Disasters can strike unexpectedly, causing significant damage to archival collections and facilities. Whether it is a flood, fire, or another catastrophic event, the aftermath of a disaster requires a strategic response to assess the damage and initiate recovery efforts.
The inherent fragility of archival materials makes them especially vulnerable to damage during disasters. To ensure the safety and preservation of these collections, archives must develop a comprehensive disaster response and recovery plan tailored to their unique needs. A well-crafted plan mitigates risks, safeguards materials, and guides staff in responding to emergencies.
Building a secure archival environment requires a strategic, layered approach. This post outlines five essential elements every archival institution should implement: access control, secure storage, surveillance systems, staff training, and vulnerability assessments.
Preserving archival collections requires more than short-term interventions or reactive measures. Establishing a long-term archival preservation strategy is essential to ensure that materials remain accessible, stable, and intact for future generations.
Archival management originated in the 1930s with the establishment of the National Archives and the Society for American Archivists, as well as the Historical Records Survey (HRS) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
The subsequent evolvement of records management as a specialized enterprise occurred in the 1950s. The expanse of governmental activity and its subsequent records spurred a need to reduce the number of records while retaining the quality of records of enduring value.
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The role of archivists has always been in flux, responding to the needs of the information world and providing the unique skill sets that librarians, historians, and records managers may understand but do not hold. Archivists are colleagues to librarians, historians, and records managers, but are a distinct class unto themselves.
The ability to automatically categorize records is very powerful, but autocategorization is not well understood and needs to be executed properly if it is to succeed. Autocategorization “attempts to assign electronic records to either predefined file structures or to self-defined categories through computer-based processes” (Lubbes 2003, 60).
Deaccessioning of archival holdings, the process in which an archives removes accessioned materials from its holdings, is one potential result of reappraisal. Ideally, deaccessioning would occur regularly in the course of archival collections management practices. As a routine procedure, it would allow archival institutions to remove materials determined to be unworthy of retention.
I recently watched R.I.P.: Rest in Pieces: A Portrait of Joe Coleman, a 1997 documentary about the painter and performance artist. Coleman paints detailed, overwhelming, and chaotic scenes in a similar style to Hieronymus Bosch. Coleman's work is categorized as "outsider art," a condescending way of saying an artist is talented, but without the usual pretension of being an artiste.
The management of the archival program connects to the hosting institution’s mission; it cannot be an afterthought. Unfortunately, management is an area where archivists traditionally lack experience, but, recently, most LIS programs require students to take at least one management course.
Archivists usually reside in organizations whose primary mission is something else, which can isolate them. Archivists often lack control over matters related to budgets or facilities; they need to be able to find and explain costs so resource allocators can understand them.
This post explores how data mining, a rapidly changing discipline of new technologies and concepts, affects the individual right to privacy. As technology becomes more enmeshed in the daily lives of individuals, information on their activities is being stored, accessed, and used. Society is developing a new definition of privacy in this information environment, with few laws specifying privacy protection with electronic transmission and storage. Collecting and using data without limitations is unacceptable, but norms have changed enough that data collection has been accepted without much opposition.
