Archival Education and the Need for Full-Time Faculty

Abstract

A healthy system of professional education has three complementary components: professional associations, practitioners in the field, and faculty in academic settings. The lack of a sufficient number of full-time faculty is the weakest aspect of the current system of education for archivists. Drawing on the extensive literature on education for professions, especially librarianship, the author speculates on the advantages for the archival profession of a larger number of faculty, sketches an appropriate role for such a faculty, and encourages further development of a more complete system of archival education.