Month: October 2019

#AskAnArchivist Day 2019: the Twitter Takeover

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This year, the Committee on Public Awareness (COPA) took over Society of American Archivist’s (SAA) Twitter for #AskAnArchivist Day on Wednesday, October 2nd. Today’s post summarizes COPA members’ experiences taking over SAA’s Twitter (@archivists.org) for the day.

Rachael Woody, Consultant & Owner of Rachael Cristine Consulting LLC

I really enjoyed the Twitter takeover. I saw it as an opportunity to help boost lower-visibility archives and projects, and to raise awareness of SAA resources that may be of use to membership. I was the last shift for the takeover and being on the west coast many of the larger institutions had already ended their participation. Using the SAA Twitter account to engage during the day until 5pm Pacific allowed us to help boost or answer posts from our Pacific coast colleagues. By utilizing COPA members across the country we were able to provide 12-hours of coverage for the day and I’m really proud we were able to participate and contribute for that length of time!

Lynn Cowles, Assistant Archivist and Assistant Professor, Nicholls State University

I participated in SAA’s #AskAnArchivist Day for the first time this year. It was a great experience, although I only asked one question and didn’t really get asked any. My question:

I got some excellent answers and I really appreciate the extended community that events like this highlight. Twitter is a fantastic tool for outreach!

Nick Pavlik, Curator of Manuscripts/Coordinator of Strategic Partnerships, Bowling Green State University

From the vantage of SAA’s Twitter account, I really enjoyed seeing the rather staggering extent of the profession’s participation in #AskAnArchivist Day.  It was impossible to keep up with all the notifications on the SAA account, but since that was an indicator of all the activity going on around the #AskAnArchivist hashtag, that was a good thing!  There were some wonderfully creative and engaging tweets from archivists and repositories that sparked substantial threads filled with insightful or simply hilarious responses, and I was really pleased to see the dedication to public outreach that was on display in our profession.  In that regard, I would say this year’s #AskAnArchivist Day was another resounding success.

At the same time, it’s no secret that generating actual engagement and participation in #AskAnArchivist Day from the general public has always been a challenge, and that seemed to be the case again this year – most tweets that I saw during my time slot seemed to come from within the field.  I certainly did see some public engagement, which was very gratifying – and I really appreciated seeing Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf getting involved! – but generating more participation from those outside the archival profession remains a significant hurdle that I hope we can continually break down over time.

Nick’s Favorite Tweets of the Day

Vince Lee, Archivist, University of Houston

As a member and volunteer of COPA’s annual #AskAnArchivist Day event, I always look forward to creating and seeing others memes created leading up to the big day. Having binge watched Netflix’s “Stranger Things” series, I couldn’t wait to find the perfect meme to use. Turns out this year’s #AskAnArchivist Day would have bit of a different twist. In conjunction with participating and using our own Twitter handles, COPA members would do a scheduled “takeover” of SAA’s twitter handle answering, retweeting, liking, and in some cases asking questions throughout the day. 

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During the 11 hour takeover, from 8am-7pm EST, my fellow colleagues were on hand to take care and facilitate your #AskAnArchivist needs. To be honest, I really didn’t know how it would turn out or what to expect when I signed up (gulp). Turns out  I really had nothing to worry about. It was one of the fastest and most pleasurable work hours I ever spent. There is a certain cadence and rhythm when working and tweeting with Twitter. Obviously, there is the word limits when posting or responding, then there is monitoring of the streams of  incoming tweets, from fellow archivists and institutions that were contributing, and then there were the likes and retweets of posts.

What was eye opening to me is the power and reach of using SAA’s twitter handle. I wanted to share the love and exposure to other respositories, in this case the University of Manitoba Archive. By merely liking and retweeting their post I was able to spotlight their institution and question to a wider audience. Talk about the power of social media! 

 

Finally to round things off, I posed some questions myself, asking fellow members:

  1. How they get students and their community members excited about archives and their collections?
  2. What does a “hybrid collection” mean to them?

The first question was a popular one. I received back 10 replies, 2 retweets, and 5 likes to this.

I’m biased, but rather than have it be one day out of the year, everyday should be #AskAnArchivist Day and #ArchivesAware if it’s this much fun and activity to showcase what we all do collectively. 

