[Nhcoll-l] Collection management: trade or profession?

[Shoobs, Nate]

 I think what John articulated here is correct but perhaps unfortunate.
I would love it if there were an international guild of museum curatorial staff that had an apprenticeship system. (Or, alternatively, if collections management were professionalized to a greater degree and we became similar to university professors, art museum curators, or librarians.) But neither scenario is currently the case.

It seems clear that: 1. there is a huge degree of variation in the way institutions treat collections staff, but that by and large, institutions tend to undervalue and poorly treat collections staff compared to, say, collections-affiliated faculty (in university affiliated collections, or in freestanding museums with academic rank systems that divide staff and faculty), and 2. we should collectively make it a priority to advance our field in a way that makes careers in collections work more accessible for newcomers and more economically sustainable / professionally fulfilling /  for existing practitioners.

I think it is interesting to note the discrepancy between the public’s conception of our work and our professional treatment. I have rarely encountered someone who didn’t think collections work was the coolest job someone could possibly have.

But we can’t eat ‘coolness’. The poor compensation and lack of professional autonomy that many collections staff experience is a serious problem in the field.

I wonder how people in SPNHC might view something like professional certifications akin to those employed by the Ecological Society of America, as a route towards professionalization: https://www.esa.org/certification/certification-requirements-checklist/

These are certifications that are meant to guarantee that the certified practitioner has a certain level of expertise in a shared body of knowledge. These certs are held by academics, government ecologists, and ecologists in private industry, and often form a prerequisite for hiring at certain levels.

There is an effort right now in the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society to implement a similar certification for 'Professional Malacologist' (in the sense of a professional freshwater mussel surveyor skilled in freshwater mussel identification and field survey methods, commonly used in the US environmental consulting field).

Maybe SPNHC would benefit from this, or maybe not. I don't personally think professionalization necessarily guarantees better treatment or better pay, and it could serve as an unnecessary barrier to entry for newcomers to the field.

(Ex. The medical field in the US professionalized in response to a perceived excess of doctors in the late 19th and early 20th century<https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/D6B538A4BBBA23CE4F4DB83FBEC95517/S0025727300042265a.pdf/physicians-science-and-status-issues-in-the-professionalization-of-anglo-american-medicine-in-the-nineteenth-century.pdf>, and the result of that professionalization is the high-cost, inefficient, and exclusive system we have today, where the supply of doctors is artificially limited by the American Medical Association<https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/why-does-the-us-make-it-so-hard-to-be-a-doctor/622065/> in order to keep average compensation high.)

-Nate
-
Nathaniel F. Shoobs, Curator of Mollusks
College of Arts & Sciences Dept. of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University
Museum of Biological Diversity
1315 Kinnear Rd, Columbus, OH 43212
614-688-1342 (Office)
mbd.osu.edu<http://mbd.osu.edu/>
________________________________
From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of John E Simmons <simmons.johne at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2024 1:42:21 PM
To: Callomon,Paul <prc44 at drexel.edu>
Cc: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Collection management: trade or profession?

Paul, I am not sure what it is you are really asking. Using the definitions of trade and profession in your original email, the answer is that collection management is neither a trade or a profession. Collection management is not a trade because


Paul,

I am not sure what it is you are really asking. Using the definitions of trade and profession in your original email, the answer is that collection management is neither a trade or a profession. Collection management is not a trade because there is no apprenticeship, journeyman period, or other qualification that one has achieved mastery. Similarly, collection management is not a profession because it lacks a professional qualification (as in your examples of MD, JD, CPA, etc.), but of course by this definition researcher, administration, and so forth are not professions either. What you have presented is really a false dichotomy, if we use your definitions.



Collection management is a profession, by the criteria that I listed in my response on 23 February. As for curation, I agree with others that the definition here is highly variable from one museum to another. Dirk is correct that the word means “caring for something,” and originally those called museum curators were called that because their job was to care for the collection (in the UK, that title was usually keeper). What we find now in museums is that “curation” means many things, from collection care to research. The title alone does not tell you what the person does. We see a similar thing with other titles for people caring for collections. When I advise students, I tell them to ignore job titles and read the job description. Often the same duties are described for the person with the title collection manager, curator, registrar, curatorial associate, and so on.



But back to the issue of the question you asked, “Is collection management a trade or a profession? What’s the difference?” The way the terms trade and profession are used on by the majority of people and institutions do not conform to the very limited definitions you proposed. Most people would probably say that collection management (and research and administration) are professions, based on the way we routinely use the words. For example, these are the definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary:

Profession: “A vocation, a calling, esp. one requiring advanced knowledge or training in some branch of learning or science, spec. law, theology, or medicine: gen. any occupation as a means of earning a living.”

Trade: “The habitual practice of an occupation, business, or profession, esp. as a means of livelihood or gain. Now usu. a mercantile occupation or skilled handicraft (esp. one requiring an apprenticeship), as distinct from a profession, or skilled handicraft, as distinct from any other occupation.”



