Employing Records Professionals in the Information Age.

A RESEARCH STUDY

AT THE CORE

IN THIS ARTICLE YOU WILL LEARN

* How the advertising of entry-level positions has changed over the past 20 years.

* The most-sought attributed for entry-level archivist and information management professionals

* Whether those attributed have changed in the past two decades to meet the demands of technology

What should those being hired for an entry-level archives position know? What other attributes should they bring to their first job? These are obvious questions for those educators who are responsible for developing and maintaining a curriculum for preparing people to work as archivists and information managers. These questions get to the heart of what higher education is seeking to do: equip students to think, grapple with complex issues, and master some "field of knowledge" (Rosovsky 1990). But the real issue is whether these qualities are actually being sought by organizations wanting to hire entry-level archivists and other information management professionals.

One way to find answers for these questions is to examine job descriptions and position postings. For an educator, examining job descriptions can serve as a reality check, providing more concrete examples to ensure students that there are jobs available and helping the educator ensure that students are learning what they need in order to fill these positions.

The reasons why records are valued and the ways in which records are created and maintained are changing rapidly. Analyzing position advertisements provides relevant and current information not just to those in education but to all information management professionals who are responsible for hiring and who desire to understand the shifting trends affecting their own careers.

Since an important role for educators is to be involved in the information management profession as an agent of change (making sure that students are educated for careers and not for short-term technicians' labor), the status of recent job advertisements must be viewed against recent evaluations of records and the technologies supporting them. It is critical for the profession to know what the field needs in information management professionals given the immense changes in recordkeeping and the increased visibility or focus on the accountability, evidence, and memory roles of records. These are reflected by the highly publicized cases of the Swiss banks and Nazi gold, World War II and stolen art, the Heiner or Shreddergate case in Australia, increasing concerns about secrecy, access to public records, and a host of other related concerns.(1)

It is also critical to understand how these attributes have changed in the past two decades given the advent of new electronic information management technologies and given the immense changes in the professional literature (especially efforts to define records and records management systems) and professional education. We have shifted from mainframe to mini to personal to networked computing. We also have seen a return to the centrality of records and records management systems as the focus of work (although just how far this has spread in the records professions is uncertain).

What has not kept pace is the effort to define specific competencies for archival and records management work. The adoption a decade ago by the American archives community of statements about individual certification and baseline competencies, containing the guiding statement that "Certified Archivists are practitioners who have demonstrated mastery of the knowledge and experience necessary for modern archival practice," appears to be a good start. However, upon closer examination of the competencies and the education and practice intended to enable someone to gain these competencies, it seems unlikely that an individual can gain the competencies with such modest education and experience as is required for certification. More importantly, these competencies may no longer be appropriate given the current marketplace.

National efforts in Canada and Australia to define competencies for records specialists in new electronic office environments have developed very different competencies. The Canadians have identified four job functions: systems designer, policy driver, retrieval expert, and advisor/coach with skills, knowledge, and abilities going much farther beyond what has normally been seen in job descriptions. The Australian competencies are based on the Australian Standard in Records Management (AS 4390, published in February 1996) and include responsibilities such as designing, creating, and using systems that keep records; creating records and capturing them into recordkeeping systems; maintaining and managing records over time; and making records accessible.

There are some hopeful signs: the growth of stronger, more comprehensive graduate education programs with a new focus on records and records management systems and a renewal of research by doctoral students on archives and records. These suggest changes in the manner in which their knowledge is being constructed (or reconstructed).

Hypothesis of the Study

The hypothesis of this study was that entry-level job advertisements would, over a 20-year period, reflect a significant shifting toward the new technologies and a knowledge of records and records management systems, instead of just archives and records management principles and practices (experience). The study examined entry-level archivist positions, critical to all information management programs and suggestive of what other information management professionals may face in regards to changing organizational and societal requirements and needs. The study's findings should be instructive to all information management professionals, regardless of whether their focus is on current records management, archives, or the converging of records work into new fields such as knowledge management.

The study was limited to an analysis of job advertisements in 1976-77, 1986-87, and 1996-97 published in the Society of American Archivists (SAA) newsletter and, later, the archives and archivists listserve, the primary outlets for those seeking employment as archivists. The time periods were sampled to provide a longer view of changes in job requirements and to cover a substantial period in information technology uses for records management.

