The aim of this thesis is to examine the archivist's professional role in public authorities and discuss if, and in what way, the profession is effected by the new swedish process oriented archival description system. The study focuses on swedish authorities and does not make any international comparisons with other institutions. Neither does it investigate archivists workingin the private sector, but centers on public institutions.The survey is performed in five swedish public authorities, using interviews and observations. Grounded theory is used as a method initially in the purpose of keeping an open mark towards the object of study. The initial results led on to questions about how well the archivists perceived that communication within the authorities served, and how this in turn prepossessed their work situation and the professional roles in which they found themselves. To answer these questions, theories from the subjects of sociology and social psychology, among other things the idea of sensemaking as it is put by Karl Weick, was used to analyze the material.The result of the analysis shows that the implementation of a new archival system has generated a change in the archivists work tasks. The archivists in the studied authorities did in some cases, out of this new situation, manage to find a professional role in which they felt comfortable, and in some cases not. The difference between these two categories seemed to stem from a difference in the ability to make sense of their situations in their workplaces respectively. In the cases where the archivists ideas of their responsibilities and provinces did not correlatewith their employers a lack of sensemaking occured and led to confusion and conflict. This discrepancy between the archivists and the employer's expectations, the thesis argues, comes from the change in the archival profession that is taking place due to the changes in society at large. The employers' traditional image of an archivist clashes with the archivists new professional role. From this it is suggested that if consent is not reached around the archivists place in the organizations, and in society, much knowledge is at risk of being lost, and much competence going to waste. This thesis is a two years master's thesis in archival science.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-197020 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Grönroos, Ida |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för ABM |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Uppsatser inom arkivvetenskap, 1651-6087 ; 122 |
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