Archives? Career/ courses

[TheLivelyRose]

Asking for a friend.

Daughter has a MFL degree. Is really interested in historical archives. He did a small amount of volunteering over the summer after uni. She's considering a career in it however from what she can see there's little money in it. The drops available appear to be part time, and even the full time ones don't pay much money even for experienced archivists.

Money isn't the only consideration. Career satisfaction is important but one has to consider that you seem to need a post graduate in this.

She'd be paying £££ for an MA or PgDip and if the salaries are low then it's maybe not worth it.

Any idea and it does only one have any experience or know.If this type of career is completely saturated. Enjoying your job is one thing, but if there's no money in it or very few jobs, then it's going to impact on your life and waste several years, and that's what she's thinking about.

Archives jobs tend to be in either universities, (where jobs are disappearing/being cut like crazy) or government institutions (eg my local city has its own archive as part of the library. Clearly local government is financially stretched ). There are a few charities (eg a local historical site has an archive). It’s not well paid and there are few jobs.

Thank you. So largely not worth it and I am assuming that the course is postgraduate are very expensive?

I have a friend who's an archivist - I'll ask her about it. I think in the junior jobs it's a lot of cataloguing. From my brief experience of working with a Head of Archives, I got the impression that senior archivists are personable types, but (apparently) junior achivists tended to be people happy just keeping their head down and cataloguing all day.

And if you do get a senior role, you'll probably spend a proportion of it trying to justify the continued existence of the archivists' jobs.

Doesn't that get a little bit boring
Just cataloguing?

Also, sorry for the state of my first post. I am dyslexic so I use speech recognition. That didn't prove read that first one.Well enough.Obviously i'm dyslexyic and I must have been muttering a bit too much. Hope it at least made sense.

It depends on how much you want the job. It’s not something you do for the money. I’m a historian so have a fair few students training as archivists/librarians.

She would be up against people with history degrees, which would give them a stronger knowledge of historical research.

I work in an archive (not a qualified archivist) and there are jobs in both the public and private sectors. It is absolutely fascinating work - so many interesting things to see.

Work in museums/archives/heritage organisations is not well paid as a rule but no one goes into it to get rich. Languages can be a bonus depending on the archive - we offer translation services.

If she has any scientific bent she may want to consider a conservation course. Conservators are very hard to recruit and I know at least two who were headhunted.

So another language isn't necessarily helpful?

No sciences.

Speaks one language fluently but did drop out of her university course for personal reasons.Take a year off and then go back and finish her degree at another university.So I dont know if that will look bad.

Doesn't that get a little bit boring
Just cataloguing?

It is so much more than listing details on a spreadsheet. It involves research, making connections, writing articles and working with other archives. There are also some really interesting things to do with public access.

Not unless she happened to get a job at an archive that had material in that language

I am so sorry. Didn't mean that to sound rude. I didn't realise how that sounded.

Yes that does sound quite interesting

I’m a librarian, and I’d also say that there are a lot of transferable skills in archives and record management. Pretty much every organisation has records of some kind, and, especially if you do a module on information governance during your qualification, you can be a pretty desirable hire, even if you’re not in a historic palace like you’d expected initially.

Cataloguing isn’t boring, either, for what it’s worth - it’s describing the thing in a way that is both accurate and useful to people who might be looking for it. It’s a real skill, and there are SO many uncatalogued things in archives that it’s not impossible that she might find something really exciting. Archives are often overseen by magpies!

It's a modern foreign language too so unlikely I guess.

The archives at my university do quite a lot of work teaching our history students so can be a lot of variation of work. As a historian, it’s great to have this resource so students can get experience researching in an archive.

@TheLivelyRose - Response from my archivist friend:

They would be best to have a look at the Archives and Records Association website first of all: https://www.archives.org.uk/a-career-in-recordkeeping

Most of the jobs are posted on Jiscmail NRA here: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=ARCHIVES-NRA so they can have a look at the types of role available.

My recommendation is that they would need to gain experience in an archive first. There are some archive assistant roles out there but they are few and far between. Therefore the only route is probably volunteering. You are supposed to have experience in the sector to do the course anyway. I have come across a few people who didn’t but they found it extremely difficult to get a job afterwards.

The first jobs for many recent graduates are short-term cataloguing project posts funded by grants. As cataloguing is pretty central to archives anyway, this is all good experience.

The Archives and Records Association do have a recommended minimum salary which some employers adhere to: https://www.archives.org.uk/salary-recommendations

Job chances in the current market are hard to gauge as I’m a bit out of the loop. However I would say that the number of courses expanded around 20 years ago due to the perceived demand that the Freedom of Information Act would cause. When the requests didn’t flood in, the sector contracted. In the last few years it contacted a bit more due to cuts in budgets after Covid. The number of courses remained the same so I would describe the market as competitive!

Thank you that's really comprehensive. It sounds worse than my profession.

I'm a solicitor and when I started out, I didn't immediately get a training contract. I was looking for paralegal work. Paralegal jobs required experience.So how are you supposed to get it? It was hard to get started.

That sounds very similar in that they won't take you on an assistant role unless you have experience or on the course?

Does the profession have quite a high dropout?Rate in that people give up quite quickly.Simply because there aren't any jobs?

@Plumpciousness thank you for posting this info, which I've passed on to DS2, as this is an area he is interested in (he has a First in History of Art, but is currently working way outside that field). One of the educational casualties of the lockdowns for him was the Achiving course which the Librarian at his school was to have run as one the enrichment activities for the sixth form.

I've just remembered that one of our archivists has a modern language degree!

DD has been looking into this as a History UG, and a Masters. She has specific university experience in handling ancient manuscripts, paleography, Latin, Italian, and Old and Middle English. She has been told she needs experience, but you can't get experience, without...... experience! Its a shame, because she loved her niche modules, but is finding it difficult to find a real world place in which to use them.

What sort of archive job is he / she in?

@TheLivelyRoseJust because one employee has a MFL degree it doesn’t follow that it’s a good degree to have did this work. My DD also has a MFL degree and most of her friends work in business or teaching. DD converted to law, but she was unusual. Lots of historic places maintain archives but the jobs market is not great I think. Certainly not well paid. Has she never engaged with careers fairs at uni or their careers service?

Qualified archivist at a County Records Office (aka County Archive).