The earliest job advertisements reflect the work of a reinvigorated SAA, coming just as it started publishing a newsletter -- in addition to its journal -- and establishing itself as the prime route for advertising positions. The next group reflects SAA's subsequent solidification as the primary professional outlet for position announcements, as well as the beginning of new professional standards governing archives and records management work. The latest group provides a view of the most recent advertisements as well as giving one the opportunity to determine the impact of the Academy of Certified Archivists and the emergence of stronger graduate and continuing education programs.

Why should archivists and other information management professionals look at job advertisements now? For educators, continually reflecting on what should be taught and how to place students, this is part of an ongoing set of responsibilities. But what about those who identify themselves as information management professionals? They are challenged by other information disciplines, especially in the emphasis on information or knowledge, which strains the importance of records as information sources because of the kind of evidence they capture. Then there is the rapidity of change in information management technologies, especially in systems such as document management systems that do not stress records but objects and which do not allow for the orderly management of records in whatever format. The growth in education programs in terms of number of faculty and comprehensiveness of curriculum provides more options for individuals interested in records professions as well as greater confusion about what such a career choice means or about the differences between these programs. These concerns justify considering job advertisements.

Job advertisements ought to help employers attract the right people for records positions. Employers, and the records community in general, need to have the best qualified and best prepared people going into the profession; but those people have to possess the right education and have to be interested in the right jobs. The field also needs people who can deal with change and information management technologies, not those who long for a static notion of records and records management systems. Information management professionals today need to be able to understand how a particular system has grown, changed, what it represents, where it may be going, and how to advise in its future development or replacement by another system -- or its demise.

A study of changing notions of archivists and other information management professionals in job advertisements may help us better understand our needs for future professionals in a more precise manner. This understanding can then be used to revise existing or develop new curriculum, to attract different kinds of students, and to advise organizations hiring records professionals about the kinds of qualities and qualifications these people should possess.

Archival and information management educators and the field should be looking for the most creative people it can find. For creativity to occur, according to Howard Gardner, "one must be sufficiently steeped in the findings and principles of the domain, or the chances that one will reinvent what has already been discovered are too pronounced ... As a complement, one must be willing to advance beyond the facts and even the conspectus of the domain, and dare to lay out a wholly new approach to the issues." (Gardner 1993) This most closely approximates the role for emerging graduate archives and records management education programs and for the graduates of these programs.

It is also crucial to examine job advertisements because we need to focus on knowledge per se instead of merely skills and attitudes (although the latter are important). Numerous comments on the importance of knowledge of recordkeeping for archivists and records managers have been made through the years, but much of what passes for education is still training (teaching short-term skills) or apprenticeship (learning the particulars of work at a single work place).

More than 20 years ago, Frank Evans urged that the "archivist must master by study of the holdings themselves most of the administrative history and the subject content of the local archival holdings which are, by definition, unique. All archivists also need an understanding of how institutions and organizations, both public and private, originate and develop; of types and patterns of internal organization and functions; of recordkeeping and records systems past and present; and of the relationship of documentation in all of its forms to organizations and functions." (Evans 1967) Evans incorporated records management into his notion of archives management and studies.

The Challenges of Examining Job Advertisements

There are limitations in looking at job advertisements. Sociologist Dorothy E. Smith noted that a job description is not an "account of an actual work process" but rather it orders the relations among a variety of organizational settings. "When actually hiring," she argued, "a job description functions as a schema ordering selective attention to an individual's qualifications and experience ... The standardization of job descriptions or methods of generating job descriptions across firms facilitates the functioning of extended labor-market relations: it is indeed integral to their organization." (Smith 1984; see also Smith 1974) This suggests, however, that there is still a crucial role for job advertisements in organizations; moreover, the similarity of job advertisement structure in archival advertisements (responsibilities, qualifications and education, experience (preferred versus required), and salary) and in the content of the advertisements (especially in how educational requirements are described) suggests that these job advertisements, for better or worse, have come to reflect some consensus by archivists.

How job descriptions are used is another limitation. One human resources management specialist has suggested that managers often do not make full use of job descriptions because they believe that the descriptions can be too general, even if they are recognized as being quite valuable for activities such as designing jobs, recruiting, and orienting employees (Grant 1998). Still, even if flawed, job descriptions can be used in important ways for orientation and socialization (Buckley et al. 1997).

