Building Sustainable Archives

(AI Transcription)
Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar with Margot Note. My name is Bradley, and I will be your moderator for this webinar titled Building Sustainable Archives.

Before we start, I would like to provide some information about our company and introduce today’s presenter. Lucidea is a software developing company specialized in museum and archival collections management solutions as well as knowledge management and library automation systems. Our brands include Argus, ArchivEra, Presto, and SydneyDigital.

Now I would like to take a moment to introduce today’s presenter, Margot Note. Margot is an author, archivist, and records manager helping individuals and organizations harness their history. As the principal of Margot Note Consulting LLC, she facilitates the understanding of the importance of unique collections, suggesting ways to manage them and to use them to tell stories to connect with people. She is also a popular guest author for Lucia’s Think Clearly blog and has provided us with many great webinars that are listed on on our website. So please feel free to check those out after today’s session. Take it away, Margot.

Thank you so much. So today, we’re talking about building sustainable archives. And I think that all comes with kind of planning for growth. So archives, as we all know very well, is very limited in staff, time, space, and funds. We’re often, we’re very creative people as archivists because we really are taking what we had and making the most out of it and really thinking about how to prioritize what we’re working with. And so that really revolves around having strategic plans to prevent crises and to guide progress. So having a plan to think about, let’s say, how your year unfolds, how the next quarter or the quarter after that, unfolds, even how your career unfolds is really important as archivists as we plan for growth for our archives to make them sustainable.

So to find this direction of the strategic plan, we really have to think about vision and mission. So vision is our long term goals. The long term goals of how we see our collections or our repository, what it’ll look like, let’s say, in three years, five years, ten years. And then we also have to take in account the present purpose of the archives.

What is our mission? What are we trying to do? And what are we trying to do with these primary sources that we’ve collected and put all this labor into? So we’re really taking a step back and thinking about connecting the daily work that we’re doing to institutional priorities.

I know sometimes, just speaking from personal experience, that has been challenging for me before I was a consultant because I was doing things that were best practices, that I knew what we wanna do for the archives. But I I think I had a hard time connecting what I was spending my time, my daily work doing, how it was tied to what the organization was prioritizing.

I think because people don’t necessarily people that make decisions in organizations don’t necessarily understand what’s happening in archives, it’s really on us as archivists to really articulate that and to make that connection very obvious.

So we’re thinking about SWOT and SMART. So a SWOT, analysis looks at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and strengths and, threats, excuse me. And then SMART is looking at specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound goals. So we can do this both, I would argue to do this both with your, your repository that you’re working with now.

You also do that with your current position that you have, and then also looking from a career point of view about looking at your SWAT analysis and looking at SMART goals. So we’re we’re putting some, rather than having some goals that are or priorities that are vague, we’re looking to put numbers, and we’re looking to get some type of benchmarking. So that could be we’re working on this particular project. We wanna digitize five hundred photos in eighteen months and have all the metadata and the copyright clearance and all of that type of work.

So that’s that’s a way to start to break down, I think, some of these big goals or these big priorities that you have within your institution to really make it more so that when you’re connecting your daily work to the institutional priorities, you’re making that clear with this kind of granularity analysis.

So we want to prioritize wisely. So we want to prevent burnout, waste of effort, rework.

I think this happens a lot sometimes. I know when I go into something and I haven’t necessarily planned I’m an action oriented person, so I wanna get in and to process a collection and to tackle the projects. But I realize that sometimes that can that can cause a lot of rework and waste of effort and, ultimately leads to burnout. So we wanna have some transparency about what we’re doing to build trust with our colleagues and with people that we work with and our researchers. So I know, usually in the start of the year, I I do this both professionally in my personal life, I really kind of take a look and take stock of what I’ve been doing and what I’m going to continue to do and what I’m going to stop doing.

I think especially as archivists, especially if you’ve come into a role and especially if you’ve maybe inherited a role that someone’s had for a very long period of time, you you wanna get your feet under the table and understand kind of how the kind of quirkiness of the collections work and your how your institution works. But I think there’s also a time to really take a look at and seeing, am I doing everything? Am I prioritizing and getting the best work done? And are there stuff that I’m wasting time and wasting effort with? I know that I had a client, and I’ve it was such a great client, and I know I’ve mentioned them in past webinars where someone, someone called, inherited a special collections at a library, and they were the second person in charge. The first person in charge of it was really the founding person and really a very energetic and action oriented person that was really into gathering materials for the archives.

