No one ever thought the North American archival profession might come to this crossroads. After six decades during which various committees of the Society of American Archivists led in all deliberations concerning the education of archivists, we are now in the interesting, intriguing might be the better term, position where individual graduate-level educators are leading or trying to lead the discussions. This is more radical than the statement at first suggests.

Graduate archival educators have not been in such a position of leadership for very long. In the mid-1980’s, I had been asked to lead the subcommittee of the SAA’s Committee on Archival Education and Professional Development drafting of new graduate education guidelines because I was not then an educator and would be impartial. [1] Today, I doubt someone would be picked outside of the education community without at least a fuss being made, although given the Society’s predilection for involving all segments of the profession in every activity it might still happen. Educators expect to be leading discussions concerning graduate education. They might defer when it comes to continuing education, but even in this area – because of the logical connection between continuing education and graduate education – the graduate educators need to be involved more than they have been. [2]

One’s reactions to all this might be different depending on whether you are a working archivist or an educator of future archivists (still, in my opinion, a working archivist). Archival practitioners may see this development as troublesome. How will they be assured that what prospective archivists are learning in the classroom will be relevant to the skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed on the job? Archival educators may be equally concerned that the students they are teaching will be unhappy with the positions, responsibilities, and salaries they are obtaining. How do educators teach their students to be as knowledgeable as possible and responsive to the situations faced by archivists and archival problems in the real world? Such questions seem endemic to professions like ours, even when the vast majority of educators bring extensive experience to the classroom. Debates like this have gone on since the days of Melvil Dewey in American librarianship, as well as in nursing, law, and other professions. It is precisely why commentators on higher education often single out professional education as a special problem or challenge to be dealt within the university.[3]

More confused will be those individuals considering becoming archivists and seeking out information on where to obtain the best education and training. If they find the Society of American Archivists Education Directory they will find information on "programs" that consist of one or two courses to full-fledged masters degrees, schools with only adjunct faculty to those with clusters of specialized faculty, and schools in both public history and library and information science. What if the interested individual happens to pick up an education directory from the Association of Records Managers and Administrators? They will find very different information. What if this same individual believes the current Society’s graduate guidelines and goes looking for a MAS degree program in the United States? At the moment, this would be a fruitless and frustrating search. Worse, what if this person just asks around? Responses could cover an unbelievable and bewildering range.[4]

Clearly, we have reached this situation because of some amazing changes in graduate archival education in North America. When I entered the field (when snow was deep and we walked to school) in the early 1970’s, one’s options for becoming an archivist were limited to patching together graduate degrees in history and library science, multi-week training institutes, one or two courses, and some sort of fieldwork or practicum. My own efforts as an educator have been directed to ensuring that others would not have to go through such a confusing apprenticeship into the field. Now there are programs offering either dedicated masters degrees or specializations of up to eight graduate courses in schools where there are two or three regular faculty focused on archives and records. Now we even see programs turning out doctoral graduates who have written dissertations on archival topics. At my own school, there will be four dissertations on archival topics in the space of a few years – more than we would likely have seen from all the schools in a couple of previous decades.

So, what is the crossroad we have reached? It is quite simple to understand, while perplex to resolve. The Society, since its inception over sixty years ago, has been predicated on serving all archivists equally well; the many regional, state, and local archival organizations have often thought of themselves as even more democratic – seeing the SAA as an elitist association. Anyone who declares that he or she is an archivist, no matter what education they may have or not have, is to be equally treated and regarded. To hold to another viewpoint is to run the risk of being declared an elitist, which is akin to being branded un-American. Graduate education, in its reformation of the past decade, has been directed to attract the best students to give them the best education in order to place them in the best jobs – hardly the egalitarian mission the Society has been based on. Not all schools are at this place, of course, but those who are working on more stringent requirements and more comprehensive curriculum clearly must be at odds with the historic mission of the Society and with many others in the field. Their financial costs, entrance requirements, emphasis on theory and methodology, and often more aggressive visions for what archivists should do mean that not all archivists are created equal (different knowledge levels and different orientations ensure this). It also implies that not all can or should be archivists. I am, it appears, an elitist. By what graduate educators do, however, I think all of them could also be labeled in the same fashion.