Given that a large percent of North American and even foreign archives and records management jobs are now posted on the archives and archivists and related listserves, we can perhaps suggest that these postings provide a kind of socialization and orientation to newly employed and budding archivists and information management managers; certainly, students preparing for careers in the information management professions are reading these advertisements as a means for preparing their own portfolios. Job advertisements and descriptions are crucial for delineating job duties and functions. Even with limitations regarding job objectives, performance evaluation, and abilities or personal attributes, job descriptions are important for stating the nature of duties or functions which are expected to be carried out (Grant 1997).

Another problem in evaluating job advertisements is that any critique of them depends on the individual's perspective and presumptions about the nature of the professional work being done. For example, some of us believe that the nature of records work needs to be built around the record/recordkeeping system life cycle or continuum, requiring archives and records management functions to be tied together by a focus on records and recordkeeping systems. It follows, therefore, that archives and records management positions will become more similar or convergent due to the changing nature of records systems and the growing recognition of the importance of records.

Research on Job Advertisements and Position Descriptions

Like most aspects of archives, there is an uneven quantity and quality to research about the basic requirements for archival work. In 1982, Peter Wosh noted the problems with the lack of standards and adherence to what standards did exist. A brief essay in the January 1982 SAA newsletter provided a glimpse into what employers were looking for, including good writing and speaking skills (67%), the ability to get along with people (61%), good common sense (55%), the affinity for detail and accuracy (45%), a desire to learn and grow (42%), the love of hard work (18%), possessing well-defined goals (9%), having a determination to succeed (6%), having a talent for persuading or selling (3%), and demonstrating a sense of urgency (3%). This informal survey was based on 10 qualities sought by administrators outside the archival profession. They were featured in a 1981 essay in The New York Times by William N. Yeomans. Archival administrators added three more qualities: responsibility (24%), initiative (21%), and good judgment (18%).

Two months later, the same newsletter ran a brief description of what applicants thought were important qualities, developing the following set of qualities: good writing and speaking skills (89%), ability to get along with people (67%), good common sense (11%), affinity for detail and accuracy (78%), desire to grow and learn (33%), a love of hard work (22%), and a determination to succeed (11%). These two surveys clearly suggested an orientation toward personal attributes and attitudes rather than knowledge. It appears that this attitude is being challenged today, even though recent job advertisements still list most of these kinds of attributes and attitudes -- almost as if they are inherent qualities that make one a good information management professional. Records management positions are even more likely to be dominated by such personal characteristics since most entering this part of the information management profession are likely to have a lower minimal education, to be more dependent on experience, and to be dependent on the ability to move up an employment ladder -- all emphasizing skills and attitudes more than knowledge.(3)

A 1989 salary survey conducted by SAA concluded that "with the exception of a 35 percent increase in reference specialists, there is virtually no change in the relative proportion of archivists who claim to specialize in particular archival activities." The education of archivists was shown to include 12.8 percent with bachelor's' degree vs. 18 percent in 1982; 18 percent had a doctorate, while 16 percent held such a degree in 1982. Two-thirds of the archivists responding to the 1989 survey had one or more master's degrees, with half of those holding a MLS degree or dual MLS/master's degree.

According to the survey's author, Paul Conway, "It is probably premature to declare either the MLS or the single master's degree (in history?) as the de-facto standard educational ticket for becoming an archivist" although "the findings call into question the viability of the concept of the history master's or the MLS as an entry-level degree ... Archivists new to the profession report significantly lower levels of education. Respondents without advanced degrees are just as likely to report having a particular functional specialty as those with advanced degrees ... Those with graduate archival education courses are just as likely to be generalists as specialists."

Conway further stated, "These findings suggest that people who consider themselves a part of the archival profession and who are sufficiently committed to join the profession's only national association simply start working in an archival repository and increase their educational experiences as they work their way up the ranks of the organization or gain additional years of experience" (Conway 1992).

Perhaps because of the increasing influence of the computer on both records management systems and records professionals, as well as the expansion of graduate education programs to include doctoral research, the 1990s have been a time of renewed interest in position descriptions and job advertisements. Some of the writing has been decidedly impressionistic (Murrah 1990), but other essays have appeared that carefully sort through the evidence of job advertisements to consider particular impacts such as the emergence of more systematic descriptive standards (DeWitt 1991).

