Advocating Archives: An Introduction to Public Relations for Archivists Book Review

• Finch, Elsie Freeman. Advocating Archives: An Introduction to Public Relations for Archivists, Metuchen, NJ: The Society of American Archivists and Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1994.

Advocating Archives is a collection of essays that describes public relations in archives from a variety of perspectives. It addresses issues such as the relationship between patrons and archivists, raising funds, celebrating significant events, and marketing. The book is well developed and would be beneficial to consult, particularly in an occasional nature to address a specific problem or issue related to public relations. It also offers a few public relations case studies and several appendices that assist in planning for a public relations program for an archives.

The first chapter, "Talking to the Angel," addresses the subject of building a public relations program. The authors look at five elements of service that define an archivist's relationship to the public. These five elements are, "the archivist's professional stance, the physical and psychological environments archivists provide the resarcher, the nature of records as the public views them, and what research tells us about the users of records" This chapter provides a foundation that archivists can use to shape the public's perception of them and their duties.

In "Money Talk," Judy Hohmann points out that many archivists ignore the vast resource of private sector money that could underwrite their efforts. Instead they generally look to sources of public funding through grants. Hohmann points out that the private sector funneled to educational institutions "a total of $12.41 billion in contributions in 1990." In this chapter, she discusses how to solicit these types of funds from corporations, foundations, and individuals.

The third chapter, "In Print, On Air," addresses how archivists should approach using the press to inform partrons about significant events in the archives. The author provides instructions for contacting newspapers and television news channels, meeting with the media, holding press conferences, and drawing attention to your collections. In general, archivists should broadcast their information locally rather than nationally.

Philip Mooney's essay, "Modest Proposals," addresses the ways in which archives can gain publicity for their collections by using marketing concepts. Mooney says that four types of marketing tools can be used for archives: publications, exhibitions, audiovisual productions, and public relations activities. He provides suggestions on how to develop brochures and guides, where to place exhibitions, and when and how to use audiovisual productions. His most helpful suggestions were in his public relations section, where he stressed the need for developing positive relationships with reporters to help promote collections.

The fifth chapter addresses the subject of planning for public programs like anniversaries. The author, Timothy Ericson, argues that participating in these events is important because it gives archivists a better public image, it allows them to demonstrate the value of archives, and it offers them a chance to educate patrons. He humorously says that the archivist's first law of outreach is, "Human beings are unable to resist celebrating any anniversary divisible by twenty-five." Ericson believes that archivists must anticipate these events, investigate what focus the institution desires to emphasize in them, use outside help in planning, carefully schedule how they participate, and evaluate the successes and failures of the event after its conclusion. The diagrams he includes for planning events are very helpful.

Chapter six addresses how to make use of volunteer workers and how to set up an maintain a "friends of the archives" group. Many of the suggestions for interviewing, educating, and planning for volunteers are applicable to managing archives in general.

The final chapter supplies tips for troubleshooting public relations issues in archives. The authors of the article contend that many probelms can be avoided if archivists assess their physical plant, their workers, their patrons, their relationship to the media, and the impact of special events. By thinking carefully through these issues, archivists are able to put provisions in place that will minimize the impact that any of these things can have upon public perceptions of their archives. If negative situations do arise, the authors recommend that archivists be honest with the press, supply a press release, and speak of the situation as positively as possible. For example, if records are destroyed through faulty piping, the authors point out that the archivist can focus on the records that were saved rather than the records that were destroyed or the faulty physical plant. The archivist can admit that damage was done, but the positive spin on the situation mitigates some of the negative publicity the situation can present. Finally, the archivist should encourage the press to follow up on these types of situations to show how they find resolution. The authors contend that the best way to troubleshoot these situations is through adequate planning in advance.

Primo Webinar

For those who do not know, Ex Libris will be offering a webinar about Primo on May 9, 2006. I posted about Primo in an earlier post. You can register for the webinar here. I assume that the webinar is only for Ex Libris customers, but perhaps it is not. I am extremely excited to find out more about this product.

Thank you, Stan Finley

I have no idea who Stan Finley is. I just know that every software developer in the world should be jockying to hire him to write their documentation. Stan's notes on the Fedora distribution of Linux are the best examples of good documentation that I have ever seen. It helps that he is writing about a fairly easy to install Linux distro. Nonetheless, his notes rock.

