The debate as to which background is best -- history or business -- is an
interesting question but I think not quite the right one.  Suppose the
question was what is the best preparation for an attorney or a doctor -- a
bachelors degree in business, history, or engineering?  Does it really
make that much difference?

A more interesting question is what have are career paths been; what are
they now, and what are they likely to look like in the future.

When I first came into records management -- records managers typically
had AA degrees while Archivists commonly had masters degrees in library
science and history.  This has changed more on the records management than
the archives side.

Records managers have typically received on the job training and took
advantage of a variety of continuing education opportunities while
archivists basic training was more academically based.  Should this
change?  Understanding business skills is useful but I am not sure that
this is quite the right training for records managers.  If we are going
the academic route we might want to consider what a RIM curriculum might
include.

For example

Basic business classes similar to core classes taught in most MBA programs

Business law, litigation and rules of evidence basics, forensics

Computer basics -- what they are and how they work

Information management such as indexing, thesaurus, linguistics

IT trends and how this may impact business documentation

Project management in large organizations


But is this really feasible to think we can find an academic institution
that would want to host such a program.  I have my doubts.
Dave Gaynon

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