More detailed studies have come from dissertation research. Alan D. Gabehart, for example, conducted a study on employers' qualifications for entry-level archivists with a number of interesting conclusions (Gabehart 1992). He discovered that "the choices of bachelor's degree and master's degree in library science dominated the selections for all types of institutions," with a preference for a double master's degree in history and library science over just an MLS and/or only a master's in history and for the undergraduate degree, history was preferred with the second choice being library science. Gabehart found that "a bachelor's degree appears to satisfy the minimum educational qualifications for employment in institutions outside the college/university community.

For an individual planning to pursue an archivist position as an employee of a college or university, a master's degree in library science would be advisable. To attain a higher level of employability and mobility within the archival profession, one should look to a master's degree in history, library science, or, preferably, both." Gabehart further extrapolated that "regardless of the subject of the master's degree, it would appear that an individual would be more employable in the archives field with an undergraduate degree in history."

Gabehart's other notable findings include the low interest in foreign language competency, the fairly weak concern for conservation training and computer automation training, and the lack of impact of individual certification as a requirement.(4) Perhaps the most difficult conclusion to grapple with was that most employers did not place a high premium on graduate archival education, with 48.5 percent indicating it would have some benefit and only 24.6 percent seeing it as essential.

New Findings from an Analysis of Job Advertisements

The importance of records to society, its organizations, and its citizens is too great not to understand more about the qualifications needed for hiring professionals to manage them.

For this study, an entry-level position was defined as any position requiring less than two years of experience or explicitly described as an entry-level position. Experience suggests that new graduates of education programs compete for these jobs. Positions that were advertised in the SAA employment service or posted on the archives and archivists listserve were included in the study. Conservation jobs were specifically excluded because of the great differences in qualifications and responsibilities, but records management jobs were included if advertised via SAA or the listserve. Records management jobs do reflect a much greater diversity and range at this point, from senior records management positions to technical information analyst and database management positions to clerical and filing positions at a much lower level.(5)

The methodology employed in this study is a tabulation of jobs advertised -- looking at educational requirements, knowledge areas explicitly sought, archival functions mentioned, skills explicitly required, regional locations, institutional type, position titles, salaries, and content for records/records management systems focus. The 1996-97 positions included both print advertisements and those posted on, the Internet.

An interesting aspect of this study was the discovery that the Internet has become the primary source for archives job postings: 202 of 230 positions (87.8%) were posted on the Internet in 1996-97; only 57 of 230 (24.8%) of the most recent advertisements were printed exclusively in the SAA newsletter (in 1976-77 there were 63 positions advertised in the SAA newsletter, compared to 129 positions in 1986-87 and 230 positions in 1996-97). Since SAA is now placing its job employment bulletin online, the Internet/World Wide Web will undoubtedly continue to dominate the announcements of job openings.(6) Does this skew the results? Possibly. Paul Gilster noted that "employers today frequently post job offerings on the Net, the notion being that those unequipped with the skills to acquire them do not possess the skills to fill the position anyway" (Gilster 1997). While this may not be the thinking behind the electronic posting of archives positions, it is possible that there has been an effect on the positions considered here.

Findings

The appropriate place to start is with the basic educational requirements needed for entry-level positions. Gabehart found the opportunity for organizations to hire individuals with only a college degree. This study shows that only a small portion of the positions advertised were open to such individuals. The slight increase in the proportion over the past two decades may be recognition that individuals are being hired who have more of a records management orientation than those who traditionally have held lower-level degrees. The much greater diversity of acceptable subject majors may also reflect this phenomenon (see Table One).

Table One

Educational Requirements for Positions Requiring BA/BS

                    1976-77       1986-87        1996-97
Discipline        N=7 (11.1%)   N=17 (13.2%)   N=37 (16.1%)

History                4             17             21

Social Sciences        0              1              8

Archives               1              6              5

Library &              0              1              8
Information
Science

Humanities             0              1              6

Political              1              6              5
Science

Public                 0              1              5
Administration

Records                0              5              2
Management

Miscellaneous          1              8             12
Disciplines(*)

(*) The miscellaneous disciplines include the sciences, American studies, business administration, art anthropology, and architecture. None of these disciplines are mentioned more than a few times in any given year. Although records management was not mentioned often, it was left as a separate category.

The master's degree is the predominant degree requirement, with decided emphasis at this level on library and information science, but there is a weakness in focus on archival education. In addition to a growing interest in the library and information degrees, there has been a definite decline in history as a requirement.

