Name: Stacy Gould
Job: Head archivist, University of Hong Kong
How early did you know you wanted to work as an archivist?
There's no undergraduate path to archival work; it's post-grad only, so it's best to take a degree that is a good fit, like anthropology or history. I did anthropology.
I never intended to be an archivist, even in graduate school [in the public history programme at Wright State University in the US]. The programme concentrated equally on museum studies and archive studies. But I had an internship in an art museum, in the archives, and another at the Biltmore House Museum's archives and libraries - in a huge old home in North Carolina, and I mean huge, 255 rooms. I lived in the north wing for six months. I felt like a princess.
Where did you go from there?
I did my internships, taught history at a state college while I was sending out my resume and did another job on top of that - I was the manager of the men's furnishings section of a big department store. I was working my rear end off. I interviewed at a number of places, including the Smithsonian, but I ended up taking a job at Michigan State University as the university records manager.