1) What was your first experience working with archives?
I have always had a fascination with the materiality and meaning embodied in artifacts, so when I was given the chance to work directly with artifacts as a volunteer at the Autry National Center, it set the stage to becoming an archivist. Over time, after speaking to archivists in the museum and library sector, I decided to earn my MLIS and focus on archival theory. My first archival work was during my graduate studies at UCLA as an archival assistant for the Barbara and Willard Morgan Archive, processing Willard’s working papers, and Barbara’s prints and artwork.
2) What is an archival issue that means a lot to you?
I believe that investing in and prioritizing the processing of under-represented and mis-represented archival materials should be work that is centered and supported by institutions and fellow professionals alike.
3) What do you hope to gain by being on the I&A Steering Committee?
As an early career archivist, I look forward to learning from my colleagues about the nuanced issues that persist in the archives profession and having open-minded discussions about how to address them.
4) What can we find you doing outside of the archival profession?
I am an avid hiker, and can often be found communing with local flora and fauna. I also enjoy creative expression through cooking, art and crochet.
1) What was your first experience working with archives?
The first time I ever worked with archives was when I was an undergraduate doing research on Coney Island and went to the local history division at the Brooklyn Public Library, which at that time was a small closet-sized space tucked behind the history section in the main branch.
2) What is an archival issue that means a lot to you?
I am passionate about seeking out and exposing labor advocacy pathways, which are all too frequently buried and hidden.
3) What do you hope to gain by being on the I&A Steering Committee?
Being a part of a group that forms community around, and gives space to, those in the archives profession to openly discuss both entrenched and emerging issues they either have witnessed and/or experienced.
4) What can we find you doing outside of the archival profession?
Outside of work, I spend time with my partner, Jesse, and our two daughters. I enjoy cooking, walking our mini-schnauzer, Whitman, through Rochester’s small parks and amazing cemetery, Mt. Hope, and curating my growing collection of body art.
Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Genna Duplisea, the Archivist and Special Collections Librarian at Salve Regina University. Genna would like to send special thanks to Caitlin Birch, Jaimie Fritz, and Olivia Mandica-Hart for reading and commenting on this piece, and to Suzy Morgan and everyone else who gave feedback during the initial data collection phase.
At the university where I currently work, there is a small but enthusiastic contingent of undergraduate students in the cultural and historic preservation and history majors interested in pursuing library school. As I am asked to give a picture of the archives profession to newly-declared majors every year, I think of the inadequate job market and question whether I am advising them well. This spring, feeling disheartened by what seemed like very few job postings and a rash of term positions, I found myself wondering if the data supported my perception that there weren’t enough opportunities for all the archivists in the region.
Methodology
I compiled information on full-time archives positions in the six New England states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont) posted between April 1, 2018 and April 1, 2019. My sources were the Simmons University Jobline (http://blogs.simmons.edu/slis/jobline/), ArchivesGig (https://archivesgig.com/), and the New England Archivists and Society of American Archivists listservs.
Compiling this data required making decisions about what constituted an archives job. I included any position shared through archivist professional venues, even if it was unclear whether most archival training would be appropriate to the position. I included museum positions that related to collections care, digital collections, or other skill sets that overlap with archives training (but not positions unrelated to archives work, such as development). I included corporate positions as well as public, academic, government, or non-profit positions. A position needed to dedicate at least half of its time to archival work to be included. Temporary positions were included if those postings were full-time, as were positions that did not require a Master’s degree.
Because I began this project after many job postings had expired, some information is missing. In some cases I had to make assumptions about whether a salary grade was posted, after reviewing the institution’s general practices in job postings. (For example, I knew several larger institutions (such as Harvard and Yale Universities) always post salary grades; conversely, if a review of an institution’s current positions generally did not include salary information, then I assumed that there had not been any in the post I was researching.) Future research would be more effective if job posting information were to be downloaded and recorded as it is posted, so that original postings can serve as reference points and more information can be gathered before the removal of inactive positions from job boards.
This study is a snapshot of a year in the New England archives profession, allowing for some broad conclusions rather than a statistically significant analysis. Undoubtedly, I have still missed a few, but positions I hope to draw useful conclusions from the data. The full table is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YglMlu_SOIUXyknVzTvxiJSj_VC9v-Pb/view?usp=sharing.