Certification of archivists is nearly invisible as a requirement, with only 11 of 230 advertisements in 1996-97 including it, and then it is preferred or desired rather than required. Given the assumed improving and changing nature of archival education, this weakness in representation in archives education as a requirement for entry-level archivists is curious. It may indicate the traditional wide casting in educational backgrounds in order to attract the best and most applicants, or it may reflect the way human resources or the civil service define positions and their requirements.

Most positions advertised included an educational requirement that was more a litany of possibilities than an educational standard. Perhaps this weakness exists also because there are no separate archives (or information management) degrees in the United States, leaving open the possibility for any number or variety of degrees.

Despite growth in graduate education, experience -- as an indicator of knowledge -- continues as the factor most sought (fully two-thirds of the advertisements sought experience), with a growing emphasis on descriptive standards and computer applications knowledge or general computer literacy, and other heavily experiential knowledge domains. The demand for special subject knowledge has remained constant, reflecting the many topically or geographically defined archives. Many positions require a knowledge of a state or region or discipline. These findings could be an aberration because of the definition of an entry-level archivist position, but the growth in requirements for standards and computer applications is not. The consistent request for special subject knowledge is probably a reflection of the preponderance of academic origins of job postings or the heavily regional and topical orientations of so many archives and historical manuscripts repositories. The experience requirement might also reflect a continuing uneasiness with graduate education.

What is more telling is the manner in which job advertisements enumerate archival functions as part of the job responsibilities. The primary responsibility, to an overwhelming degree, is arrangement and description. This may be the most conclusive finding: the archives profession thinks of an entry-level archivist as one who will arrange and describe records and do reference on the side. The management responsibility, appearing consistently, is most often the supervision of technical staff, student interns, and volunteers in arrangement and description work.

All of this supports the heavy reliance on experience as a knowledge area; archives want people who can come in and. arrange and describe from the start. This also supports the growing interest in people who have a knowledge of descriptive standards. Given the move toward appraisal as an analytical exercise requiring a knowledge of records and records management systems, as well as how organizations work and create records, it is troubling that appraisal has not increased in importance. After all, arrangement and description as an exercise has not changed substantially in practice over the past 20 years, other than the use of standards because of the reliance on automation.

The strong emphasis on organizational and communications skills (see Table Two) should come as no surprise, since they would seem to be a commonsensical element for any job advertisement. Archival work (and all records work) requires the ability to write well, to compose brief descriptions of elaborate records systems, and to prepare memoranda, grant proposals, articles, and other such products. The lack of detail about such skills two decades ago may reflect that over the past 20 years job advertisements have gotten longer and more detailed, although it does not fully explain why the advertisements of the mid-1970s were consistent in not including such language.

Table Two Predominate Skills in Entry-Level Position Advertisements,

Skill              1976-77   1986-87      1996-97

Organization and      1      50 (38.8%)   112 (48.7%)
Communication

Word Processing/      0      16 (12.4%)    54 (23.5%)
Computer

Interpersonal         0      27 (20.9%)    63 (27.4%)

Physical              0       3 (2.3%)     26 (11.3%)

Close Attention       0       5 (3.9%)     22 (9.6%)
to Detail

An examination of advertisements from four different kinds of institutions posting advertisements in each of the three time periods reveals a growth in average length from 97.8 words to 163 words to 202.5 words. The posting of positions on the Internet may be the most recent cause for this increase in text since such postings eliminate word limits or a cost-per-word charge imposed in the print advertisements.

The prevalence of posting information about such skills also reflects the need to include information that meets changing legal and human resources requirements. The emphasis on basic skills, such as word processing, is certainly logical, although one might wonder why the portion requiring it is not higher (perhaps it is assumed most will have such skills). All of this may be the result of the information management profession's inability to resolve the issue that there are different levels of such work, favoring instead a more democratic or egalitarian approach to employment and professional status.

The geographic distribution of the job advertisements showed a flattening out over the two decades (see Table Three). The smallest portion in the Southwest was not surprising, given its generally more sparse population. But the greater balance between the-other regions suggests, again, that the posting of job advertisements on various list-serves may have provided a greater democratization in the records community; possibly, smaller repositories able to post advertisements given the ease, speed, and low cost of doing so.

