Hi everyone, I'm a researcher currently working on a project about Professor Raymond Dart. I've learned that the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) holds digital archives that include original photographs of him, but I've been unable to access these materials. Does anyone have experience with Wits' digital repositories or know which department or individual I should contact to request access? Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you! Matteus

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I wonder if lego chima is genuienly considered lost media? because as someone who loved it as a kid, i really wanted to rewatch it, but it was impossible to find anything, until I came across of a guy who had uploaded it to his google drive. Moments later it got deleted, and as far as i know, that was the only place where you could find it in 4K quality. I have saved it to my own hard drive of course, and i was wondering if i should archive it somewhere, or if its not as "lost" as i thought it is

Hi!

I'm considering doing Latin at university (atleast for 2 years, potentially to Honours too.)

How valuable could Latin be? I'm very much interested in Ancient Rome, and languages have also been something I'm fond of - Latin especially considering it's large influence. But I'm not sure how much impact it will have throughout my career. Would something like Ancient History/Classics/Archaeology be better?

To what extent will it actually help, or would it just be pretty on my CV?

Hello! I hope the question in the title makes sense, but I will elaborate -

I am a fan of all things analog, and when my former partner's grandfather took us down memory lane by going through his photos with us, I decided I wanted to make my own photo albums too.

For the past few years, my process has been: 1. Print photos on MPix 2. Write on the back of the photos (dates, people, location, etc) with the Micron archival pens and 3. Putting them in BCW binder photo sleeves 4. Putting them in a photo binder (I buy one every time I see them at a thrift store, which surprisingly is at least once a year. I guess these end up at the thrift a lot).

I'm thinking of switching up this method, mostly because I don't like how constraining it is to be limited to the predetermined sizes of the photo pockets. Not all photos are the same size! And I like to add memorabilia (ticket stubs, concert wristbands, that sort of thing) to the albums as well, and that really isn't conducive to the photo sleeves. Ideally I'm looking for something that allows me to place/position photos in whatever configuration I want, that can be stored in an album/binder that can be flipped through. Obviously, magnetic sheets would be the easiest for that, but I know those are not very good for archival purposes. I also saw storage boxes being recommended a lot on this sub, but that defeats the purpose of being able to flip through these albums - it just doesn't feel the same as going through a catalogue.

I saw someone recommend photo corners on the sub, which I think could be a great option! But I wanted to see if there were any other ideas. If you do recommend photo corners, is there a brand yall recommend? And what kind of paper would you use to attach the photo corners to? Or should I just go the magnetic sheets route and forgo the archival aspirations?

Thank you!

Hi everyone! I'm almost done my master of info studies (graduating in May) and I've been having some very interesting conversations about money recently. I'm curious how much people here made in their first year after graduating, and how quickly that went up with experience. I'm located in Montreal Canada and would love to hear from Canadians especially.

The context for this is that I currently work at a non profit associated with my university, basically working as a librarian in a very small community led library focussed on progressive politics. They also have an "archives" with material from different student activist groups, but there hasn't been the capacity in the organization to arrange or describe these materials to make them accessible. I've taken an interest in this collection and am currently applying to two different grants to receive funding to pay for a full-time salary for me, and support expenses associated with formalizing and expanding the archive. The idea is for it to be community run and participatory once we can organize and catalogue the existing materials.

The thing is if I get these grants, my salary would be between $35 000 and $41 000 Canadian before taxes, as the organization doesn't have the finances to support me any further. I've never been driven by high salaries and understand that archives aren't a lucrative field, especially in the kind of grassroots community work that really gets me excited. Montreal also has a lower cost of living and I feel that it would be a living wage.

This was all fine with me until i spoke to my family and friends who were surprised that I would accept such a low salary with a master's degree. My question is basically if that kind of pay is appropriate in the archival world, or if I should really be aiming higher. I'm also kind of worried about getting stuck; I'm really passionate about the student activist archives project and want to see it take off, but will being a lone archivist in a non profit hurt my career options moving forward?

I'm happy to maintain my lifestyle as it is, but I do want my own apartment (to rent not with roommates) in the coming years and anticipate my cost of living going up.

Sorry for rambling and thank you for reading! TLDR how much did you guys make out of school, and is taking a low paying community position financially a bad idea in the long term?

Hi all! I am a college junior getting my BFA in art history with a focus on cinema studies. I realized about a year ago that I wanted to become a film archivist/preservationist. Since then I’ve spent hours researching grad programs, film archives, etc. I’ve reached out to and met with the Special Collections Librarian at my uni, and the libraries and archives for the AMPAS, making valuable connections. I even landed a video archiving assistant job at my university’s film studios!