Chris Burns, Curator of Manuscripts and University Archivist, University of Vermont

Chris’ Favorite Tweets of the Day

For more information on #AskAnArchivist Day check out previous posts about this super awesome day:

Responses & Retrospectives: Rachael Woody on Resources for How to Convey the Value of Archives

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RachaelWoody

Rachael Woody (photograph courtesy of Rachael Woody).

This is the latest post in our series Responses and Retrospectives, which features archivists’ personal responses and perspectives concerning current or historical events/subjects with significant implications for the archives profession. Interested in contributing to Responses and Retrospectives?  Please email the editor at archivesaware@archivists.org with your ideas!

American Archives Month is an annual reminder of why we do what we do. Archivists across the country mobilize to promote collections, articulate what archives are, define what archivists do, and advocate for the value of our work. Articulating the value of archives and ourselves as archivists is hard to do. Speaking for myself, the value of archives and archivists is so evident that I have a hard time trying to explain our value proposition. The difficulty is often compounded when I realize I also need to explain why history is important, why liberal arts education is vital, and why critical thinking and the evaluation of historical resources are imperative for a healthy democracy. These are big concepts to convey and we as archivists need to continue our work on breaking them down so that they’re consumable for the public.

To get us started, I’ve compiled a list of resources to help use identify and articulate the value of archives.

Resources to Help you Talk About Archives and Their Value

Books on Advocating for the Value of Archives

Craft an Elevator Speech on Why We Value Archives

Check out COPA’s elevator speech cheat sheet with prompts to guide you toward your perfect pitch and review Talking Points on the Value of Archives for elevator speech examples.

SAA’s Role in Advocating for Archival Value

SAA’s advocacy efforts are directed to three principal audiences:

  • We target policymakers for important messages on archives- and records-related public policy.
  • We work to raise general public awareness of the importance of archives–and the important work of archivists.
  • And we provide resources for members to enhance advocacy within their own organizations with key decision makers, colleagues, and others.

SAA Groups Specific to Advocacy and the Value of Archives

SAA Resources for Advocacy and the Value of Archives

SAA’s Committee on Public Awareness – ArchivesAWARE! Blog

COPA’s ArchivesAWARE! Blog hosts several series to help to promote the value of archives and archivists.

  • There’s an Archivist for That! features examples of archivists working in places you might not expect.
  • Keeping ArchivesAware is a recurring roundup of some of the latest archives-related news stories, features, commentaries, announcements, and projects that have caught our eye, with links to the original sources.
  • Asserting the Archivist is focused on the importance of highlighting archivists and archival work in outreach efforts, rather than just focusing on the collections themselves.
  • Archives + Audiences features the perspectives of archival audiences – scholars, journalists, filmmakers, artists, activists, and more – for whom archives have been an important part of their life and work.
  • Archival Innovators aims to raise awareness of the individuals, institutions, and collaborations that are helping to boldly chart the future of the archives profession and set new precedents for the role of the archivist in society.
  • Responses & Retrospectives features archivists’ personal responses and perspectives concerning current or historical events/subjects with significant implications for the archives profession.

 Interested in Contributing to ArchivesAWARE!?

If you’re interested in contributing a piece to ArchivesAWARE! lease email the editor at archivesaware@archivists.org with your ideas!

Conclusion

We still have work to do when it comes to distilling for a general audience the complex issues that surround the importance of archives and our role as archivists. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on how to communicate the value of archives and/or archivists. Please share them in the comments of this post or email me at consulting@rachaelcristine.com.

This post was written by Rachael Cristine Woody, a member of The Society of American Archivists’ Committee on Public Awareness (COPA). The opinions and assertions stated within this piece are the author’s alone, and do not represent the official stance of the Society of American Archivists. COPA publishes response posts with the sole aim of providing additional perspectives, context, and information on current events and subjects that directly impact archives and archivists.

THERE’S AN ARCHIVIST FOR THAT! INTERVIEW WITH JENN PARENT, REFERENCE ARCHIVIST, THE MUSEUM OF FLIGHT

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This is the latest post in our There’s an Archivist for That! series, which features examples of archivists working in places you might not expect. In this entry, Committee on Public Awareness (COPA) member Anna Trammell brings you an interview with Jenn Parent, Reference Archivist at the Museum of Flight. 

[Reference archivist Jenn Parent in front of mural by Henry at T

Jenn Parent, Reference Archivist at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA

How did you get your job?

