ARHIVSKI VJESNIK 40. (ZAGREB, 1997.)

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T. Thomassen, A Small Country in the World of Archival Education: the Dutch Case, Arh. vjesn., god. 40 (1997) str. 95-104 Ever since 1919, colleagues from all over the world had highly esteemed the Dutch archival education system: the close relations of this Archive School with the archival profession, its pragmatic orientation and organisation, the wide scope of its programs, the relatively short duration. And the same went for the fact that all Dutch archivists, having been educated at the same school, used the same methods and standards, subscribed to the same professional values and shared the same professional attitudes. The maintenance of this efficacious system of archival education, however, dating back to the beginning of the century, became more and more difficult. The model of the school and the structure of its programs kept their original features, in a time when archival science, archival practice and the demands of the profession changed rapidly. The amount of graduates finding a job in documentation centres and records offices or a temporary and project-related assignment in one of the sectors of information industry increased gradually. Two years ago, only 30% of the graduates found a job inside the public archives system. Apparently, knowledge of archives was not a commodity only to be traded within the old boundaries of the profession anymore. The old professional organisation, designed to represent only the public archives, could hardly legitimate its predominant influence. The Dutch curricula had to be adapted ever more frequently to the changing requirements of an expanding archival enterprise. The auxiliary sciences of history gradually lost their central position in the curricula. New curricula had to be adopted, covering the whole life-cycle of records and archives and putting more emphasis on modern records developments. And because the staff introduced new subjects whithout reducing the hours of the existing ones, at a certain moment the one-year programs became overloaded. Gradually the programs also lost their very pragmatic character. The increasing complexity of the archival functions asked for a stronger theoretical basis of the educational programs. Consequently, an increasing part of the four days in a week which the students traditionally spent as a trainee in a public archives became devoted to schoolwork, to study and to research. The new programs of the Dutch Archives School Last year, the organisation of the Archive School as well as the structure of its programs and the scope and the contents of the subjects taught were fundamentally restyled. After the privatization of the school, strategic alliances were established with the University and the School for Higher Vocational Education in Amsterdam in order to make the Archive School part of the general education system. The exclusive authority over programs and examinations as well as the authority to fix 102