Archivist Job Description

An archivist decides which records an institution keeps for good, then makes sure those records survive and can be found. The Bureau of Labor Statistics sums up the occupation in one line: archivists appraise, process, catalog, and preserve permanent records and historically valuable documents. In government that sentence covers a lot of ground. A state archives may hold governors' papers, legislative bill files, prison registers and nineteenth-century land surveys. A county archive may hold deeds, court dockets and commission minutes. At the federal level, NARA takes in the permanent records of executive agencies when the agency records schedule calls for transfer.

Appraisal comes first. Nothing is preserved without a decision that it deserves to be. In the public sector that decision is written into a records retention schedule, a legal instrument that tells each office how long to keep each series of records and whether the series ends in the archive or in the shredder. Archivists help draft those schedules, revisit them when programs change, and push back when an office wants to destroy material with lasting value. A destruction order cannot be reversed, so an appraisal mistake is permanent.

Arrangement and description make a collection usable. Archivists keep records in the order their creator left them and record where they came from, then write finding aids to Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS), the Society of American Archivists standard. Those finding aids can be encoded in EAD and published through a system such as ArchivesSpace. A well-built finding aid lets a researcher tell in minutes whether a run of correspondence justifies a trip to the reading room.

Born-digital records are a discipline of their own. Email accounts, databases, geospatial files and shared-drive exports arrive as files, not boxes. The archivist confirms that a transfer is complete and unaltered, records checksums, identifies file formats, and migrates anything at risk of becoming unreadable. BagIt for packaging and Archivematica for preservation processing are part of that toolkit, along with the storage and backup decisions that keep the files intact for decades.

Reference and access connect the holdings to the public. A genealogist wants a naturalization file, a title examiner needs an old plat map, a reporter is chasing a former official's correspondence, and an agency attorney needs the paper trail behind a decision. Government archivists also screen material before release, because personnel files, medical information and some law enforcement records carry legal restrictions, and they work with the office that handles FOIA or state open-records requests.

Physical preservation still matters. Paper, film and photographs need stable temperature and humidity, acid-free housings, pest monitoring and a disaster plan someone has actually rehearsed.

In a large state archives these functions are divided among processing archivists, digital archivists, reference staff and records analysts. In a small county or city office one archivist may handle all of them, plus the exhibits, school visits and grant writing that keep the program visible and funded.

Education. BLS says archivists typically need a master's degree in history, library science, archival studies, political science, or public administration. As a rough guide, a library and information science master's with an archives concentration, or a history or public history master's that includes archival coursework and a supervised practicum, is the usual entry point for professional titles. Candidates with a bachelor's degree generally start as archives technicians or records clerks and move up as they add coursework and experience.

Experience. As a rough guide, plan on 1 to 3 years of processing, reference or records work before a full archivist title, and 5 or more years before supervising a section of a state archives or running a local records program. That early experience can come from internships, graduate assistantships and grant-funded project positions. BLS notes that students may gain valuable archiving experience through volunteer or internship opportunities, and a processed collection with a published finding aid is something a hiring panel can actually read.

Certification. The Certified Archivist (CA) credential is awarded by the Academy of Certified Archivists (ACA). ACA removed all education and work prerequisites for the examination beginning with the 2026 exam, so a candidate no longer needs a master's degree or a minimum amount of work history to sit for it. The exam is offered once a year. ACA has scheduled the 2027 exam as a virtual exam on June 10–12, 2027, with a $125 fee for first-time candidates. Certified Archivists pay annual dues and recertify once every five years.

For born-digital work, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) runs the Digital Archives Specialist (DAS) Curriculum and Certificate Program. The certificate is earned by completing required coursework and passing both the course exams and a final exam. Archivists whose jobs tilt toward retention schedules and agency compliance may also pursue the Certified Records Manager (CRM) from the Institute of Certified Records Managers.

Technical skills.

• Description standards: DACS, EAD and authority records for creators
• Collection management: ArchivesSpace or an equivalent system
• Digital preservation: BagIt, Archivematica, checksum validation and format identification with tools such as DROID
• Digitization: FADGI image-capture guidelines, metadata schemas and quality-control sampling
• Records management: retention scheduling, email capture policies and legal holds

Legal and policy knowledge. Government archivists work daily with their state's public records statute, the federal FOIA where it applies, privacy restrictions on personnel and medical files, and copyright as it affects reproduction and online publication.

