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The purpose of this paper is to point out the increasing need to provide information professionals with a sound grounding in the technological aspects of their profession.

The paper sets out by describing the sudden increase in volumes of information that confront our society, and then looks at how the younger generation approaches/uses this mass of information. It then analyses how the traditional functions of information professionals (presentation of material, reliable preservation of information, maintaining authenticity, and conservation) are handled in an electronic environment.

The paper discovers that considerable technical knowledge and experience are required to carry out those same functions in an electronic environment and suggests a redefinition of information sciences as information engineering.

The paper recommends increasing the technology content in the training of information professionals such as archivists, records managers and librarians.

The paper concludes with a radical assertion that the proper locus for such training is a school of engineering rather than a school of librarianship, information studies and/or archives.

Archival education has progressed tremendously in the past 30 years. The numbers of archival programs, full‐time tenure track faculty and courses offered have all increased exponentially. Archival science is no longer seen as a sub‐specialization of library science or history and the efforts to legitimize archives as a separate field worthy of in‐depth inquiry at both the Master's and doctoral levels have succeeded. Most recently, however, the convergence of the information disciplines has called the distinctions between related disciplines into question. This poses both challenges and opportunities for archival education. This article places archival education in its historical and professional context, and will then discuss some of the issues relating to convergence and integration in the information professions.

As the archival profession seeks a wider role in the field of information science, the need to prepare students for careers in a rapidly changing world requires multidisciplinary education, greater emphasis on core archival knowledge, and fully articulated graduate programs combining structured course sequences with practical experience and sophisticated research projects. The Society of American Archivists is currently considering new “Guidelines for a graduate program in archival studies”. This case study of the graduate program in archives and records management at Western Washington University provides one example of the diverse offerings available for archival students. The six key aspects of the Western Washington University curriculum include: linking history and archives, integrating archives and records management, emphasizing information technology, incorporating management principles, including practical experience, and requiring research for a master’s thesis.

To discuss the purpose, methodology, and results of the recent Archival Census and Education Needs Survey in the United States (A*CENSUS)

Description of survey conception, purpose, methodology, and the implications of selected results.

The 2004 Archival Census and Education Needs Survey in the United States (A*CENSUS) was the first archival census in the USA since 1982. Funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services, it represents unprecedented cooperation and collaboration among over 50 archival organizations and educational institutes throughout the USA. Preliminary findings indicate that the educational preparation of archivists has changed drastically, the profession has feminized, and that archivists are aging, with insufficient numbers of younger archivists to replace them. In spite of these dramatic changes, the archival profession has failed to diversify racially and ethnically.

This early view of the A*CENSUS is intended to stimulate discussion and further analyses of these data. The methodology sets a precedent for inter‐organizational collaboration and will help archivists and allied professionals better understand the profession today as well as the prevailing trends.

This article presents an early report on the A*CENSUS results and discusses potential implications of use of the dataset.

This paper begins to construct a theoretical foundation for using a diplomatic-informed pedagogy that specifically addresses common concerns in archival instruction in a higher education environment. The authors utilize self-determination theory (SDT) to define student-centeredness and provide empirical guidance for creating a learning environment supporting student motivation, persistence and academic achievement. The proposed framework provides both structure and theoretical grounding for the archivist while also cultivating a learning environment which effectively motivates novice researchers.

The authors draw on diplomatics and archival instructional literature to propose an instructional framework utilizing SDT.

A diplomatic-informed pedagogy is a new, theoretically viable approach to archival instruction for novice researchers intending to replace common archival orientation and competency-based instruction. This pedagogical approach also provides a reproducible structure to the instructional archivist, helping to organize classroom learning outcomes, assessments and activities in alignment with evidence-based research and well-established archival theory.

This is a conceptual paper and based on subjective analysis of existing literature and theory. The proposed framework has not been tested in a practical application, but it is based in the pedagogical foundations of diplomatics and SDT's focus on student perceptions and motivations.

Diplomatics, the foundation of archival science and legal theory, can be applied pedagogically to provide concrete guidance to teach students to use archives in more intentional, creative and disciplinary authentic ways. Diplomatics gives the instructional archivist a pedagogical foundation, structure and guiding methodology to approaching novice researchers in the archives, while SDT presents how to implement such an approach.

