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/