The survey found 115 full-time archives jobs at institutions within the six New England states posted between April 1, 2018 and April 1, 2019.
Salary information
Most of the job postings did not include any salary information at all, whether a flat number, a grade, or a range. Of the 115 total positions, posting information was insufficient in 30 of them and it was impossible to tell whether salary information had originally been present. Of the remaining 85 positions, 47 (55.3%) included salary information, and 38 (44.7%) did not.
If we exclude Harvard and Yale, the two largest employers in this survey, then the salary information becomes paltry — only 17 positions at other institutions included salary information. There was not enough information on salary amounts to conclude anything substantial.
Location
Of the 115 positions, 30 of them (26%) were at Harvard or Yale Universities, meaning that over a quarter of all archives jobs posted in New England last year were at one of those institutions. The state with the highest number of postings was Massachusetts with 73 (63.4%). Connecticut had 25 (21.7%) postings, and Rhode Island had nine (8%). Vermont and Maine each had three postings (2.6% each) for the entire year, and New Hampshire had two (1.7%).
Temporary & Contingent Positions
The permanency of 11 positions was unclear. Of the remaining 104 positions, 72 (69.2%) were permanent. The rest were temporary positions, with terms ranging from two months to five years but mostly appointments lasting less than two years.
The value of the MS or MSLIS
Of the 115 positions, it was unclear in 25 of them whether a Master’s degree was required. Of the remaining 90, 61 (67.7%) required a Master’s or higher (one position required a Ph. D). Twenty-nine positions (27.7%) did not require it, and of those, 12 positions did not require a Master’s but preferred it.
Archives grads
For context, I was interested in finding out how many new archivists there were every year. The only archives management degree in an ALA-accredited LIS program in the New England region is at Simmons University in Boston. The Simmons University Office of Institutional Research provided information regarding the number of graduates with the archives management concentration. This includes graduates who earned the concentration in-person or online, and also includes graduates who pursued the dual-Master’s MS/MA program in Archives Management and History. (I myself am a graduate of this program.) Of course, not all archivists have Master’s degrees; not all Simmons University graduates stay in the region; not all archives graduates seek jobs in the archives field; and not all archivists in New England went to Simmons. The University of Rhode Island also has a library school (though not an archives-focused degree), and there are several public history Master’s programs in the region; all of these, as well as online programs, also train area professionals who work in archives, but the number of archivist graduates would be more difficult to track. Still, Simmons’s data provides an idea of how many new archivists enter the job market in the region annually.
Graph created by the author using data from the Simmons University Office of Institutional Research.
For the past ten years, the annual number of Simmons archives graduates has more than doubled, from 56 in 2008 to 121 in 2017. (The latest figure for archives degrees awarded in academic year 2018-2019 is 38, but this does not include the 2019 spring semester.) The increase has not been steady, with a drop between 2012 and 2014, but the program has consistently grown since then. The online program began awarding degrees in 2014, and represents a substantial minority of those degrees. All told, 872 professionals have graduated with archives degrees from Simmons in the past decade.
Discussion
It does not seem that the job market in New England is supporting the influx of new graduates, or emerging and seasoned professionals. The exponential annual increase of digital information alone means, in my view, that society needs more archivists. A separate but related conversation with current archivists would surely conclude that people in this profession are overworked and understaffed, with job responsibilities ranging from processing to digitization to records management to teaching to digital preservation.
The Society of Southwest Archivists (SSA) has demonstrated concern for a dearth of salary information and low pay. SSA President Mark Lambert has published a series on the failure of national organizations and top archives directors are failing the profession (https://www.southwestarchivists.org/poor-pay-in-archives-how-top-archives-directors-and-our-national-organizations-are-failing-us/). Lack of transparency about archivist salaries allows institutions to avoid providing competitive compensation, and can generate huge wastes of time for candidates and hiring committees when applicants do not know whether a position will compensate them adequately. Last fall, SSA began collecting regional salary data (https://www.southwestarchivists.org/home/archives-regional-salary-research/). At its spring 2019 meeting, the Society of Southwest Archivists voted to stop posting or sharing job advertisements that did not include salary information (https://www.southwestarchivists.org/salary-information-now-required-in-job-postings/). As of this writing, a group of archivists is collecting information for a proposal to SAA Council to require the organization to require salaries in job postings (https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_efCj42MurbrLAj3), and New England Archivists is considering a similar change. More regional and national organizations, not to mention library schools, could make similar statements and take action to support its communities of learners and professionals.