However, after researching and spending time on this sub, I’m worried about the job prospects. My major before choosing archiving was production design, which I left because of the oversaturated job market (among other things). I don’t want to trade one trap for another, so I want to ask: is it worth it? Or am I at risk for spending more money on a degree for nothing?

I don’t mean to be cynical, I am really passionate about archiving and will put in the work. I just don’t want to make a mistake because I’m wearing rose-colored glasses.

I have a collection of rare and old books, that needs to be organized and stored, it goes back as far as 15th century, I have been looking around archival storage options and they seem to be quite limited in terms of size, and not much information is offered. Would I need the additional items such as silica gel secrets, Carbon etc to prevent moisture and pollutants !? Any information, brands, types of boxes or examples and advice would greatly be of help thank you in advance!

I am located in France if it makes a difference.

Hello all, I've recently accepted a faculty Librarian I position for a digital archivist role at a university. I'm very excited, because my MLIS studies and internships focused on archives. However, I'm fresh out of school and start this role in the Spring, and I'm becoming overwhelmed with the notion of being a faculty member. For context I have been working and interning in university and non-profit archives since 2018, but this is the biggest opportunity I've had.

I'm curious what to expect as a faculty archvist, especially in a newly created role within the department? How would you or have you handled balancing research and publication and/or project and grant planning? Should I even be thinking about this stuff as a L1? I know my role involves establishing a digital preservation program in my first 2 years, but outside of that I'm just curious how other folks have handled their first faculty position and if there is anything I should pay attention to, keep an eye out for, or prioritize.

Any advice or just stories about your experiences would be helpful. I do plan to reach out to the department and get to the other faculty a bit more and learn about their experiences as well, especially at this university, but I wanted to start here.

I collect some trading cards, most of the people store their cards in Polypropylene Sleeves. and toploaders made of PVC.

I asked the manufacturer about the usage of PVC with stabilizers and additives for long-term storage, and they responded: "The materials used in our PVC toploaders, like all PVC materials, are not considered inherently stable. Long-term storage is only recommended when they are used in combination with protective sleeves. PVC toploaders may also contain additives, such as stabilizers, to enhance durability"

I honestly don't know how the PVC leaching would work in the long-term (If it off-gas or what). Would cards inside toploader still be safe if they are sleeved in Polypropylene sleeves? The Sleeves are obviously not 100% closed and they are open on the top to insert the card, I am not sure if the degradation of the toploader could affect the cards somehow.

Hi all,

I'm the film archivist for a small company that has a collection of about 2000 reels of 8mm and 16mm footage that we've recently had digitized. I've been going through it and creating metadata for it in Goolge Sheets (at the request of the company's owner), but have recently received approval for contracting an outside vendor to better manage the collection's digital presence.

Currently we've got all the film stored on DropBox, so what I'm really looking for is a company that can help me set up a front end user experience for people in our organization to view the films and their metadata together. Something that could link to/access our Dropbox and have individual entries for each film into which I could import the metadata (file name, searchable subject tags, etc.).

If people have any suggestions for vendors who could help with that process, or resources I could use to do my own research, I would really appreciate it! My previous work didn't involve much digitization, so I'm a little out of my depth.

So I work for a law firm in the UK and my job title is Archivist but I’m not sure I am one. I essentially deal with and take of law files and deeds, the storage of them and storing of them. I’ve been thinking about changing jobs to see if I could do something similar for a bit more pay but I don’t really know what I am or what to look for.

Am I an archivist or a records management guy? I don’t have any qualifications in archive but have 6/7 years experience in my role.

I like that I’m left alone to do my own thing, that no one else bothers me or messes with the order or the way I do my work. If I were to look for other “archival” jobs, should I expect the same sort of role or would they usually take on other responsibilities and/or mean being part of a team of archivists?

Thanks guys

Hi everyone!

I'm a graduate student and have written a few papers about trauma-informed archiving and archivists (9/11, Virginia Tech shooting, COVID-19, BLM, so on...).

I was interested in hearing from you about your experiences with this. This is not for any academic paper or anything, I'm just personally curious. What is it like? Do you feel like the archive provides adequate mental health resources for affected archivists? What do you wish more people knew? How do you handle acquisitions?

Also - if anyone has an articles or academic papers or even blog posts on this subject, please let me know! I'd love to hear from you. :)

I apologize in advanced if this question is overasked or inappropriate for this sub. But I am supposed to write a 5,000 word research paper and I am struggling with finding sources. Should I change my topic? My professor also suggested looking into how generalized archives might be a hindrance for minority communities, but I am worried it might be too late to change my topic since this is due beginning of December.

