Exploring the Current State of North American Graduate Archival Education

Abstract

This article analyzes 65 North American graduate archival education programs' course listings against current professional standards as crystallized in the 2016 Guidelines for a Graduate Program in Archival Studies (GPAS). The study addresses the following research questions: 1) What types of programs list graduate archival education courses?, 2) What types of courses do these graduate archival programs currently list?, 3) To what extent do archival programs' courses conform to GPAS?, and 4) What are the implications of a program's conforming or not conforming to GPAS? The authors' findings indicate an overriding tendency for graduate archival education programs to be hosted by LIS programs, especially under the auspices of iSchools. They identified a great diversity of graduate archival education programs and course listing combinations. Most important, they analyzed the archival curriculum coverage of 65 graduate archival programs to discern conformance with GPAS curriculum requirements. Although their findings may be used by programs for self-study, they also call into question the overall utility of GPAS and suggest the need for a more flexible approach.