Table Three Region of Entry-Level Job Advertisements

Region         1976/77      1986/87      1996/97

Southeast      12 (19%)     25 (19.4%)   48 (20.9%)
Midwest        18 (28.6%)   29 (22.5%)   49 (21.3%)
Northeast       9 (14.3%)   27 (20.9%)   28 (12.2%)
West            8 (12.7%)   13 (10.1%)   37 (16.1%)
Mid-Atlantic   14 (22.2%)   37 (28.7%)   46 (20%)
Southwest       2 (3.2%)     5 (3.9%)    22 (9.6%)

Another interesting finding is the concentration of entry-level positions in the university/college environment; there is virtually a one in two chance that this is where the entry-level archivist will find a position opening.

The most compelling statistic is the continuing preponderance, by a substantial margin, of higher education as the employer of entry-level archivists. This poses some interesting questions. Has this relationship been the reason why the old three-course archival education/apprenticeship programs (the consensus educational standard of the 1970s) have remained so embedded that these programs generate their own potential employees? Or is it merely ironic that a profession with an essentially academic orientation has dallied so long in developing graduate archival education programs?

In contrast, the 1998 Cunningham salary survey showed that nearly one-quarter of the new records management positions are being established in corporations, followed by government, utilities, and other similar organizations. The continuing small number of institutional archivist positions ought to be a great matter of concern to the archives community. The profession must continue to put an emphasis on and institutional archives programs. Examining entry-level positions advertisements over the past three decades reveals a decided lack of development in institutional archives.

The remarkable array of titles for archivist positions would, at first glance, reflect a profession that has not made up its collective mind about its identity. Actually, it more likely reflects the diverse structure of the hiring organization. If one works in a library, one is apt to have a librarian classification, whereas, if one labors in a cultural organization, a curatorial designation might be appropriate.

More importantly, in this wide array of job titles, records or information classifications represent a small portion of the positions available. Perhaps archivists have not been embraced as part of the information professions, despite the strengthening of archival education in library and information science schools. The continuing small number of records classifications continues to reflect, unfortunately, the schism between archivists and records managers.

The more disturbing finding concerns the average salary of entry-level archivists. Factoring in for inflation, there has been a relative decline in salaries. The average salary of 1976-77 would be worth $29,749.40 in 1997; the 1986-87 average salary would be worth $28,215.60. As a result, there appears to be, based on the position advertisements mentioning salary, an average decline of 9.7 percent from the mid-1970s to the present.(7) This may be the most telling and problematic finding for the profession and for graduate programs, although this is very rough data that does not take into account different salary scales, geographic variations in living costs, and other such factors. As Steven Brint reported in his study on expertise, "The claim to `formal knowledge' in `expertise' is one thing; being rewarded in relation to those claims is quite another." (Brint 1994)

There is virtually no explicit wording in any of these entry-level job advertisements for working with records and records management systems. Only six of the recent positions included wording related to this; of these, three could be rightly called records management positions. Very few positions contain statements that suggest that archivists are experts on records management. The closest wording on records and records management systems knowledge included the following from the recent 1996 and 1997 advertisements.

* An advertisement for the records officer, University of Idaho Division of Finance and Administration, included a requirement of "good knowledge of records management and archival theory and practice, files management and records storage systems, privacy and access laws, federal and state regulations relating to records retention and disposition, and records management professional resources."

* An advertisement for an archivist II: Web Master for the Ohio Historical Society called for a "knowledge of the functional requirements of recordkeeping." This position included responsibility for making electronic records available over the Web, and the wording may be a general allusion to recent efforts by the Universities of Pittsburgh and British Columbia to develop recordkeeping functional requirements.

* An advertisement for an archivist for the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Archives and History, asked for "considerable knowledge of supplies and equipment used in the creation and maintenance of records."

* An advertisement for a government records specialist for the Minnesota Historical Society, sought an individual with "knowledge of and experience with electronic records."

* An advertisement for a position with the Massachusetts Historical Records Advisory Board called for applicants with "demonstrable knowledge or experience in records management, electronic records management, or documentation activities."

* An advertisement for a records analyst with the Utah State Archives sought someone with "advanced skills in analyzing agency operations and identifying solutions to records management problems." While this is probably a statement used for typical records management work, it at least includes an analytical component one would expect to see more in any archives and records work.

Conclusions

As stated earlier, the hypothesis for this study was that entry-level job advertisements over a 20-year period would reflect a significant shift toward new technologies and to knowledge of records and records management systems instead of just archives and records management principles and practices (experience). The findings, however, disprove this hypothesis. While there has been growth in the demand for computer literacy and experience with computer applications, it is tied to the all-prevailing archival arrangement and description function. There is no discernible evidence of a shift toward knowledge of records and records management systems as the focus for entry-level archivists.

