agingwunderkind:

raspberryrose6:

Absolutely 😃

I’m passionate about my work and enjoy it immensely. It is incredible to work hands-on with original documents day to day, ensuring their survival into the future and communing with the hands and minds that created those documents and held them before yours. You find the doodles of a bored young scribe in the margins of an illuminated Medieval Psalter…pocket diaries kept by soldiers in the trenches of WW1…letters from scorned lovers…thumb prints on seals. Your heart beats just a little faster at those moments.

The other aspect of the job that delights me is that, as an Archivist, I work to Make Things Neat. That is very satisfying to me. You really need to be a tidy person, in both your physical surroundings and in your own mind, to be an Archivist, as you need to run a tight ship and keep everything in order. It’s not always easy when you’re dealing with huge volumes of material, but it’s a beautiful thing to make order out of chaos. Quite often people deposit large quantities of documents in a right old mess. It also helps if you love stationary and enjoy packaging things nicely! Brass paperclips, acid-free boxes and unbleached cotton tape are the tools of the trade, and there’s a purity to that aesthetic that calms my soul.

To get a place on one of the Masters courses in Archiving, you need an undergraduate degree (mine was in Ancient and Medieval History, but other subjects are acceptable so long as you can prove you genuinely love History) and some work experience in the sector to prove your commitment. Back when I was applying for the Masters, they required a year of experience, paid or unpaid, but I think they’re less strict on that now. I literally wrote to all the Archives I could physically get to and asked for experience, and went to a variety of placements through the year, some paid and some unpaid.

The Archives Masters are available at a handful of universities across the U.K., and I went to UCL. I’d definitely recommend it. My qualification was in Archives and Records Management which means I’m also qualified as a Records Manager, but the title and content of the Masters courses vary. After you complete the course and qualify, you can apply for professional level positions.

I now work in a Local Government (County) Archive which means I curate the historical records of a specific geographical area. Day to day, my work is very varied and involves a range of activities. Typical tasks are:

-taking in records from members of the public who wish to deposit them with us
-accessioning those records which means assigning reference codes, packaging and quick-listing them
-cataloguing them which means a more in-depth study of their origin, context and content
-publishing catalogues in hard copy and online via our electronic software
-contributing articles/blog posts/preparing catalogues for our website
-I do a lot of the social media work for my workplace so I organise content for that to go up on a daily basis. I’ve set up Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and it’s good to see our following grow on our various channels.
-Ingesting catalogues and scanned images of the documents in them, into our digital preservation software. Archivists also need to be technologically savvy these days; I have a digital strongroom that mirrors my physical one. Digital archives are archives too! #equality 😉
-managing volunteers, which means organising projects for them and supervising/assisting with those. Plus baking them cake at least twice a year to say thank you!
-dealing with enquiries from the public via telephone, face to face, letter and email, which requires research skills
-trouble-shooting! For example, inevitably, with miles and miles and miles of archives, occasionally a sheet of paper here or there is misplaced and finding it is A Thing!
-copyright enquiries. If people want to publish images from our archives, we have to research ownership of both the documents and their copyright. It’s complicated! Copyright is something we’re trained on whilst qualifying.
-work experience students come and go throughout the year, as-like you-they want to know more about what I do and need pre-course experience.
-preservation work. I work with a conservator but I’m in charge of the preservation of our archives. It’s like this: the conservator is the surgeon and I’m the GP. He does the surgery where needed but I ensure the daily comfort of my ‘patients’!
-exhibitions. These are always going on in branch as well as for special events, to which we bring travelling exhibitions with us.
-outreach, which can mean many things but a key example would be giving talks to groups who want to learn more about the Archive or about a specific element of local history. Can be scary but it’s also fun to share your passion and tell people all about the Precious Things you look after.

I could go on but this is already way too long and I think this is enough detail to give you a taster! Good luck if you decide to go into Archives as a career, it’s fab 💕

My original chosen profession. Xoxox