Archival Musings

I'm away on a Librarian's Academy (which, secretly, I've renamed the Nerd's Academy), so I don't have time to create any new content here. Instead, I'll point you to a brilliant post over at The Digital Archive: Those New Archivist Ads. Enjoy.

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath for this. Or maybe not, but here it is anyway:

This is the cover of our very good looking brochure, which is available for downloading from our web site.

Go and have a look at it at www.lib.uct.ac.za/mss. There's a nifty little hyperlinked image, and clicking on it allows you to download the pdf brochure. It contains all you ever wanted to know about our archive but were afraid to ask. 

Another reply to my survey. Woohoo! That's 3 in 3 weeks. Sigh. Perhaps it's time to start phoning and badgering people. What do you think?

North said that I should sally forth. Totally agree. It's easy to advertise to students and staff who want to use the archives. It's not as easy to motivate colleagues to converse and share ideas. But yes, I agree, the conversation won't happen unless we make it happen.

In September, I'll be presenting a paper at a conference on policies in South African academic archive Reading Rooms. Which is a mouthful, but it's basically a look at what South African archives allow and don't allow in their Reading Rooms: do they allow use of digital cameras? Do they restrict access? Do they allow researchers to handle photographs with their bare (gasp!) hands? That sort of thing.

I prepared a little survey - just 10 questions - that I asked my population to fill in. (Can you see I've just recently been on a statistics course? I can now throw words like 'population' and 'sample' into casual conversation.) 

The response hasn't been great. It's been 3 weeks and I've received 2 replies. 

The exercise got me thinking about communication amongst archivists and librarians. I've been a librarian for 18 years and I've worked in the archives for 8. How many of the people that I contacted for my survey have I met and chatted with? Two. How many librarians and archivists from other institutions do I speak to on a daily basis? None.

I'm all for exchanging of ideas. It's ridiculous to think that when we're creating policies, or starting a new venture, we have to flounder around as if no one before us has done exactly this and might be able to help.

I read the blogs of archivists and librarians daily. But they're all American. They're helpful up to a point - I've contacted one or two of them to get tips and advice or to comment on their ventures - but it would be wonderful to have a similar conversation happening in South Africa.