Using Stan's notes helped me do something I have been wanting to do for a long time–create an intranet at work using a Linux server. Basically, I set up a blog to be used internally, and I hope to set up a wiki as well. I had talked about it for a while, but to be honest, Linux makes me nervous. I am much more comfortable in a Windows environment simply because of familiarity. I have used Linux and Unix, but they still make me a bit nervous.

All that changed when I started cleaning up a room and found an older computer with a pretty good processor that we were no longer using. I thought, hey, I can use this to practice setting up Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. All my fear left. At the worst, I could just reinstall Windows. Now, after just a little bit of work, and with the help of Stan's notes, I have the thing up and running.

So, thank you, Stan.

Understanding Archives and Manuscripts Book Review

• O’Toole, James M. Understanding Archives and Manuscripts, Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 1990.

James O'Toole's Understanding Archives and Manuscripts is a helpful guide to understanding basic information about the history and development of the science of archives. O'Toole contends that knowing how records came to be, what functions they document, what information they contain, and how that information can be used is fundamental to understanding archives and manuscripts. In the first chapter, O'Toole discusses how record making developed from oral transmission used by the earliest preliterate people to the modern proliferation of texts in literate societies through various means. He notes that the shift from oral transmission to written texts produced more precision, more permanent records, and more progress, especially when writing became a widely used form of communication. As literacy increased in society, so did the proliferation of records, which in turn meant that society began to value whole sets of records more than the individual parts.

O'Toole points out that there are six basic reasons for the creation of records: personal, social, economic, legal, instrumental, and symbolic. People save records for both practical and ephemeral reasons. Records archived for practical reasons can be saved either for their priginal intended use or some unknown secondary purpose. O'Toole then traces the development of various instruments that have been used to record information. He notes that sometimes progress in the means of communication results in more information being recorded (ie. printing press), and sometimes it means less (ie. telephone). He concludes the chapter by pointing out that modern records are abundant, decentralized, interrelated, social, have value as a whole, and have shifiting usefulness.

In the second chapter, O'Toole recounts the development of archives, particularly in America, and he notes that archival science is a growing discipline in America. He discusses the fact that ancient civilizations used the word archives to refer to any written records. Modern archival practices really began during the French Revolution when records began to be kept to protect the rights of the people.

O'Toole notes that public records were important in America from the time of the establishment of Jamestown. In the late 18th century, there also developed a historical manuscript tradition that began with the work of the Massachusetts Historical Society, which was established in 1791. This tradition focused on gathering, saving, preserving, and publishing historical manuscripts to ensure continued access to them. During the 19th century, the focus on the historical manuscript tradition in the US far outweighed the focus on the public records tradition. This trend began to change shortly before the beginning of the 20th century with the establishment of the Public Archives Commission of the American Historical Association. The 1930s brought several developments for archives including the building of the National Archives, the formation of the Society of American Archivists, and the Historical Records Survey of the Works Progress Administration. In the decades that followed, archival science went through a period of diversification of interests (ie. records management) and of consolidation of professional identity (various types of standardization).

The final two chapters describe the work of archivists and thee types of knowledge and values that archivists need to possess. Archivists should develop knowledge about the creators of the records with which they work. They should understand how records are created, how they are used, and the types of activities they document. In addition to all these, they should understand basic archival principles such as provenance and original order, and they should have a working knowledge of how to take intellectual and physical control of records for which they are responsible.

Understanding Archives and Manuscripts is an extremely helpful guide to the archival profession. O'Toole explains both the history and concepts behind archival science in simple language. He also provides a basic bibliography of archival texts as an appendix. I would, without reservation, place this text in the hands of a student worker who was considering a career in archives. In fact, I may do just that tomorrow.

My Long Tail

My buddy Chris and I have been discussing the concept of the long tail recently. I have been trying to intentionally think of the implications of this business and marketing concept to libraries and archives. I noticed I have a little bit of a long tail phenomenon taking place on this blog. You can see it in this diagram of this month's post popularity.

As you can see, the post I made about Primo and Ex Libris got a pretty good number of people reading it for a couple of days. Of all the posts I have made on this blog, it by far attracted the most readers. However, when I started this blog, I made a couple of posts about a couple of things that I am interested in–PHP and PSP. For some reason, these posts have perennially attracted several readers a day. In the long run, I am pretty sure that these posts will outpace the Ex Libris post.

