ArchivesNext

Do you have concerns about compensation, access to health insurance . . .

I think a lot of you probably do.

In San Francisco, SAA’s Issues and Advocacy Roundtable decided to take on an ambitious topic for the next two years:

Our goal is to explore issues related to the financial and professional issues archivists and related information professionals face in trying to earn acceptable compensation, access to health care insurance, professional advancement and financial challenges while staying in the archival profession.

Certainly those are probably the issues that are closest to the hearts of many in the profession, particularly some of its newer members. What do you think about this choice? What aspect of this topic is most important to you? If you’re a manager, do you have concerns about these issues in terms of being able to hire the best candidates? What kinds of resources, products, or actions would you like to see the roundtable produce? I know you’ve got opinions on this–let’s hear them!

Archival profession, Society of American Archivists (SAA) | Kate T. | September 22, 2008 1:02 pm

13 Comments

By Russell D. James, CA, September 22, 2008 @ 7:33 pm

I always seem to be one of the first to comment, but, oh well . . .

I think these are very important issues, especially for some archivists who are in smaller institutions that do not offer these benefits. It seems working for the federal government or an academic institution usually brings good benefits, but maybe not historical societies.

When I worked at a public library, the benefits were okay, but could have been better. I got health insurance, but it had a $5000 deductible, meaning it was worthless to me because I am a single man who spends maybe $1000 a year on health concerns. So I had to pay health insurance (mandatory) and got zero benefits. I think, then, that it works both ways – choice would be better than having to pay for something that does not benefit you. It would be nice to have some sort of cafeteria plan where we could pick the benefits we wanted – I could have used more dental insurance and some vision insurance, things not covered by the health plan the library had.

Then I was a records manager at a university, but though I had a master’s degree, it was a staff position that carried zero benefits, not even vacation days. I could have used some benefits then, too.

I wonder, on a related note, whether your group should do something with salaries. I know the ALA published a few years ago some study or paper or thing like that that said a librarian with an MLS should make no less than $40K a year. Maybe we should do the same for archivists and records managers, maybe based on the A*CENSUS?

And I am sitting here thinking, it comes to mind that perhaps one of the things your group might be interested in purusing is if it is possible for SAA, CoSA, and NAGARA to unite with some insurance provider or another and offer to their members some sort of cafeteria plan that does not revolve around a person’s work, but instead their profession – archives and records management. Then archivists and records managers who work for companies that don’t offer benefits can purchase them at a reasonable rate on an SAA, CoSA, or NAGARA membership. I don’t see anything different here from some associations that contract with rental car companies and the like for discounted services for their members. SAA, CoSA, and NAGAR together must have, what, 7500 or more members? This should be some kind of incentive to an insurer to cover archivists and records managers in these groups. Just an idea for something to pursue.

Just my thoughts late at night.
By Jill Severn, September 23, 2008 @ 2:14 am

We at the Russell Library’s Forum for Civic Life in Georgia will be hosting a series of forums related to paying for health care this fall as part of a national initiative of the presidential libraries, partners, and the National Issues Forums Institute. The forums use National Issues Forums study guides as basis for the deliberative, non partisan discussions. http://www.nifi.org and http://www.libs.uga.edu/russell. If archivists are looking for a good framework for hosting discussions for themselves an their colleagues the NIF guides are a great resource and can be downloaded in an abbreviated format from the NIF Web site.

Cheers,
Jill Severn
Head of Access and Outreach
Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
University of Georgia
By Christine Di Bella, September 23, 2008 @ 6:56 am

Issues of compensation, advancement, and health insurance are very tied into how archivists are valued in the workplace. And how we are valued is very tied into whether we are perceived highly trained professionals, or whether the perception is that anyone can do the work we do. To me education – and codifying and standardizing education to some degree – is the key to ensuring that the former and not the latter perception prevails, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve been active in advocating for accreditation of graduate archival education programs.

One aspect of Mark Greene’s presidential address that really resonated with me was his discussion of what professionalism means, and his assertion (correct, in my view) that the image many archivists give of the knowledge that we rely upon to do our jobs is that it is “intuitive, informal, and cookbooky.” Why is that the case? Our field does have a strong intellectual history after all, and there are core skills and key areas over which a good archivist should be able to demonstrate mastery, and we do ourselves a great disservice when we claim that there aren’t. Yes, some of this knowledge and the way these skills are applied differ depending on our work setting, but it’s still the same stuff: appraisal, acquisition, arrangement, description, access, and preservation (yes, even for electronic records). In my opinion, the best place to get the theoretical and intellectual background necessary to truly understand these areas and do them well is in a solid graduate education program, and to help people figure out which graduate education programs are solid, we need some sort of formalized, centrally sanctioned process. (And, no, I do not think the Certified Archivists program, as currently constituted, is the answer – but I’ll save that discussion for another day.)