I came to archives and The Museum of Flight as my second profession, having spent well over a decade working as a bookstore manager. I loved helping people find books but at the same time I always felt limited in how I could help people. So, I went back to school to get my Masters in Library and Information Science with the goal of becoming a special collections librarian or an archivist. I did two internships at The Museum of Flight during grad school (one in the library, one in the archives), and due to the positive internship experiences I had, I added the organization to my “watch list” for jobs. About a month or so before graduation I saw an opening for a part-time Processing Archivist and applied. I got that job and started in July 2017. Then, in late December 2017, I was promoted to Reference Archivist, and I’ve been doing that since.

[Group portrait of Pan Am flight attendants]

Group portrait of Pan Am flight attendants, circa 1960s-1970s || The Denise (Babcock) Schmidt Pan Am Flight Attendant Collection/The Museum of Flight

Tell us about your organization.

The Museum of Flight is the largest private non-profit air and space museum in the world. Contrary to popular thought, we are not part of Boeing and never have been (although we enjoy a good relationship with Boeing!). With over 150 air and spacecraft, dozens of exhibits and experiences, and all kinds of programming and educational offerings The Museum of Flight (TMOF) is devoted to the preservation and sharing of aviation and aerospace history and technology. 

I work as part of the Collections team, which includes the Harl V. Brackin Library, The Museum of Flight Archives, and our small object collection. As the Reference Archivist, my main job is (you probably guessed it!) to answer reference inquiries, which are mostly related to photo requests and general research/reference. If an inquiry requires in-depth curatorial knowledge, it gets assigned to our Curators. On average, I personally handle 30 to 40 reference inquiries per month. We get requests from all over the world and our researchers vary, from students of all ages to authors to model makers to aircraft restorers and more. 

When I have time, I also still process and catalog archival collections because I love processing. It adds to my knowledge of the collection so I can better assist researchers, but also I just love making collections accessible for folks to use! In addition, I contribute to outreach efforts, such as participating in our monthly “Coffee with the Curator” (a themed presentation with materials on display from the library, archives, and objects), writing articles, leading Library & Archives tours and/or giving presentations about the Archives, and contributing to our team’s Instagram (shameless plug for @tmofcollections)! And of course, I help with “other duties, as assigned.”

[African-American Rosies with Boeing B-29 Superfortress]

African-American “Rosies” with Boeing B-29 Superfortress || Credit: The Museum of Flight Collection

Describe your collections.

The Museum’s collection contains over 25,000 small objects (classified as anything smaller than an aircraft), over 90,000 books and periodicals, over 18,000 aircraft manuals and technical reports, and nearly 5,000 cubic feet of archival materials. 

Our archival collections contain materials that document the entire evolution of manned flight, from the Wright Brothers to modern jet travel to space exploration. We have an estimated four million images, including photographic prints, film and glass plate negatives, slides, and transparencies. Our paper-based materials include maps, charts, drawings, blueprints, log books and diaries, manuscripts, research and technical documentation, correspondence and philately, and airline ephemera such as tickets, timetables, brochures, and luggage tags. 

What’s really awesome is that we’re becoming more publicly accessible, which is fantastic! We’re always open to the public via the Dahlberg Research Center. You do not need to be a Museum member or pay admission to visit us but we do recommend/prefer an appointment! But we can also be accessed via our Digital Collections, which went live December 2017 and currently has over 6,500 digital images and 100+ oral histories with more content being added on a regular basis. And in April of this year (2019), we also launched our public research portal, where folks can browse finding aids from our collection. We add to it weekly, and it currently has just shy of 300 collections, which is about 10% of our collection. We also encourage folks to reach out and ask if they don’t see something online, as these are just fragments of our collection!

[Convair (Theodore P. Hall) 118 Convaircar]

Convair (Theodore P. Hall) 118 Convaircar || Credit: The Peter M. Bowers Collection/The Museum of Flight

What are some challenges unique to your collections?

I don’t have an aviation or aerospace background so describing the technical aspect of many of the aircraft collections can be a bit daunting. Luckily, our Curators are great at helping me understand things so I can correctly explain it in a finding aid or to a researcher.

I’d also say our building is a bit wonky. It was originally meant to be a hazmat storage facility but was never used in that manner that we know of (at least I haven’t grown a tail yet). The building has very thick concrete walls and floor and a very thin aluminum roof, so in the event of an explosion, the roof would be forced up and (in theory) the walls and floor would withstand the blast, leaving only the roof to replace. Additionally the floors are very slick and slightly sloped (in case spills needed to be hosed into the also-present drains that happen to have gaps the exact width of a library cart wheel). This makes adding shelving quite a chore, as you can imagine. 