The troubling thing is, these posts really have very little to do with my core competencies here at NeoArch. I'm not sure what all this means, but it can't be good.

My ALABI

If my wife or boss asks me where I will be on May 31-June 1 of this year, I have an ALABI. No, I am not a poor speller, and I have nothing to scream about. On those two days, I will be in Richmond, Virginia at the second annual meeting of ALABI, the Association of Librarians and Archivists of Baptist Institutions.

The group was formerly known as –no, wait a minute–that was Prince. ALABI was formerly known as the Southern Baptist Librarian Association. That name did not really account for the fact that many of the members were archivists who worked with Baptist historical collections. So, those of us who are archivists are now officially recognized.

I say all this to encourage anyone who works with Baptist archives or manuscript collections to join the group, read the newsletter, and attend the annual meeting. Participation in this group is a great way for Baptist librarians and archivists to network, collaborate, and offer training. Plus, the membership dues are so low that if they went any lower, the group would have to change its name to Crazy Larry's Discount Association of Librarians and Archivists at Baptist Institutions–and CLDALABI is just way too many letters.

Modern Archives: Principles and Techniques Book Review

• Schellenberg, Theodore R. Modern Archives: Principles and Techniques, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956. SAA Archival Classics Series. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2003.

Even commenting on a book like this can be a little unnerving. Schellenberg's Modern Archives is an archival classic, and for me to even say that is tantamount to saying that the Grand Canyon is grand. The thing needs no praise, especially from someone as insignificant as me. It is also unnerving because for me to criticize the book in any way is tantamount to my looking at a particular part of the Grand Canyon and saying, "Well, right here it does not look so grand." Again, I am insignificant, and Schellenberg is not. He is the hero of archivists–an archivist's archivist, if there ever was one. So, I confess at the beginning of this review that I am probably unqualified to say anything of this work.

In this book, Schellenberg discusses a wide variety of topics related to archives and records management. He begins by describing the way national archives programs developed in France (Archives Nationales in 1795), England (Public Record Office in 1838), and the United States (National Archives in 1934). The reasons for the existence of archives are governmental efficiency, cultural preservation, personal interest, and official (ie. so a government can do its work.) He notes that records must meet at least two qualifications to be considered archives. First, they must be "created or accumulated to accomplish some purpose." Second, they must "be preserved for reasons other than which they were created or accumulated." He also notes the Jenkinson believed a third qualification was necessary; an archive must have "the possibility of proving an unblemished line of responsible custodians."

Schellenberg points out a couple of fundamental differences between archives and libraries. First, they differ in holdings. The materials holdings of libraries were created in a different manner from the holdings of archives. Likewise, the way a library acquires its holdings differs from the way an archive acquires its holdings. Libraries and archives also differ in their methods. The two types of institutions differ in the way they appraise, select, arrange, describe their respective materials. Still, each type of institution can benefit the other. Archivists should also cooperate with record managers or officers. An archivist is concerned with the work of records managers because he or she will eventually receive their records, describe their records, and provide availability to their records in accord with policies that the originating institution set forth. Archivists should participate in discussions with records managers about how records are arranged. The two occupations have differing roles relating to the primary and secondary value of records. Record managers judge the primary value. Archivists ultimately judge the secondary value, although they receive input in this regard from records managers.

Schellenberg devotes a whole section to records management. This section deals primarily with government records. He contends that the nature of records is that they ever increase in number, volume, and complexity. The most difficult types of records to manage are the ones that are the most important. Records dealing with origins, policies, and procedures are attended with difficulty and do not pass quickly into non-current use. Each government agency should have a staff concerned with record keeping that works with an archivist to determine what records have enduring value. Records pass from current use in an agency's office, to non-current use in a records management center, to non-current use in an archives.

Schellenberg's section on archives covers several topics of importance with regard to archives. He addresses the conditions of archival management by pointing out that modern archives are difficult to deal with because they are difficult to identify and come in a variety of forms. Yet they must be maintained because they are often unique and are valuable for many purposes. Schellenberg pointed out that NARA basically separated the activities conducted in managing archives into four parts: disposition activities, preservation and arrangement activities, description and publication activities, and reference service activities. Work in an archives should be assigned by subject matter. Workers should generally understand archival principles, but they should also have background in a field of work that can complement the materials that they will work with in the archives. There should be an organizing plan to the work of an archives to ensure that the work on collections progresses evenly.