It has been a decade and a half since the Society of American Archivists conducted A*CENSUS (Archival Census and Education Needs Survey in the United States), which revealed trends about the archival profession and archival education. The SAA annual meeting this year includes a task force on A*CENSUS II. Pre-planning for the survey will be complete by early 2020, with the Committee on Research, Data, and Assessment (CoRDA) implementing it thereafter. (https://www2.archivists.org/news/2018/saa-council-affirms-strategic-goals-creates-research-committee)
The frequency of temporary and project postings demonstrates how dependent the archives profession is on external or limited funding. It is alarming that nearly a third of the archives positions posted last year were term-limited. I focused on full-time positions because I wanted to get a grasp on the types of positions people graduating from archives programs ideally want — secure, full-time, in a relevant field. Yet even this set of supposedly ideal positions show that job insecurity prevails. Professional organizations have a role to play in supporting the creation of stable, benefited, appropriately-compensated positions for its members. New England Archivists supported a study on contingent employment, released in January 2017 (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aFVWuA6zJsrTGFoPuKeU8K6SJ1Sggv2h/view). In response to the UCLA Special Collections Librarians open letter on contingent employment published in June 2018, NEA released a statement later that year (https://www.newenglandarchivists.org/Official-Statements/6814976).
A trend of precarious stewardship threatens archival collections, to say nothing of the impact on individuals struggling for economic stability. Eira Tansey’s recent May Day blog post pointed out that the best way to protect collections is to secure stable, ongoing support for staff (http://eiratansey.com/2018/05/01/mayday-on-may-day/). Yet the inadequate number of new positions, combined with the trends of salary secrecy and contingent positions, seem to demonstrate that archives are not valued as core functions necessitating ongoing operational funding within an organization. If the collections that archivists steward have enduring value to their institutions, then the staff should experience similar value and respect for their work.
Steering Shares provide an opportunity to learn more about the I&A Steering Committee and the issues that the committee members care about. This post comes courtesy of committee member Steve Duckworth, University Archivist at Oregon Health & Science University.
It’s my last Steering Share! Until a week ago, I thought I had another year left in my term and now that I find I’m about to be off the team, my perspective on what to write today has changed. I’ve been asked to run for chair or vice-chair for the section to help keep the momentum going, but I’m now really looking forward to a year off (at least) from SAA service. I&A has focused a lot on issues around labor and equity within the profession. I think we’ve raised some good questions and hopefully we’ve helped get people thinking about these big issues.
But personally, I’m conflicted. We have a problem with diversity in the profession (admit it or not – it’s there and don’t come at me with your rebuttals to this claim). We’re underpaid. We’re frequently undervalued. There is a large focus on temporary and other project-based work. And, on the positive side, there is professional movement against all of this. However, I’m not sure where best to focus to help make meaningful change.
Should we try to “diversify” the profession? Should I really be encouraging more people to come into a profession with a fairly limited market for jobs that are also generally underpaid?
Should we try to tamp down on temporary jobs? Does that mean that – overall – even fewer people will be employed? Will it be even harder for recent graduates to get a foot in the door? Will more records go unprocessed and hidden?
Should we advocate for more visibility and better funding? If we are paid better for our work, where does that money come from? Budgets always have trade-offs. Do I get more money but less staff? Does higher pay necessitate higher workload and stress level? Given our high percentage of academic affiliation, as we push up our requirements, do we also raise qualifications? Will archivists eventually all need a PhD – raising the bar for entrance to the profession even higher?
These are some thoughts that go through my head when someone asks me to serve on a committee or a career panel or teach a course. I honestly really enjoy the work I do and I’d love to have more cool people in the profession, but I’m not sure the profession is one that I can squarely get behind and encourage people to enter. I don’t know.
