In your message Mr. Boylan, you mentioned that there were shortages in
information communication technologies, including museum network and Web
management.  I have spent most of my time researching employment in
collections, so it does not surprise me that I missed these types of jobs.
Could you, or anyone else, please give me details such what the job titles
are, what they do, and where I can locate them.  Thank you.

----- Original Message -----
From: Boylan P <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2000 11:10 AM
Subject: Re: what more can I do?


> On Mon, 21 Feb 2000, Adrienne Roberts wrote:
>
> ++++ [CLIP ++++
>
> > Out of panic and desperation, I thought I would turn to you all for some
> advice.  I am currently looking for an entry level position, preferably in
> the curatorial/collections field.  During the past 6 months I have been
> able to find more than 60 web pages that list museum related jobs in North
> America, so I've not been slack.
>
> =========================
>
> Adrienne:
>
> I feel very deeply for you.  In the early 1960s when the museum scene was
> in deep recession over much of the world it took me four years to get my
> first museum job, during which time I trained and then worked as a
> secondary school teacher.
>
> At that time the problem was that museums weren't recruiting, because of a
> combination of lack of growth and a stable (middle-aged) professional
> workforce of people appointed (or re-appointed) as UK museums
> re-established themselves after World War II.
>
> The present situation is different.  There is currently a massive
> "over-production" by pre-employment museum studies (and similar) courses
> in relation to even the most optimistic labour market projections in
> several major countries.  In less than 30 years the numbers of
> postgraduate museum studies courses around the world has risen from less
> that 30 to somewhere well over 500, while the average number of students
> on most of these has also often doubled or trebled.
>
> To take Britain as an example, there are probably less than 100 graduate
> entry-level jobs a year, and a rapidly growing proportion of these are for
> people with very specialised academic or professional qualifications (eg.
> specialist PhDs, education, specialised conservation, accountancy,
> building services management or human resources management), rather than
> generalist curators or other traditional museum studies specialisations.
> (It is estimated that curators in the traditional sense have fallen from
> over 30% of the total museum workforce three decades ago to around 12%
> today. However, against a labour market need of well under 100 a year, the
UK
> Museums Association currently has around 800 student members on (or
> recently graduated from) such courses trying to get entry level jobs.
>
> France was here 15 or so years ago. Most museum jobs were in the
> government service, and entry was by means of a national competition (the
> annual "Concours").  To prepare for this took at least two postgraduate
> years including up to a year of voluntary work in a major museum, and
> studies in the Ecole du Louvre.  There was, however, a fixed pass mark,
> and everyone achieving this was then placed on an official list of
> candidates who were allowed to apply for jobs when these became vacant and
> were advertised amongst those on the Liste d'Aptitude.
>
> However, despite a high standard and many failures each year, the numbers
> for one particular government grade - as curators or deputy curators of
> the major regional museums and galleries - mounted exponentially through
> the late '70s and early '80s, so that against a total employment (not
> annual vacancies) of around 150 there were quickly around 800 on the
Liste.
> In other words there were over three working life-times worth of
> candidates waiting for these 150 or so jobs to become vacant.
>
> The French government's solution was as brutal as it was controversial.
> Primary legislation was passed cancelling completely all these hard-won
> qualifications.  Instead a completely new system was set up based on a
> competition for entry to a national staff college for advanced training in
> museum, archive and heritage work.  Entry to this was by a national
> competition again, but now instead of having an absolute pass mark, the
> numbers who pass in each professional specialisation each year is strictly
> limited by government decree to the estimated number of professional
> vacancies that are expected to occur 2 years later, at the end of the
> training programme.  On this basis in some recent years the total number
> of museum curator passes in the Concours has been fixed as low as four
> per year - out of well over 600 entries a year to the competition.
>
> Though this seems extremely harsh, I often wonder whether this is not in
> the longer term far more honest that simply packing people into
> pre-employment courses in number than can never lead to employment.
>
> The other possibility, Adrienne, is to re-train for one of the "shortage"
> areas in museum employment, such as museum management or information
> communication technologies (including museum network and Web management
> and wider Internet skills). Both are rapidly growing areas within which
> there are definite skill shortages worldwide.
>
>
> Patrick Boylan
> Prof. of Heritage Poilicy and Management
> City University, London
>
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