Post #5: Fair Compensation: Procuring Well-Deserved Funding for the Employees of Archives and Special Collections

Chela Scott Weber’s Research and Learning Agenda for Archives, Special, and Distinctive Collections in Research Libraries (2017) extensively explores options to improve the functions and quality of archives and special collections by placing attention on both the collections within these places as well as the skills that archivist, stakeholders, and others who work collections can offer to the public.[1] Weber also proclaims that to improve the innerworkings and missions of special collections and archives, diversity of the workforce as well as a push for accessibility and diverse collections must be prioritized. Weber argues that a blockade to drawing in more employees who want to instate these features is the reality of “soft money” funding: a highly unstable way to maintain employment of archivist and special collection staff. In this case, how can more concrete manners of pay be given to these employees?[2] From my knowledge, though this article was published in 2017, I would think that in many archives and special collections today, soft funding is still a major way to fund archivist despite their integrity to retaining, appraising, and learning collections and the history that these collections can unveil. This also makes me question whether the archivist in states like my home state (Delaware) have either been given fairer funding and benefits, or if outside funding and grants are still the basis of compensation for their labor. The jobs that archivist complete are very integral to sustaining many sources that provide a window into history, and if people are not fairly compensated to do so, the dwindling of such employees may be more than likely.

[1] Chela Scott Weber, Research and Learning Agenda for Archives, Special, and Distinctive Collections in Research Libraries, 2017, https://www.oclc.org/research/publications/2017/oclcresearch-research-and-learning-agenda.html.

[2] Ibid., Research and Learning Agenda for Archives, 13.

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