On November 3, 2001, the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia held a celebration of its 40th anniversary. The School began in 1961 with a Bachelor of Library Science degree, expanded in 1971 to a Master's degree. This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Master of Archival Studies program in 1981. As the founding faculty member teaching in the MAS program, I offer these reflections on twenty years' development of archival studies at UBC.

As early as 1976, in the first year of its existence, the Association of Canadian Archivists called for the establishment of a graduate program for archivists. The first president, Gordon Dodds, asked Hugh Taylor and Edwin Welch, two senior archivists of British training, to write the Association's first education guidelines, which were approved at the annual meeting in June 1976 in Quebec City. President Dodds then had meetings with some university officials in eastern Canada to try to promote establishment of a graduate program for archivists, to no immediate avail. It was left to the West to respond.

Of his own accord, and with no initial contact with ACA, Roy Stokes, Director of UBC's School of Librarianship as it was then called, conceived the idea to establish an archival program, which he believed was a natural complement to the library program. Without Roy's drive and his stature in the University, it is doubtful indeed that his initiative would have succeeded. But succeed it did, just under the wire of the onset of recession, and in spite of certain academic doubts about the intellectual bona fides of the archival profession, which, with his eloquence at Senate, Roy managed to parry. It is difficult at this remove not to reflect on the stroke of good fortune that gave archivists in Canada such a good stage to launch their journey of professional education in the university, for the fact of there being a full-fledged master's degree to prove was absolutely vital, in my view, to the success the program enjoyed.

The program began in the fall of 1981 with a class of ten students, one full-time professor, and teaching help from the faculty of the School, the Department of History, which at that time had a formal role in administering the program, and many part-time teachers from the field, too numerous and too dangerous (for fear of omitting someone) to name. It is worth remembering that it was a very demanding program in the first ten years, requiring 60 credits, a three to four-month practicum, and a thesis. Perhaps readers of this who were not there in the early years can imagine what it was like to organize, instruct, and learn in virtually a virgin field in the Canadian university, to go on practicum to institutional settings completely unfamiliar with professional education, or, in what amounted to the greatest challenge of all, to devise and execute original research for the thesis. The program rose to all these challenges in ways and with results on which I would like to reflect at some length and, I do not mind saying, with some candour, for the story is one of many twists and turns little understood outside the ken of those who trooped to the eighth floor of the Main Library at UBC to give or take classes, study, and live through the growing pains.

The School proved to be a good home for the program. The Director, Basil Stuart-Stubbs, who took office the same day I did in July 1981, staunchly supported the program in every way he could, as did other faculty members, one of whom, Peter Simmons was given the unenviable task of teaching archival automation, about which he understandably had little familiarity, without benefit of a proper teaching laboratory. It was still the era of dumb terminals, with library automation confined to mainframe applications. This particular venture, like many such over the years, to reach out to existing knowledge in other disciplines and graft it onto archival studies, proved problematical. Today interdisciplinary study dominates academic discourse, and there is much talk about harmonizing the disciplines of the so-called information profession. In the early years of the program, it was expected that the MAS program could lean on library science, history, and indeed other disciplines. In retrospect, one can see that the fault in this kind of thinking was that there were powerful countervailing forces pushing archival studies to develop its own knowledge and intellectual self-confidence.

I gather that graduates of the program gave little impression of these struggles, of which they bore the brunt, for they soon developed, in my view, an estimable élan that did not go without notice in the profession. It may well have been part of the script, but few of us embroiled in the struggle saw it that way then. Now I am impressed by the tolerance and understanding of colleagues and the tenacity and good sense of the students, who made their way very well in the profession and in the university.

They did so in two principal ways in those early years. On one score, they went out into the field on practicum to provide a vital contact and locus for communication between the program and the field. Many in the field were curious about the program, some, few openly, hostile to it. No student was unaffected by the close attention paid to them in those years when everything was unfamiliar, and any misstep seemed to have the potential for disaster. In fact, disaster never happened. Soon there was healthy competition for practicum students, and glowing reports came in from many supervisors.

On another score, students rose to the occasion of writing theses, with remarkable results. I have written at length in the Fall/Winter 2000 issue of The American Archivist about the early experience of the required thesis. Of the 97 who set out on a thesis, 82 completed it. Two theses (those of Heather MacNeil and Trevor Livelton) were subsequently revised and published as books, and many articles were published from thesis studies, all of them noted in my article. Every thesis examining committee had someone outside the discipline on it. In numerous cases, the outsider compared MAS theses very favourably with the kind of work at that level with which he or she was familiar, and word of MAS students' accomplishments in this regard, more than anything else, established the academic credentials of the program. Much midnight oil burned, many agonies endured, but the accomplishments of thesis writers laid the foundation of a research component in the program and contributed significantly to Canadian contribution to archival discourse. Nowadays graduate programs are closely scrutinized from a research point of view, so this foundation, which did not really exist in 1981, has proved vital to the program and to the School. I shall always honour the students' hard work and intelligence behind this accomplishment.

This early success of the program did not go without reward. In 1986, Basil Stuart-Stubbs convinced the Dean of Arts to give one of the five new positions he had to distribute in the Faculty, the first new positions in years, to the archival studies program. The School was fortunate to be able to hire Luciana Duranti in 1987, who brought a deep knowledge of the European tradition of study of archives from her extensive Italian education. Her formidable energy and intelligence intimidated and inspired us all, and indelibly put a new stamp on Canadian archival studies. A third position soon followed, first filled by Albin Wagner, then Charles Dollar, and now Heather MacNeil, a MAS graduate of the 1980s.

Three full-time professors gave the program opportunity to fill out the curriculum.

Together full-time and part-time teachers, who continue to make a critical contribution, offer about twenty separate archival studies courses, exclusive of individualized courses such as the now optional thesis and internship, professional experience, and directed study. There are now two courses dwelling on computer applications to archival work, to say nothing of instruction on the management of current electronic records and their long-term preservation. This range of offerings, which can be surveyed on the School's website at www.slais.ubc.ca, goes beyond the wildest dreams of those involved in the 1980s and is unmatched by any other program on the continent.

A review of the first twenty years would not be complete without some mention of the employment of graduates. Of the over 200 who went through the program from 1981 until 2001, almost all found work in the field soon after leaving the School and remain productively employed in the field or in some closely related work. They work in Canada, the United States, and overseas. I well remember being asked in the early 1980s where graduates were going to get jobs. These fears were never borne out. It is also noteworthy that the growing number of foreign students who have the degree hold it in high esteem and are held in high esteem by colleagues, or so I am regularly told.

Several MAS graduates have gone on to do doctoral studies in the field. For the first twenty years, the School did not offer its own doctoral program, but one has just been approved, and is open now for applications. The inauguration of the School's doctoral program will mean that archival studies can go to the next step to produce scholars and teachers of the discipline at the highest level.

When I spoke briefly about the early years of the MAS program at the 40th anniversary celebration, I said that UBC did it the hard way, the right way, and of that it can be proud. In this same period, archival education has flourished all over the world, but it is generally recognized that UBC is one of the leading institutions for archival studies in the world. Much as I am averse to tooting our own horn, I have to say that is not bad at all for twenty years' endeavour and dedication to the cause of archival education and research.

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© 2001 Archives Association of British Columbia