As long as we hold to the mantra of “there’s no particular path to becoming an archivist” or, even worse, “anyone can be an archivist,” we will not be valued as we think we should be. Why should an employer offer us a competitive wage, a permanent position, or decent benefits if anyone can do our jobs? If these are the issues you’ll be focusing on this year, I would like to see the Issues and Advocacy Roundtable get involved in the accreditation discussions that are going on in SAA right now. Even if accreditation is not the end result, the accompanying discourse and debate could go a long way to improving our lot as archivists.
By t, September 23, 2008 @ 7:38 am

I find some of what Christine says to be true and some of it less so. Are there really only two poles in the “becoming an archivist” world – graduate archvial education and intuitive, cookbooky, osmosic, “anyone can become an archivist”? I was forwarded an article recently that related diversity issues in the library profession (and I think it tracks pretty closely to the archival profession) to the requirement of a graduate dregree as the only professional entry level path. There might be a middle ground that aims to increase the professionalism of entry level positions and the skills of paraprofessionals. Something that tries to get more people to the table instead of more food for those already there.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6551177.html
By Christine Di Bella, September 23, 2008 @ 10:52 am

Well, using that article in this context was just the thing to get me back on the keyboard – thanks for that, T . I really disagree that the solution to poor pay and marginalized status for a profession is less education and lower standards. I also think bringing more people under the tent, purely in the form of increased numbers, is very self-defeating. What people graduating now are finding is that there aren’t enough *good* jobs for the number of people who want to be archivists – and this problem is only going to get worse for awhile, since that mass exodus of aging baby boomers is not happening as predicted (and certainly not in this economy).

We absolutely need to increase diversity in this profession, but I think it’s patronizing to suggest that the way to do that is by lowering the already fairly low standards. Instead, I’d argue for strengthening the educational and qualifications standards, but lowering the financial barriers to getting the education and qualifications, and that we do this in a way that is much more far-reaching than offering one or two scholarships a year per institution or professional association. Here’s where education – and standardizing education – comes in.

Just to demonstrate that it is possible to make out pretty well in the library school/archives education game, I’ll take a little detour. I went to grad school for free – not because I was independently wealthy, but because my program paid me (tuition, fees, stipend, health insurance) to go to school in exchange for a 20-hour a week assistantship. With most of my expenses taken care of by the school, I was able to graduate with no loan debt. This was possible because I went to a large university that had resources and was committed to convincing good applicants to matriculate. It also happened to be one of the best archives programs in the country at the time (and yes, this was an American institution). Pretty good deal, right? And it’s not like I’m the next T.R. Schellenberg or Helen Samuels or something…

For undergraduate education, how do places like Yale, Princeton, and Harvard achieve a diverse student body – both in racial and ethnic and socioeconomic terms? Not by lowering the admissions standards, but by reaching into their pockets and making it so that people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend, or would be drawn elsewhere, have their financial need met (and not by providing tens of thousands of dollars of loans the students will be saddled with for the rest of our lives).

In our profession, rather than having dozens of options of schools where people can get their degrees with the least inconvenience or where the only way to get through is by working full-time and attending part-time (both of which tend to correlate with a great deal of expense and little or no non-loan financial aid), why not focus efforts on making a smaller number of programs really strong, both academically and financially? Then direct prospective students to these programs, which will be able to both provide a thorough education and be on firm enough footing to offer the vast majority of their students financial aid that meets their need?

Yes, this may lead to fewer people entering the profession, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing – in fact, it may lead to a number entering proportionate to the number of jobs available (helping balance out that supply and demand equation that compensation is so linked to). Something has to give – we can’t expect both low standards and healthy compensation, not when the work we do doesn’t, for the most part, fit on the “Income” side of our employers’ balance sheet and when we’ve so far done a fairly poor job of demonstrating why it’s so valuable.
By Russell D. James, CA, September 23, 2008 @ 11:33 am

Hmm, you play the money card in your argument. I like that. I hold an MA in history and an MLIS and I am $177,000.00 in student loan debt. I pay $961 a month, so I need to make at least $45,000.00 a year just to stay afloat. I think the idea of giving out some scholarships for study is a great idea.
By ArchivesNext, September 24, 2008 @ 6:08 am

Christine,

Am I right that the accreditation effort would really only benefit those coming into the profession after programs began to be accredited? In other words, the degrees you and I both have would not be considered accredited degrees because the program was not accredited when we graduated? That’s the way it works with ALA I think, but I just wanted to verify.

If that’s true, then I think it’s even more important that other groups in SAA focus on salary issues for those currently in the profession, who would not benefit from having accredited degrees. Isn’t it even possible that this effort could hurt those of us who wouldn’t have accredited degrees–if employers start requiring them?

I’m not trying to suggest that your efforts shouldn’t move forward, but rather that I think there is still a great need to provide resources and tools that could be of immediate assistance to archivists in the field now. Everything else that SAA is doing is great, but I think we still need people working on compensation issues in a practical, pragmatic way. That’s what I hope this roundtable will be able to do.

