Bastian / Yakel (15 July 2004) ICA Vienna 21
professional control. At the same time, increasing specialization of courses does show that
archival knowledge is developing and differentiating itself from other professions.
Larson notes that formalization of the cognitive base of a profession is significant
because "it allows a deeper and more thorough standardization of the production of
producers than would otherwise be possible."
22
While this may appear to be a somewhat
circular argument, it is important in assessing the current state of graduate archival education.
As this data overview and example demonstrate, there is a wide disparity not only between
course quantity but between course density, as well as between the courses that programs
choose to offer. The lack of a standardized curriculum impedes the ability not only to teach
archival science, but to teach those who would then go out and teach archives. Archival
education is still very tenuous in the university and a profession-wide initiative is needed to
sustain and encourage quality graduate level education.
1
Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis, Berkeley,
University of California Press, 1977, 40.
2
Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
3
Eliot Freidson, Professionalism: The Third Logic, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2001.
4
Timothy Ericson, "Professional Associations and Archival Education: A Different Role, or
a Different Theater?" American Archivist 51 (Summer 1988): 298-311.
5
Richard J. Cox, Elizabeth Yakel, David Wallace, Jeannette Bastian, and Jennifer Marshall,
"Archival Education at the Millennium: The Status of Archival Education in North American
Library and Information Science Schools," Library Quarterly 71/2 (April 2001) and R. J.