So this is why I’m looking forward to a little bit of down time. I mean – I’ve been out of library school for just over 5 years and in that time, I’ve held 4 (or so) archival jobs in Philadelphia, PA; Anchorage, AK; Gainesville, FL; and Portland, OR (in that order – that’s a lot of moving). I’ve served on SAA’s Diversity Committee and the I&A Steering Committee (plus local and regional group work). I’ve published articles and written blog posts. I’ve presented at over 10 conferences. I’ve mentored 8 or so other budding archival professionals. And in two weeks I’ll begin teaching an introductory archives course (ironic, right?).
I’m tired! And we all need to take time to clear our heads now and then.
So, thank you to I&A for the chance to meet some amazing people, provide some service to this profession (which I do really enjoy despite what some may think after reading this), and open my eyes to a lot of things I wish I could change.
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. his post comes courtesy of committee member Steve Duckworth, University Archivist at Oregon Health & Science University.
Hello again. This is my second year on the I&A Steering Committee and I’m excited to be back and helping continue the work of this group. This year, I’ll continue to oversee our news monitoring efforts, but we’re going to turn away from the monthly list of news reports and have a few people blog on news items of interest to them. This, I hope, will result in a more focused look at a few topics rather than a really shallow overview of a ton of topics.
For my first Steering Share this year, I’ll attempt to avoid repeating my answers from last year, even though my thoughts haven’t really changed much.
Steve having fun with mold.
What is your favorite thing about your job or the archives profession?
I still really enjoy mentoring students and new professionals, and hope to do more of that as my career continues to grow. But another thing I really enjoy about this profession is the archival community. For the most part, I’ve met amazing people with great ideas and a drive to do something about them. I’ve been lucky enough to have great mentors of my own and am constantly meeting people that I want to collaborate with on some project or another. I am learning to limit those projects to what I can actually handle in a given time period, but the ideas are still great and that positive energy helps keep me going.
What made you want to join the I&A Steering Committee?
I’ve been involved with I&A for a few years and, again, the people have been great to work with and really keep me wanting to stay involved. This committee is involved in a lot of issues that I feel are important not just to archives, but also to humanity – climate change, labor practices, open records, and truth in information exchange. It’s a great way for me to work within the profession, but know that the work I’m doing has some further reach.
What is an archival issue that means a lot to you?
Last year, I wrote about labor issues here. This is an area that I’ve continued to focus even more on in the past year – and I think some of these issues are becoming bigger and more widely spoken about. In the past year, the UCLA Project Archivists have spoken out loudly about the structure of that institution’s labor practices. I’ve continued to advocate for better labor practices for student employees. And I even advocated for myself when I felt I was not being fairly paid by my own institution. I think advocating for ourselves may be even harder than advocating for others – people don’t want to come off as needy or pushy or selfish. But I think we need a bit more push in this profession. What we do is important and we need to push others to understand the value of that work and stop accepting the status quo.
Steering Shares provide an opportunity to learn more about the I&A Steering Committee and the issues that the committee members care about. This post is by I&A Intern Samantha Brown. Along with serving as I&A’s intern and Social Media manager, Samantha works as an Assistant Archivist at the New-York Historical Society. Thank you for your year of service, Samantha!
While it seems like my internship started just yesterday, almost a whole year has gone by. Never having served on a professional committee before, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started. I wasn’t sure if I would just be observing the committee’s work and working on my own small project or if I would be taking an active part in the committees work. Much to my surprise, I was warmly welcomed to the committee and treated like any other member.
In our first meeting, new members were assigned jobs that they would be fulfilling throughout the year. Since I had worked on social media as a graduate assistant, I was assigned the job of managing the committee’s Facebook and Twitter pages. As the job was explained to me, managing the pages would consist of sharing articles that discuss issues and advocacy within the world of archives and sharing new posts from the committee’s blog. After hearing this, I assumed the job would be easy and wouldn’t take too much time away from my work.
Overall, my committee assignment was relatively easy. The difficult part wasn’t finding content or managing the pages but juggling my responsibilities. Since I am working on strict processing deadline for contract position, I didn’t have any time during the day that could be devoted to searching for articles to post on the committee’s social media pages. At first I tried mult-tasking, trying to search for articles while Archivists’ Toolkit loaded or while I was waited for a file to load on my computer. I quickly discovered that this would not give me nearly enough time to find what I need. Instead, I decided that I would take a half hour to search for articles when I arrived at work. If I couldn’t find anything during that time then I needed to move on with my day and possibly make another attempt at finding something during my lunch break.
