Author: Unaccessioned

This may seem like a strange place to start. Surely after working in the sector for around 20 years, I know what an archivist is? In the early stages of my career, I was certain that I knew what an archivist was and that I knew what my role would be wherever I worked and that was that. Since I qualified the sector has changed in so many ways and the range of roles that I’ve had has shown me that no archive is the same – so maybe no archivist is the same either. I also wonder if what we expect from ourselves is the same as what others expect from us. That’s why I thought it was worth taking a step back to look at what I know, what I think I know and what everyone else thinks.

Good old Wikipedia describes an archivist as, “… an information professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to records and archives determined to have long-term value.” The Oxford English Dictionary has a far more succinct definition stating, “(an archivist is) ​a person whose job is to develop and manage an archive”. When I qualified, these definitions agreed with my perception of the career I was signing up to. I wanted to collect, preserve and make available records to anyone who wanted to see them. As I started working in the sector, I realised that the actual tasks I was required to do to fulfil these wider remits varied hugely and I’ve done a bit of everything, from project management to bid writing, to social media promotion, exhibition creation and management, coding, graphic design… The list goes on and as I read back through that list, it makes me wonder when did archivist become shorthand for jack of all trades and master of none?

And I think we’ve done this to ourselves with a complete lack of ability to say no. and this is what’s lead to the confusion outside the sector around what we actually do what our role is and the value we bring to organisations, which is why we are constantly de-valued. The ever-expanding job descriptions that always end with “any other duties as required”, proves this further as they detail a long list of tasks outside the traditional scope of an archivist role, but a list of tasks that nonetheless we all need to show at least some proficiency in lest we remain unemployed. Our sector is unlike most in this regard. Lawyers aren’t asked to create adverts to promote their services, Doctor’s aren’t asked to design the logos for their practice or curate exhibitions about the work they do,  and accountants don’t need to know how the back end of the software they use works but archivists do, and in many cases this work is prioritised as more important as the preservation and arrangement work we thought we were being hired to do. It is problematic that we’re expected to promote what we have when the large majority of many collections remained uncatalogued and in extreme cases inaccessible. We’ve been so busy highlighting the ‘gems’ of our collections, we’ve forgotten to advocate for the cornerstone of the work we do. Our love of records has us saying yes to doing the work of 4 people and then wondering why we never seem to catalogue more collections with full descriptions for people to access. One hugely publicised collection does not make up for the hundreds of uncatalogued collections left behind.

As archivists, I think for a long time we’ve believed that part of our job is to tell the stories found in the collections we hold. I don’t think this is the case anymore. We see this as a main component of outreach and advocacy, when the story we should actually be telling is that of the archive. Our role is to highlight why what we do is important and the importance of the collections we collect. This has become synonymous with telling the stories held in the collections that we maintain and preserve but they are not the same thing. I believe by continuing down this route the role of archivist is slowly morphing into that of researcher and curator, both incredibly important roles, but not officially our roles.

I think we need to get better at advocating for the collection, arrangement and access facilitation we became archivists to do. Yes, digital is changing the arena and more technical skills will be required but this is the same with every profession and I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be upskilling where we can. By convincing those in management roles that this work is essential and will provide an even larger pool of exciting content to curate from in the future, we will be doing the work we were hired to do while also securing the role of archivist as essential to a large range of organisations and institutions. If your place of work thinks what you are showcasing now is amazing, wait until they see what you can discover when you’re working on their unknown collections. Let’s be archivists – and showcase what we do best.

Do you agree? Did you become an archivist to do traditional archive work? Or do you think being an archivist involves learning parts of other sectors works to do our job well? Use #Unaccessioned on social platforms to discuss or comment below.