. We archivists need a good PR firm…
Kate Theimer has a wonderful idea to start a scholarship fund to help fellow professionals by paying the registration fee for SAA’s annual conference. The conference can be such a great learning and networking experience for a new archivist. It can also be an expensive endeavor, especially for someone just starting out or is currently un- or under-employed. So far in my young career I have been lucky enough to have generous support from my employers. However, not enough of us are this lucky. SAA currently has one scholarship to help students travel to it’s annual conference. It is fantastic that Kate’s idea will expand the number of professionals that will receive assistance.
Now, as great as her idea is, the idea alone is not enough. The pot of money used for these scholarships will be funded by us, other archivists. See Kate’s post for more details on the scholarships, how to contribute, and how to apply (application deadline is midnight on Friday, July 8th). She has made it nice and easy, so please give what you can and help to support a fellow archivist.
UPDATE: Kate has posted that she extended the donation deadline and she will keep sponsoring conference fees until the fund is dry. The deadline to apply remains the same. Also, archivists on Twitter f-ing rule!!!!
I tired to make a sweet spreadsheet for this year’s Hotel Sharing post, but I could not get the form to work for some reason. So we are going low tech again.
If you are looking to split a hotel room with someone for the 2011 SAA Conference in awesome Chicago, please use the comment section of this post as a way to find people also looking.
Some useful info to add in your comment might be:
The dates you will be attending the conference
The hotel you have reserved or prefer to stay at (conference hotel, other area place, etc.)
Anything general you think is important for others to know (you prefer a female or male roommate, non smoker, early riser, you do that thing where you subconsciously binge eat at night, etc.)
If you add your email address to the comment form you will be contacted if someone responds.
Don’t forget that if you are a Chicago area archivist with some room for a person to stay with you during the conference, please add yourself to Crash Space for Archivists.
I will delete all of the comments to this post after the conference.
Last year I wrote a post on the things that made my archivist heart thankful. I thought I would recycle that old idea revisit that favorite holiday tradition and update it for 2010. As an archivist, I am thankful for:
Archives that Share One of the projects we are tackling at work is the creation of EAD compliant finding aids. To help facilitate that, we have been working on drafting a finding aid manual to guide our archivists and volunteers. Luckily, there are some great examples out there, like the Finding Aid Style Guide [PDF] from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University; the Processing Guide [DOC] and Tag Set from the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, and the University of Maryland Libraries’ Processing Manual [PDF]. I know that it is easier for larger institutions like these to create such guides as they often have more staff and resources than smaller archives, but the fact that they share the results of their work helps the entire community. If we had to create a manual from scratch, well, I don’t think we would, as we have larger and more pressing projects to deal with. I hope more places follow suit and share things like manuals, policies, and implementations with the community.
Deferment of Student Loans I plan on deferring these suckers until I have time to sit down and hatch an elaborate plan where I fake my own disappearance. I will then live the remainder of my years riding the rails, with only my freedom and whatever fits into my hobo bindle to weigh me down.
Archive Standards Yeah yeah, I know these are uber-boring. In grad school the acronyms all ran together: AACR2, EAD, DACS, OAIS, etc., etc., etc. But now I realize the inherent awesomeness of these things. This is specifically directed to all you students out there. When they start talking about DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard) in your class listen up because it completely kicks ass! I refer to it almost every day as we get our finding aid project off the ground (my only complaint is that it is not online, getting it out there will only increase its value, SAA!). And OAIS (Open Archival Information System)? This thing allows for the conceptualization of everything from what metadata you store and deliver to your freaking technological infrastructure. I dare you to come up with a digital preservation program without it, I dare you! I have no idea who works on these things. I am assuming they toil away in a dark room somewhere, and when they do get a break they speak in some kind of xml tagged language or draw a model explaining what they want for dinner. I for one thank them, as we are all better for their work.
A Job My first job out of school was grant-funded and expired at the end of this past summer. My wife and I wanted to stay in Michigan, and then she got a job in Ann Arbor (because she is awesome), meaning I needed to find something in the area too. This was daunting (hard to find employment to begin with, really hard in Michigan). However, I was able to land a job as a digital project archivist in the archive of The Henry Ford. Followers of this blog know I do not usually talk about work specifically, but I will say that this job feels like a perfect fit for me. It is just what I want to be doing.
I have been working on a post with more detail on my job hunt. I have been working on this post now for almost three months. I am obviously having a very difficult time with it. I think the big reason for my troubles is that the job hunt can be so humiliating sometimes. Even though it worked out better than I could have hoped for and I have a job I really like, I just do not like to reflect all that much on the disappointments of the search. Personal disappointments because of positions I did not receive but more than that, disappointments in how some in the profession treat applicants. But this is a positive post, so I will leave this for another time..
