Hey there!

I’ve created a grassroots/cultural digital archive. It documents a specific historic migration event for people in our community globally as we are on the cusp of the 40th anniversary of this migration.

However I’m running into some privacy and consent concerns. I have lots of group photos from back then, but a small handful of people do not want their faces shown.

Does anyone have any examples of how to include the photos but mask/edit the person who requested privacy. I feel like just blurring their face out feels weird. I’m thinking not to include the photos they are in. And just have a written description of the photo or something.

Some real life examples of other archives or institutes doing this would be great. Anyway, i’d really appreciate some thoughtful, considered approaches. Thank you!

Bonkers news.

IndyWire article: https://www.indiewire.com/news/breaking-news/academy-cuts-library-and-archives-staff-1235061796/

https://x.com/brianna_toth_/status/1852023595930706441?t=WPE7zDTqy9uVf3InCE7G_g&s=19

Sharing Via Brianna Toth:

Yesterday 7 of the 30+ employees were laid off at the Academy Film Archive without notice. This included the Director & Head of Preservation who was one of the best managers I ever had. This feels like a death knell for the 3rd largest film archive in North America.

Many of the people who were axed were pivotal in making the collections what they are today. None of them deserved this. The decision was “effective immediately” and they had no time to pass on work or institutional knowledge. They were simply told to leave.

Bill Kramer has been pivotal in this “restructuring”. He does not care about or understand cultural heritage or the people who work with it. DO NOT APPLY here if jobs are posted! Reach out to your friends and colleagues if they work here. They need you.

Bit of a rookie question here -

I'm a solo archivist at a small historical museum and while I've been here almost two years, the archives are still in quite a messy state. There really isn't much in document boxes and most of the cataloged material is in filing cabinets. I've started the planning stages of rehousing everything into document boxes to put on new shelving we're getting (the ultimate reason for this is to create more space since the shelves are higher vertically the filing cabinets can be), but I don't know how to number the boxes.

Currently, the archival material is housed in a folder or envelope with the trinomial object ID as it's identifier on the folder/envelope and is ordered chronologically. If I put these in document boxes, I want the box to have it's own unique container number so I can update the locations in our CMS. (Right now locations are just "archive cabinet")

How should I number the boxes? How are your boxes numbered? I would love to simply do Box 1 and work from the beginning, but we also have Found In Collection items and Missing Items that could turn up and would need to be housed before new boxes. Or, am I incorrect in thinking this way and items found later could just go in the next box chronologically and the boxes are ordered simply by the order in which I process them?

Eager to hear people's input! Thanks :)

My place of work has organized a union. Obviously this involves secrecy and there is a scarcity of material to preserve. I don't have a lot of experience initiating things like oral histories etc and would love some guidance. Thank you!

Hi! I’m a recent graduate for fine art undergraduate. I’ve become super passionate about museum and community archival but worried my skill set won’t allow me to do it for a masters. I’m volunteering and applying for more volunteer roles, some of its online so hoping that will help with my IT skills. I know that there can be a thin line between curation and archival especially in galleries so just looking for advice. Thanks in advance !

Hello! I am processing a large collection from a department store for a public library. It has all sorts of materials from chairs to illustrations and more.

While most things I am either putting in acid free folders and boxes while creating a finding aid, the paintings are giving me a hard time.

How would you recommend labeling the items that are too big to store in boxes and have no way to tie small tags onto them?

Thank you!

Hello!

I've started working this year on the archive of a small cultural association here in Lisbon. They have a lot of stuff, many letters and printed documents, also pictures and videos. There has been an attempt to organize it but never to create a proper database. It's a bit messy and I'm looking for a good, simple and free way of creating a ditital database where one can search, find, group and link documents. We don't have budget for a paid version and many of the free trials I've found aren't enough for what we have.

