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 the numbers of students and to have them selected by representatives of the profession were abandoned. The existing programs of the Archive School were integrated into the programs of the new partners. The existing course for senior archivists was defined as a separate three year differentiation or "study track" of the four years university Masters program in library and information science. The existing course for middle grade archivists has been defined as a separate three year differentiation of the four years programme of the library and information department of the School for Higher Vocational Education, leading to a Bachelor degree. Both programmes consist of three main components. The core component is archival science as applied to all archival functions, particularly archives and records management. In essence, this component is a conversion of the old programs for senior and middle grade archivists; the subjects involved will be taught by the teachers of the Archives School. The other two components are the other information sciences on the one hand and history and auxiliary sciences on the other. By reconstructing our programs for archival education in this way, we succeeded in broadening the scope of both programmes, in deepening the curriculum contents, in broadening the labour market perspective of our graduates, as well as in ameliorating the facilities for students and teachers. Conclusion Archival education depends to a large extent on how archival functions are understood and organized, on what status and orientation archival science has got and how strong and influencial the archival profession happens to be. In this respect global standardization makes no sense: different circumstances ask for different types of archival education. At the same time, however, it is unmistakable that global developments make archival educators around the world raise the same questions and that similar problems are very likely to lead to similar solutions. A few observations can be made from the Dutch experience: (1) In the information age archival education should primarily be aimed at educating specialists in process-generated information provided with a good knowledge of history, rather than at educating historians specialized in archival science. (2) Curricula of initial archival education should reflect the autonomous status of archival science as a discipline in the field of information sciences. (3) Due to the growing complexity of archival enterprise and archival science and to the increasing rapidity of change the education of senior archivists should be 103