1. Wanted: Free Labor
The Impact and Ethics of Unpaid Work
Lance Stuchell
2011 SAA Conference
Image courtesy of Flickr member Kevin H. / CC-BY-NC-ND
Session 105

2. This slideshow was originally presented at
Session 105 of the 2011 SAA Conference
on Thursday, August 25th 2011
(some slides have been edited for clarity)
For more information on this presentation, see the blog post at
http://newarchivist.com/2011/11/17/free-labor/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

3. This Presentation…
• Is Not:
– Arguing against internships or volunteerism
• WILL:
– Outline challenges facing our profession
• How internships complicate those challenges
– Discuss creating a “Pay it Forward” internship
– Draw a distinction
• Internships/volunteering for new professionals
• Volunteering outside an archives career track

4. Financial Challenge
• Professional positions require Masters degree
• Cost of graduate programs
• Small number of scholarship opportunities
• Prolonged job search
1
– Average of 6-months
2
– More applicants than positions
1
Dana Miller, “Professional Sustainability: The Elephant in the Archives,” 2009 SAA Conference Presentation (109), slide 15.
2
Miller, slide 15; Victoria Irons Walch, “A*Census,” American Archivist, vol. 69 no. 2, pg. 312.

5. Financial Challenge
• Does unpaid work compound this challenge?
– Limited in-school paid opportunities
– Some students simply have to have an income
– Inability of some to afford “placeholder”
employment opportunities
Image courtesy of Flickr member jollyUK / CC-BY

6. Diversity Challenge
“The relevance of archives to society and the
completeness of the documentary record
hinge on the profession’s success in ensuring
that its members, the holdings that they
collect and manage, and the users that they
serve reflect the diversity of society as a
whole.” – SAA Statement on Diversity
http://www2.archivists.org/statements/saa-statement-on-diversity

7. Diversity Challenge
• Does membership diversity include people of
different economic backgrounds?
• How does unpaid work complicate efforts to
diversify our professional ranks?
– Limits field to those that can “afford” education
and unpaid positions
– Is our price of admission too high?

8. What Do We DO?!?
Image courtesy of Flickr member sparktography / CC-BY-NC

9. Pay It Forward Internships
• Unpaid positions ≠ professional positions
without pay
• If you can pay, pay
– Drexel University Archives pays one intern a term
– University of Michigan’s IMLS Practicum pays
students for summer internship placements
• Some work is not appropriate
– Is it archival in nature?
– Is it better suited for a part-time paid position?

10. Bad Want Ad
Volunteer Wanted!
Duties:
• Supervision of other volunteers
• Processing and cataloging new collections
• Planning for technology upgrade
Qualifications:
• Graduate degree in Library Science
• Experience with arrangement and description
• Experience with archiving digital content

11. Improved Want Ad
Volunteer Wanted!
Duties:
• Supervision of other volunteers
• Processing and cataloging new collections
• Planning for technology upgrade
Qualifications:
• Working toward or considering a graduate
degree in Library Science
• Interest in learning archival arrangement and
description standards
• Interest in learning how to manage digital
content

12. Conclusion
• There is a cost associated with unpaid work
• Internships are important, make them count
• The archival community needs to respond
– Training new archivists is an obligation
– Make unethical practice unacceptable
Thank You!