Personal Reflection

The Class

When I first started this program, I thought that I would pursue becoming a Processing Archivist in a university setting so I have read a number of job descriptions related to the field and was very excited to take this class. Now, I understand those job descriptions and appreciate that I was able to practice some of the skills necessary for that role; I enjoyed the Ted Carlson papers project because we got a taste of doing the work. I have a much better understanding of metadata (your lecture on Metadata was more enlightening than the actual Metadata class). I think that throughout the class, I drew parallels from my own professional experience and though arrangment and description are part of my daily experience, I gravitated towards the public-facing aspects of the profession; conducting reference interviews and helping researchers, outreach and engagement, working with professors to include primary research in class activities and assignments. I have also considered working as an Archivist in a corporate environment, having worked with several companies as an advertising executive, so I appreciated the articles that talked about that work and this class helped to fill gaps in my knowledge. I don't think I am fully prepared to step into an oversight role because I am still lacking in the fundamentals of setting up systems and working directly with technology, but I know where to find resources to help further my education. As born-digital archives grow in scope, I expect that there will need to be more specific roles created within departments. It is somewhat disheartening to think that one needs to be a specialist in architectural history, a foreign language and born-digital preservation with five years of experience to make $20.00 an hour.

I took this class and Managing Photographic Collections at the same time. There is a significant amount of overlap in subject matter and assignments which was good in terms of reinforcing concepts, but extremely challenging both in workload and in remembering what I read in which article and then finding the quote or language I wanted to use for discussion posts. I read the discussion post topics prior to watching the lectures and doing the readings, and took notes. I'm not sure that even a literature matrix would have been a better aid. If I had to do it over again, I would have only taken one class.

Key Take-aways and Thoughts About the Profession

I was surprised by the challenges surrounding donor relations in terms of negotiating for collections and considerations related to accessioning. Having a Collections Policy sounds like a very good way to manage time spent on seeking and acquiring collections as well as gently turning away collections. If I was to work in that role, I would want to pursue collections while creators are still living to be able to conduct an oral history with the individuals and negotiate terms of use. I found the work of Howard Gotlieb at BU to be very inspiring and I would like to read more about him and his work. Though there were times when I thought, is it even worth accessioning something if it is embargoed for decades, I see the value of holding on to a collection until it can be fully processed and made available to users. I think that more needs to be written about donor relations and negotiating for collections in the form of real scenario case studies, searchable by topic.

In looking at several Archival Collections across repositories, I can see how potentially valuable collections can be hiding in plain sight. One thing that struck me in my conversation with Prof. Kira Dietz was the idea that if a researcher needs to find something, they will know where to look. This idea was in response to my question about marketing or publicizing the collections. I got the impression that the time spent on outreach within the academic and immediate community was a priority and promoting the collections to a wider audience was of less concern. Generally speaking, when I look at lists of collections on a university's website, I see a list of donor/creator names that mean nothing. Of course, with metadata and search, one can find documents or collections related to a topic, but I do think that a log line description for each collection would go a long way. Perhaps in reviewing the collections in this manner, Archivists will find some gems to highlight via social media, in the same way that love letters were unearthed by cataloguers at the National Archives (UK). There are opportunities to partner with marketing, communications and design students to create a promotional program for the archives. I am also interested in the idea of cross-pollination among archives meaning that repositories that collect around similar subject matters would help each other. I found the #colorourcollections to be inspiring.

All of our readings and discussions around resources were especially dismal. I think our lack of emphasis on the monetary value of archival collections contributes to underfunding. Going back to my conversation with Prof. Dietz, I was shocked and saddened to learn that the entire Special Collections suffers from poor facilities, which could jeopardize not only the entire collection, but the work put into processing, preserving and maintaining the collection. In one of the articles I read, Cornell put a dollar value on their entire collection. Would it be possible to work with the business school to audit the repository and put a dollar value on the entire collection as well as the labor over a set period of time to help the parent organization understand that they need to actively protect their investment? How can we work with researchers to quantify or create metrics around collection use? Who is doing this already and how can we learn from them? How do we make a case for ourselves with the Develpment Department to increase fundraising?

This class provided me with a significant amount of information and knowledge. In addition to the practical skills, it opened my mind to the value of archives, how what we choose to keep is important in shaping a full picture of history and more importantly, how important it is to make these collections accessible in a user-friendly manner while telling everyone that we are here and why they need us.