WHAT'S DIFFERENT ABOUT RELIGIOUS ARCHIVES?

Abstract

Anyone who has recently attended the meetings of national or regional archival associations or who has followed the professional literature is aware that the last decade has seen a marked change in the nature of the archival profession. Not only have more and more people become archivists, but they have come to their work from a wider variety of backgrounds and with an increasing level of formal professional education and training. Even more significant, they find themselves working in a wider variety of archives, as institutions and organizations have established archival programs where none had previously existed. Perhaps nowhere is this expansion of the profession more apparent than in the area of religious archives. The most recent general survey of archivists in the United States found that 13 percent of the respondents identified themselves as archivists of religious groups. The number is remarkably close to the 1 7 percent of therespondents who identified themselves as working for private, non-religious organizations such as historical societies and libraries, one of the traditionally strong sectors of the archival world. Since 1973, while the percentage of archivists working for academic institutions, another numerical mainstay of the profession, has remained roughly constant, the number of religious archivists has doubled.1 What is more, the change has been qualitative as well as quantitative. Whereas religious archives programs in the past tended to be found mostly among the mainline Protestant denominations, religious archivists are now coming increasingly from Roman Catholic, Jewish, and evangelical groups. For all this growth and diversification, however, religious archivists have not succeeded in defining themselves adequately in relation to the rest of the profession. Perhaps because they and their institutions are relative newcomers, they have not yet exercised in professional circles an influence commensurate with their increasing numbers. This hesitancy results at least in part from a lack of models of large and successful religious archives programs. It also derives from uncertainty over the nature of what religious archivists

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