I'm thinking I can use only Excel or maybe try Tropy (and digitalise all documents to pictures?), but I don't know if it's very good! I'm looking for a solution that one that comes after me can use easily, that can be used for a long time and isn't clumsy. We don't have to publish anything, it's just for an institutional memory.

Can you help me?

Thank you so much!

Leo

Hello, we’re a nonprofit organization founded in 1949, and we’re currently looking to digitize some of our records to safeguard them from potential physical damage. Given our limited budget, we’re particularly interested in any recommendations for affordable software solutions or insights on using Microsoft 365 tools like SharePoint for archiving. Any advice or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Hi everyone, I'm in a library science program focusing on a special collections certificate. I'm working full time so I really only have time to take two classes at a time. Right now I have three class options available and I'm wondering which ones would be most useful for moving into an archive or special collections career. There is an advanced special collections class, which goes deeper into collection development, acquisitions and donor/dealer relations; a digital stewardship class focusing on digitized and born-digital materials; and a cataloging class. I have already taken a rare books cataloging class and my professor told me that should be enough to get into even a regular cataloging job, but I'm considering the other one to get more experience in other cataloging methods. I've been looking through job boards and I'm seeing a lot of digital focus as well as some cataloging jobs. The bigger archival jobs all seem to require at least five years' experience in the profession.

But I'm wondering what people already in the profession are seeing as trends that students should focus on in their coursework. Thanks for any advice!

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/national-archives-history-colleen-shogan-f8512bc3?mod=policy_news_article_pos1

I'm not sure if this is the right subreddit for this, but I figured I'd start here.

I have a PDF scan of a rare, out-of-print book (public domain) that I'd like to make into a physical print copy. However, the way the book was scanned is making this challenging. It was scanned as spreads of facing pages, and many pages have black edges in the gutter of the spread (thankfully, nothing on the body text).

I've used Abbyy FineReader before to turn scans into an epub, so I thought I'd try it to see what cleanup options it had. It was able to separate the facing pages into individual pages. While the pages are fairly straight and unskewed, they aren’t centered at all, with large amounts of space on different sides of each page. I think this would be ugly and distracting in a printed book. It also had no options for removing the gutter.

Does anyone have any software recommendations that could help me fix this scan the way I want?

On another note, how important is it to participate in conferences? Giving presentations and talks. I have been in the field for one year as a project archivist so I feel like I don't have much to contribute yet. I also am afraid of public speaking but do want to advance my career. Any tips or advice. Also do any of you do any creative thinks on the side to make extra money but also just for fun?

TL;DR: Do you have to actively present at conferences to be successful (AKA make money) as an archivist?

How do you all feel about keeping awards and plaques? Not the paper ones - those are easy to store and manage, but the various glass, wood, metal, plastic plaques and such that faculty acquire over the years?

No question on keeping highly recognized awards of something very unique, but what are your thoughts on basic annual awards and the like? Thank you for your input.

Hi, I'm an archiving noob so I'd appreciate some help with a very technical question in a little project of mine.

I have a collection of leaflets I want to digitalise. I don't have a good, quick scanner, so my phone camera will have to do. But each leaflet would need at least two pictures (front and back side) and I don't want to end up with a big folder full of photos without a clue which belong together.

How would you solve that? Is there an android camera app with a button to automatically create a new folder and switch to it? Because making two photos, then making a new folder, then going to the settings and switching to that new folder over and over again is too slow.

I have been looking into archiving for a long time and wanted advice first. I'm currently in Texas and want to take online courses for school. I was wondering, which college/university would you recommend? It doesn't have to be in Texas, just as long as it's online. (can't travel out of state) I have seen some online programs but wanted people's advice/experiences on some I may not know or that might be better options.

I've just purchased a bunch of newspapers to commemorate a special event and I hope to give them to someone in 25 years or so.

What is the best way to protect and preserve them so that they don't fall apart in that time?