Taking this tactic worked well for creating social media posts but did not work as well for the other responsibilities that I had as a committee member. Throughout the year, committee members were expected to write blog posts and participate in any projects that happened to arise. This posed a problem for me since my current position does not allocate time for worked that is not directly related to processing our project. To make everything work and accomplish everything I needed, I had to fit things in where I could. For me, this meant I had to write blog posts on my days off and work on projects, such as #AskAnArchivist Day, on my lunch break.
Despite my struggle to fit everything in, I really enjoyed my time on the committee. Everyone was friendly and encouraging. No one ever made me feel like my opinion was of less value since I was an intern. In the future, I would be love to work on a committee again and become an active member of the archives community. From this experience, I’ve learned what it means to be part of a professional community and how to coordinate competing responsibilities. If was given this opportunity again, I would not hesitate to take part.
Steering Shares are an opportunity to find out more about the I&A Steering Committee. This end-of-year post comes from I&A Vice Chair/Chair Elect Courtney Dean, a Project Archivist at the University of California at Los Angeles Library Special Collections.
As I mentioned way back in the fall, in my very first Steering Share, I am one of the co-founders of the Los Angeles Archivists Collective (LAAC) which is a local professional org that focuses on community building, skill-sharing, and outreach, with a particular emphasis on supporting students and new professionals.
Several weeks ago we held our first ever mini-conference, entitled ArchivesNOW, at UCLA Library. Co-sponsored by LAAC, the UCLA Library, and the UCLA Department of Information Studies, the day featured a host of presentations by MLIS students and early career professionals, addressing current issues in archives. The goal of the event was to provide space for the voices of students and new professionals, and to foster conversations from their unique vantage point. We aspired to facilitate open and honest discussions that led to awareness, reflection, and interrogation, and by all accounts, we were pretty successful!
The morning session, “Getting Ready for Work,” included Jessica Maddox, Accessioning Archivist at the University of Nevada, Reno discussing her transition from student to accessioning archivist; Noah Geraci, Digital Assets Metadata Librarian at UC Riverside on getting started with [computer] programming for archivists; Alyssa Loera, Head of Digital Services and Technology at Cal Poly Pomona on teaching expectations in academic libraries and archives; and Karly Wildenhaus, MLIS Student at UCLA, on denormalizing unpaid positions in archives and libraries.
Photo by Snowden Becker. The real financial COST of working for free on a graduate intern, from Karly Wildenhaus.
Session 2, “Archival Dilemmas: Collection-Based Case Studies,” featured Carolina Meneses, a former Metadata Technician at the University of Miami, and incoming UCLA MLIS student, discussing the practices and challenges of archiving performance; Julia Hause, Archival Studies Student at UCLA, on reviving the Salton Sea History Museum; Jonathan Naveh, MLIS/Media Archival Studies Student at UCLA on the problems that arise when processing pornography; and LAAC’s own Grace Danico, on creating diversity and inclusivity through outreach and collaboration in LAAC’s Acid Free Magazine.
Photo by Courtney Dean. Angel Diaz introduces the afternoon panel.
The day ended with paletas and Snowden Becker, co-founder of the international Home Movie Day event and the nonprofit Center for Home Movies, and currently the MLIS Program Manager in UCLA’s Department of Information Studies. Snowden teased out some of the main themes of the day, encouraged everyone to fight for more salary transparency (“that’s how the man keeps us down!”), and challenged us to think critically about what constitutes “professionalism.”
Photo by Sharon Farb. Snowden Becker and our main takeaways.
Be sure to check out #ArchivesNOW2018 on Twitter for all of the hot takes. Community notes from the day available here.
As I approach my transition into the I&A chair position, I will be bringing with me an agenda filled with many of the issues that arose at ArchivesNOW. You’ll continue to hear about all of I&A’s ongoing dynamic projects, but expect an increased focus on things like the deleterious effects of unpaid internships and temporary positions on our profession; cultural humility; and, of course, cats. See you in D.C.!
