Check out the r/Archivists wiki:

I'm a current MLIS student, and this semester I'm taking a Python for LIS Professionals course. We have a final project to start thinking about, which will be to write some kind of application that could be used within a LIS setting. I'm wanting to work in archives after I get my degree, and I already have some prior archives experience, but I'm feeling a bit lost trying to figure out how Python is/could be used within archives. I have no prior programming experience, and previously I mostly did processing and digitizing (scanning, not metadata) projects.

I was wondering: Do you use Python (or other coding languages) in the archives? If so, what kinds of projects do you use it for or applications do you run? How often do you use it? I'm trying to get a better understanding so I can have a clearer idea of 1) what skills I'm learning now and how they can be applied in the future, and 2) what kinds of applications I could investigate writing for my final project.

Since I'm a bit stumped, I may also talk to my professor, but I wanted to get some input from current archivists!

at Rice University

For context, my mum met Princess Diana in the 80’s and a photographer snapped a pic for the local paper - I’m looking for someone to help me find that exact article which will help me with further info-searching (I really want to surprise my mum).

(If you saw the article, you’d see why this is so sentimental)

Does anybody have subscription/access to the newspaper archives and willing to help me out?🙏

This would mean a lot to me (and of course, my mum) - and any help would be greatly appreciated🤩

My archive is loaning various documents/photos for an exhibition. We want them in archival sleeves but they are asking that the sleeves fit each item exactly (of which there are many sizes) with no excess material. They also need to be sealed. I am having a hard time finding such sleeves. Any ideas?

I have a large collection of physical photos, and I’m finally done with the archiving process. Now I’m trying to figure out the best way to physically organize and store them.

For those who also work with photo collections, how do you organize yours? Do you use photo albums, archival boxes, envelopes, or another system?

Would love to hear your suggestions and what has worked best for you!

Hey folks,

I recently inherited a collection relating to the 1973 Round the World Yacht Race. It includes photographs, negatives, diaries, and various pieces of memorabilia.

I’m considering donating the collection to either the Maritime Museum in Greenwich or the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth, but I’d really appreciate some advice from archivists or museum professionals before I approach them.

My main question is: should I scan, digitise and catalogue the collection myself before donating it, or is it generally better to leave that work to the museum/archive that eventually accepts it?

Part of me would also like to retain some form of access to the material after donating it—whether that means having digital copies, being able to consult the collection, or knowing that it will eventually be accessible to researchers.

I’m also conscious that the way I handle and organise the material now could affect its archival value, so I don’t want to accidentally make things more difficult by trying to “tidy up” or reorganise it before speaking to professionals.

Any advice on the best approach would be very welcome—particularly from anyone who has donated a personal or historical collection to an archive or museum.

Fair winds!

Hi! I’m a current online MLIS student, and my school offers and Archival Administration certificate. Completing the certification would add an extra semester to my time in school (and nearly $7,000).

I have some experience in museums and historical archives, and was recently offered a job at an institutional archive. I’m early 20s and trying to find my footing. I enjoy archives and museums, and would love to work in one as a career one day.

I heard there’s been a bit of a push lately to value experience over education. I’ve also considered the fact that some jobs offer tuition reimbursement, and it would be much cheaper for me to acquire this certification later in my career.

My question(s): Is it worth it push and get the AA certification while in grad school? Or should I wait? Additionally, for those of you who got the certification outside of a traditional grad school program, does $7,000(ish) seem like a comparable cost?

I’m leaning towards going for it now, but would love some feedback from people before I fully commit. Thanks!

18th century plan from one of my processing projects (16th to 19th century monastery) attached cause it looks cool lol!

Hi! I'm a Canadian working at a German-speaking Swiss archive. I'm updating my LinkedIn and am stuck on the best way to translate my job titles. I can give a 1:1 translation myself but the way archival systems in CH work compared to Canada are just so different that I'm stumped on the most accurate in-context translation.

I started working at my archive as a 'Praktikantin', which I've been translating as intern. This was a one year, full-time, paid position that is intended for master's-level history graduates to prepare for the field and for the non-obligatory post-master's archival certificate. Back in the day this experience was all that was needed to land a full-time job but now with how things are the local certificate is needed even if the experience is more important. I spent half my time processing modern and historical documents and the other half shadowing archivists in-house and externally. I am tempted to refer to this as an apprenticeship position but that's a semi-protected term here in CH. On the other hand, internship doesn't quite capture it for me in the Canadian context, and I'm not sure practicums are a robust concept in Canada.