Hello, I hope this is appropriate to ask here, I figure archivists will have the best answer. All of my belongings will soon be sent via container ship to the other side of the world in an estimated 4-month journey. I’m really worried about my clothing and sentimental items (quilts that my mom made for me) being damaged by humidity or moisture during transit. What steps would you take to best protect belongings? The best I can come up with is vacuum seal bags with desiccant, but then I also fear the seal could fail or the compression could damage delicate fabrics. If I don’t intervene, the movers will just pack everything into cardboard boxes. What would you do here? Any ideas on how to protect textiles traveling on the sea for 4 months?

Can’t decide what to minor in lol

Hi. I have a small collection of pre-war movie leaflets and I wanted to straighten up one of them. I didn't use a lot of force, but unfortunetelly the paper was weaker than I saw at first and one fragment was torn apart. Is transparent tape for conservating books good for things like that? How would you repair it? Here is the photo of it: https://imgur.com/4ZeEn4U Im angry at myself, fortunetelly I didn't tear any image or photo, just a blank corner that was very loose anyway.

Hi all, I'm a newly-minted archivist working in a small archive nested in a public library. I'd like to start using a collections management program to keep track of accessions, existing collections, etc etc. Y'know, collections management. Prior to me, there has been no such program/software, and most of our records are on paper; in an excel spreadsheet; or simply don't exist. I'm on the hunt for recommendations for collections software. I had suggested ArchivesSpace, but the person who would be setting this up felt it was too complicated to install, and it's way outside of my wheelhouse to do on my own. Ideally, the program/software would be free or close to it, as I basically don't have an independent budget. It does not need to manage digital items; we use Omeka for that. It also does not need to be viewable/usable by the public, at least not for a good while. I'm leaning towards AtoM, but it seems like it may require similar things as ArchivesSpace and I'm afraid it will be similarly declined. Thoughts? Suggestions? Magical solutions? Thank you!

ETA: Alternatively, if someone could point me towards an installation tutorial video that's a more recent version of ArchivesSpace than 2.5, I could probably figure it out! I'm not completely inept, but I need a smidge more guidance than what I can find on their website.

My organization received binders of materials from a personal collection of someone who was an avid historian in the early 20th Century. The vast majority are newspaper clippings glued to pages and put into several binders.

My question is how would you approach digitizing these types of collections? My first inclination is to photograph each page, making different versions of each page to move clippings to get as much information from them as possible, and then remove the clippings to digitize them using a flatbed scanner?

My supervisor and I are at a loss of what to do. Let me know your thoughts.

I work in a school that goes from K-12 that had six of its high school teachers retire at the end of the 2017-2018 school year. Those six teachers represented over 180 years' worth of institutional memory at our school. Some of them had started working here back in the late 60s to late 70s. Four of those six had taught here their entire careers.

With the other three grade school and middle school teaching retirements we had that year, we had over 250 years of institutional memory leave the building. Taking into account three non-teacher retirements in June of 2018, we figure we lost close to 300 years just that year. I haven't dared to look at the teaching and non-teaching staff that didn't come back during and after the pandemic.

All this to give you a picture of the project I am undertaking with a colleague: doing audio interviews with former and current staff members who have been and were here at least 25 years.
We've done a couple of interviews so far, and it has gone swimmingly well. A list of informal questions I had cobbled together were sent ahead of time to these two teachers. But we were very lucky with them—they were natural storytellers, and we really didn't need to ask any of the questions. We just let them talk and let the tape roll. (With one of the interviewed teachers, it felt like I was back in gr. 11 with my favourite French teacher—M. Landry, if you really need to know.)

My questions were mostly about their work and their lives coming to this city, how they adjusted, taking into context their time here and what was going on in the world, in Canada, and in Toronto at the time. My colleague is wondering if there's a formalized set of questions that archivists ask when they're doing this kind of project. My research has so far uncovered many academic papers and essays showing and justifying why these kinds of interviews are important, from an institutional perspective... but they all seem very HR-oriented. HR have their set of questions from exit interviews, and that's not what we want to do.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!