Hippies vs. Yuppies: Is Archival Profession Splitting Up?
The archivist community is a house divided. The recent ACA conference provided a perfect illustration. In her presidential address, Dr. Luciana Duranti urged archivists to forge partnerships with records managers and IT professionals. A day later, Dr. Guy Berthiaume, Director of Library & Archives Canada, encouraged archivists to align with GLAM (galleries-libraries-archives-museums) sector. These two calls didn’t seem to be contradictory, but were clearly directed to different audiences.
Dr. Duranti was speaking to the yuppies, while Dr. Berthiaume was addressing the hippies. Let me explain.
The yuppies are structure-and-function archivists who believe in digital haven, holy diplomatics and blockchain magic. They strive for scientific precision and seek the respectability of lawyers.
The hippies are humanities-grown history-huggers living blissfully in the world of culture and meaning. Content is king, genealogists are friends, digital are scans. They preserve history for future generations and love old papers.
The yuppies are MAS-educated cohort who thinks with rules and aspires to be part of the system. The hippies are a mottled crew of resourceful rebels who seek to make difference for their communities.
The yuppies prefer corporate setting and large institutions; the hippies toil at small to medium community institutions. The former look for an expert niche; the latter are jacks of all trades – lone arrangers turned community activists.
Amazingly, these two tribes still share basic language and concepts of the trade and a common identity. But this common ground is not there for long. The digital shift is pushing them apart. While the digital archivists and records managers ponder technology, the continuum model and post-custodial future, the manuscript-photograph curators, the hippies, simply don’t care much about the chase or the digital catechism. The split seems inevitable. And its ramifications might spell doom to the archival profession as we know it.
Owner/Operator
6yInteresting perspective, hmmm
Consultant, Digital Asset Management
6yIt's not impossible that the 2 "tribes" can be incorporated in one individual. Not irreconcilable.
Librarian/Archivist at Car and General (K) PLC
6yAny information manager must be IT oriented which i hope is.I dont think an archivist is paper oriented and traditionalist.I dont understand you Lucia may be you elaborate.What we Know in information profession, is that an archivist is an information professional with a function to manage permanently valued records whether electronic or physical.The documents are unique in nature and have got enduring value.
Records and Document Management expert
6yThe article is WRONG in many respects. In real life, most archivists are traditionalists and paper oriented, as they were educated in classic archival sciences. On the other hand, records managers are technologists, as the profession toof off after IT became mainstream, andunderstanding electronic information is critical. This is not all. Records managers and digital archivists follow different standards, ISO 15489 for RM and OAIS for digital archiving, and different models (lifecycle/continuum versus OAIS). Curators of museums and librarians have different things to catalogue and maintain, hence their different approach. We are taking not about two categories, but really three: Records managers, Archivists and Librarians /Curators. Each has its own domain. I am not sure whether Museum Curators and Librarians can be lumped together. In this case there are four distinct categories.
Nice schematic piece. We tried to square this circle with Aggregate then Curate after a project in Manchester with the MOSI Museum of Science & Industry. I think we need new metaphors & new processes for the digital age which allows for new forms of participation if curators can accept it; https://www.academia.edu/22587450/Aggregate_then_Curate_Digital_learning_champions_and_informational_resources