Service is at the heart of archival practice, underpinning the archivist’s commitment to facilitating access to primary sources.
Get the right records management consulting services from a qualified consultant. Learn to find and hire the best consultant to help you with your records management needs.
Beyond safeguarding historical records, archivists promote using and understanding invaluable resources.
Plans for archival projects have expressions of how to meet quality, budget, and time expectations. Archivists heading projects should calculate the funds required to deliver the specified products within the proposed timeframe. Archival project managers need to demonstrate that planned activities, number and types of staff, and time frames are all realistic. The project must have a reasonable chance of succeeding in achieving its objectives, especially given its schedule.
Starting work on an archival project can be challenging as your attention shifts from planning to action. When archivists allocate tasks and complete the scheduling, team members may not automatically start working. The archival project manager ensures work begins by making sure everyone knows who should perform what tasks and when each should start. Team members must be free to start work, and the essential materials and equipment should be available.
Starting work on an archival project can be challenging as your attention shifts from planning to action. When archivists allocate tasks and complete the scheduling, team members may not automatically start working. The archival project manager ensures work begins by making sure everyone knows who should perform what tasks and when each should start. Team members must be free to start work, and the essential materials and equipment should be available.
Archival projects should begin with a kickoff meeting, which is the first formal meeting of the project team members and stakeholders. The meeting announces that the project is about to commence, communicates what the project is about, and generates commitment to goals and deliverables.
The kickoff meeting happens somewhere between scoping the project and in-depth planning. This moment is the busiest time for a project manager across the entire lifespan of the project. Everyone should recognize what the project should achieve, why this project is important, and where it stands on the organization’s priority list.
Principles of original order and provenance aim to achieve the objectives of archival arrangement and description, which preserve the context of the archives and safeguard their evidential value and historical authenticity. Most archivists agree that descriptions of collections are often inadequate to capture the complexity of the records. Both an expanded understanding of the provenance and function of records and an acknowledgment that archivists are co-creators of the records could greatly enhance current description practices.
While libraries have developed structured rules for cataloging print materials, these rules have not fully addressed the needs of image collections. Museums, on the other hand, have acquired great expertise in describing their unique holdings, but these practices vary because of the diverse nature of individual museums and their collections. Even with the emergence of online catalogs, web accessible collections, and improved information searching and navigation, access to visual collections has remained limited due to a lack of standardized description and integrated modes of access.
Tracking is the process by which archival project progress is measured to ensure that changes to the schedule are tackled promptly. The starting point for tracking progress in archival projects is the project baseline schedule and other plan documents devised and accepted when key stages are fixed before implementation. The project baseline should remain unchanged throughout the project, and it’s the guide against which variances are identified.
Projects enable archivists to undertake roles that differ from their usual positions and are training grounds for leadership. Team members likely have other responsibilities in addition to their work on the archival project. Identify gaps in skills or resources, and then begin to locate people to resolve staffing issues. Determining basic team member roles up front allows projects to move forward with vision and vigor.
