An accidental archivist returns to school

After undergrad, I swore I was finished with formal education. Then, I found myself in need of a career path and wandered in to librarianship, as I described in a previous post. I did briefly consider continuing after my master’s degree to pursue a Ph.D., but I was burned out. Full time work, part-time grad school, and holding office in my town was a lot to do at once, and on reflection I wasn’t sure what a doctorate would actually do for me, or my career. I didn’t want to teach library science or become a full-time researcher, so what would be the point?

I had a similar gander at further education when I joined the library staff at Vermont Law School – should I get a J.D. or master’s degree in environmental law? But after considering this, I came back to that same question: what would be the point? I don’t want to pursue law as a career, and I’m not interested in becoming a faculty member here (some of our librarians do hold J.D. degrees and they teach legal research courses – a prospect I admire from afar). I could see the value in auditing a class or two, to be better acquainted with the experience of legal education, or more familiar with certain topics, but a whole degree? It’s not for me.

I did not set out to become an archivist, either, though I probably should have, given my background in audio and video production and crossover interest in librarianship. (It was only after we moved out of the D.C. area that I learned about the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus and all the amazing preservation work they do.) Little did I know that I’d be appointed to rescue a bunch of old video and audio recordings made on various formats. I was excited about the prospect, at least at first. I attended an annual meeting of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA – but not to be confused with the medical group of the same acronym) and got really excited. It’s hard not to when you’re in a room with people who work with materials from Hollywood, the golden age of advertising, early film and television, the wildly experimental period of 1960’s and 1970’s popular music, etc.

Returning to Earth, I did my best with the collection of campus recordings at my former library, and managed a pilot project to have ProQuest digitize a small sample of them – back when they were still trying to conquer all formats and all subject matter. But I couldn’t get buy-in for a larger digitization project and the corresponding cataloging work. Too bad, too, because there were some big names among the recordings: Ursula K. Leguin, Sun Ra (giving a jazz master class and a concert), Bill Clinton, Sheryl Crow. It was a missed opportunity for the institution and for me personally, to learn how to project-manage and oversee a multimedia archival collection, preserve it, and make it available. I do wonder what happened to those boxes of tapes.

That disappointment has lingered, the career version of a romantic “what if”. Then, when my current position opened up, I noticed the job description included this nugget: This position manages the library’s archives collections while also participating in the library’s reference and faculty liaison program. It was an interesting footnote. At that point, I’d worked here about 18 months, primarily part-time. While I knew we had something we called an archive, I didn’t know anything about it, even where it was kept. I got the job, got the lowdown on the most urgent tasks and responsibilities, and archives was mentioned as a “work on this when you have time” type of project.

Work on what, exactly? Turns out, there are labeled boxes in a storage closet (the door is marked “Archives” so you know it’s legit) and a MS Word document that loosely describes the contents. This finding aid is current through 2009, when the storage closet ran out of space and items started piling up in an “annex” room. My predecessor lacked the support, and time, to move forward with the next phase of the archives, so during her 10-year reign nothing more was done – donations just kept accumulating. She did at one point write a memo that essentially said “unless you give me money to buy equipment and hire some people to work on this, it’s going to remain as-is” — a fair play and good enough at the time.

Personally, it’s always been hard for me to be a “good enough” type of worker. So for the past year I’ve been thinking about this most-neglected aspect of my position. Our school archives are my responsibility, and I do regularly receive requests for information about school history that may or may not be answerable using the information they contain. (Who was the graduation speaker in 1984?) These requests are coming in more and more frequently now that the 50th anniversary of the institution is in full swing, with all the fundraising opportunities that provides. We need to be able to tell fun and engaging stories about the wonderful things this school has seen and done, but how can a neglected pile of unorganized documents do that? How can we do better? Can we do any better given our limited funds, staff time, and facilities?

As I mentioned, one of the former obstacles to working on / in our archives has been space. That problem was alleviated when we decided to divide the materials into two categories. We now have another librarian in charge of faculty scholarship, which includes all the published books and articles that were housed in the archives storage area. These are being inventoried and moved to the “annex” room, to give them a distinct home, which frees up space for the rest of the materials – historic documents, photos, audio and video recordings (a chance at personal redemption?), and artifacts from the school’s history, a positive step.

It is helpful to understand, as a library, what our archives contains and who it is intended to serve. So, working in part from an unpublished prior draft, as well as from our broader Collection Development Policy, last year I created an Archives Policy, outlining what we collect, why, and how we will assess future offers of materials. This is very helpful to have, not only internally but also externally, when another department, alum or community member comes asking if we will take their old records. Do they meet the criteria outlined in the policy, including content, condition, format, and volume? Having a rubric to assess against is another helpful step in the right direction.

I’ve also been trying to learn about archives work and best practices more generally. I’ve gleaned some basic concepts over the years, but I wasn’t able to take an archives or preservation class in library school. The lack of formal training has been weighing on me, and frankly, I’m not that motivated to sit and read the books left behind by my predecessor. After all, how would I know if the information in Developing and Maintaining Practical Archives, ©1997 is still relevant?

I’ve realized I need some structure and inspiration to get moving in a tangible direction. How do I go about integrating the post-2009 items into the existing collection? How do I assess what items need to be preserved sooner than later? How can I raise funds for such a project and what are the details needed to be able to estimate scope and costs? I knew I was out of my depth, but I wasn’t exactly sure what supports could be most helpful – a series of workshops, a mentorship?

Then, somehow, I found out about the University of Maine’s Graduate Certificate in Digital Curation. It must have been on Mastodon because I can’t find email about it. I was intrigued; I investigated. I learned about the department head, Jon Ippolito, and his long career as a digital artist, multimedia archivist, and deep thinker on these and related topics (ding! someone I want to learn from and emulate). I looked at the course syllabus from the fall of 2024 for the introductory class and saw that it had a module on the use of AI (ding! not teaching from a position of 10+ years ago, as some programs are, but keeping up with current technology and exploring how it fits with current practice). The certificate program is aimed at working professionals and allows students to use real-world projects as examples and test cases for course assignments and independent study (ding! do work for my job and get academic credit). This is a defined program from a reputable institution that, if completed, bestows a specific credential (ding! enhance that résumé). And, because I’m the “school archivist,” accidental or not, I’ve been able to successfully argue that the tuition should be reimbursed as professional development (ding! free for me).

So, I’ve enrolled and will be taking my first class, Digital Collections & Exhibitions, starting next week. I’m excited and a little intimidated – it’s been a while since I was in a formal class, and the syllabus looks dense. (This is probably good – I tend to get bored easily if not challenged.) And I genuinely want to learn some applicable skills that will help me figure out what to do next with all these helical videotapes, newspaper clippings taped to sheets of acid paper, curling reams of faculty meeting minutes, and photos of people who are clearly affiliated with the school but unidentified as individuals.

It’s going to be fun and weird, and difficult and challenging. A big motivator for starting this blog now is to have a place to process my learning and share it. Archives will probably be a sizable topic here for the next few years, so I hope you’ll enjoy exploring with me. Thanks in advance for reading and joining in on this accidental adventure.