Working outside the walls: from gatekeeper to keymaster
Amanda HillHillbraith Ltd.
Archives Association of OntarioDeseronto Archives
Gatekeeper
Keymaster
Side effects…
• In opening up resources online, archivists and other information professionals are becoming increasingly invisible…
• …whilst reaching a larger audience than ever
So…• If our users can find what they need and easily
understand it
• If our paymasters understand and value what we do
• It doesn’t matter if our professional public profile is low or non-existent…
• …as long as the value and importance of our records and archives is understood
Ch ch ch ch changes
• Funding security
– Personal
– Professional
“Division of Classification and Cataloging, November 17, 1937.”U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 64-NA-193
http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3874691342/
Turn and face the strange
"…professional archivists need to transform themselves from elite experts behind
institutional walls to becoming mentors, facilitators, coaches, who work in the
community"
Terry Cook, 'Evidence, memory, identity, and community: four shifting archival paradigms' Archival Science, June 2013
Support community recordkeepers
Do we need to lower our standards?
• Inclusion
• Description
http://cheezburger.com/5651149056
"Archivists can also engage interested members of the community in interactive dialogues with
mainstream archives and their holdings.“
Terry Cook, 'Evidence, memory, identity, and community: four shifting archival paradigms' Archival Science, June 2013
Community involvement
• Go where there are people
Try not to say ‘no’
(Over)share obsessively
• Get out-of-copyright images online with permissive licences
– Let the public do your work for you, online and off
– People love to share your content
Tell people about what you do
• Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr– Go where people are - online as well as off
• Deliberately become a creator
Gather evidence of usefulness
Mobilize support
Those dreaded words…
Service Delivery Review
"Archivists can also engage interested members of the community in interactive dialogues with
mainstream archives and their holdings.“
Terry Cook, 'Evidence, memory, identity, and community: four shifting archival paradigms' Archival Science, June 2013
must
“…that backwater, which, though apparently calm and comfortable, may also be stagnant with the signs of approaching irrelevance.”
Hugh Taylor, 1993
I watch the ripples change their sizeBut never leave the streamOf warm impermanence
David Bowie, 1971
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deserontoarchives/3699611148/
@mandahill
http://hillbraith.com/
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