The society: From birth to maturity

American Archivist

Volumn 61, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 12-35

  Burckel, Nicholas C ^a  

^a MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79959775660     PISSN: 03609081     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.17723/aarc.61.1.j45n1v1277127r47     Document Type: Review

References (20)

1. Nicholas C. Burckel, "Archivists Facing the Millennium: Preparing for an Unknown-but not Unknowable-Future," 31 August 1996, Sixtieth Annual Meeting, Society of American Archivists, San Diego, California, published as an insert in the January 1997 issue of Archival Outlook
2. J. Frank Cook, "The Blessings of Providence on an Association of Archivists," American Archivist 46 (Fall 1983): 374-99.
3. Actual figures for each year: 1940 (247 members), 1965 (853 members), and 1990 (2,941 individual members). Society membership at the end of June 1997 stood at 3,145. Membership information for 1940 was taken from the December 15, 1939, mailing list in Series 200/3/2, Box 2, Folder 25 of SAA Archives, University of Wisconsin, Madison (hereinafter cited as SAA Archives). Data for 1965 was taken from the Biographical Directory of the Society of American Archivists, 1965, and data for 1990 was taken from SAA Yellow Pages, 1990.
4. Actual percentages for each year: 1940 (24.6%), 1965 (28.7%), and 1990 (54.0%). Directory information does not specify gender. Calculations are based on the author's knowledge of the individuals or his best guess on the gender in cases where the name may be ambiguous.
5. Directory information did not always distinguish between business and home addresses. The author was more interested in which states archivists worked in than in where they lived. Examining this data in conjunction with institutional affiliation provides a more complete picture 6 Actual numbers for each category are provided in the bar graphs. The numbers for each year do not equal the total membership numbers because it was not always possible to determine the type of employer or to include categories for all types of employers. The 1990 data assumes that members who selected an institutional section (e.g., college and university) were also reflecting their institutional affiliation. 'Mabel E. Deutrich and Ben DeWhitt, "Survey of the Archival Profession-1979," American Archivist 43 (Fall 1980): 532.
6. Although the American Library Association does not publish membership data by gender, a sampling of individual members listed in the Handbook of Organization and Membership Directory, 1990/91, indicates that approximately 70 percent of ALA members are women.
7. SAA Fellows as of 1 January 1965, listed in the American Archivist 28 (January 1965): inside cover.
8. Fellows listed for 1990, SAA Newsletter (January 1991): 4.
9. For a discussion of the early influence of historians, see Mattie U. Russell, "The Influence of Historians on the Archival Profession in the U.S.," American Archivist 46 (Summer 1983): 277-85.
10. Although there were forty-six articles, there were fifty-six authors, 48 percent of whom were women 14 The Society of American Archivists Fourth Annual Meeting Program, November 11-12, 1940, Montgomery, Alabama.
11. AREA-SAA National Conference on Records Management and Archival Administration, October 6-8, 1965, New York, New York.
12. Society of American Archivists, Final Program. August 30-September 3, 1990, Seattle, Wash.
13. SAA Fourth Annual Meeting Program (1940).
14. AREA-SAA National Conference (1965).
15. 'Financial Statement, December 31, 1939 to December 31, 1940. Series 200/4/1, Box 1, Folder 3, SAA Archives. Budget data for 1965 in the American Archivist 30 (January 1967): 218-19.
16. American Archivist 54 (Fall 1991): 578-82.
17. American Archivist 4 (January 1941): 1-12.
18. American Archivist 29 (January 1966): 1-10.
19. John A. Fleckner, '"Dear Mary Jane': Some Reflections on Being an Archivist," American Archivist 54 (Winter 1991): 8-13.
20. The thoughts and ideas of past presidents of the Society of American Archivists presented in the next several paragraphs reflect the results of a questionnaire distributed by the author to past presidents of the Society 26 The data presented in this and the next several paragraphs was obtained from the following sources: AHA data from Sharon K. Tune, Assistant Director, Administration, American Historical Association, Washington, D.C; ATA data from JoAnn Jacoby of the ALA Archives held at the University of Illinois-Champaign- Urbana; OAH data from Arnita Jones, Executive Director, Organization of American Historians, Bloomington, Indiana; and Encyclopedia of Associations, Vol. 1 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1991), 942, 1004, 1032, 8422, 9093