Professional Associations and Selling:
The Wrong Paradigm

Richard J. Cox

Note: This essay was originally published in the
Association of Canadian Archivists Bulletin 20 (July 1996): 15-17.

Lyne St-Hilaire-Tardif's essay, "The 21st-Century 'Selling of a Professional Association," in the May 1996 ACA Bulletin seems both logical and benign enough. She argues that the Association of Canadian Archivists has to provide services that attract members with an eye to the goal to secure the "adherence" of all archivists. How could anyone argue with this? If you receive substantial services for your membership fee, more members will be attracted, revenue will increase, more services can be provided, and the archival profession will be all the stronger. I contend that this is, in fact, the wrong model and that the primary purpose of any professional association is not to include all the professionals. The purposes of a professional association are to promote and protect professional standards and the professional mission, and these aims can often be in conflict with "selling" a professional association.

The first fallacy of St-Hilaire-Tardif's argument is the leap from her statement that "professionals do not pay dues to a professional association just because they are professionals" to her recommendations for particular kinds of services to attract members. Actually, professionals ought to belong to their professional association for precisely the reason that they are professionals. Being a professional is not limited to being paid to do particular types of activities associated with a particular discipline nor is it restricted to working in a certain type of institution. In other words, being an archivist does not mean being paid to do archival work or working in an archives, but rather means mastering archival principles and knowledge, having met certain educational and employment standards, and carrying out work that has been entrusted to the archivist by their institution and society. Since professional associations exist to maintain certain professional standards -- the essence of what it means to be a professional, an individual should be a member of their national association no matter what they might think of the range of services.

The nature of services described by St-Hilaire-Tardif is also extremely problematic and, in fact, if adhered to undermines the very foundation of what the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) or the Society of American Archivists (SAA) should be doing as professional associations. She suggests, for example, that "it is the responsibility of the ACA to reach and reach out to all archival professionals in all repositories, members and non-members alike." If this means simply that membership materials are distributed so that no one misses what these associations represent, then I have little to argue with this. St-Hilaire-Tardif goes quite a bit further, suggesting to use the paper newsletter as a means of publishing what were electronic communications in other venues, and other similar activities. Where do we cross the line from individual responsibility of the professional to activities bordering on removing the responsibility? Is a professional association an umbilical cord for the individual who cannot function independently as a professional?

I can best relate my concern by reciting an example of some professional discussions I participated in a few years ago with a specialized group of archivists intent on producing an annual, annotated bibliography for this group. Let me state at the outset that I have no problem whatsoever with producing basic and critical lists of readings (and in fact I have done such bibliographies on a variety of topics over twenty years). The issue is the motivation. In this series of discussions the motivation was to produce a bibliography because 1) these busy professionals did not have time to read; 2) did not know where many relevant studies were being published; and 3) were not reading beyond a few professional journals already known not to feature much on their immediate specialization. There was no discussion about educating these individuals about where or what or why they should be reading. Indeed, there was no real consideration of the professional's responsibility to remain current with the relevant literature. In other words, there was, despite some genuinely positive aims, an anti-professional attitude at the root of the project. I sense the same attitude at the heart of the recent essay by St-Hilaire-Tardif.

This attitude is clearly revealed in her very internally-focused essay. She wants ACA to "reach out," but this reaching out is restricted to the profession. "The ultimate goal of any professional association," she writes, "remains the adherence of all professionals in its respective field." There are two problems with this statement. First, is it the ultimate goal? Isn't the real ultimate goal the establishment of standards coupled with advocacy for the use of these standards in behalf of the fulfillment of the mission? Second, what is a professional? Is a professional anyway who is paid to work as an archivist or calls him or herself an archivist? If "adherence" covers the latter, according to St-Hilaire-Tardif, then we are heading in the right direction in following her advice. However, her essay makes me interpret her use of "adherence" as dues-paying member, and I believe this is an incredibly short-sighted objective. Let's examine these two matters in a bit more detail.