I was lucky enough to be offered another full-time position. This job doesn't officially have a hard and fast title and is referred to in different places as 'mitarbeiterin erschliessung' (processing employee) and 'archivarin' (non-academic archivist). I've been translating this as processing archivist as I also work in our reading room once a week, play a part in planning meetings, develop processing plans, and am starting to serve in limited supervisory roles. The tricky thing with this position is that it could be filled with the local equivalent of a technician position or a full-on archivist at the start of their career (like me, lol!) Archive technician might also fit here according to the NOC?

The tricky things with translating these roles is the different structure for archival processing and the different requirements for archivist roles here in CH vs in Canada. I've consulted Swiss translation guides and while the technical translation is correct, the localization seems off. I'd love any feedback even/especially if it's shaking some sense into me to be more humble lol.

Scanners, high end DT cameras, etc.

Does your archive job let you use their $$ gear for personal work when off the clock?

I recently found out about this: https://www.footagefest.com/about/

I am early on in my film career, and want to break more into archives. I want to build connections with people but honeslty do not know what I am doing and trying to figure out a direction. Worth the cost? I do not have to worry about travel costs thankfully.

Not a professional archivist — hoping that's okay here. For ten years, three of us ran a private community archive digitizing rare Urdu books (19th-century lithographs from Nawal Kishore Press, early 1820s dictionaries, out-of-print periodicals) on a DIY camera rig.

We hand-finished 575,729 page images in Photoshop; 1,300+ complete volumes are freely available on the Internet Archive. This year we had to end daily operations — funding and burnout and I wrote up our full technical post-mortem, data infrastructure, and methods here: https://ibteda.org/journey/

A few things this community might find relevant, and some questions we'd genuinely value professional perspective on:

What we did: Raw camera exposures are preserved untouched on ZFS with BLAKE3 manifests and integrity audits as the preservation masters. All processing (cropping, bounded stain/stamp removal) applies only to access derivatives, with per-page provenance recording exactly what changed and why. Our automated retouching is deliberately conservative — it abstains when uncertain, changed pixels are limited to a declared region, and anything ambiguous routes to a human operator.

Question 1 - Retouching Ethics: Where does this community draw the line on cleaning access copies (stains, scanner artifacts, library stamps) when the master is preserved bit-perfect? We treated stamps and handwritten marginalia as route-to-human cases rather than automatic removals, but I'd like to know the professional consensus.

Question 2 - Succession & Institutional Custody: We now hold ~5,000 physical volumes, mostly purchased personally, currently sitting on private shelves — ironically the exact situation the project was founded to fight. What's the realistic path for an independent collection like this into institutional custody (academic special collections or international libraries), ideally with digitization-access commitments? Any experience with deeds of gift or donor agreements that protect open public access?

Question 3 - Digital Redundancy for Volunteer Archives: Our preservation masters live on a self-healing ZFS pool with offsite cold storage and cloud backups. For a volunteer-run archive with no ongoing budget, what's the honest next step beyond standard 3-2-1 advice — are community or consortial preservation networks accessible to non-institutional archives?

Happy to answer anything about our workflow or physical setup. Mostly, though, we'd rather the collection and its open-access mission outlive our stewardship of it.

Hey everyone! I'm an archivist for a semiconductor manufacturer. We work closely with the company's design team who recreates parts for customers. The design team currently has a Wiki where they store many things - communal knowledge, scripting and licensing for tools they use, and other day-to-day operational information that's useful for recreation. It's stuff that wouldn't really fit into our archival database, so it's helpful for them to have a separate system that they can tailor to fit their needs.

The wiki is incredibly clunky, slow, and difficult to update, so my coworker on the design team has taken it upon herself to find a new system. She said her top priority is that it's easy to edit because engineers are so reluctant to write any kind of documentation, so she wants to remove as much friction as possible to get them to use it.

I work in such a unique archives situation that I figured this was a shot in the dark, but I was wondering if any other archivists have seen something similar in their jobs, or have used a platform that could be helpful?

Thank you!

Hello, all!!

This may seem a little silly considering my age and current situation, but I’m in need of some advice! I’ve been rejected from archival assistant positions and casual assistant roles in museums and I’m beginning to get a little bummed out. I understand I’m young, I understand I’m currently completing an MLitt (archives & records management, ARA accredited course) and I’m volunteering one day a week.

I think it’s a problem of experience. I’m looking into volunteering additionally at a local university archive, but all of these things are difficult to manage - I additionally work a part time job in something unrelated (hospitality) which includes very late nights. I feel as though I have no time for anything. Many of the jobs I’ve applied for refuse to give feedback following the recruitment process, apart from one. I think I’m also not inquisitive enough at the end of interviews.

Any advice or stories of experience? I’m aware I need to bolster my experience with additional volunteering as and when I can. I know the job market around the world (based in UK) is competitive. Any additional advice for CVs?