Steering Shares provide an opportunity to learn more about the I&A Steering Committee and the issues that the committee members care about. This mid-year post comes courtesy of committee member Alison Stankrauff, the University Archivist at Wayne State University
I’ve been on the Issues and Advocacy Section’s Steering Committee since 2009 (a long time!) and I was chair of I&A from 2010 to 2012. There are a lot of things that drive me as a professional.
Here at Wayne State I’m fairly new as a professional – I began here this past September – so I’ve been here six months. That being said I’m coming back to Wayne State after receiving my archives degree here in 2002. I went away and served in two great positions between then and now – first as a Reference Archivist at the American Jewish Archives and then as Archivist and Associate Librarian at Indiana University South Bend.
Coming back to Wayne State – the university that I feel so deeply for – that I feel has given me the profession that I love – is a real honor, and an opportunity. I’m coming back in Wayne State’s sesquicentennial year – so there’s been a lot of celebration of this great urban university in the heart of the wonderful city of Detroit.
Coming back to Wayne State as a full-blown professional with some great experience under my belt has enabled me to have the perspective and scope to connect with people all over the world who love Wayne State just as much as I do. These include the immediate campus community – university schools, departments, offices – and their faculty, students, staff, administrators. It also includes a lot of people who feel very connected to the university for many reasons: alumni as well as the community beyond.
I feel that being a University Archivist – first for 13 good years at Indiana University South Bend and now at my alma mater of Wayne State – means advocating for your repositories and always, always reaching out. It’s critical that we are actively connecting with all the – varied – communities that we serve. We must let people know who we are, why we’re important, and show our value. We cannot wait for people to come to us. This underlines the fact that advocacy for our collections, our repositories, and our institutions has to be sewn into what we do.
I feel honored to serve this role at Wayne State University – and in a similar role with SAA’s Issues and Advocacy Section: that of advocate, ambassador, and communicator. Thank you for the opportunity to serve you – the membership of the Issues and Advocacy Section!
Steering Shares provide an opportunity to learn more about the I&A Steering Committee and the issues that the committee members care about. This mid-year post comes courtesy of committee member Steve Duckworth, University Archivist at Oregon Health & Science University.
In my last Steering Share, I spoke about my concerns on archival labor. This is an issue that is being discussed more and more, including in Courtney Dean’s recent Steering Share and in Fobazi Ettarh‘s piece, “Vocational Awe and Librarianship.” For this post, I’m going to take this to a slightly more positive place (and prep for a presentation that I’ll be giving on the topic in April!) So…
Let’s talk about ways that archival professionals can maximize student positions and internships for the betterment of the student, while hopefully also getting some benefit out of it for our institutions. Please note, for the purposes of brevity, I use the word “student” as a general stand-in for employees, interns, or volunteers who are enrolled in a degree program and hoping to find a professional position in the library, archives, or museum fields.
My student workers tell me, and I like to believe them, that I’ve been extremely valuable in helping them find full-time employment. Can we all agree that one of the main goals of a student job is to find a professional position? Unfortunately, I feel that’s not how many pros out there view it. Mostly we view student employment, internships, and volunteer work as cheap labor to help us do what we need to get done because we’re all underfunded. But, while ‘getting stuff done’ is important, training and mentoring the doers in the process of the doing is much more valuable.
What I’m talking about is not all that revolutionary, but it does seem to be a little abnormal. Look at these student positions as mentorship opportunities, rather than cheap and temporary labor. Some of the more concrete ideas you can try out in your own institution are listed below:
Train students in archival practices. I was surprised to learn that students were often not trained for other jobs they’d had. Think of the job as a long-form class in archival processing and management, teach skills to help students negotiate complicated decision making and to know when to ask for help.
Be flexible when possible. If students don’t have public service duties, allow for flexible scheduling. If you have work that can be done offsite, consider allowing students to work from home from time to time.
Aid students in the job search process. Review resumes and cover letters; offer in-person and online interview practice sessions; recommend jobs they should apply for. If your institution has open sessions or presentations for job applicants, invite students to attend – it’s great experience to watch other people interview for jobs.
Expose students to a wide variety of job functions: exhibit planning, cataloging, reference support, physical and digital processing, project planning, etc.; the skills will come in handy for applying to a wide variety of jobs.