Why does a professional association, like the ACA or SAA, have to be an advocate in our society? This question can be answered better by examples, and I will cite United States examples that I have been following. Political leaders, such as former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, have sometimes threatened the destruction of records essential to public knowledge about the activities of the federal government (I am referring, of course, to the landmark case known as the PROFS case). Cultural institutions, such as the Library of Congress, have entered into agreements for the deposit of significant records with such an array of restrictions that the validity of the decision to accept and preserve such records is questionable (here is a reference to the Sigmund Freud Papers controlled by a small group of Freud disciples and scholars trying to preserve his reputation). History museums, such as the Smithsonian, have been besieged with complaints and political pressure for installing exhibits with controversial views despite the fact that the revisionist interpretations are often based on newly uncovered archival evidence (and here we have a reference to the Enola Gay exhibit controversy). And we have supported a Presidential Library system in the name of preserving better and more records even though the system has often been capricious in its openness to the records (as has been exemplified by the influence of the Kennedy family on access to JFK records by scholars they do not approve).

I believe that these kinds of controversies and issues are extremely common. They require us to have professional associations bold enough to be outspoken advocates for the preservation, identification, and use of archival records, not to be too internally focused on providing services that professional archivists themselves should be equipped to do. Rather than publishing print versions of essential or important electronic communications for those archivists without access to those information systems, we should rely on the fact that every professional archivist must gain access to such systems and that our attention needs to be devoted to the larger public forum in building support for the archival mission. Given that all institutions and most individuals are shifting to the use of electronic recordkeeping systems, the suggestion that many archivists will not have access to computers is to admit that they cannot cope with basic recordkeeping methods of the late twentieth century.

Why does a professional association, like the ACA or SAA, have to wrestle with the definition of what it means to be a professional? We have been doing this for generations, it seems, but this is particularly relevant when we read calls for more inclusive membership of archival practitioners. While there is a decided need for any professional to understand that he or she has a responsibility to their employer and to society, there is a counterpart notion that being a professional means having command of a certain knowledge that others do not. Institutions hiring archivists and individuals donating archival records to repositories assume archivists to possess some basic competencies. So, before we embark on reaching out to bring in every individual who thinks of themselves as an archivist, we need to realize that not everyone commands this knowledge or deserves the title of professional.

There are, of course, two dangers with struggling over the notion of the professional archivist. The first is that we become elitist, restrictive, and too constraining in our concept that we make no effort to assist all involved in archival work to raise their standard. The second danger is, however, just as real. We may become too inclusive, accepting anyone into the fold, and become so pre-occupied with keeping them that we support professional associations almost standing for nothing. The lowest common denominator rules. Association leaders will make decisions to keep the largest numbers happy, rather than do what is needed in order to ensure that our documentary heritage is managed. It has been this latter problem, I believe, that has been the larger problem facing our associations.

The one argument offered by St-Hilaire-Tardif that I absolutely concur with is that "dedication, voluntarism, and commitment are very important assets to a non-profit association." Rather than dreaming up such schemes as recognizing volunteers, however, we should strenuously consider what the purpose of the association is and why we need such commitment. This is not about selling something. Rather, this is about working for stronger professional standards, monitoring the activities of government and other leaders regarding the care of archival records, and laboring to create better public understanding about why archival records are essential to our society. I submit that building up either ACA or SAA should come through efforts that support the profession and not just provide some litany of services that makes one feel good that he or she is getting their money worth.

Being a professional archivist means being a member of the national professional association. Such membership is a professional responsibility. I would waste little time in trying to persuade someone who cannot understand that ACA is a good buy. I suspect that such individuals will stay a member for only a brief time anyway, because they do not really understand the essence of what it means to be a professional. The "sense of belonging and the association's capacity for affecting change and representing all its members" can only occur if we understand the members of our profession to be those that possess good educational backgrounds, have mastered the essential professional knowledge, are keeping up with the expanding professional knowledge, and who use that knowledge in the appropriate fashion to preserve and manage archival records.