I've done my best to stay out of this, but I have to respond to Sharon
and Charmaine.

Sharon is right, "State and local governments hire archivists, private
companies hire records managers," is too simplistic a statement.  In
reality local governments have very few trained Archivists.  

In the Great State of Texas we have over 8,000 local governments and
they have a combined total of five trained archivists.  Dallas and
Irving have one archivist each and Harris County has three.  There are
other archivists working in libraries but they are working with
manuscript collections and not with the records of the organization.

But by law all local governments have "Records Management Officers" to
handle the more traditional records management issues.

The result is that permanent records are being lost every year in Texas
and even many of the records that are saved are under-utilized because
there is no professional staff to promote accessibility.    

Part of the problem is with the archivists, all too many who would
rather work for a pittance in academia rather than work for local
governments.  But part of the problem is also with the local governments
who may have the oldest, most extensive and heaviest used archives in
their respective communities but do not seek out professionals to work
with them.

We've made great progress in Harris County.  We have a functioning
archival facility.  The District Clerk hired two archives interns last
summer and he and the County Clerk are both putting more money into
records preservation than their predecessors, but we still have a long
way to go.

Paul R. Scott, CA, CRM
Records Management Officer
Harris County, TX

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