There are a number of speculations worth making in light of the above findings. First, it seems that the archives profession is tied to traditional scholarly users (still mostly academic historians or other academically-based scholars) and content-based practice, not knowledge areas (as a means of providing better access to the highly selective sense of potential users of archives). Second, the shift to library and information science seems to have maintained emphases of traditional archival functions, especially classification and bibliographic standards. Third, despite the decided changes in graduate and continuing education, the predilection when hiring entry-level archivists is to consider experience at least as important as education. Fourth, despite a growth in graduate archival education programs, there have been no substantial changes in knowledge or skills areas over the past two decades. The archival profession seems oriented to its basic or rudimentary practice, processing backlogs, and distrust of what it sees as theoretical or conceptual approaches (even though the growing complexity of records systems suggests the need for such approaches).

Some concerns ought to emerge from these kinds of speculative assessments. Educators need to ask some obvious questions: Are we teaching the right things? Are we preparing students for the right jobs? It is probably the case that the majority of graduate archives education programs are tied to marketing their graduates to traditional settings, primarily because of the fact that most of the educators have come out of these settings, have strong connections with them still, and are attracting people interested in these traditional settings.

A number of educators have the feeling (we are only beginning to collect data on this) that some of their graduates are either leaving traditionally defined archives positions after a few years or, increasingly, not accepting these kinds of positions to begin with. This may portend a crisis for the archives profession or it may strengthen the profession to meet its mission to an unprecedented degree if people accepting non-archives or non-records management positions assume roles of potentially greater influence in gaining resources and respect for the administration of records. Or it may reflect a growing trend by individuals to pursue multiple careers in a lifetime, a case which still suggests educators needing to adjust curriculum and training approaches.

But, what about the possibility that many important records jobs are being taken over by others? Other commentators have seen this with the explosion of information jobs. Blaise Cronin, for example, stated that we live in a world of libraries-without-walls and distributed information systems, where disciplinary pedigree and professional affiliation matter less than perceived competence and adaptability. He added that "the portmanteau labels of librarian and information specialist have splintered dramatically to reflect the pluralistic character of the marketplace." (Cronin et al. 1993)

The current trendy focus on knowledge management -- supposedly melding together technology, information, operations in new ways -- also is seen as including records management. The idea is that this person, the knowledge manager, will know where the organization's research and other expertise is located (Watt 1997).

Then there is the problem of outsourcing. The idea of outsourcing often involves the notion that seemingly routine records tasks are ripe for removal from organizational responsibilities. Jobs like human resources can be outsourced because so much of the time on these tasks is spent on routine administrative tasks. One source cites four main areas with potential for outsourcing: (1) benefits design and administration; (2) information systems and recordkeeping; (3) employee services like retirement counseling and relocation; and (4) health and safety (Stewart 1995).

Given such challenges, one might hope that graduate archival education has taken the lead in at least beginning to redefine what constitutes the qualifications for entry-level archival work. However, it seems that graduate education might merely reflect ideas first formed about graduate education two generations ago. The SAA Education Directory's inclusion of philosophical statements is telling: with 38 United States-based programs included in the directory, 18 have no statement, 7 define its role within a broader history function, 4 merely offer a description of what is offered, 5 include a statement emphasizing archives career-oriented objectives, and only 4 include some sort of records-centered approaches. The focus of graduate programs needs to be on equipping individuals to become records and recordkeeping experts, in a way that enables them to manage records regardless of technology, organizational type, or institutional mission. Yet, the nature of job advertisements suggests that the archival field has been static. The rapidly changing nature of records systems and organizational records creators suggests that we need more change to remain relevant, helpful, and well-versed with records, their warrants, values, and significance. Similar research studies focusing on other related disciplines (e.g., records management, corporate librarianship) need to be undertaken. Not only may that research tatter cherished assumptions, but it might also provide the firm data from which leading those fields in new directions may be possible.

