Archives: MS v. MA

It was a very long week. There are about two weeks left in the semester so needless to say, it’s crunch time. I have some pretty significant projects due this week so it’s been a long weekend too (again!). Yesterday evening I decided to take a much-needed personal night and just relax. I started reading the back issues of the American Historical Association’s monthly publication Perspectives and came across this interesting, but somewhat alarming article from May 2007 called “The Historical Profession and Archival Education” by Joseph M. Turrini.

In the article Turrini talks about how archival education used to be taught almost solely within larger history graduate programs, but is now being usurped by archival education within larger library science programs. This has happened because the library science programs have been more receptive to the “technologizing” of archives and have expanded their course offerings accordingly. History programs have not. Employers are looking for people who do have this technological experience and therefore more and more archivists have MLIS degrees.

Wait a sec! This is a little bit scary because the graduate program I’m most interesting in is Temple University’s Public History concentration that offers an archives sequence that prepares you for taking the Certified Archivist Exam. So upon finishing the program and taking the test I would be officially “Master of the Arts in History with a Concentration in Public History and Certification in Archival Methods” or something like that. I have been interning this semester at The Historical Society of Pennsylvania in the archives department and it has been a huge learning experience and very inspiring. I’m drawn to archival work because it really is hands-on work with the stuff of history. Sometimes I notice at HSP that it’s been really quiet and all you hear is the shuffling of papers and the clicking of the keyboard as items are described. It’s a really great sound, trust me. The internship has caused me to think about being a professional archivist.

Anyways, this article got me thinking: Am I making the right choice? To seriously have a chance at being a professional archivist do I need to refocus the hunt on library science programs?

One of the reasons why the archives within a history program appealed to me is because I feel like it would provide me with the opportunity to explore those aspects of public history that are more intangible (like “spheres of memory”) while also providing the education needed for doing archives (there’s doing again!).

I think there’s something to be said for learning the practice of archives within a history program. The rich historical knowledge and perspective that a history-based education provides would most certainly be helpful when trying to understand letters or documents from another time. I suspect it would also help with the very difficult task of deciding what to discard. The library science programs to me seem very limited in their scope.

Turrini does have a point though. If the history programs are to keep up then they must expose their students to al the acronyms associated with archives – MARC, EAD, and XML etc. The Southeast Archives Educational Collaborative Turrini mentions is a neat and oh-so-21^st Century solution to this. Middle Tennessee State University’s stock just went up in my book.

Lots to think about now…