And kudos to her. I mean, she really tapped into the community and really got those materials in the archives. But now that she retired, someone took on this role, they had to take a look at all this stuff that didn’t have deeds of gifts, that weren’t processed, that were not in the best preservation materials. And they really had to they worked with me to prioritize what they should be working with and or working on.

And they also were thinking about, and I was coaching them, and this is thinking about what can you no longer do that maybe a person previously, it was important for them to do when they were kind of creating archives. What are things that have no effort, like don’t get a lot of return on investment, that waste time, that aren’t used by researchers? And so let’s let’s really take a kind of zero based priority of, like, what’s going on here and really prioritizing what would work for the archives at that moment. And I think that was really eye opening to have that conversation with both the person that was in charge of the archives, her staff, and some of the leadership at this library because I think they just they didn’t really understand that there are certain workflows that just didn’t make any sense.

There was a whole amount of stuff that they did not have to do that was a complete waste of time and money. And so I was able to free them up to do actually what the researchers were dying to get access to.

So it does take a certain amount of, I think, confidence and wisdom to take that step back. But I think it’s really worth it to, again, to build a sustainable archives is to really think about what works in the archives right now, having a very mental declutter of what you should be doing and what you should stop doing and what you should start doing.

So you want to sustain the long view. So scenario planning is something that businesses do to kind of prepare for change, to kind of do a thought experience, experiment about how you might do change something in your organization, change something in your archives. What what would that look like? And really think about all the different options. We wanna think about sustainability as diverse funding, skilled staff, environmental responsibility. I think these are kind of three key items.

And then we wanna think about collaboration with resilience. So are there partners, let’s say, on campus or in your city or in your region that you can make these partnerships with, let’s say, resources or to create an exhibit together. Or there’s some ways that it could be mutually beneficial to work with someone else. I think a big part of this, and this is what we’ll get into at the end of this webinar, is thinking about diversifying funding, which it does take a lot of effort to think about how you can look for different types of funding.

But it’s worth it in the end because we want to especially, I think, in today’s political climate, there’s there’s a lot of there’s less federal funding, there’s less grants, grants are more competitive. So we wanna think about what are ways that we can not rely necessarily on one funder or one big funder that, or I would say a handful of big funders because they could change their mandate overnight. I know certainly when I’ve worked in, nonprofits, we’ve had, I can name a handful of situations where the funder either stopped giving altogether or really changed. It was a one was a big corporate funder.

They completely changed what they were funding, and so we lost out on a lot of money because of that. And there’s no way to really anticipate that other than to really think about how you can diversify your funding so you’re not relying on one pot of money at a time.

So budgets are strategy. I would also argue budgets are political within an organization. There’s reasons, there’s and as a consultant, I get a different type of view than I did as an employee, where if people in power wanna do certain things, they figure out how to get the money to do it. It’s definitely political.

So we want to have the budgets link by mission to operations, and we want to show accountability and stewardship. This is where I think OCLC’s total cost of stewardship, I think, is really a powerful tool to think about. What does it really cost to, let’s say, take on a collection? What does what does it mean to process a collection to digitize?

What are promises that, let’s say, we’re making to donors? Like, how do we fulfill those promises? I just had a meeting today with a client where it worked primarily a few months ago with what she gave me. She booked some time with me because she wanted to give some advice.

She’s donating her parents’ materials to a number of archival institutions.

And so what she was talking about was thinking about the stewardship of her collection and how each organization was different in what they were, even like the deeds of gifts look differently. And I was trying to tell her, you know, there’s best practices in archives, but each organization does everything differently.

And we wanna make sure that we understand we’re negotiating when we can when we’re donating these collections. And we’re understanding what’s involved in the stewardship of collections.

So part of budget is also understanding costs. So we’re thinking about fixed costs, which are things like salaries, rent, subscriptions. Those things basically, like, change. Maybe they might go up as far as, like, rent, for example, But we know that, okay, every, you know, every, fifteenth day of the month, this certain amount of rent is due.

Like, it’s not a surprise. It’s not changeable. It’s fixed. We can anticipate. But there’s also variable cost too.

So equipment, temporary staff. So let’s say you take on a big processing collection for one year. So those supplies and those temporary staff might be very variable, might be very high one year, and then when that project closes, it goes back to being less. I think there’s also hidden costs, that we don’t necessarily see or understand, and that is kind of things like long term digital storage.