Kate
By t, September 24, 2008 @ 8:13 am

Thanks, Kate. I don’t think I made myself clear. I’m not against accreditation of programs – in fact, I think it’s a great plan. And I’m also not against the MAS being the desired degree many archivist positions. And I’m certainly not against real archival education as an alternative to appending a couple archives classes to a history or library degree. What I was trying to argue for was a more nuanced approach to our profession. I don’t think we have (or ever will have) a binary profession — where you are either fully archivist or not archivist. There are all sorts of people out there doing archival work (often very well) who are librarians, curators, historical society directors, records managers, and hosts of others. Many of these people work in situations where there will *never* be enough funding to pay Russell’s >$45k a year. Rather than ignoring this segment or telling them “you’re not an archivist”, it makes sense to me to help professionalize it and create an entry level archivist group around a combination of education and accreditation. In my mind it is not about dragging the “good” archivists down, but pulling the other archivists up.
By Christine Di Bella, September 24, 2008 @ 9:00 am

Absolutely, Kate – accreditation would likely mainly be for people entering now and in the future, not for those of us who have been around for awhile. Once you reach a certain level in the profession, experience rather than education tends to weigh much more heavily in employers’ decisions about whether they will hire you and how you will be paid. (The fear some have of highly qualified veteran archivists being left out in the cold just because they don’t have accredited degrees is understandable but unjustified, in my opinion.)

But I don’t think that means this issue is outside of the purview of your roundtable. There are both short-term and long-term solutions to problems, and working on one does not mean you can’t work on the other. In fact, addressing underlying causes of problems does more than treating the symptoms in the long run, even though treating the symptoms is necessary to provide immediate relief. One thing that bothers me about the archival profession is that we spend a whole lot of time and energy focusing on symptoms and very little on the root causes. This means we never cure the problem (and why we face many of the same problems now as we did 30 years ago).

Low salaries, lack of insurance, and low status within our institutions are symptoms of a much larger problem – the way archivists, and their training and qualifications, are perceived. To make lasting, sustainable change, we need to address that root cause. We’re not going to be able to fix it in a year, and accreditation certainly isn’t a panacea, but we can make progress. Salary studies and investigating group insurance options are important and will hopefully help many people in a relatively short period of time. Figuring out ways to change the perception of archivists and their value will help even more and could transform our profession.

(I realize I’m coming off a bit soapboxy – which is not my intent, and it’s certainly not my intent to dictate the agenda for the I & A roundtable, one of the best groups in SAA, in my opinion. If the roundtable prefers to focus primarily on immediate solutions, I think that’s fine. I’m definitely not suggesting you take the lead on accreditation. But I think it would be valuable to have members participate in the effort, because it has clear ties to the issues with which you are concerned.)
By Dana Miller, October 12, 2008 @ 9:07 pm

Thank you Kate for bringing this up. And I also wanted to thank Christine for her comments- as I was reading one of the posts I actually said “Right on, Christine!” out loud. I was particularly excited by the way you went through gradschool. I just proposed a similar semi-radical idea to someone the other day- that we mitigate the often unmanageable burden of expense for archival education by making sure- heck, let’s explore making it mandatory- that you’re already working in an archival organization before you can even be accepted into an archives program and they’re going to pay at least half your tuition while you attend. That might be a little easier to swallow than coming out with $60K in debt and being offered $35K for a one year position- and that is exactly what is happening right now to many folks, and sure that $35K may be in Ohio but cost-of-living factors don’t cover high student loan payments or any of the myriad financial hardships that just tend to happen now and then.

Personally I have been fairly lucky and as a pragmatist I won’t take a truly poorly paid position, but still sometimes when I see these job ads, I wonder just who can afford to become an archivist these days, the same way I wonder about public schoolteachers and their notoriously low pay. Then I look at the bills that I myself am struggling to pay off, the retirement plans that often go unfunded, and the factual impossibility of owning a home in my area on my salary, and many of my fellow newbie coworkers are in the same boat or worse… If you’re not careful about the way you structure your career in archives, you can live like a college student forever, moving your futon back and forth across the country and tapping that nonexistent trust fund, or mom and dad, whenever the unexpected comes your way. That way you never have to grow up, I guess.

Also, besides fighting for vital accreditation and professional status (hark! mire not ye archivist forever at assistant librarian status!), let’s stop some of these library schools from churning out graduates like degree mills. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my library school experience, but it is irresponsible for schools to produce so many grads in a professional degree when there aren’t enough jobs. I want to see limits on the number of students accepted. I want to see tougher admission standards. I want to see more grants and scholarships. My co-author and I are hoping to do a study to provide a snapshot of the job market for new grads, and I am curious to discover the ratio of grads to actual available jobs. People need to know these things before they enter grad school- the reasoning behind the library school/archives education choice is most likely a lot more practical than the, say, MFA in poetry choice- the former as a practical choice sometimes fails to meet those expectations when one sees the availability of good jobs.

Anyway, if accepted, the session proposal I and a colleague are working on will, I hope, be a starting assessment, a state of the union; from there I hope we can open up a dialogue and get to some practical solutions. (If it is not accepted, we may produce a white paper on the same topic, we have to do something because these issues need to be discussed.) I hope we can keep everybody talking about this enough, distill the rants like mine above into some useful action points, and take some real steps towards making this a more people-friendly profession to join. We have a lot going for us, much of the time we do extremely interesting cultural work, and we need to stand up and start counting our value amongst ourselves and in the greater community. (I will get off of *my* soapbox now.)