Thank you for all the great advice I got about school archivists. It's a job not
many seem to relish, but there were huge differences in the way it is approached.
I'll give all these suggestions to my principal and hopefully he won't want them
all! Here is the original post along with the responses I got.
Caitlin Hooker
Prek-8 Librarian
St. Gabriel's Catholic School
Austin, Texas
caitlin.hooker@sgs-austin.org
I am the librarian at a 10 year old, private school. My new principal just
informed me that I am now the school archivist! Does anyone take on this role of
preserving their school's history? Specifically, I am looking for ideas on what
exactly I should keep (all newspaper articles? DVD's from school musicals, etc)
and the best way to compile and preserve the information. I will post a HIT if
there is interest.
Thanks so much!
I was the director of libraries in a school founded in 1689. We had an archives.
You certainly want to keep some legal records, minutes of the board, reports to the
state, reports to accreditation agencies, yearbooks, newspapers. Find out what the
purpose of the archives is, get an advisory committee. Don't take on too much,
remember you are going to have to do it.
Another Texas school archivist! I'm the archivist at the Kinkaid School in
Houston. How familiar are you with archival standards? If you're completely new
to this, I would recommend taking a look at "Starting an Archives" by Elizabeth
Yakel, and the Archival Fundamentals Series from SAA (particularly the one on
Arranging and Describing Archives). These are all available from the Society of
American Archivists.
Before I got here the library director established a fairly comprehensive list of
record series that are produced by the school on an ongoing basis. This was useful
for getting the archives started, and particularly for identifying records that are
created each year so you can make sure that they get to the archives (i.e.,
directories, programs for school productions, annual reports, board minutes,
newspapers...). If possible, we keep two copies of each record. I can send you a
copy of our records series, if you're interested.
Until I started working here, each item that came into the archives was evaluated
using these records series and filed accordingly. This isn't a horrible way to
start, but there are a couple of problems with that I can see with this method.
First, it takes the records out of context. Let's say you have a box of files that
came in from the headmaster. When looked at together, these records and the way
they have been kept tell you something about the way the headmaster conducted
business on a day-to-day basis. If you file the records according to an external
framework you lose this context.
The other problem I have with this method is that, in the future, it will require a
lot of shifting of files and boxes to maintain the files in order.
Also, there are a lot of records that are created that are not produced
consistently. For example, we have an auction every three years. Announcements,
invitations, and programs are created for each auction consistently, but planning
materials for the auctions vary significantly from year to year.
I haven't completely scrapped the work my predecessor did, but I do handle things a
little bit differently when they come in the door. Basically, I identify the
creator/office of origin of a given box of records, and process it as a unit. If
there are materials within it that are part of a recurring series (annual reports,
board minutes, auction programs, newspapers and newsletters...), I do file them
with that series, but I fill out a notice of document removal/transfer and leave it
in the original location to point researchers to the documents that have been
removed. This makes it much easier to keep track of how many copies we have, and
we don't end up with five copies of one newsletter stored in different places. It
also makes it easy to look at the newsletters sequentially.
Hopefully that gives you a little bit of information to start with. I hope it
wasn't too confusing! I could go into more detail, but I'm not going to do that
unless you would like me too. I'd be happy to try to answer any questions you
have, or send you copies of any of the archival management records I've created
(accession log, that list of records series, sample finding aids...). Just let me
know what would be most helpful!
Ideally, you should keep everything that the school produces and every
print mention of the school. In practice, you won't be able to do that.
I'd suggest that you keep a copy of every yearbook, graduation programs,
installation services for new staff, programs for musicals, concerts,
etc. Make sure that if you have an annual staff photograph that you keep
a copy of that, too. You should have a picture of every principal and
years of service. In fact, you should have that for all teachers. Get
pictures of the Board members, and make sure that you take pictures of
all major events.
Now the problem: How will you keep those pictures? Not all that many
years ago we had negatives and actual photographs to keep. The
photographs would deteriorate over the years, but if the negatives were
given even minimal care you could always make another print from them.
Today everything is digital, and since that technology changes, it is
entirely possible that you will not be able to print a digital picture
even five years from now because no one will have the necessary machine
to read the old data. Of course, that assumes that nothing damaged the
original data in the first place (think a magnet getting too close to
the storage device).
Here's my suggestion. Remember that this is worth no more than what you
paid for it. I'd keep those memory cards, CDs, DVDs, etc. in a small
strong box in the school safe. Whenever your technology changes, so that
you are now using something different than what you used before,
transfer from the old medium to the new.