Hidden costs that we don’t again, it’s kind of a total cost of storage ship or the total cost of ownership model where we think about very holistically what it’s going to take to, use a software, like, install a software solution. I know that I’ve talked to people in the past where they’re they had no archivists. They didn’t really they had they had a collection, but it was not organized in any way. And they thought, you know, let’s let’s buy some software, to hold the collection.

But my argument is, like, who’s gonna install the software? Who’s gonna create the metadata? Who’s gonna upload the files? Who’s gonna train people on you know, who’s gonna administer the software system?

Who’s gonna train people on how to use it? So there’s a lot of hidden costs that we don’t really think about, but it certainly comes up in budget discussions when we’re thinking about archives. And they can kind of sneak up on you too. So it is important to think about fixed variable and hidden costs and be kind of thoughtful about what categories your budget lines fall into.

So we’re also thinking about balancing now and the future. So what are we doing presently, and what can we do in the future? So in the present and the now, we’re thinking about short term. That would be urgent fixes.

A donor is trying to contact us and we have to get back to them. We have an exhibit that’s two weeks away or we have a grant report that needs to be filed, for example. These are kind of the urgent things that fill our inboxes, that fill our meetings, and it it takes a lot of our focus. We also wanna think about long term.

So repositories, endowments, outreach, these long term things are are important, but sometimes we don’t focus on it because we’re focused on the urgent. So integrated planning really ensures that sustainability because we’re focusing on both. I think we’ll never get away from urgent. But if we only think about urgent things that we need to do, we lose focus on the important stuff that we need to focus on for long term sustainability.

And so that way, I think if we have some planning where we’re thinking about both at the same time, we can really help balance that so it’s not completely putting out fires at all times. Everything’s an emergency. We’re really having a more balanced view of the work that we do.

We also wanna make the case with data. So we’re looking at metrics. So users processing, like, many linear feet we’ve processed in a certain amount of time, digital growth. We wanna show the return on investment for projections, so, like, you know, twenty five percent output increase. We wanna tailor to audience needs.

Obviously, the qualitative value of archives is immeasurable. Like, there’s certain stories that we can tell. There’s ways of research, how research has touched lives, has funded, or have founded, that have helped people. Obviously, that’s very important.

But I think, especially when we’re talking to decision makers, people that are thinking about our budgets, for example, we do really wanna have a lot of data and a lot of metrics in our back pocket. A lot of these things could be things that you set up. For example, like looking at website users or how many reference requests you’ve gotten, for example, there’s certain ways that we can automatically calculate some of these metrics. But I think it’s really important to make a case with data so that people understand that archives are being used, the kind of quality and quantity of queries that we get.

And it’s beyond the bottom line. So diversified funding is looking at, let’s say, grants, services that you can charge for, campaigns, sponsorships, memberships, if you’re a membership organization. We wanna build reserves for crisis crises.

So or crises. So we’re thinking about, you know, do we have a little bit of this cushion that we that that’s that can be liquid that we can use, let’s say, if we have there’s another COVID nineteen or some you have a natural disaster or something happens where we need that little bit of gap of money to make sure organization is still working. And resilience is really about adaptability and advocacy.

So we’re facing the funding challenge. So archives are competing with all different types of things to fund.

And very important things to fund, like teaching, research, if you have any initiatives that are revenue driven.

And decision makers see archives as cost centers, investments. Unfortunately, they don’t see the humongous amount of historical value and fiscal value that archives have.

Think of they can think of it your CFO, for example, can think of it more as line items on a budget that they don’t understand. So I think we’re we’re always gonna have that funding challenge. I I don’t know if it’s necessarily gonna go away unless we get really enlightened leadership in our organizations. So it’s something to think about and to strategize when you’re asking for money and looking at budgets.

We wanna tell the archive story, so we’re using compelling narratives. They’re tailored to audiences that we’re talking to, and we’re emphasizing identity, accountability, and cultural heritage. So again, that’s the other side of the metrics is telling that narrative. The numbers in the narrative, I think, really tell a more holistic archival story.

And yeah, so I said it, the power of proof. So we’re looking at quantitative stats and qualitative impact and then tying the funding that we’re getting to measurable outcomes. So we know if a funder gives us a certain amount of money, this is what’s going to be the result. That’s the deliverable, and it’s going to be tangible or intangible, but it’s going to be measurable and an outcome.