In discussing appraisal, Schellengberg notes that in America, two values determine whether or not records should be retained. Evidential value refers to the evidence that documents the function of the government that produced the records. There are three tests for determining evidential value: the position of each office in a structure, the functions performed by an office, and the activities carried out by an office. The most important records will usually come from the top of a hierarchy. Four types of records should be analyzed of evidential value: policy records, operating records, housekeeping records, and publications. Informational value refers to records providing information about persons, corporations, events, and problems. When appraising records for informational value, the archivist is not always concerned with their provenance. Basically, appraisal means the archivist is to consider the various types of research for which scholars can use the records. Schellenberg conceives of the archivist as historically trained. When archivists encounter a particular type of information in records with which they are unfamiliar, they should consult a scholar familiar with that type of research to see if the records are significant.

Schellenberg briefly touches upon preservation practices. If any section of this work could be strengthened, it is the section on preservation. He points out that the two types of threats to records are internal and external (environmental). He says that good facilities are necessary to an archives and will generally eliminate the external threats. He points out that records are often threatened by materials intrinsic to them. He also says that at the time of his writing, laminating was an acceptable and preferred means of preservation activity for paper. He notes that this practice was in the process of evaluation.

Schellenberg's discussion of arrangement is quite helpful, particularly because he recounts the history of terms such as fonds, respect des fonds, provenance, and original order. He points out that the principles of archival arrangement are quite different from the principles of record keeping, primarily because archivists arrange records from multiple agencies in a way that demonstrates their relation to one another. He recounts the history of arrangement first by considering Europe. France's Archives Nationales originally had subject based arrangement developed by Camus and Daunou. In 1839, however, Guizot departed from this system and proposed that records be grouped in fonds according to the creating institution. In 1841, the term respect des fonds first occurred in a circular produced by the Minister of the Interior, Count Duchatel. However, within the fonds, France still arranged by subject. Prussia (ie. Heinrich von Sybel, 1881) extended this concept by developing the idea of provenance, claiming that an archives should group according to the administrative units and maintain the arrangement of the creating agency. The Dutch extended these ideas and claimed that records should be arranged according to the original order of the registry. Finally, English archivists, particularly Jenkinson, claimed that archivists should never transgress original order, even in regards to miscellaneous items within records.

In America, archivists for the National Archives faced several problems. First, they had to determine what to call groups of records because their groups differed somewhat from European records. They settled on the term "record group." Second, they had to decide how to divide the records of various agencies within the departments of NARA. Third, they had to decide on how to arrange record groups. Finally, they had to decide how to arrange records within record groups. Schellenberg concludes this subject by suggesting that several things. First, records should be in separate units according to agency. The holdings of archives should be divided into units or groups. They should maintain records in the order in which they were received. Finally, records being used for informational purposes should be arranged in the way that best serves scholars.

Schellenberg discusses description by noting that it has four basic elements: authorship, physical type, title of the unit, physical structure of the unit. In America, records are modern in form and content. Very few records predate the 19th century. At the National Archives, they divide their records into approximately 300 record groups and use two different schemes to describe their records. The provenance scheme is the preferred method. Here, the archivists describe record groups according to their hierarchy and administrative function. They produce finding aids in various stages of development for all record groups. The National Archives also sparingly uses a pertinence scheme of description. They occasionally develop either reference information papers or detailed lists about special topics. Obviously, this method cannot be applied to entire repositories.

Schellenberg briefly addresses publication before turning his attention to reference in the final chapter. Here he looks at the policies governing access and use. He argues that archivists should encourage openness of records for the public good and discourage unreasonable limitations on access. However, doing what is best for the public good also means that certain types of records, such as those that pertain to the security of the nation, present foreign affairs, confidential business information, or personal information, should have very limited or restricted access. Schellenberg also makes several points concerning use. First, all users should be treated similarly. Second, reasonable requests should ideally be filled in order of importance, without regard for the status of the person making the requests. Archivists should, however, ask for identification to ensure that the patron is trustworthy. Likewise, patrons should sign a statement acknowledging that they received the materials. Lending (as opposed to using) of materials should be discouraged, although it is sometimes appropriate to lend records to the creating agency. Finally, reproduction services are generally appropriate, as are certain types of information services requests.