One other thing to do: have every teacher write down their memories of
each year. If you have anyone around from Day One make sure they write
out everything they can remember. If you can find anyone who was a
student then get them to do the same.
also found myself as the school archivist. We are currently in the process of
creating an archive committee of interested faculty/staff to determine what we have
saved, what we should save in the future and where we should save it. Currently, I
keep acid/lignin free file folders for each school year. I have folders for
general school materials, student materials, alumni materials, faculty materials
etc. Some places use boxes instead of files. I have purchased acid/lignin free
paper to use for making copies of newspaper articles, but haven't done a very good
job of keeping up with the copying. Instead I try to keep the newspaper articles
in separate folders so they don't discolor the other materials. Everything we have
is in paper form so I am hoping to explore ways to digitalize at least portions of
the collection as searching for any specific person or event is time consuming. I
would be interested in hearing what other schools are doing.
i have a clerk who cuts out all newspaper articles to glue them into an
"old school" scrap book. of course she chooses to represent only the
positive light of the school. i don't care what she does because i am
NOT that person, have NO desire to be an archivist.
sounds like your attitude is positive towards the process.
anyone done ANYTHING in the past, as a starting point of thought for
you?
seems like a daunting task to me. hope you get lots of great input
from the group.
It is not unusual for an academic or public librarian to suddenly be assigned
responsibility for historical collections already held at an institution, but
I'd never heard of it with pK-8! Ask your principal what, exactly, s/he
'means' by this. S/he may think it's just a matter of keeping the school
newspaper and/or yearbook (if you have such); but s/he may have some bigger
concept of the responsibilities, especially in a private school that isn't
documented through the school district. Is s/he expecting you to track and
create records of alumni or donors? Provide 'resources' (e.g., photographs)
for fund-raising campaigns? Putting up a 'history' webpage? If you do not
have any background or training in archives administration and the principal
has an expanded idea of that role, make it clear that s/he is placing extra
and time-consuming responsibilities on you that normally require special
training. Keeping the DVDs, original prints of photographs and other,
non-paper material is gravy - it'd be nice, but requires even more
specialized expertise (including knowledge of migration techniques). The
principal may not want to put the burden of maintaining history at the
expense of your support of emerging technology, for instance. Look for
support from the Society of American Archivists webpage
http://www.archivists.org/
<https://mail.sgs-austin.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.archivists.org/>
If you decide to take on the role there are
excellent basic resource titles listed under publications. (I'd interlibrary
loan them before you decide which would be most useful).
If s/he merely means keeping yearbooks and newspapers, it will still be
time-consuming to make it a 'useful' chore as you may want to create indexes
that will make them useful, or consider how you are going to allow 'use'. Do
you let students come in and check items out? In-library use only? Do you
need special rules to protect the items, and if so, how will you implement,
teach and enforce those rules? If the newspaper in particular is in a paper
format, consider scanning them to pdf at the least, so that you don't lose
them in your rush to save them.
we have long served as the archivists here - we go through the local paper and clip
any articles about our students and put them in a scrapbook (how antiquated!)
We keep a complete backlog of yearbooks and literary magazines - I don't allow
these out of the library office, because the yearbooks esp. have a tendency to get
cut up (a girl has a crush and cuts his pic out!) or disappear. We put photographs
into the scrapbook, but that has started to change a lot since digital has replaced
the old fashioned film cameras. We also keep all the DVD's (formerly videos) from
the school drama productions. Anything else which seems of historical interest
could arise - you will know what to do!
Ask the head master what he wants kept and the Board. You will also need a budget!
I had some things which were not to be made public, including the ex head's
correspondence, we had a specific time period. I also have copies of an underground
newspaper which had been ordered destroyed.
Although I don't have this assignment, I keep yearbooks in my office
that don't circulate.
A scrapbook could be kept for the newspaper articles.
Hi. I have that unofficial position and really sort of inherited it when my partner
of some years retired in 2000. She had been active in the early years of the school
and I learned a lot from her. I have worked at my school twice, in the early to mid
80s and again since 1992-93 school year. In 2002 I decided to establish
the"History Corner" which includes the local area books, items from the collection
of our namesake (a former superintendent) , and materials from the school. In 2004
the building was renovated and really delayed anything that we could do with the
"archives" for at least a year. However, I began again, collecting items, trying to
organize (a former student who worked with our local historical society cataloged
the items before renovation took place) and finally getting our Young Historians
Club to prepare a scrapbook that will stay in our collection. We have called upon
former faculty, staff, students, family and friends to donate items. Space is an
issue, but I am trying to arrange and store items that are important in the history
of the school.
I wish that I had more time to give to this, but there are only two media
specialists, no clerical help, and a school of more than 1300 persons to serve. We
also operate 32 computers for student use in the media center, so there is not a
lot of time for me to work on the archives. Our school just celebrated the 30th
birthday.
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