In today's Globe and Mail (a newspaper based in Toronto, Canada), there was an article titled, "Creativity gap plagues workers." In part, the article reads, "A good number of workers say they're creative types, but fewer say their jobs allow them to express that creativity, according to a recent survery. It's a conundrum that some say is leaving to a 'creativity gap' in the work force., leaving workers feeling unfilled and sometimes willing to job hop, occasionally for less pay." The survey sample is so small (+500) that is effectively meaningless, but I think the concern articulated here is an interesting one.
I have two kinds of reaction to this sort of claim. The first, cynical reaction is to metaphorically shrug my shoulders and think something like, "How sad for you - you can't be creative at work. There's a reason that it is called work. If you want creative, go write a damn novel or act in a play or something in your spare time." My other reaction concerns archival work. I have worked, in a rather junior capacity, in two archives now and the work is quite the opposite of creative. Some of my archives readings have argued that archivists play a creative role in creating records, through selection, appraisal and so forth but I wonder if archivists really have that much influence in what happens. In institutional archives (i.e. most archives), what is archived is often defined by somebody else in the organization (e.g. accountants, lawyers etc).
The question of the day: Are archivists creative workers? Is much creativity involved? Or to put my spin on this: Is it intellectually satisfying work for somebody with three university degrees or is it, as I sometimes fear, little more than glorified file clerks who have tried to inflate their status?
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2 comments:
Are archivists creative workers?
Not really. But we can be curators of those that are creative workers.
Is much creativity involved?
Not really. Though one can argue that archivists are creative with rules (everything that you learned in school is often thrown out the window when it comes to a practical application of them there theories), or creative with budgets, or creative with stretching supplies to do things they were never meant to do, or developing a creative way to explain to folks who have no idea what an archives is, just what exactly an archives is (extra bonus points if you are able to do this without using the phrase 'glorified file clerk')...
Is it intellectually satisfying work for somebody with three university degrees or is it, as I sometimes fear, little more than glorified file clerks who have tried to inflate their status?
Though glorified file clerks takes it a bit far (as someone who has had to train a ridiculous number of students and volunteers, I can say with full confidence that some sort of theoretical background or familiarity with RAD is a beautiful, beautiful thing, and they don't teach you those things in file clerk school, but they do in library/archives school), archives are ultimately about systems, and learning the system and making it work. Though what about that pesky notion of the archives being an organic creature?
Intellectually satisfying? Could be, if you aren't massively understaffed and so have the time to actually think about what you are doing. You are preserving the world's knowledge, after all. It's a pretty damn cool job if all the other shit didn't always get in the way.
Perhaps you might want to check out this posting at Annoyed Librarian
http://annoyedlibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/10/calling-all-librarians.html
There is a discussion over there about what you are talking about in this post.
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