Please Bear with Me

I will find a theme that I like eventually. For now, this one works. It's three columned, and everyone knows that three columns = the golden mean of web presentation.

Digitization Gone Awry

I like digitization. I like for people to be able to access books and other resources remotely. I understand that digitization costs money. I know that the various vendors who digitize usually need to get some sort of return on their investment. But this is ridiculous. Logos Bible Software company is willing to sell the “J. A. Broadus Preaching Collection,” a digital collection of three John A. Broadus books, for the low, low price of $59.95. That’s the price with $15.00 off, folks. They assure you it’s a bargain, too. They could “only locate a single copy of Sermons and Addresses anywhere on the web–available used for $100!” They should have looked harder. Alibris has five copies right now, the most expensive of which is $34.95. They are also willing to sell you A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons as part of the package. All well and good. The only problem is, there are already two free, standards-compliant, online editions of the work here and here (you can also get this free). Both of these editions are older than the Dargan-edited edition that Logos is offering.

Look, I know Logos probably has major $$$ invested in equipment, workers, and the like. Still, I think the price on this software is a little exorbidant. I am willing to bet that

• Logos paid nothing for the books, because they used copies from a theological library.
• Logos paid nothing for the copyright, because they are in the public domain.
• Logos could probably sell three of the collections at that price and more than make up for any amount of money it cost them to have an employee scan the books.

I know there are attendant costs with digitization, but it seems crazy to me to charge that much for something that libraries are trying to provide for free. If you are going to charge a good bit, provide a good bit of content. For example, Baptist Standard Bearer’s Baptist History Collection costs $59.95, but you get 43,298 pages with it.

Of course, the whole discussion brings up the concept of the invisible web, because the library versions of Broadus’ work are buried or non-existent in a good Google search, while Logos’s product is the second entry. Libraries need to do a better job of bringing their digital resources to the fore so that these types of digitization ventures do not occur.

Kudos to Ex Libris

Kudos to the folks at Ex Libris for jumping into the library 2.0 discussion. Many librarians are currently complaining about the slowness of vendors to react to changes within computing culture. To be fair, the employees for some vendors are doing the same. For example, Stephen Abrams, SirsiDynix's VP for Innovation, bemoaned this slowness during his section of the Dead & Emerging Technologies Forum at CIL2006. It looks as if Ex Libris is working to at least stay close to the curve, if not ahead of it.

Patrons today probably expect that all library resources should be able to be found in one place. Federated searching and link resolvers are a nice start, but Ex Libris has gone one step further. Today, they officially published that they are developing a tool called Primo, "a complete solution for the discovery and delivery of diverse content types." I had a chance to speak with the folks at Ex Libris during the recent CIL2006, and I have to admit, they have my curiosity peaked. I like the fact that they are trying to bring all of a libraries resources into one place. I am extremely excited that they decided to make a fopac-like product that allows for tagging and comments. I cannot wait to see how this functions, and I think I would love to be in on the testing of this product.

I do have a few questions, though.

• Will Primo work in conjunction with other Ex Libris products such as MetaLib, or will it be a total replacement for it? I know the newsletter says, "Primo uses the metasearch capabilities of MetaLib to perform the searches on remote databases," but I am not exactly sure whether this means Primo has MetaLib built-in, or whether MetaLib will be separate. I think it means that one has to have MetaLib as a separate product, but I am not sure.
• Will institutions be able to add online resources to Primo? I assume they can. What if I want to use Primo to access several search engines? Can I do that?
• Will it generate RSS feeds and permalinks for searches?
• I know it is customizable, but can it be OpenSearch-like? Or can it be incorporated into OpenSearch?
• Given Paul Miller's recent article on the death of the OPAC, will Primo soon be unnecessary? FWIW, I highly doubt it, but I just thought I would throw it out there.

If anyone has any other questions, feel free to leave them in a comment. Perhaps someone from Ex Libris will come over and discuss all this. Whether they do or not, kudos to them for trying to give librarians what they say they want!