Introduction to the ICA/SAE Training the Trainer Resource Pack

Training in the archives and records management field

It is not easy for trainers and educators in the archives and records management field to find formal ways of learning the necessary skills and expertise to teach. Educators, and more particularly trainers, are frequently only teaching as part of a practitioner’s heavy workload. Whilst they are often experts in their own field or specialism with much to pass on to other members of the profession and its supporting para-professional staff: this does not guarantee effective training for those wishing to learn from them. As the experts it is appropriate that they should teach the next generations of practitioners and although some are naturally gifted teachers, there is always something to learn to improve delivery of training. Moreover, in many parts of the world training is very expensive to deliver and cascaded learning, where a few people attend formal training and then feed it back to their colleagues and institutions, is an effective and a cheaper option.

This resource pack is intended for anyone who wants some guidance or direction in planning, organising and delivering effective training for both professionals and support staff whatever their working or learning environment. The bulk of the pack addresses the various techniques for delivering training but it also covers the practical administrative tasks that are essential for successful training courses and which underpin the training content.

ICA Section on Archival Education and Training

The Training the Trainer Resource Pack is a deliverable of the 2000–2004 Medium Term Plan of the ICA/SAE (International Council on Archives Section on Archival Education and Training) Steering Committee. For more information on the Section see: http://www.ica-sae.org/.

About the authors

Margaret Crockett and Janet Foster are archives and records management consultants based in the UK. They have delivered training in Mongolia, Estonia, Latvia, Malta and Hungary as well as running their own on-going programme of training for staff at all levels working in archives, records management and information services in the UK. They developed a Training the Trainer course for the National Archives of Estonia and Latvia: this resource pack is based on the training materials used for that training, coupled with their experience of delivering a wide variety of archives and records management training over the past two decades.

To contact Margaret and Janet email info@archive-skills.com.

How to use this Resource Pack

There are many ways to use this pack. Individual learners can use it as a book and read it through from start to finish. It may be more useful to approach it in a more targeted way and focus on training techniques that may need improvement or represent methods that are perhaps new. Click-throughs within the Web-based version allow learners to navigate to supporting material and areas of follow-up interest.

The pack can also be used as the basis of a training programme for training trainers. If the user follows the guidance in the pack on organising training, it is possible to select an appropriate programme from the list of contents.

Comments on the Pack

The ICA Section on Archival Education and Training Steering Committee invited peer review in the spring of 2005 and many comments have been incorporated into this first edition. SAE continues to welcome feedback on the pack. You can access the feedback form from a link on every page.

Last updated: 20 December 2005