The purpose of this paper is to present a survey carried out on a sample of Greek university students (including students of library and archival science) that aimed to map and clarify perceptions of the archive among the students as well as their understanding of the nature of archival science. Moreover, it intends to investigate the information regarding student’s opinions and expectations about their archival studies.

Two separate groups took part in this research and were asked to answer a questionnaire with 16 closed-type multiple-choice questions. The first group included 244 individuals, all of them Higher-Educational Institutions students from almost all academic fields. The second group contained 130 students from the three Information Departments of Greece.

The conclusions verify Greek society’s view of archives. Even though no consistent definition of the archive seems to exist among the sample of students on which this survey drew, there is a clear understanding of the archive as a source of information emerging from the questionnaires as a shared undisputed fact.

The research indicates that archival science is an important part of the information studies. The survey results were taken into account during the revamping of the curriculum of the Department of Library Science and Information Systems, Technological Educational Institute (TEI) of Athens.

The study has advanced the understanding of archival science as an informational discipline which has to contribute a great part in the integrated field of information.

University archives (UA) are the bridge between the past and the present and serve as a beacon for highlighting the contribution of academic institutions to society. Although the UA topic was introduced and formalized in the 1950s, the scientific research interest has increased significantly in the past two decades. This paper aims to provide insights into the UA research topic during the previous 15 years.

The combination of two well-established methods for performing literature review was deployed, aiming to identify, select and assess the research documents. Based on the selection criteria, 49 documents presenting research efforts around the UA topic were finally examined from the Scopus citation index. The selected studies have been classified into three main topics: strategic management of UA and the derived challenges, the educational contribution of UA and the strategic information systems for UA.

Some of the main findings are the lack of well-defined administrative policies, the low level of awareness and archival consciousness within the universities, the inadequacy of university archivists’ educational and training background, the need to use UA for building relationships with alumni and society, and finally, the need for metadata standardization by the UA management systems.

As a literature review around UA has not been conducted before, the reader will gain insights into the methods and research designs that other scholars had already applied to designate useful findings and results.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between historiography and archival practices. It takes the new social history approach to history as a case study for examining how historians' changing theories and methods may affect solicitation, acquisition, appraisal, arrangement, description, reference, outreach, and other aspects of archival administration.

The paper presents a review of the archival and historical literature since the late 1970s.

The paper finds that many aspects of archival administration have been and continue to be affected by the new social history trend in historical scholarship. The paper suggests that archivists and archival educators be trained in historiography as a way to understand historians' craft and develop strong documentation strategies to anticipate future archival needs.

Because the paper is primarily a literature review, it does not test real‐life examples or case studies that would be useful in understanding the relationship between historians and archivists.

The paper includes implications for the development of archival administration and education strategies.

The paper draws from a range of literature to consider the impact of scholarly practices on professional archival work.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the archives management practices and needs of corporations that do not employ professional archivists and propose strategies for helping corporations manage and preserve their archives.

An online survey was distributed to non-profit and for-profit corporations located in the XX area, USA.

The majority of surveyed corporations did not have archivists on staff and were not satisfied with their archives management practices. Many of them have unaddressed archives management needs and preferred no-cost or low-cost approaches to address those needs. Most surveyed corporations had digital archives but lacked knowledge about digital archiving. Free archiving resources and services provided by libraries/archives were dramatically less well known than commercial archiving resources and services.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the very few empirical studies on corporate archives not under professional control. Findings from this study inspired thoughts on how archival education programs, professional associations, cultural heritage organizations and other relevant parties could help corporations better manage and preserve their archives.

This article is the result of a brief survey, conducted across the Internet by researchers from the Archives and Records Management Programme at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. The authors discuss the need for records management training and education world‐wide, and the emergence of records management as a subset of information management, with an acknowledged impact on the systematic and efficient management of organisations. They show how the focus of records management has shifted over the recent past from the archival management of unwanted documents, to the management of electronic systems, giving records managers an equal standing with other professionals in the field of information management. Using a comparison between Malaysia, where much of the training is provided by visiting consultants, and the United Kingdom, where records management training is provided by the universities, the authors conclude that the needs of qualified and well‐informed professionals in this distinct field is dependent upon the training and education provided by courses in universities world‐wide. Their survey, however, reveals that there is no standard approach to the training provided by these institutions: some are likely to reflect their archival origins, others represent various streams of the broad context of information studies.