“Sometimes I feel like they hate us”: The Society of American Archivists and Graduate Archival Education in the Twenty-first Century

Abstract

The Society of American Archivists (SAA) has long involved itself with graduate-level archival education. It has sponsored committees and subcommittees, guidelines, roundtables/sections, student chapters, and pre-conferences. But limited empirical evidence exists regarding faculty members' view of SAA's involvement with graduate archival education. This exploratory qualitative case study employs semistructured interviews with full-time, tenure-track archival faculty. We address the ways in which SAA contributes to faculty members' teaching, faculty members' encouragement of students to join SAA, SAA student chapters and faculty advising, and how SAA might promote better communication, coordination, and collaboration between graduate archival education programs and practitioners. We contend that despite decades of effort on both sides, the relationship between graduate archival education programs and the Society of American Archivists remains disjointed, ultimately limiting the field's development. We offer recommendations and suggestions for future research to strengthen this relationship in the interest of improving student experience and the health of the profession.