Where does this leave graduate education and the Society? More practically, where should we go with this pre-conference meeting of educators? Should graduate education stay within the Society? Should graduate educators form their own association? Should archival educators form an alliance with another association focused on the education of similar professionals, such as the Association of Library and Information Science Education (ALISE)? Ten years ago I suggested to a number of graduate archival educators just such the former, and the reception I received was immediate and clear – NO! Today, the idea may not seem so ludicrous. What are the pros and cons of educators staying subsumed completely within the Society? What are the arguments for taking the other side of the road, moving to form a very different vision for educating records professionals? Is there the need for a separate association? Or, is there the need for informal clusters of schools and educators with similar philosophies and objectives?

The reasons for staying within the Society of American Archivists may seem extremely obvious. The SAA is the main national association dedicated to the education of archivists. It has also become more proactive in the 1990’s, perceiving a stronger advocacy role for the management and protection of archives. The SAA is also the richest in professional and other resources of all the professional archival associations. The Society has had six decades to establish itself, and in the past three it has managed to establish a broad program in continuing education and supported a committee on professional education and training that issued and revised guidelines. It has taken on the role of the voice of the profession, especially as the voice of the National Archives seems to have grown weaker and less influential. Why would anyone want to pursue an educational agenda for archivists apart from the Society of American Archivists?

Yet, let us re-examine each of these reasons. Yes, the Society is the main national association, but it is not the only national association. What about the role of the Association of Records Managers and Administrators (ARMA)? Given the complexity of modern records, we must focus on the education of records professionals and this includes the kind of life cycle or continuum that knots together archives and records management.

Yes, the Society has become a stronger advocate, but this is a relative improvement. It has not taken on a broader public role, and the Society certainly has not taken a firm stance on using its graduate education guidelines as a means of implementing change in the nature of these educational programs.

Yes, the SAA has more resources than other professional archival associations, but these resources are still very limited. Besides, there are other records associations with much greater resources, such as ARMA. And, the issue is whether any of these associations use their resources in an effective manner to advance the education of its members.

Yes, the Society has been working for three decades in establishing educational guidelines, supporting workshops, and producing materials that can be used for educational purposes. But these efforts have not always been well coordinated. Its workshops have often worked at cross-purposes to graduate education. The SAA pre-occupation in publishing basic manuals has both portrayed archival work at its lowest level and contributed to a "dumbing down" of the substance of graduate education.

There is another, ironic element in the above discussion. At the moment, the greater number of the comprehensive graduate archival education programs are located in library and information science schools. These specializations are usually part of Masters of Library Science (MLS) degrees, degrees that are accredited by the American Library Association (ALA). Yet, what role, beyond accreditation, has the ALA assumed in archival education? And, how effective has accreditation been in changing, improving, or sustaining archival education? In other words, if we are looking for leadership in graduate archival education, or a home to support such leadership, perhaps the ALA has some untapped potential.

This gets us to what the point of graduate archival education is as we turn into a new century. We have seen many different phases in the development of North American graduate education. In the 1930’s and 1940’s, there were early efforts to define a new kind of educational program, when the first courses on archives were offered. Then, over the next few decades, there was the parallel development of graduate courses in library schools and history departments. More recently, we have seen the expansion into specific degrees or, at the least, concentrated clusters of courses supported by multiple faculty members.[5]  In this most recent phase, we have seen the divergence of philosophies in these graduate programs. Some are focused on educating individuals to be knowledgeable about records and record-keeping systems and technologies, preparing students for careers across a broad array of organizations and fields. Other programs focus on the cultural dimensions of archives and historical records, with an emphasis on these records as source materials for the historian and other researchers. Still other schools stress very traditional archival skills, orienting their classroom and students to practical experience.[6]  Matters for future meeting or collaboration of archival educators should be how such efforts can knit together these diverse educational philosophies, whether there should be any work to unify educators, and whether educators can profitably work on such matters under the aegis of a professional organization such as the Society of American Archivists or the Association of Library and Information Science Educators. Perhaps we should just let nature take its course, allowing educators to connect with their natural or closest professional associations. Perhaps we should not debate such matters at all.

The nature of archival education has been the subject of a long-term debate within the profession. That is part of the problem. Archives, with a focus on the nature of records and record-keeping, the technologies supporting all this, and the dual managerial and cultural purposes of archives for evidence and information, is an interdisciplinary field. This is very different from other fields. Carl Schorske argues that "History can only exist in a symbiotic relationship with other disciplines. By virtue of its untheoretical, associative character, it depends on them for its analytic concepts. Nor does history have a particular subject matter of its own. Virtually the only stable center of the historian’s armamentarium is the simple calendar that determines what came before something, what came after."[7] While some might argue the same for archival science or archival studies, I would argue against this – but that is not the point in this essay. The issue is that the basis of archival knowledge or theory is an interdisciplinary one regardless of whether there is a core unifying knowledge or not, and that this suggests a range of possibilities for the alliance of the theorists in the field, the educators. The debate about the archival theory and education ought to cut across many disciplines. Archival educators could be associated with history, public history, library and information science, public administration, business, or law.

