ArchivesAWARE is a blog hosted by the Society of American Archivists and managed by its Committee on Public Awareness (COPA). It was established in January 2016 to create an online space where professionals and students engaged in all aspects of archival work could share their experiences of and ideas for raising public awareness of archives and the value that archives and archivists add to business, government, education, and society as a whole. Since that time, it has evolved to become a space for archivists to share the varied aspects of their work both with those within the archival community and those beyond.

Editorial Guidelines

What we post: COPA welcomes submission ideas for full-length “Features” or short “Highlights.” The longer “Features” posts can tackle any and all aspects of raising awareness of archives and archivists, including, but not limited to:

• Tool(s) and/or resource(s) for use in outreach efforts (e.g. social media platform or handout template)
• Practical tips for successful archival outreach
• Archival outreach theory
• Detailed descriptions of outreach projects and/or programs, and their results

“Highlights” cover specific outreach/advocacy news from the field, and short descriptions/updates of projects, programs, sites, and/or resources.

Format: While traditional, written blog posts will be the primary format of posts to ArchivesAWARE, we welcome non-traditional submission formats, such as videos or cartoons. Have an idea for a unique format? Send your proposal to archivesaware@archivists.org!

Length: “Features” should be between 500 and 1,000 words. (Longer pieces may be edited for length or split into multiple posts.) “Highlights” should be between 200 and 500 words.

Images: Authors are responsible for supplying images (approximately one for every 250 words) that are in the public domain or for which the author has permission to publish online. Captions should include a short description and image source. Images must have a minimum of 72 dpi for online publication.

Citations: Online sources should be hyperlinked directly in the blog post text, and Chicago style endnotes used for non-digital sources.

Author credit: Each author should provide their title and organization (if applicable), along with a headshot/picture to accompany their post. If it is helpful to provide context for your post, a one-two sentence biographical statement can also be included.

Copyright: Contributing authors hold copyright of their work, but we do request that if the content is re-posted elsewhere, ArchivesAWARE be cited and linked to as the original publisher.

Post comments: Comments to posts are moderated by ArchivesAWARE editors. Authors are encouraged to read and respond to posted comments.

Publicity: The Society of American Archivists will promote all ArchivesAWARE posts via its social media accounts and in the weekly “In the Loop” e-mail newsletter.

Interested in contributing to ArchivesAWARE? E-mail archivesaware@archivists.org to share your idea(s) and/or draft(s). Our current editors will work with you to publish your content to the blog!

Editor

Kristi Chanda, Early Career Member
SAA Committee on Public Awareness