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.
As the initial step in managing incoming materials, accessioning is a critical function within archival work. The process ensures that newly acquired collections are formally accepted, documented, and incorporated into the repository’s holdings.
Developing an acquisition policy is critical for archivists because it sets the foundation for how an institution acquires and manages its collections. A well-crafted acquisition policy ensures the archives remains focused, relevant, and aligned with the institution’s mission and strategic goals.
Digitizing materials requires an investment in describing them to aid users in discovering them. What makes description challenging is the level of detail required.
Understanding description requires knowledge of recognized standards and the ability to apply them. In addition, description requires multitasking, toggling between high-level philosophical issues such as the inclusiveness of subject terms and a focused eye for detail to troubleshoot data entry issues.
Archival repositories can generate surrogates for various purposes, such as PDFs for print reproduction, JPEGs for online display, and TIFFs for storage.
The hundredth copy of a digital image is indistinguishable from its progenitors. Electronic copies suffer no degradation through the duplication process, unlike other forms of copying, such as facsimiles. A copy of a digital image is indistinguishable from its source, while the original can lose its meaning in this electronic world.