I'm a new archivist at a small museum that uses PastPerfect. The established practice here is that accession numbers double as collection numbers. So an archival collection is identified by its accession number (2026.057) rather than getting a separate collection (MS-001).

It works fine day to day, and PastPerfect is built around accession numbers anyway. But I keep second-guessing it when I write finding aids and cite collections publicly. It also gets messy when a single collection comes in through multiple accessions, or when one accession gets split across catalogs.

For those of you at small institutions, especially PastPerfect shops: do you have any advice? Has anyone dealt dealt with this issue. There are already a large number of collections so changing it would be a huge project. ​​

Hi all!! I need advice/reality check on if I should pursue an archive degree. I’m currently located in a big city in the USA.
I have been struggling to land a full time archivist job or archive assistant job. I have worked in big name universities and museums in archive assistant positions, and house museums and community organisations too for the past 5 years, and have cataloguing experiences from library, special collections, and archives for 8.

I never gotten an MLIS because I stubbornly was doing two other graduate degrees, they were in critical theory and fine arts. I took a bunch of classes in rare books schools, etc. I know my education didn’t set up the best route lol but my “expertise” is in modern and contemporary art history, local art scene, art organisations, etc.

I have skills and experience in processing both physical and digital materials, writing finding aids, digitising, appraisal, inventorying, creating metadata, writing workflow and establishing series and subjects, transcribing, archival research for curatorial and research team, etc.

As I havent been to MLIS, so I’m lacking knowledge in things like XML, building a collection managing system, trying out varieties of management system etc. And without a current institutional archive job, I’m feeling a bit rusty in general. I am still working for organisations with detailed inventorying, files organising, etc. But I’m not playing with cool and complex file management systems :(

For context, I’ll 100% do an online MLIS but unfortunately my visa don’t allow me to do that.
I landed an interview recently for a contract archive associate position in a local art centre but never heard back.

Right now with my visa and all immigration situation, I am a little up in the air with my life. But I’d still love a reality check of if I should get an MLIS. I got in the university of Glasgow archive program three years ago, but didn’t have enough money to attend.

Edited for grammar and clarity! Thanks ! English is not native to me!

Hi weird question but I am a family archivist and one thing I struggle with is sweating. Even if the room is cold and I am sitting, something about the stress of handling these precious documents makes me warm, which then in turn makes my head sweat.

I have been thinking of wearing a bandana but just curious if anyone has suggestions.

I also want to know if I am not alone in this issue lol

I'm a film maker based out of Paris and India and I have the opportunity to take up up a digitization project for my church in India. They recently reached out to me regarding digitizing their archives, which includes a lot of Mini DV tapes, and VHS-C cassettes though and DVD as well. I wanted some advice on how to go about all of this for optimum data backups and transfer. I have experience with digitizing VHS-C through an old camcorder, my Dazzle dongle and OBS. Here, in India, I don't have a setup currently at this point and I wanted information on pricing, and equipment to purchase amongst other things though.

Setup I currently have is:

1. HP Compaq Laptop (Windows XP, Intel Pentium, 512MB RAM, 80GB HDD which is past its life) but this has a firewire port. Will the specs of the laptop support firewire capture if I capture it all to an external HDD/SSD?
2. Mac Mini (32GB RAM, 1TB SSD) I could use this for DVD capture.
3. Dell Vostro (24GB RAM, 512GB SSD) I could also use this for VHS-C capture.

What would you recommend I purchase to round up the setup so it makes things easier for me?

1. Should I purchase a working VHS-C camera or a VCR because it'll support full size VHS too?
2. RCA-HDMI adapters
3. Should I purchase a working Mini DV camera and the appropriate Firewire cable?
4. HDD/SSD (three for capture on either system, one for backups)
5. USB Capture Device for VCR (which one do you recommend?)
6. VHS-C to VHS adapter

Is there anything else I should purchase which will make things easier for me? And I probably need to download the appropriate drivers for the system as well, right? And if anybody has any info on purchasing any of these items in India? I haven't given them a budget yet, but I do need to have a look at how much footage they have, and how many VHS, Mini DV and DVD they have as well. How much would one charge for such an endeavor?

There definitely are services outside that will do these for me, but if it's a lot, I would prefer doing it by myself to save some money for them as well. Apart from this, if I wanted to round out my setup and have some equipment to help digitize every consumer format that existed (Video8, Hi8, VHS, Mini DV, DVD, Digital 8 and Betamax) what would you recommend? Is there any way to automate a lot of this too?

From a management and archiving perspective, would you have any feedback?

For the past three years, I've been an archivist at a relatively well-known, well-regarded institution, and before that, was an assistant at a college archive while getting my MSLIS.

