Archival Studies
Graduate Certificate
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The Graduate Certificate in Archival Studies presents exciting educational opportunities to practitioners working in libraries and archives, especially on the challenges posed by the emergence of digital record keeping. It provides a specialization in an area of growing interest within the library and information science field, and creates opportunities to learn more about archival practices as they affect the composition and meaning of cultural artifacts and historical records.
The program gives students core knowledge they’ll need in archives-related professions. The curriculum is structured around the guidelines for graduate programs set by the Society of American Archivists, ensuring that students have a comprehensive understanding of professional archival standards that may not otherwise be acquired without an archives concentration in their graduate-level education.
*Residents of some U.S. Territories may not be eligible. Please see our Eligibility & State Authorization page for more information.
The certificate includes 9 units from required courses and 3 units from an elective course. The required courses include:
| This course provides an introduction to the archival profession with a focus on theory and practice in the areas of appraisal and acquisition, arrangement and description, reference, preservation, exhibitions, outreach, and electronic resource development. |
| This course examines the archivist's `first' responsibility - the appraisal of records for long-term preservation. Appraisal is first in the sequence of archival functions and, therefore, influences all subsequent archival activities. Importantly, appraisal is integral in archiving as, through it, archivists determine what sliver of the total human documentary production will actually become `archives' and thus part of society's historical narrative and collective memory. |
This course will focus primarily on digital curation and preservation in archives, libraries and museums. The course will explore and compare digital curation and preservation practices from other disciplines, such as e-commerce, government documents and various business document systems and collections, in order to understand both the differences and similarities in the organization, management and preservation of different digital collections.