How we proceed is, as well, fraught with perils or, in a more benign way of thinking, potholes. We have tended to be a conservative lot. Earlier educational guidelines were often drafted to reflect what was already going on, rather than to point to where archival education needed to be headed. The current educational guidelines, effective for five years, do point down the road toward separate degree programs – but there has been no response as of yet from any United States program in creating separate degrees. There have been some changes in strengthening curriculum, but whether this is the result of these guidelines is uncertain. This may be the result of the fact that these are guidelines, not standards – that is, voluntary not buttressed by any accreditation or other regulating body (unless one counts ALA’s indirect accreditation of MLS degrees). This may also be the product of working within the SAA. On the one hand, the Society issues stronger graduate guidelines while on the other hand it feeds off of offering basic, rudimentary workshops that are clearly substitutes for graduate education. In the Society, there is complacency about such things or a marvelous ability to allow a thousand flowers to bloom – depending on one’s outlook about such things.

There are other factors or obstacles in nurturing archival education. There is little feedback from the employers of archivists about what such graduate programs should be teaching. Then, of course, there is the question of what employers we should seek input from for the content and structure of our education. Should we listen to the small, local historical society who is interested in having someone work with its traditional manuscript collections? Or, should we work with the Fortune 500 corporation needing someone to work as a part of a team in designing a complex electronic records system? Obviously, the advice will be very different from such remarkably different sources. The Society of American Archivists wants to listen to both and respond in positive ways. The graduate educator will only scratch his or her head in disbelief at the prospect of constructing a coherent program that could do both. As graduate educators we might consider ways of reaching others than our graduate students, but it may be just as likely that we do that in order to recruit them into the graduate program. We cannot accomplish the same thing in a workshop as we do in a graduate course. We cannot also come close in a series of workshops to what someone will be exposed to as part of a coherent cluster of graduate courses. Workshops and graduate courses have very different purposes.

It is, of course, not just a matter of blindly or mindlessly responding to the cacophony of voices from the field. Educators have usually not been willing to band together in ways that would pull up their own educational programs. Think about what happened in the first of our daylong meetings in San Diego in 1996. A few educators who had been discussing some issues of mutual concern put together an invitation-only conference. The invitation-only aspect created immense ill-will, even though it was directed at full-time regular educators and schools that had made a strong commitment to the education of archivists and other records professionals. Conspiracy theories circulated. Charges of elitism were made. Angry accusations followed. What began as an effort to push along graduate education caused a temporary derailment in moving in this direction. We can’t afford such derailments in the future, if we intend to develop effective and relevant graduate archival education programs.

There are various interpretations that could be made about what occurred in San Diego, but the only one worth considering here is that this controversial meeting was a natural outgrowth of a still relatively young aspect of our field. The youthfulness of graduate archival education can be seen in other ways. Some educators believe that they can rely on an annual two-hour meeting of the Archival Education Roundtable at Society meetings for the exchange of information and other business. Another indication is that educators, such as they are, continue to be in short-supply and there is only now beginning to be any real preparation of future educators in doctoral programs. The long-cherished idea that the future of research rests on the establishment of graduate programs and the employment of regular faculty members seems to be more myth than objective; the number of faculty doing research and programs promoting their students to be engaged in research activities are relatively small. Even more indicative of our youthfulness is the fact that we have done so little research about our own educational programs. Setting out a task as seemingly straightforward as doing a survey of our graduates reveals that many of us have not been keeping good records of our graduates. Perhaps, we have not taken ourselves seriously.

There are always hopeful signs. I mentioned one of the most positive developments earlier. The creation of multiple-faculty programs re-invigorates any graduate archival education program. Prior to the arrival of the second faculty member, the educator spends considerable time not only in developing a reasonable curriculum, but also in constantly explaining how and why archives fits into the parent curriculum as well as single-handedly trying to administer it. With the arrival of a partner, attention obviously shifts to developing a stronger curriculum, team-teaching, administrating the program, and joint advising – all to the benefit of students. Other possibilities emerge as well. There is time for joint-grant writing, collaborative research and writing, sharing of reading lists, and a more focused effort on influencing other courses to reflect archives and records sensibilities.[8] There is no need to stop at two faculty programs. Distance education offers the possibility of enriching curriculum and teaching, and there have been a few experiments in this. Even simpler is the banding together by educators from different schools for informal discussions, but this possesses as well strong potential for strengthening graduate education.

