Working as an archivist

Working as an archivist

It is hard for a British person to get paid work as an archivist in Italy. Although the archive qualification gained here is accepted (in fact you are considered to be a “Doctor” in Italy as having an MA, or equivalent, means you are eligible for that title over there) it can be hard to know where to look for jobs. There is no specific jobs circular and so one must assume that jobs are advertised in the newspapers or are word of mouth. Sending speculative letters to archives you wish to work for is another option.

Offering your services for free is an excellent way to get experience but you would probably have to have some level of Italian language to be accepted. Business archives are much keener to take on volunteers from Britain as in a corporate environment all Italian employees are being encouraged to speak as much English as possible, so be warned… if you are going over there to practice your Italian this may not happen and you may even end up giving English lessons! In 1998 business repositories were more forward looking in their approach to digitisation, records management and electronic records. Moving with the times in a business environment means that they require archivists who possess relevant skills.

Archivi di Stato are more traditional employers and would require a high standard of Latin and palaeographical skills. The emphasis in these repositories is still on medieval and early modern documents (presumably because the majority of their records are from that period)

All archives and archivists have an extremely strong sense of history. Historians, academics and archivists are very closely linked. Most archivists in Italy come from a background of studying history (if not history then definitely humanities) and there is an expectation that the archivist cataloguing a collection will know just as much about the history of it as they do about the arrangement of documents. This perhaps means that moving around jobs is more difficult because individuals build up a knowledge about a certain period or organisation whereas in Britain jobs are based around the skills required rather than the specific knowledge. Archivists are expected to contribute articles to academic journals and sit on university working groups.

Last modified 07/09/2004