Sorry you've quit the list. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. A
little outrage is what makes the USA worth living in. Or as I believe,
An argument a day keeps the ulcers away!  And my family has the ulcers
to prove it. 
C. S. Lewis on perception, "What you see and hear depends a good deal on
where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are."
 
Joy Ketron - Watauga Regional Library
[log in to unmask]
"Never trust a man who reads only one book." ~Arturo Perez-Reverte 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Archives & Archivists [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Dana Miller
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2006 2:52 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Archival Education
 
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
<http://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]>

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]> 

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]>