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ACADEMY OF CERTIFIED ARCHIVISTS
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"The certification program provides a means for employers to identify individuals who have both appropriate academic preparation and documented breadth and depth of knowledge essential to being an archivist. Everyone -- employers and archivists -- benefits." David
B. Gracy II |
Jan Zastrow, M.L.I.S., C.A When
the CA exam was first conducted in Honolulu a couple of years ago, I frankly
didn’t think we needed it here. After all, Hawaii is a small state, we all
know each other, and we network regularly in our regional Association of
Hawaii Archivists meetings. I resented the thought of another hoop to jump
through, and the invasion of a Mainland concept like credentialing intruding
on our Island traditions of aloha, nurturing and inclusion. But when I took
on the new position of Hawaii Congressional Papers Archivist at the
University of Hawaii at Manoa, the CA credential was a minimum requirement.
Although I had worked in a variety of archives—in a newspaper “morgue”
decades before I ever imagined making a career of archives, as a fledgling
archivist at the Hawaii State Archives, as a “lone arranger” in a
private college preparatory school archives, and as a project-based archival
consultant—I didn’t have the doggone credential. Was all my experience
for naught? Fortunately, I was hired into the Congressional Archivist position with the understanding that I would sit for the exam next time it was offered, just five months from my start date. Study? You bet I did!!! After somewhat casually perusing the reading list in the ACA Handbook, it dawned on me that I had a very short time to cover five pages of bibliography! I started by reading all the SAA “yellow books” and then proceeding to the suggested (check marked) readings in each of the domains. I took notes as I read in order to be able to review again before the exam—at stoplights, in the bathroom, during coffee breaks, you name it. Despite all my real-life experience and Library School coursework, I was amazed at how much I didn’t know ... or once knew but had long since forgotten. This, I
discovered, was the real benefit of certification. Not the snazzy “C.A.”
lapel pin I get to wear on my blazer, not the mystifying initials after my
name, not even as a minimum qualification in a job application. The real
benefit was the opportunity—mid-career—to systematically and thoroughly
refresh my knowledge of archival theory, methods and best practices, and to
pick up what somehow slipped through the cracks the first-second-third time
around. So
what’s the bottom line? |
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