The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
I went through library school without a strong exposure to the archival profession and its rich history and scholarship. I'm trying to make up for lost time now, but am wondering if questions involving archives are welcome here.
Because of the increasing relevance of archival theory/practice to the preservation of born digital materials I would like to see archives included. But I was wondering what other people think?
...and then there are museums :-D
Ed Summers
I do think archives should be included because archivists go through a Library & Information Science degree program. I would say no to museums and galleries because they are a different degree program, so the education and philosophies might be different. Archivists fall under the umbrella term of the "librarian" profession due to the similar education while museum and galleries are a separate profession, in my opinion.
I would say that questions on archives should not be considered on topic. Archives is a separate profession from librarianship (evidenced by the existence of separate professional organizations, for example) that, while related to librarianship (and museum studies, as another information setting), also has ties to history and is more closely aligned to records management. Archives and libraries have different theoretical frameworks that underlie the organization and description of materials (archival arrangement and description vs. cataloging, for example). Although some archival programs are part of library degree programs, this is far from universal, as many schools offer archival studies through their history department and, within North America, the University of British Columbia, Georgia State and San Jose State offer a Master of Archival Studies or Master of Archives and Records Administration degree.
Questions regarding the preservation of born-digital materials that are not specific to a particular information environment might be better suited to the proposed Digital Preservation stack.
As an archivist who's title is librarian (that is I do both archival and library work) I think that the archival questions are certainly on topic. While the work can be very separate from library work, in my day to day job it is one in the same.
For example, my work envolves cataloging and metadata tasks for both archival materials and electronic journal articles and I need to worry about digital and physical preservation of our collections (and yes, I am waiting w/ bated breath for the Digital Preservation stack to get into beta).
Often the questions faced by archivists are faced by librarians as well: how to create a collection development plan or how to catalog a type of material. Yes, they are answered using different sets of background knowledge, but they all stem from the same premise of caring for and providing access to information no matter its form.