I don't love my current job and have applied to other jobs, but haven't gotten any interviews - I know the job market is tight but I'm not sure what I can do to even be considered. I feel like my cover letters are solid and my resume is well-rounded!

Now, I'm moving to a new state for my partner's work and applied to a job at a college archive that I think would be perfect and I am more than qualified for, but it's been two weeks and I haven't been contacted. Should I just be patient, or is there anything I could/should do to be noticed?

Any advice? Or just commiseration lol

I’ve started trying to archive my old family photos and old identity documents and I’m wondering how to digitize them going forward. I started digitizing some of them for a MLIS class assignment and took pictures of some of the photographs with my phone (iPhone 11 if that’s relevant) and then used Microsoft Lens to straighten it out. I’m not sure if it would be better to start scanning them with a 2014 Canon printer/scanner scanner (including scanning the ones I took pictures of before), because I know the image quality would probably be better with the scanner but I’m worried about damaging them.

I’ve attached some pictures of the photos + an identity document and an example of what one of the photos looked like after I straighten them with Microsoft Lens.

Is it safe to digitize the photos using the scanner or could that damage any of the older photos or documents?

While I am not on the search committee, I will be working closely with the search. I will answer things I can, but if I can't I will see if I can refer you to someone else here who will not be working as closely with the search as I will be. Instructions on posting and the full job ad are at: https://lib.gsu.edu/DPA2026

The University Library seeks a motivated, collaborative, and service-oriented Digital Preservation Archivist (non-tenure track, open rank faculty: Librarian Instructor, Librarian Assistant Professor, or Librarian Associate Professor) to provide leadership and expertise in digital preservation. This includes working with the archivists, librarians, and staff across the University to manage the long-term preservation of digital materials for all collecting areas and handling materials in all formats.

The position serves as a member of the library faculty (12-month, non-tenure track), holds faculty rank, and is expected to participate in service activities as outlined in the University Library’s faculty guidelines. The library is committed to providing excellent professional development opportunities for its employees. While not required, employees are welcome to further their careers by earning an additional advanced degree, and, in some cases, tuition assistance is available.

Responsibilities Include:

• Establish and refine policies, procedures, and best practices for acquisition, long-term preservation, accessibility, and life-cycle management of permanent digital materials in accordance with best practices and guidelines from the digital preservation community.
• Train and work with faculty and staff on processes and procedures around acquisition, appraisal, arrangement and description of permanent digital records.
• Work with archivists to identify digital materials on physical media and use digital forensics tools to extract and transfer selected content to the digital preservation system.
• Work with the University and University Archivist to implement procedures for capturing permanent, born-digital archival content, in accordance with the University System of Georgia’s records retention schedule.
• Manage and maintain the digital preservation system, train faculty and staff on its use, and provide ongoing support.
• Manage and maintain the University’s Archive-It web archiving account and collaborate with archivists to identify, capture, and revise web and social media content in accordance with the collection development policy.
• Supervise students and/or temporary employees as needed.

This is a twelve-month (meaning we work 12 months of the year) non-tenure track faculty position (all professionals in the library are non-tenure track).

Salary range: 61,100-72,600 depending on faculty rank.

• Librarian Instructor – an entry level probationary rank requiring little or no professional experience and is based on potential. Appointments at this rank shall require expectation of successful overall performance and the potential for a promising career in librarianship or archival science.
• Librarian Assistant Professor – Minimum three full years of professional service.
• Librarian Associate Professor – Minimum of five full fiscal years of professional service.

I'm evaluating our archives' supplies because we're unfortunately losing a bit of storage. I found a ton of these acid-free boxes I'd never seen before, and I'm wondering if anyone here uses boxes like this already or has ideas about what they could be useful for. We have a number of smaller objects in our collection, but the boxes are kind of shallow, and I can't think of what I'd use these for except for maybe something like medals? And even then I feel like there are better solutions. The boxes are smaller than my hand. I just don't want to get rid of them if there's something obvious I'm not thinking of!

Hi! I have a question about plastic bins. Some of my childhood toys were stored in cardboard boxes and there was a mouse problem in the house they were stored in. I want to avoid that from happening again so I'm going to be using plastic storage bins (polypropylene) to store them in an upstairs room. Specifically storage bins that have tiny holes under the handles for airflow.

I plan to line the bins with acid-free tissue paper.

Question: Is there any concern if the plastic bins have a colour to them? Does the colour damage items over time? I'm leaning towards opaque plastic to protect from light, but all the opaque bins in my price range have a colour to them or are black.

Thank you

Hey guys!

So just like the title says I'm looking for ways to stay up to date on the archives industry and was wondering if anyone had a good site to get all the latest news?