Dear Mr. Vernon,
Oh dear here we go again. I am sending this to you and the list. I am glad
that you have sympathy for Mr. Erdmann as he probably deserves it, but I'm
afraid you do not know all the facts. Therefore I would appreciate it if
you would please *not* bring up my name in the listserv again. Did not
Maarja, diplomatic as she is, discuss this? It would be simple enough
for anyone to discuss personal names off-list if that's what they want to
do, and then they could say whatever they want and those of us who are over
it can move on.
You may find my words outrageous, but I find anyone engaging in a personal
attack on the list to be just as outrageous. Somehow it was glossed over
that after I had put in what I thought was my last 2 cents on this topic on
the listserv, Mr. Erdmann contacted me first off-list, I responded to his
questions but asked that we drop the issue- I happen to think that when
discussions like this run too long unresolved we all become navel-gazers and
it makes a nuisance of the listserv. When he persisted by contacting me
off-list a *second* time and unnecessarily dragged in the female question [I
had been earlier assumed to be male because of my name but I am female and I
dislike being assumed male for whatever reason]- I perceived it as
approaching a soft kind of gender harassment- and I still do, because in his
email there was no reason for him to capitalize HER or to use the example of
suffrage because it simply did not make sense to his argument, and if you
want I could write you a 5 page treatise defending my reaction. With
logic missing as a reason, I thus concluded he was dragging gender in to
annoy me. That qualifies as harassment, and it was somewhat gender based,
so there you go. Being needled further about a point which one has tried to
walk away from?- also harassment, just not gender based. Dragging my name
up again after this should have been long buried... you can guess what I
think about that, and here I am again trying to swim through the netting.
Finally, I will admit that I worded my statement incorrectly because
everyone perceived it differently than I meant it- all apologies. By saying
that one would "be surprised what higher-ups I *might* know" I meant to
point out rather sharply to Mr. Erdmann- so that he would let me alone
rather than instigate a personal attack (kinda like this one)- that a
professional should not engage in harassment of anyone via personal email
because you never know who you might be looking to for a job one day. That
was *all* I meant. Unless perhaps you'd like to believe that as a new
professional I am secretly behind the every move of the SAA and am plotting
to have all the anti-educationalists rounded up in DC and carted off
to an interrogation room... give me a break. I said I was a newbie, what
more do you want? I am not a powerful or threatening figure in the field,
except if you engage me in meaningless arguments, harass me, and call it an
issue of free speech, and then I just get fiesty, and obviously nobody likes
that.
Now can everybody please stop saying "Dana Miller" (except the lottery man!)
so we can all just continue having a pleasant day, okay? We can burn me in
effigy or something later but let's do it quietly, for heaven's sake.
Sheesh!
Silent from here out! I swear!
DM
PS- Oh but I DO happen to have some outrageously cute shoes on today, for
anyone interested in following my outrageous behavior. And I might have
tacos for lunch. I know, I know, I'm out of control...
On 6/20/06, Vernon Rood <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Archival Education
>
> 1) Sympathy for John Erdmann.
> I agree with you, Mr. Erdmann, that it is outrageous for Dana Miller to
> accuse you of gender harassment merely for holding opinions different from
> hers. Her statements speak volumes about the parlous state of free speech
> in today's politically correct university. It is doubly outrageous for an
> archivist to threaten to blackball a student. It is striking how blithely
> she threatens to destroy your career and then ends with a kind of "have a
> nice day." Does nobody else think that this is outrageous?
>
>
> 2) Archival Education at NARA
>
> NARA is the nation's largest employer of archivists, and I have been
> surprised that the current Listserv discussion has not included the
> practices of this agency. Although I am not any kind of spokesperson for
> NARA, a few basic facts about NARA's program are not privileged
> information.. Basically, NARA existed before today's university programs to
> train archivists, and as a result, NARA has traditionally trained its own
> archivists.
>
> When I came through the archivist training program in the 1980s, it was
> called the CIDS program (which I think stood for Career Intern Development
> System, or something similar). A group of a couple dozen of us trainees
> began the program with two weeks of instruction on the theory and practice
> of archival work. For the following two years, we trainees then worked in a
> number of different departments. In those two years, we each gained about
> 4,000 hours of on-the-job experience in arrangement & description,
> reference, appraisal, as well as other fields. Personally, I thought that
> this was an unrivalled program for training archivists. The program still
> exists, and most archivists at the National Archives have gone through it.
>
>
> 3) Library Training and NARA
> Unlike much of the rest of the archival world, very few NARA archivists
> have librarian degrees. Until recently, NARA hired as archivists mostly
> people with backgrounds in American history. The educational requirements
> for archivists have changed recently, however, as has also the work of
> archivists at NARA. As our work becomes more centered on the computer, our
> work of processing records, for example, has become much more like library
> cataloging than traditional arrangement and description.
>
> Personally, I have a librarian's degree, and I also went through F. Gerald
> Ham's excellent archival training program at the State Historical Society of
> Wisconsin. All of this training has been useful to some degree, because it
> is largely complementary, concerned as it is with the storage and retrieval
> of information. I also have happy memories of wonderful information
> professionals, like Dr. Ham, that I worked with and learned from in those
> days.
>
> While I am on the subject of NARA's differences from other archives, one
> could mention also the paucity of NARA archivists-please correct me if I am
> wrong!-who have become Certified Archivists. Perhaps that will change with
> time, also.
>
>
> 4) In Conclusion
>
> Although NARA traditionally has trained its archivists on-the-job, I would
> not argue that it is inherently superior to academic training. In fact, I
> think that there is merit in both classroom and on-the-job training. In
> Germany, for example, its world-class archival training programs inherently
> combine study and on-the-job archival work.
>
> Finally, I wish to repeat that I am in no way an official spokesperson for
> NARA. I am merely providing the archival community with non-privileged
> information about archival education at NARA so that well-considered
> judgments are possible.
>
>
> V. Paul Rood, MA, MALS, Ph.D
> Archivist, Initial Processing and Declassification Division (NWMD)
> National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
> 8601 Adelphi Road
> College Park, Maryland 20740
>
> A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the
> Society of American Archivists, www.archivists.org.
> For the terms of participation, please refer to
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>
A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, www.archivists.org.
For the terms of participation, please refer to http://www.archivists.org/listservs/arch_listserv_terms.asp.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask]
In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
*or*: UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask]
Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html
Problems? Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>