The nineteenth century was the emergence of formalised archival education. The first archive schools, and the first professional training, appeared during the first three decades of the century, in Italy, Germany and France. The importance of religious archivists in many countries cannot be underestimated, particularly for the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Religious archivists fall into two groups: professional archivists working for religious organisations and clerics who manage their institution's archives as part of their religious duties or in their spare time. The need for specialisation among archivists became increasingly apparent in the final decades of the twentieth century as technological advances changed the records themselves, the roles demanded by archivists and societal expectations, and that need is reflected in the large rise in different types of archival training and education provision offered.