I am now off to gorge myself on more deviled eggs, and wonder what I did to have so much to be thankful for…
I am sorry that I have not posted in so long. I promise that I will get on a more regular schedule now that I am settled into my new job and college football is almost over (a guy can have his guilty pleasures, right?) ~ed.
There has been a lot of talk lately about some of the challenges of our profession, this blog included. But it also got me wondering if the pendulum has now swung too far to the negative. I mean, why do we do it? Why do we go against the advice and become archivists? Why do most of the profession’s critics (me included) remain in the profession? The answer, for me, lies in two completely unrelated things that I came across over the past few weeks.
Badass Archivists: It was recently announced that NARA is investigating the destruction of the so-called CIA torture tapes. This announcement comes on the heels of the Justice Department concluding its own investigation and deciding it will not be taking any further action. The action by NARA prompted a Gawker blogger to declare “the Justice Department may fold like a cheap hooker, but NARA doesn’t fool around. You’ve fucked with the wrong archivists, CIA!”
I usually avoid discussing politics, and I know there certainly are politics at play here. But I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and say that there is also something more going on. Much like the embarrassing Sandy Berger incident, NARA tends to use investigations as a way to call out people or agencies out who are somehow abusing them or the archival record. I do not agree with NARA all the time, and I know it has its issues, but I love in this case they are fighting the good fight.
If I Don’t Do It, Who Will? I recently had a interesting conversation with a corporate archivist. First, a little context. I know the economy is difficult for everyone these days. But we here in Michigan have had it very bad, and the badness started a few years before the rest of the country. My relatively short commute each weekday brings me by shuttered factories, office parks, and homes. It is profoundly sad for a very proud Michigander like myself. The archivist was relating how challenging it is to work in such an environment. This company has fired (I hate the work laid-off) entire departments. Often, the archivist has to go to these departments to save records before they are all destroyed by people who do not see the value, people who view records and archives as just another needless cost that should be cut.
So why does the archivist continue to work here, to work in this environment of too many records and demands, and not nearly enough funding or staff? The answer: “If I don’t do it, who will? Who will save this history?” That statement actually gave me chills when I heard it. This archivist is fighting the good fight.
The Fight: The fight can take many forms. It might be a very public fight for justice and accountability. Or, it might be a private fight to follow one’s own professional standards. Either way that fight is based in principle and the passion for one’s work. It is based in the belief that often “the right thing,” whatever the hell that is, is worth the battle.
I think this passion and principle is at the heart of why we work in this profession and why we try to better it. I want to make things accessible, and this career feeds that passion. That is why I am an archivist rather than something that makes more money or earns more public respect. I think the profession as a whole is grounded, for the most part, in this same principled approach to our work. That is why I bothered to write my manifesto, why Rebbecca proposed her Howl-Up, and why the Justice League writes about crappy jobs, because deep down we believe a profession grounded in ethics and principle can change for the better. It is also why people, no matter how many times they are told not to become archivists, that library school is too crowded, and that they will not find a job, will continue to want to work in this field. It is why most people who complain about the archives profession have no intention of being anything other than archivists.
It is why people keep finding the motivation to fight the good fight. So Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our Archivist dead.
I have only been in one fight. It was during the time of life where we as a people get the closest to the kind of violence driven societal breakdown depicted in Lord of the Flies: yep, I am talking about middle school gym class. Derek Something-or-other was making fun of my less than stellar volleyball skills. While his criticisms were spot on (I am not a strong volleyball player), I found them to be a bit much. Now, at that time of my life I was pretty quiet and shy, like Simon (although others may have categorized me as more of a Piggy), but on the bus ride home (also close to a Lord of the Flies type situation) I decided I would channel my inner Jack if it happened again. The next day, it happened again and Derek Something-or-other got the pushing of his lifetime. I had had enough and felt as though I had to act.
I was reminded of this moment of my life when last week, a group of archivists on Twitter reached that point of action as well. There was a job posted on the A&A that, as I have talked about before, I thought was undervaluing our degrees and experience. I tweeted it. Others people, including @benuski, tweeted more terrible positions. Then @meau took the initiative and started the blog You Ought to be Ashamed at http://eatingouryoung.wordpress.com. A group of archivist will be using this blog as a forum to…, well, lets be honest here, we will be using it to call out crappy job postings. I really, really hope this blog wil not be around very long for lack of content, but I have my doubts…
I will be one of the people contributing, so please let me know if you see any bad postings out there. Maureen has dubbed us the Justice League (in case you are wondering which Super Friend I am, the answer is Gleek), and hopefully we will be able to at least point out some of the uninformed and misrepresented postings that appear out there, some of which even make it to SAA’s job announcement page and the listserv. Professionals should not tolerate part time or intern positions that require degrees, extensive professional experience, or even certification! The people that post these jobs should feel shame.