It is appropriate to discuss one continuing effort at such informal discussions. Over the past two academic years the archives faculty of the Universities of Michigan, Pittsburgh, and Toronto have met every four months to share ideas, determine how the schools can work together, and to provide critical analysis and feedback in certain crucial activities related to their programs. What brought these three schools together was the expansion of their faculty to include two at each school, and the possession of some common critical key ideas about where graduate archival education needed to be heading. It was no fluke that this happened. A doctoral graduate from the University of Pittsburgh joined the University of Michigan. A doctoral graduate from the University of Michigan joined the University of Pittsburgh. A doctoral graduate from the University of Pittsburgh joined the University of Toronto. They brought some shared interests in research and outlooks, although an analysis of the six faculty members reveals a wide array of other interests as well. Moreover, in the past year, they invited the faculty of the University of Manitoba to join their informal discussions so that they could have the perspective of those teaching within a graduate history program. Now these faculty members are working on special issues of journals, a book on record-keeping and accountability, mutual grant proposals, and conferences. The current conference emerged from these discussions and the faculty worked as an informal program committee in order to develop it. It is interesting to speculate, of course, if this group had not emerged would there have been another group that would have done this conference? Would the SAA have stepped in to take the necessary leadership in order for this conference to materialize?

Some may believe that I am being overly argumentative in my comments, but I believe it is necessary to be so in order for us to advance the cause of graduate archival education. No one else will do this for us. And the issues we face are, I believe, very critical. This is not the time to be growing new degrees in higher education, yet there are many schools (especially in library and information) recruiting faculty to teach about archives and records management. This may be our time to try to get these degrees, and the only way we might be able to do this is to work together. How we define the core purposes of graduate education will influence who gets hired to teach and how extensive the educational programs will be. While many in the public do not understand the inner workings of archives or the profession supporting their work, records nevertheless are in the news on a regular basis. It is a good time for us to be advocating stronger standards for educating records professionals. There are other models for educating and training archivists and records managers. Supporters of the certification of archivists, while ostensibly acknowledging graduate education, define it at a level that harks back to where graduate archival education was two or three decades ago.[9] Documentary editors, with stronger political support, provide a completely different vision for the education of historical records custodians, one challenging the progress made by the archives community for educating its own practitioners and educators. Again, we must rise to the occasion and make clear the requirements for anyone intending to work as an archivist.[10] New and more complex record-keeping technology also presses us by introducing a larger group of competitors for managing records. Many organizations, policymakers, and even records professionals look to technical solutions to most, if not all, records issues. As educators, we know the need of educating individuals both to understand records and record-keeping systems as well as the technologies supporting these systems.[11]

All of this suggests the need for us not just to be vigilant but to build a clear road ahead for where we want graduate education to be going. This is not an easy task. Laying out a route, requires not only knowing where we want to go but some hard work in clearing trees, removing underbrush, and contending with sometimes difficult terrain. I believe that fundamentally important to accomplishing this is the need for archival educators to determine how and when we should work together. Here are the options for how we proceed:

