A recent thread began with the cost of living in NYC vis-a-vis museum
salaries and led to a "larger issue" of salaries in cultural professions.
As noted, part of the problem is that some employers, usually private
non-profit organizations, simply don't have the money to offer adequate
compensation.  This raises the issue of whether or not, if those
organizations can't offer adequate salaries, are the boards of trustees of
the organizations meeting their responsibilities? We often talk about the
responsibilities of boards for the collections with which they have been
entrusted.  How often do we talk about the responsibilities of boards for
the people they employ?

A second issue is that the expertise required to do a profession job as an
historian, or as a museum staffer, or as a museum or historical agency
administrator is not well understood by the general public or by "human
resource" professionals.  In my opinion, this is because some members of the
general public and personnel classifiers think that a professional historian
or museum staffer needs no more than the skills required to write a high
school history paper.  There is also the fact that since most of us like our
work, we are too often willing to work for less than appropriate wages,
thereby keeping the salary scale low.

Our professional organizations (AASLH, AAM, etc.) occasionally conduct
salary surveys.  Is anyone aware of a survey that compares compensation for
historian, curator, and similar positions with compensation for positions in
other fields that require similar academic preparation and professional
expertise and experience?
William S. Hanable