Archiving: A History Buff's Alternative to Teaching

                                                                   by Juan Carlos Sanabria
                                                                        February 18, 2013

            Many times when I mention that I'm a history major, people ask me, “so you're going to teach?” I've become very skilled at answering that question. I would then go into how a history degree can allow you to work as a curator, a researcher, a journalist, or an archivist - careers that, one way or another, deal with the field of historical study (like a history teacher would). Then some people respond by saying those careers don't entail as high an income as teaching, with which I don't disagree. Teaching has 17% job growth, beating archiving's growth by five percent on the United States' Bureau of Labor Statistics website. There are also a lot more teaching jobs than archiving ones, and many of those archiving jobs entail traveling to other parts of the country. But as a twenty-five year old with no children, working as, say, a civilian archivist for the military, I can make a decent living for myself – and hopefully remain nearby my family in Florida.

            What many of these inquirers forget or may not know is that the experience I get from working as an archiving assistant can also land me a job in business and/or industry, dealing with a organization or a company's records, documents – any type of material requiring oversight. These jobs may not involve the type of historical study history buffs enjoy, but depending on the employer, the salaries are typically higher than working for organizations strictly within the field of historical study.

            If a history buff wants an alternative to teaching, then one of the options I'd mention is archiving. It may not pay as well as teaching, but it allows the avid history buff access to documents that can help expand his or her knowledge of a period and place. As he or she reviews, chooses, and classifies the items for a collection, the history buff can indulge in his or her favorite past time by reading up on little-known facets about a person, place, event, or thing. Being an archivist places the history buff within the process of writing history. Professors come to archives to analyze and interpret history, and to help them, archivists must understand what collections will aid them in solidifying their conclusions. So in a way, an archiving career at a historical society, entails some of the same analysis and interpretation a professor would demonstrate in his or her publications.

            I hope this has been helpful for those considering archiving.

Best,

JCS

What I've Learned So Far

                                                                   by Juan Carlos Sanabria
                                                                        February 18, 2013

            My internship at the +Florida Historical Society  in Cocoa, Florida, entails that I familiarize myself with a collection in the archive, categorize all outside documents that may belong to that collection, write a new finding guide with the added documents, and then use a computer program called PastPerfect to present the fully organized collection through the organization's online databases. The title for my internship is “archiving assistant,” but I feel as though I might as well be doing the work of an actual archivist.

            The collection that I am working on is the Federal Writers' Project papers on the state of Florida. The Federal Writers' Project was a part of the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal Program established in April 1935 as a way of finding jobs for the unemployed during the Great Depression. The goal of the FWP was to write and compile extensive collections of local and oral histories, ethnographies, children's books, and field guides. At the same time, the FWP created jobs for historians, researchers, writers, editors, archaeologists, geologists, and cartographers.

            From a historian's standpoint, there are two ways to approach the collection: as a collection of primary sources or one of secondary sources. A primary source is original material from the past. A secondary source is material building upon a primary source. The FWP papers on Florida are ideal primary sources for late Depression-era American views on Florida history. As secondary sources, the writings are decent; I would recommend them first as primary sources for Depression-era American views on Floridian history before I recommend them as secondary sources for events like the Seminole Wars or the Spanish-American War. Every now and then, however, I find transcripts of interesting first hand accounts buried in some folder. It certainly is an important collection, covering most aspects of Florida and its history.

            In reflecting on what I have learned, I am overwhelmed with happiness. In the last several weeks I have learned how a research library functions, like the dynamics between the various jobs in the building and the importance of taking notes (and notes on notes), among other things. I have learned about aspects of Florida and Cuba's history I have never known about, which helps to supplement my focus on Cold War Florida and Cuba. In relation to my classes, the experience has increased my understanding of how the information taught came to be. There is also the aspect of selecting documents for archiving and/or for highlighting, as well as the process of predicting what researchers and the public may want to look for.

            More importantly, working alongside other individuals who care about history reminds me of the tentative nature of what we call history, those “real” stories that individuals and nations use to define their characters. As far as I can tell, those working alongside me care about the truth in the documents, but finding that truth can be an ordeal. The subjectivity of human nature and the circumstances pressing upon it are too evident when I pore through Florida's history according to Americans in the 1930s. I knew about the relativity involved in history when I first signed up for the internship, but to see it and to make sense of it has been enlightening.

Until next time,

JCS