Hello all, I'm currently in the midst of accessioning a collection of dolls from west Africa. I'm having trouble figuring out the medium and materials for these dolls and was wondering if any of you have any ideas? Would it just be cotton?

Hello! I have been asked to digitise an archive for a small UK charity. It's a very exciting opportunity but slightly daunting as I have never digitised an archive before and want to ensure I do it properly. I would be very grateful if anyone could offer up some advice or knowledge :)

The archive:

• The items are all 2D papers - photographs, letters etc. However there are also some microfiche and microfilm materials.

Archive requirements:

• Only for internal use
• Needs to allow for file descriptions/to be tagged by key words
• Files should be searchable by a number of different categories (dates/names etc)
• The charity would also like to be able to search the text within some of the documents.

Questions:

• What software or program would you recommend to store the digital archive?
• Should the digital archive also be stored in a back up place (something not 'on the cloud', like a plug in hard drive?
• I need to hire a scanner for the papers but also a scanner for the microfiche documents - any equipment recommendations or thoughts about cost?

Any other general tips or advice would be much appreciated too. Thank you for reading

Hi! I attend a pretty good MLIS program, and one that has been known for it's archival studies in general.

My goal is to be an audio/music archivist. However, my advisor and others I have spoke to always press me to get their archival administation certificate (in addition to the MLIS), even though I am on the Archival Administration pathway for my Master's.

I have looked it up and at least fout of the people I have identified with careers I would like only have an MLIS, INCLUDING, to my knowledge, the advisor who keeps pressuring me to get it. Outside of my state, this wouldn't even be something that important, I don't believe. And I could get additional learning/DAS or something more useful. The certificate adds an entire year onto my learning, and I'd like to leave my state after graduating, so getting a job and then getting the certificate wouldn't make sense for the higher out-of-state rate.

I intend to do my post graduate at Glasgow University, and I'm not sure on which course I should do.

Options are either Information Preservation and Management or Library and Information Studies.

Both seem to be useful and the requirements are the same, but I thought I'd run it by yall.

(just to clarify, I'm hoping to become an archivist in some capacity, or a job that's similar)

Any advice is welcome :)

Hi! I’m in the third year of my BA History degree and now it’s time for me to do a work placement and complete a project there. In the future I want to study Archives and Records Management so I am currently trying to decide on the best archive to apply to. I have 3 options. 

I’m hoping that someone here will be able to weigh in on what would be the best choice to make as I am approaching this choice with the consideration of what would look best on my future application to studying Archives and Records Management. 

Option 1: A feminist archive. Pros: They have lots of materials concerning fashion, knitting and sewing patterns, beauty, etc. which I think could make for an interesting project about wartime fashion. While this archive is small, it has a fantastic reputation. Cons: Their website says they have no space for work placement candidates. Being accepted there would hinge on another candidate dropping out.

Option 2: My country's national film archive. Pros: I think having some experience with a national organisation would love fantastic on a CV. They have a lot of material to work with, and I think a project about historical cat videos would be funny. Cons: I’m concerned about how relevant the experience I gain there will be. On the long term, I have very little interest in film archiving. It seems very different from other kinds of archiving and thus intimidating.

Option 3: My university archive. Pros: I know the staff there are great. I have a fantastic project idea in mind that is relevant to the materials they hold and the history of our university. Cons: Would it look potentially wimpy on my CV to have had work experience at the university I study at rather than an independent organisation? 

I also must consider the possibility that, due to organisations’ availability, I might not get a choice.

I have no connections to the heritage sector and I’m struggling to find support at my university, so I would appreciate any insight here. If you had one route to pursue, what would you pick?

I am about to graduate with an archives degree. I have a realistic appraisal that the job-market is not great and the political environment is going to be tough for any additional funding on this front so hiring is likely to be stagnant. I am unable to move due to family commitments. I want a job with healthcare, at least $35,000, that is more intellectually stimulating than data entry. My GPA is very good my work experience is mostly part-time. What are realistic post MLIS options on this fronts.

1. What are my best options to improve my skill-set to get hired doable in the next 3 months

2. What kind of careers can I transfer into outside of the MLIS field

I’m freshman in college and I’ve been considering studying to be a librarian or archivist but I’m still really undecided. I apologize if these questions are really basic, but I was wondering what exactly a special collections intern’s duties entail? It seems interesting but there are some other internships I’m interested in pursuing so I wanted to get a more specific idea of what I would be doing on a daily basis to see if this would be a good fit for me. What assignments are interns usually given, and how similar is the internship work to the career at large? I understand that digitization and cataloguing are usually a part of it but I’m not sure what that means in specific terms and daily activities. I’d appreciate any input!