Archivist Career
Archivist Career
The Real Poop
Humans have a knack for creating clutter...even our heads are often cluttered with weird thoughts about dinosaurs and whether or not T-rexes actually had glorious feathers. We like coming up with ideas, and we like recording those ideas for later use. That's why we have so many books. And documents. And newspapers, and film reels, and songs, and crumpled sticky notes that just say "don't forget the elephant," whatever that means...if there's an idea, we'll find a way to record it.
Once these ideas have been jotted down, they need to be put somewhere. Preferably somewhere where we'll be able to find them again. That's when the hero/ine of our story, The Incredible Archivist, swoops in to figure out where, when, why, and in what order to store all the ideas that people have recorded.
If you like the thought of getting to organize other people's intellectual clutter—and scoring a cool $50,000 a year while you're at it—then get ready to hear the best news of your life: As an archivist, you can totally do that (source). All you'll need is a good education and mad organizational skills.
So what is an archivist? As professional archivist and incredible mustache man Richard Pearce-Moses wrote, "Archivists keep records that have enduring value as reliable memories of the past, and they help people find and understand the information they need in those records." Basically, it means you take stuff, put that stuff in order, keep that stuff in a safe place, and help people find the stuff when they need it. You're called "archivist" because it sounds a lot more professional than "Stuffmaster."
Archivists are in the same general career zone as librarians, records managers, and museum curators. All of these professions are about organizing and preserving information in some manner. However, as an archivist, the stuff you work with will be rarer than what a librarian gets, much flatter than what a curator gets, and much more permanent than what a records manager gets. Your job is to organize a bunch of cool one-of-a-kind things in a way that will last forever and ever.
The stuff that you'll be archiving will depend on where you work. Professional archivists can be found everywhere: in colleges organizing research materials, at news media organizations filing articles, and in the catacombs of the National Archives, helping the U.S. government keep track of its millions of historical documents. It may sound easy, and it is...once you've gotten your bachelor's, master's, and possibly even PhD.
Why so much schooling just to be able put stuff away? Well, say you're working on ancient Egyptian manuscripts. Shouldn't you know a little something about Egyptian history? And unless they were all in ESOL classes back then, you should probably know something about the language too. Where are you going to learn this stuff?
That's right: school. Lots and lots and lots of school.
Once you've put in that work, you'll find yourself getting paid a pretty penny for what you do. While your exact salary will depend on a lot of conditions (those what/where/why questions above), typically you'll make around $50,000 a year by the midpoint of your career. You won't start there, but most of the places you'll apply, from colleges to corporations to state offices, will get you there eventually. If you've taken the time to get that PhD, you'll be able to go even higher (with pretty great job stability to boot).
As you can imagine, the people best cut out for work as an archivist have organization on the brain. If you routinely leave a pile of clothes scattered around your bedroom (and bathroom, and living room, and car...) you might not be the best candidate. You've also got to be able to stomach long hours all by yourself. Archivists generally work alone, and your imaginary friend Shmooperella will only be able to keep you company for so long before you remember that she's, well, imaginary.
Basic people skills will also come in handy. You don't have to be the world's best schmoozer to do well in this field, but part of your job is helping people access all the stuff that you've archived. If you're just looking to lock yourself in a dark room without any human contact, look elsewhere. You've got a code to keep to (more on that later).
An archivist's job can be hard to get to (all those degrees), and the competition can be stiff since a lot of people think that being an archivist would be pretty neat. You can't avoid this problem, but you can skirt around it by looking at all your options. You could work at universities, corporate firms, film and television studios, and even in freelance positions.
Once you're in, though, you should be set for a good long while. This isn't a job that will wear out your body prematurely or bring you face-to-face with the worst of humanity. If you're good at what you do and you want to do it, you can have a job for life. And once you're gone, you can rest easy knowing that your successor is going to really appreciate your nifty color-coded system.