• Return to business as usual. We can continue to rely, as we have, on the Society of American Archivists to provide the necessary forum for us. Educators can meet annually at the Archival Education Roundtable. Educators can participate in the work of the Committee on Education and Professional Development. Educators can allow the Society of American Archivists Council to set the agenda for graduate education. These do not seem like good options, however, because they do not address the fact that graduate archival education programs reside in universities. The SAA, ALISE, educators, or any other group cannot create or nurture programs on their own, at least without taking into account the politics, economics, and culture of universities.
• Lobby SAA for a different venue. Another possibility for educators, working within the Society of American Archivists, is for them to advocate for a different role and different kinds of structures. Perhaps the current Committee on Education and Professional Development needs to be supplemented by another committee composed solely of graduate educators for facilitating the more efficient development of standards and guidelines. Lobbying universities directly might be the primary task of this new committee. Perhaps this new committee should replace the current archival education roundtable, a body severely limited in its ability to do more than provide a very minimal level of communication. A new committee could become responsible for holding an annual SAA pre-conference meeting on graduate education issues.
• Align with another professional association. Graduate archival educators could build an alliance with another professional association. The range of options is considerable. Educators could move to an association with a stronger focus on education, such as the Association for Library and Information Science Education. ALISE lacks political clout, however, and seems uninterested in broader agendas such as would be represented by one pushing the development of graduate archival education. Educators could work on strengthening the alliances between those who educate archivists and those who educate records managers by seeking a partnership with the Association of Records Managers and Administrators. Educators could strive to focus on records technology matters by building an alliance with the American Society for Information Science. Educators could move on all these and other fronts.
• Establish an independent professional association. North American archival educators could also establish an independent professional association. This independent group, which could be organized either formally or informally, could then rotate meetings among relevant professional association conferences, from those of public history to records management to regional and Canadian associations to library and information science. While current numbers of educators are small, probably no more than fifty in North America, an association could be sustained at least for the purposes of annual meetings, issuance of professional standards and guidelines, and communication networks using the Internet/World Wide Web.
• Create informal working clusters. Another approach is to follow the lead of the Universities of Manitoba, Michigan, Pittsburgh, and Toronto and create informal working groups that band together because of common philosophies and objectives or in order to share resources or to work on specific projects. Clusters could form along the lines of separate masters degrees, multiple faculty programs, parent school affiliations, or small programs supported by adjuncts. Clusters could also form to work on developing distance education offerings, Web-based teaching resources, research projects, and standards and guidelines.
• Hold annual conferences. At the least, it seems that graduate archival educators ought to meet regularly in order to work on common concerns, collaborate and share research, provide a forum for doctoral students preparing for academic teaching positions, and enable a more intensive and effective consideration of matters relating to graduate archival education. There are two issues that must be resolved for this to happen. First, we must decide whether this annual meeting will be held in conjunction with the annual conference of the Society of American Archivists. Second, we must determine who will take responsibility for its planning and implementation.
• Plan and hold special, focused multi-day meetings on educational issues other than graduate education. There are many issues of importance to the education and training beyond graduate archival education. Yet, there has not been a major conference on any aspect of archival education and training since the 1987 Savannah conference. Given the rapid development of graduate education and the development of other standards such as those for continuing education, this kind of meeting is long overdue. It is also important to have a meeting whereby all the major professional associations with a stake or interest in the education and training of archivists can play a role.

1. I described my experiences with this task in my "The Masters of Archival Studies and American Education Standards: An Argument for the Continued Development of Graduate Archival Education in the United States," Archivaria 36 (Autumn 1993): 221-31.

2. We have still not completely resolved the issues generated by a relationship between graduate and continuing education. I considered this a bit in my "Continuing Education and Special Collections Professionals: The Need for Rethinking," Rare Books & Manuscripts Librarianship 10, no. 2 (1995): 78-96.

3.. A good introduction to the tensions and stresses in professional education in the university is Derek Bok, Higher Learning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), chapter three.

4. The remarkable range of possibilities of how one might be educated or trained to become an archivist is evident in the long qualifications descriptions often posted as part of job advertisements. At present the prospective employer has to hedge his or her bets about what kind of education one might have, including absolutely no formal education to prepare a person to be an archivist.

5. Readings on the historical development of archival education, as well as other key essays on education, are listed in the bibliography provided as background reading for this conference.

6. A perusal of the current Society of American Archivists education directory reflects the range of different philosophies. The directory is available at the Society's web site, http://www.archivists.org.

7. Carl E. Schorske, Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modernism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 16.

8. This is based on my experience over the past two academic years at the University of Pittsburgh after Elizabeth Yakel joined the faculty. It has been an invigorating experience. One wonders what it would be like to have three, four, or more faculty gathered in one department.

9. I have made dramatic shifts in my views about archival certification, having shifted from a supporter to a detractor. I describe my reasons for this change in my "Certification and Its Implications for the American Archival Profession: Changing Views, 1989 and 1996," at http://www2.sis.pitt.edu/~edu/~rjc/pp1.htm.

10. I have also written a position paper on this, "Messrs. Washington, Jefferson, and Gates: Quarrelling About the Preservation of the Documentary Heritage of the United States," First Monday 2 (August 1997), at http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_8/index.html.

11. Browse through the entire issue of the American Archivist 56 (Summer 1993), a special report on education and technology from the SAA Committee on Automated Records and Techniques.

12. Luciana Duranti suggested some of this in her "A Personal Vision for the Society of American Archivists," published as an insert in the November/December 1998 Archival Outlook and available at the SAA web site (http://www.archivists.org).