What should be the qualifications for digital archivist jobs?

Mon, 02 Dec 2013 13:58:47 +0000

I'm increasingly seeing listings for "Digital Archivists" at a range of cultural heritage organizations and many of them look very different from each other.

As academic programs increasingly try to prepare students for careers as digital archivists it would be helpful to have a sense of what the qualifications they should be developing are. With that said, I've seen listings for digital archivists that:

want people with master's degrees in computer science
look much more like digital asset manager jobs and are primarily focused on organizing digital assets and doing things like running content management systems.
want the candidate to have a PhD.
focus on archival description and are looking for people with an MA or MILS
include varying degrees of technical skills (in this case MySQL and Archivematica)

So, what should the general qualifications for a digital archivist job be in terms of training, credentials and technical chops?

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What should be the qualifications for digital archivist jobs?