Advancement. As a rough guide, the ladder runs from archives technician to archivist, then senior or supervisory archivist, and from there to a section head, a state archivist post or a records program manager role.

Working traits. The job rewards patience with long processing projects, precise writing, and the ability to explain a retention rule to an agency director without losing the argument.

Archivists are a small occupation. O*NET puts 2025 employment at 10,300 and rates projected growth from 2025 to 2035 as average, at 3% to 4%, with about 1,100 openings a year on average. The BLS wage survey, which counts jobs differently, found 7,970 archivists in May 2025. The same survey's industry rows list 860 archivists in local government, 830 in state government and 560 in the federal executive branch.

The federal shift to electronic records. OMB and NARA memorandum M-23-07 required federal agencies to manage all permanent records in an electronic format by June 30, 2024, and after that date to transfer permanent records to NARA in electronic formats with appropriate metadata. In its Federal Agency Records Management 2024 Annual Report, published in December 2025, NARA reported that the share of agencies saying they met the permanent records deadline rose to 71%, while 44 agencies (29%) did not meet it. That annual reporting cycle has run since 2009 and is one of the key methods NARA uses to gather information from agencies on the state of their records programs. For federal archivists and agency records staff, that means permanent records are supposed to arrive as files with metadata rather than as boxes of paper. The memo also required agencies, starting on July 1, 2024, to digitize permanent records created in analog formats before transfer to NARA, and gave the same June 30, 2024 date for managing temporary records electronically or storing them in commercial records storage facilities. Scanning specifications, image quality control and descriptive metadata are therefore part of preparing any analog permanent transfer, on the agency side and at NARA.

NARA's budget and staffing. NARA's FY 2027 congressional justification lists 2,796 full-time equivalents in FY 2025 and 2,628 in the FY 2026 enacted budget, and the FY 2027 request holds staffing at 2,628. The same request proposes savings from reduced development funding for the Electronic Records Archive 2.0 and the National Archives Catalog, less contract digitization, and the closure of several NARA locations. The FY 2027 figures are a budget request, not an appropriation, and Congress sets the final figure.

State and local programs. State archives and county and city records offices operate under their own records laws and budgets, so hiring follows state legislatures and local governments rather than NARA. A single position in a small program can combine archival and records-management duties, so a candidate who can write a retention schedule as well as a finding aid is prepared for both sides of such a job.

Where to focus. The skills the electronic records rules put in play are concrete: appraising email and shared drives, building ingest workflows, writing metadata that survives a transfer, and screening digital files for restricted content. A completed SAA Digital Archives Specialist certificate, a published finding aid, or a documented digital preservation project gives a hiring panel evidence of those skills.

Dear Hiring Committee,

I am applying for the Digital Archivist position with the State Archives. For the past three years I have worked as a project archivist at a regional historical society, where I processed municipal and business collections and built the society's first workflow for born-digital donations. I would like to bring that mix of traditional processing and digital preservation to a government program that receives records from agencies every week.

My main project was a collection of a former county commissioner's files: paper correspondence, a set of floppy disks and an external drive holding about a decade of email. I arranged the paper series to DACS, wrote the finding aid in ArchivesSpace, and handled the digital material separately. I imaged the disks, packaged the files with BagIt, ran them through Archivematica, and documented every format I could not open so the next archivist would know what remained to be done. The finding aid is now the society's most requested online guide.

I have also worked on the records side. When a nearby town asked the society for help, I drafted a retention schedule for its clerk's office with the town attorney, which taught me how to explain disposition rules to people who would rather keep everything or nothing.

Your posting emphasizes agency transfers and public reference. I enjoy both. I answer reference questions from genealogists and local historians each week, and I have learned to screen files for personal information before they reach the reading room.

My graduate degree is a library and information science master's with an archives concentration, and I am preparing for the Certified Archivist examination. I would welcome the chance to discuss how I could support your agency transfers and digital intake.

Sincerely, Jordan Ellery