There are more detailed definitions of profession and trade, but these are not reflective of common use of the terms nor do they conform to the way they are used in museums. By the more detailed definitions, collection management, curation, and research are neither trades or professions. Here are the definitions from Wikipedia, that Knower of All Things (and note that the following definitions are not supported by English language dictionaries):



Profession: “A profession is a field of work that has been successfully professionalized. It can be defined as a disciplined group of individuals, professionals, who adhere to ethical standards and who hold themselves out as, and are accepted by the public as possessing special knowledge and skills in a widely recognised body of learning derived from research, education and training at a high level, and who are prepared to apply this knowledge and exercise these skills in the interest of others… Professional occupations are founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested objective counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain. Medieval and early modern tradition recognized only three professions: divinity, medicine, and law, which are called the learned professions. A profession is not a trade or an industry.”



What makes collection management, curation, and research fail to qualify as professions is what the Wikipedia site goes on to say is “the process of professionalization”:



“Major milestones which may mark an occupation being identified as a profession include:

  1.  an occupation becomes a full-time occupation
  2.  the establishment of a training school
  3.  the establishment of a university school
  4.  the establishment of a local association
  5.  the establishment of a national association of professional ethics
  6.  the establishment of state licensing laws”



It is the last one (state licensing laws” that excludes nearly educated profession except medical doctors, lawyers, and CPAs, unless you want to throw in engineers and a few other “professions.”



The Wikipedia definition of trade, significantly, is under the heading of Craft:

“A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale production of goods, or their maintenance, for example by tinkers. The traditional term craftsman is nowadays often replaced by artisan and by craftsperson… When an apprentice finished their apprenticeship, they became a journeyman searching for a place to set up their own shop and make a living. After setting up their own shop, they could then call themselves a master of their craft.”



--John


John E. Simmons
Writer and Museum Consultant
Museologica
and
Investigador Asociado, Departamento de Ornitologia
Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima


On Sat, Feb 24, 2024 at 9:40 PM Callomon,Paul <prc44 at drexel.edu<mailto:prc44 at drexel.edu>> wrote:
The reason I brought up the trade/profession distinction is because the meaning of those two words, which was once so clear (as I defined them before, and based on different career pathways) has become so confused with a similar term as to defy simple definition. When ambiguous terms are involved in discussions of power, however, it's often because their ambiguity makes them useful to the powerful.

"Profession" and "professional" are two different and largely unrelated terms, as demonstrated by their antonyms: "profession" vs. "trade" and "professional" vs. "amateur." CMs in many institutions in the USA see themselves as "professionals" because they are in a "profession," but that is to mix the two terms. Collection management in natural history museums is something of a chimaera, in that its practitioners often have and apply a body of knowledge you would expect from someone in a profession (a doctor, lawyer etc.) but are treated by management as tradesmen. A "technician" in the European sense is maybe a more apposite term for this.

In the struggle to be recognized and compensated as high-knowledge workers, we maybe do ourselves no favors by using ambiguous terminology. What many people mean by "professional" is "educated and salaried." There is also the social use of the term "professional" with the antonym "unprofessional," which are subjective judgments of behavior unworthy of gentlefolk (and that sporting pair - "gentlemen" vs. "players" - is a synonym of "amateurs" and "professionals.")

Incidentally, the use of "professional" for museum curators and staff dates to the late nineteenth century and only means "employed full time" - that is, not amateurs. "Museum curator" has never been considered a profession like law or medicine, as it has no legal privilege. For all their erudition, curators and CMs alike cannot legally perform surgery or prosecute people in court.


Paul Callomon
Collection Manager, Malacology and General Invertebrates

________________________________

Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia
callomon at ansp.org<mailto:callomon at ansp.org> Tel 215-405-5096 - Fax 215-299-1170




________________________________
From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu>> on behalf of Laura Rincón <collectionslitclub at gmail.com<mailto:collectionslitclub at gmail.com>>
Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2024 7:55 PM
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Cc: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu> <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] [External] Re: [KU SUSPECT SPAM] Re: [EXTERN] Re: Collection management: trade or profession?


External.

 I am uncertain about the potential issues that may arise if CM is considered both a trade and a profession. Could this correlation perpetuate low salaries and hinder an understanding of the tasks performed in collections?

Having this combination between on-the-job learning and university-trained professionals is a great recipe for me. I like what Liath says about Collections Management (CM) being a specialization within the profession category. For example, my undergrad is in Information and Library Sciences, and I pursued a Master of Arts in Museum Studies. However, during my graduate studies, I discovered my interest in biological collections. Despite the fact that my master's degree did not specifically focus on natural history museums, I decided to gain experience by working at the natural history museum of my university.

It would be interesting to explore how an Union or HR decides to assign a title to the CM position. What resources do museums rely on to implement significant changes in titles? There are many titles assigned to specific job positions, and this can vary among natural history museums. Ultimately, it appears that some museums are still grappling with a clear understanding of what CM entails.

Very interesting questions and discussions around this topic!

Thank you,



Laura A. Rincón R. |  Museum Studies professional

Malacology Museum Specialist

Division of Invertebrate Zoology

American Museum of Natural History



Email: lrincon-rodriguez at amnh.org<mailto:lrincon-rodriguez at amnh.org>
Twitter: @LauRincon222



https://collectionslitclub.wordpress.com/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://collectionslitclub.wordpress.com/__;!!KGKeukY!yhNXeDOzSbzvtqUcx2YM7EUmuj9buQUAPiHW2wktpt0g727c3YRUaUtmjLmH2FoEErTvI4nb-RrQ5nFmgkCNj8s$>



“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” Maya Angelou
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