Support professional growth and scholarly output. Get to know students’ goals and interests. If possible, allow some work time for research. Offer financial support for meeting or conference attendance as possible, or help find a roommate, rideshare, or other cost-cutting measures. List students’ names as authors on finding aids; this helps during the job interviewing process. Where possible, instead of describing them as a “Student Assistant,” try “Archives Assistant” or no title at all.
Involve students in everything. I’ve learned students love new experiences and also getting away from their desks – the bonus for them is learning more aspects of the profession. Bring them everywhere: donor meetings, records pick-ups, hunting expeditions in the stacks, etc. Encourage students to attend relevant trainings being offered or events on campus. Allow them to serve on committees if they are interested, but don’t pressure them into it.
These are some concrete actions you can take, but more important is the work environment that you cultivate. Try to create a supportive environment where students feel comfortable asking questions and voicing opinions. This helps them develop and feel a part of the work being done, but also empowers students to bring up new thoughts on how to tackle problems. Don’t be afraid to learn from your students! Allow your ideas and common practices to be challenged by someone with a fresh view. Build trust with your workers and allow them autonomy to learn and grow; you should also review their work and offer feedback and critique when needed.
In assembling these ideas, I talked to my student workers and heard from them that one of the best things I’ve done for them was to not be condescending. Apparently they get a lot of condescension in both classroom and job settings. So I recommend that we try being more respectful or deferential, and more approachable and welcoming. I like to think that’s a simple place to start, and the rest can grow from there.
Our ICYMI series provide summaries of presentations, publications, webinars, and other educational opportunities that are of interest to I&A members. If you have an issue you would like to write about for this blog series or a previous post that you would like to respond to, please email archivesissues@gmail.com. The following is from Sara Janes, University Archivist for Lakehead University, Ontario.
The 2017 conference of the Archives Association of Ontario was held on the University of Toronto Campus, April 26-28. The theme, “Come Together: Meaningful Collaboration in a Connected World,” felt relevant to the participants as we discussed ways to work with each other and with the public to better support archives and communities across the province.
Focus on decolonization and Indigenous issues
Decolonization and indigenous issues were a significant theme, particularly as archives are beginning to respond to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and are engaging with Canada 150 celebrations. In one plenary session, Michael Etherington, of the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, spoke about those calls to action, and the frequent disconnect between colonial institutions and Indigenous people and communities; in the other, Raymond Frogner, Director of Archives at University of Manitoba’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, spoke about the impact of Indigenous thinkers such as George Hunt on archival theory and practices.
Responses to the TRC, engaging with Canada’s colonial past and present, and social justice issues were well represented throughout the conference, and these themes were often tied in with discussions around acquisition, archival management, and digital outreach, as well as working groups formed within various organizations.
Focus on collaboration and partnerships
Other presentations highlighted collaboration and cooperation between institutions. Papers touched on: collaboration for acquisition and collection development, appraisal of government records, sharing resources for digital preservation, teaching courses using archival material, online outreach and collaborative exhibits, and the work of student and young professional organizations. Overall, the program was excellent, and attendees found it difficult to choose between sessions.
Talks were also held on the past, present, and future of the Archives Association of Ontario, giving members a chance to learn more about how this organization has been shaped over the years and its plans for the future. In particular, this included a report on the first year of the Provincial Acquisition Strategy, and feedback on how to continue building cooperation between archival institutions in the province.
Other highlights
The formal side of the conference was supported by a variety of other opportunities for socializing, networking, and learning. Four archives tours were held: to the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and University of Toronto Archives, and the John M. Kelly Library Conservation Studio. The opening reception was held at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, and attendees had many opportunities to catch up with each other during breaks and at pub nights.
The Banquet, held at Hart House, celebrated 20 years of the Archives and Records Management program at the University of Toronto iSchool. The Awards Lunch was held at at the Faculty Club, and honoured Suzanne Dubeau, Nick Ruest, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the Hastings County Historical Society.
Sara Janes is University Archivist for Lakehead University. She has an MLIS from McGill University, and has worked in archives and records management for ten years, with a focus on digital records issues, outreach, and education.
Issues & Advocacy 
