Entrepreneurship in archivology: necessary reflections

Abstract

The documents produced and received by the institutions lack specific informational treatment to become, among other factors, important administrative arms for decision-making. The archivist is the professional with specific training to work with archival documents. Its performance can occur in public and private environments. In this way, this research aims to analyze the archivist as an entrepreneurial professional, who works through the provision of service, an area that has a consistent and broad field of action, which permeates the public and private area. The problem established for this research presents the following question: Do the current curricula of undergraduate courses in Archival Science contribute to the formation of an entrepreneurial professional? The general objective of this study is to verify whether in the curricula of Brazilian Archival courses there is an offer of discipline that deals with entrepreneurship, since the role of the archivist as an autonomous professional presents itself as a fruitful field of work. As methodological procedures, this research presents itself as exploratory and descriptive with a quantitative-quantitative approach. For the development of the documentary corpus, a non-systematic literature review was used in order to present the theoretical scope related to the themes presented. To verify how [and if] the discipline of entrepreneurship has been offered, the curricular matrices of undergraduate courses in Archival Science in Brazil were analyzed. In order to know the perception of archivists about the need for disciplines that deal with entrepreneurship to contribute to professional training, a questionnaire was developed and applied, using a Google forms form for the target audience of the research. The research was developed with the contribution of 9 archivists who work as entrepreneurial professionals. As a result, the research showed that only 05 Universities offer courses that address questions about entrepreneurship. Thus, there is a low incidence of the discipline in Archival Science courses, which demonstrates a need to review the curricula, so that they are adequate to the demands in the job market for archivists.