Research On Working Status And Career Development Of The File Clerks In The Archives Of Institutions Of Higher Learning

Fundamental to the all-round development of the institutions of higher learning, the archive management has become increasingly complicated with the transformation of higher education from elite education to mass education. It is particularly true with some institutions of higher learning in which archives have not yet been established and the very limited number of file clerks not only have to shoulder the burden of archival work but also need to help with the general affairs of the college or university, which makes them feel powerless while struggling to cope with the transactional work and have no time to attend to personal and professional development. As a consequence, some file leaders feel that they are ’drifted away from the core leadership’, the experienced file clerks feel ’burnout tired of the tedious endless work’ and those green-hands find the job not promising at all and are on the lookout for other jobs. There is no doubt that these are not conducive to the development of the college or university and will influence the development of our archival cause in the long run. However, research on the career development of archival clerks in institutions of higher learning is far from being enough and profound and there is also a lack of systematic empirical study of the working status of the file clerks in the archives of institutions of higher learning.Questionnaires and interviews on the basis of literature review, this paper explores the working status and career development of the file clerks in the archives of institutions of higher learning from such perspectives as physical and mental health, interpersonal and organizational climate, system protection, evaluation, professional identity, career motivation, career growth, professionalism, professional self-study, on-the-job education, future prospects and so on. According to the investigation from twenty-three colleges and universities in Shanghai, the working status and career development of the current file clerks in institutions of higher learning is far from being optimistic, and at the same time, the low occupational identity leads to the neglect of their career development because of the heavy workload and the anomie archival management system. This paper identifies three main causes of these problems, namely, the work position, the management and the staff themselves.In order to improve the quality of life for the file clerks in the archives of institutions of higher learning, this thesis proposes some solutions from the social, administrative and individual perspectives. On the social level, it is necessary to step up publicity efforts to improve the social acceptance of archival work, to deepen the level of interest with a view to gathering more social support for archival work, and to intensify training to create lifelong education system for archival work. On the management level, it is essential to change their management philosophy to create a people-oriented organization working atmosphere; to reform the management system to form the benign mechanism to promote the professional development of the file clerks; to improve the management to fully meet the needs of the file clerks to stimulate their potential. On the individual level, it is critical to change career awareness; to concentrate on self-study to comprehensively enhance their overall quality; to enrich leisure life to cultivate a healthy work mentality.