different traditions and working environments, and the fact that at that moment
in a number of countries, education programmes were strongly influencing
the definition of the profile and not the contrary. The academic approach
was still predominant, and in some cases, the archivist was considered as a
researcher before being a professional. Moreover, having considered different
existing models throughout Europe, it appeared that the methodology and the
approach for developing the model could be quite different, for instance the
French6 and the Dutch models...The Section for Professionals Associations (SPA)
of ICA published in 2007 a paper summarising information on archival and
recordkeeping competency, certification and accreditation programs in various
countries throughout the world.7 This paper can be considered as a first step from
SPA to have a basis for reflection comprising several case studies. However we can
be surprised by the reduced number of initiatives throughout the world. They all
were developed by professional associations. There might exist "official" models
at the national level developed by public institutions, but in most of the European
countries, this is not obviously the case.
The 2007 International Conference of the Round Table on Archives in
Québec City gave us the opportunity to confirm concretely this impression.
I proposed to set up a discussion group (this was a new format for the
conference, tested in 2006). The topic was "Why do you feel special as an
archivist?", or "What makes our profession specific?". The group gathered
eighteen people from different countries, traditions, and working environments.
I regret to say that we were not able to agree about a single core competency
after a two hours discussion. One of the main points was that records managers
participating in the discussion group did not want to be considered as archivists,
and were pretending that it was a different profession, while some of the
archivists felt as they could be records managers as well... For others, it was a
single profession. This situation could easily be applied to Europe...There would
be an important consequence for our project: we would not use in our study or
whatever product we would deliver the terms "archivists" or "records managers"
in our study, but preferably take into account the concept of whole lifecycle
management.
Hans was no longer with us. However in Québec a simple, but friendly tribute
was paid to him by his "fellows in competencies", and we watched an interesting
video showing Hans dancing in an hotel room in Curacao, with a group of
colleagues I will not mention here.
Dancing again...
Act three: How Hans went on inspiring the project and preventing his
friends to forget about him (Kuala Lumpur 2008, Girona 2010)
As a consequence of this repeated finding, the working group decided, in the
framework of the International conference of professional associations held
in Madrid (October 2007), to give priority to the methodological aspect and
not to a precise definition of content. The project would therefore consist not
PROFESSIONAL
6 The French model is available online at http://www.archivistes.org/IMG/pdf/Referentiel_metiers.pdf
7 Sources relating to archival and recordkeeping competency and certification and accreditation programs, 2007,
available at www.ica.org. Since the publication other competency models have been developed, including
the French one.
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