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Jenn Parent at work at the Museum of Flight

What is your favorite part of your job?

 That’s a tough call. I really like continuously learning and encountering material that sparks an interest or moment of “Wow!” (so many rabbit holes to go down – like did you know Goodyear made a plane out of rubber? Look it up – the Inflatoplane!). I also enjoy that my days can be quite varied based on what I’m up to that day. From answering a photo request about the Aero Spacelines Super Guppy to giving a tour to students or from making “frankenfolders” to house oversize materials to helping relocate a missile in our storage area, it’s never dull. 

But I think my real favorite is simple – being able to successfully guide a researcher and help fulfill their information need, especially when they reach out to me with what they may think is a long shot. I recently had a researcher ask me if it was fun being both useful and magical. A resounding yes!

 

Responses & Retrospectives: Rachael Woody on October is American Archives Month

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RachaelWoody

Rachael Woody (photograph courtesy of Rachael Woody).

This is the latest post in our series Responses and Retrospectives, which features archivists’ personal responses and perspectives concerning current or historical events/subjects with significant implications for the archives profession. Interested in contributing to Responses and Retrospectives?  Please email the editor at archivesaware@archivists.org with your ideas!

It’s that time of year again. No. Not pumpkin spice latte time – though it’s that time of year too. It’s American Archives Month!

 

Quick History Lesson

American Archives Month was launched in 2006 by the Society of American Archivists in support of their mission to advocate for the value of archives and archivists.

Archives Month Activities

Archives across the country can participate in archives month activities by doing any of the following:

  • Host an archives open house
  • Publish an article on your archives or collection
  • Create a display of highlights from your archives collection
  • Offer an archives workshop to the community
  • Give a lecture on a topic related to your archives
  • Write a blog post or post a video about your archives
  • Advocate for the resources you need for the archives to run smoothly

And Don’t Forget About #AskAnArchivist Day!

#AskAnArchivist day is October 2 this year and SAA’s Committee on Public Awareness (COPA) will be hosting a Twitter takeover of the SAA twitter account (@archivists_org). To learn more about #AskAnArchivist day and how you can participate please check out this SAA webpage.

Hone Your Archives Elevator Pitch

American Archives Month is a great time to work on your elevator speech. Not sure where to begin? Check out COPA’s elevator speech cheat sheet with prompts to guide you. Need examples to inspire you? Check out Talking Points on the Value of Archives for elevator speech examples. And for Twitter friendly speeches check out the Twitter #Archivesin5Words to see just how succinct (and funny) we can be.

American Archives Month Resources

A major partner and contributor to American Archives Month is the Council of State Archivists (COSA). Please check out the COSA Archives Month Resources page for information about Electronic Records Day, a sampling of Archives Month 2018 programming, press releases and governor proclamations, and example of state archives’ websites. COSA also offers a library of past American Archives Month posters to help inspire you.

Additional Resources to Help You Plan American Archives Month

Resources to Help with Media

 And don’t forget, International Archives Day is June 9, 2020!

In 2004, membership from the International Council on Archives petitioned the United Nations to create an International Archives Day. The date was chosen in honor of the ICA’s founding date: June 9, 1948. Just like Christmas in July, we can revisit our American Archives October activities and celebrate Archives Day in June.

Past American Archives Month Activities

To see a summary of activities archives across the country have hosted from 2006-2018, please see these pages:

Conclusion

Some of the resources offered in this blog post and on the American Archives Month webpage are dated. Do you have resources, tips, or toolkits we should know about? Please let the Committee on Public Awareness (COPA) know in the comments on this post or send an email to consulting@rachaelcristine.com so that COPA can continue to offer up to date outreach resources.

Now get out there and let us know what you’re doing for American Archives Month by sending an email to saahq@archivists.org.

This post was written by Rachael Cristine Woody, a member of The Society of American Archivists’ Committee on Public Awareness (COPA). The opinions and assertions stated within this piece are the author’s alone, and do not represent the official stance of the Society of American Archivists. COPA publishes response posts with the sole aim of providing additional perspectives, context, and information on current events and subjects that directly impact archives and archivists.