Endnotes

(1.) The changing nature of recognition of the value of records can be seen in the following: Seymour M. Hersh, "Nixon's Last Cover-Up: The Tapes He Wants the Archives to Suppress," The New Yorker (December 14, 1992); Bruce P. Montgomery, "Nixon's Legal Legacy: White House Papers and the Constitution," American Archivist 56 (Fall 1993); "Freeing the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Question of Access," American Archivist 56 (Fall 1993); Neil Asher Silberman, The Hidden Scrolls: Christianity, Judaism, and the War for the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: G. P. Putnams Sons, 1994); David Bearman, "The Implications of Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President for the Archival Management of Electronic Records," American Archivist 56 (Fall 1993); James D. Lewis, "White House Electronic Mail and Federal Recordkeeping Law: Press `D' to Delete History," Michigan Law Review (February 1995); Philip G. Schrag, "Working Papers as Federal Records: The Need for New Legislation to Preserve the History of National Policy," Administrative Law Review 46 (Spring 1994); Catherine F. Sheehan, "Opening the Governments Electronic Mail: Public Access to National Security Council Records," Boston College Law Review35 (September 1994); Timothy W. Ryback, "Evidence of Evil," New Yorker 69 (November 15, 1993); Gerald Posner, "Secrets of the Files," The New Yorker, 70 (14 March 1994); Michael Palumbo, The Waldheim Files: Myth and Reality (London: Faber and Faber, 1988); Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian (New York: Marlowe and Co., 1995); Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, The Mormon Murders: A True Story of Greed, Forgery, Deceit, and Death (New York: New American Library, 1988); Anthony Grafton, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Michael Schudson, Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past (New York: Basic Books, 1992); David A. Wallace, "Archivists, Recordkeeping, and the Declassification of Records: What We Can Learn from Contemporary Histories," American Archivist 56 (Fall 1993): 794-814; Stanton A. Glantz, John Slade, Lisa A. Bero, Peter Hanauer, and Deborah E. Barnes. The Cigarette Papers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Janna Malamud Smith, Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1997); Timothy Garton Ash, The File: A Personal History (New York: Random House, 1997); Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy, The Right to Privacy (New York: Vintage Books, 1997). The list of such writings grows daily, and both prospective and experienced archivists and records managers need to become more conversant with the issues they raise.

(2.) See Preliminary Study on the Core Competencies of the Future Records Specialist, Information Management Standards and Practices Division, National Archives of Canada, June 1996.

(3.) An analysis of what 67 companies in 12 U.S. cities did in hiring and using records employees revealed a low level of education: More than 80 percent of the respondents indicated that no more than 1 out of 4 records employees had records management education in high school, business college, or community college and over 75 percent of the respondents reported that no more than 1 out of 4 had records classes in a four-year college. There was also a wide range of job titles and wide range of salaries, as reported by Barbara A. Christensen, "Responsibilities and Training of Records Employees," Records Management Quarterly 16 (January 1982): 40-47. This certainly has produced unease by records managers about their education, as reflected in Robert V. Williams, "Records Management Education: An IRM Perspective," Records Management Quarterly 21 (October 1987): 36-40. At this time, Williams notes that formal records management education is dominated by the office administration/secretarial approach.

(4.) For foreign languages, 83.6 percent stated that there was no such requirement (p. 432); for training in archives conservation, 27.5 percent saw this as of some importance (p. 433); for training in computer automation, 28.1 percent deemed it fairly important (p. 433); for the effect of certification on hiring, 5.1 percent saw this as a potential employment requirement (p. 434).

(5.) See the ARMA International job hotline page (CareerLink) at www.arma.org. Some of these differences are evident in Raymond K. Cunningham, Jr.,"Handbook for Records Management Careers" at www.staff.uiuc.edu/~rcunning/job.htm (dated 1997).

(6.) It is impossible to track the number of local institutions that post entry-level job announcements only in local newspapers, other local print sources, or via word-of-mouth. It seems that many local institutions do operate in this fashion. Since many of these organizations do this because of a lack of awareness of professional qualifications, educational programs, and national standards, if these announcements could be evaluated, we would presumably discover a weakening of the basic attributes profiled in this study.

(7.) The comparative salaries were calculated using the Inflation Calculator by S. Morgan Friedman, available at www.westegg.com/inflation/.

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Richard J. Cox, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dr. Cox has 27 years' experience in the information management field. His focus is on archives and records management. In these areas he is a prolific writer and speaker. He is a member of ARMA International, the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), and the Society of American Archivists (SAA). Cox's doctorate is from the University of Pittsburgh. He last wrote for The Information Management Journal on "The Importance of Records in the Information Age" (January 1998). The author may be reached at [e-mail].