Want to engage stakeholders, so our allies and champions within any organization. I think throughout all, no matter how your organization is organized, you’re going to have people that get archives. And they might not be the people that you normally think of. I had a past client where the humanities it was a campus. The humanities were really interested in the archives because of past incidences. But the science department was really into using the archives, which was unusual, but I think it was a perfect combination. And they were really seeing the value of having this kind of primary source, hands on, working with the materials within the archives.

I would have thought history and literature would have been the first people to use the archives when it turned out to be true. And I think that’s also questioning, let’s say, some stereotypes that we have or some assumptions that we make about our users. We can really be surprised at who who walks in the archives’ door. And especially if we make an effort of outreach to welcome them in, they might not even understand what the archives holds or they think it’s old or dusty or all the, you know, all those tales that we hear about. They think if we can make that connection about why the archival materials can help them and we’re welcoming we can bring them in that door. So we wanna maintain long term communication and also build partnerships within our organization and outside of our organization to expand the reach of our holdings and our credibility.

So collaboration and persistence is really important. We wanna definitely advocate during budget cycles and planning periods. I think knowing, depending on how your organization is structured, if you know, let’s say, the next year’s budgeting is is being discussed, like having some talking points of some things that you’re looking for within the budget, I think, is really helpful to help plan.

We wanna partner with the related institutions, seeing who are your allies, who are similar organizations, getting some maybe tips and tricks from them, I think, is important. And then we have to be persistent to get archives visible. I know that certainly when I was a really hands on archivist working in the stacks, I was, you know, with the materials all the time, and I really wish I’d spent a little bit more time more being visible, talking about the collections in people’s spaces, I think that would have been just as helpful as processing a collection.

So if you’re interested in all of this, I wrote a book recently for Lacidia called Fund Your Archive’s Future, How to Secure Support and Budget for Success.

And it talks through all all different ways of making your archives more sustainable and looking at support, funding, a grant making grant funding, for example, and it’s available on the city’s website for free. And that’s why I love partnering with city because I’m able to write about subjects that I’m interested with. They put it in a really nice package, and then people are able to get these resources for free.

And I think that’s just a win win win for everyone all around.

And an important part of this book that I did differently than other books I did for Lisidia is that I created worksheets at the end of each chapter. So there’s nine chapters and each chapter has five worksheets.

And I did this because the chapter itself, especially for Lacidia, I write books that are very readable, that can give you that information right away, that help you start thinking about how you want to improve your archives. But I also wanted to have something that was a little bit more hands on or more interactive so you could kind of think through at a deeper way some of the problems that archives face.

So in chapter two, which is about budgets, I have worksheet two point four, which is explore ways to diversify funding sources. So I talked about this earlier in the webinar talking about the the need for diversification of funding sources. So this is kind of an example of what this worksheet would look like where this first step is looking at your current funding sources and the percentage of the budget, of your archives budget, and the stability. So a funding source, and this is, of course, unique to each organization, your institutional support that comes from, the powers that be within your organization, the grants that you receive, donations.

So that could be individual donations or, corporate donations. Of course, this is if you are a nonprofit endowment. So what type of different endowments that you have. If you have an endowment, what is the amount of, money that you get that would be part of your budget?

And if you’re a membership organization, what percentage of the budget do you get? And are there other funding sources? Now, as I said, each organization is gonna be different. There’s gonna be a different percentage of the budget.

The suitability, I think, is really interesting because, for example, you could have, as I said in a previous slide, you could have a grantmaker that has given you a chunk of money year after year after year, but they might decide that what their funding has totally changed. So that grant, for example, might be low stability. You might have depended on it in the past, but now we’re not really sure if that grant money is coming in. And what are we gonna do to take care of that?

Are we going to ask for more donations? Are we going to maybe seek out more grants to fill different types of grants to fill up that space that they’ve given. So that’s one way to kind of list your current funding sources and to think about and plan out how reliable or stable they are.

Step two is kind of brainstorming about identifying new funding opportunities. So things like crowdfunding, sponsorships, additional grant applications, service fees, for example.

So and you can talk about the what you need, like the requirements and the feasibility. So, of course, you know, it’s easier said than done. You can you can write down as much, you know, new funding opportunities as you can think of. But, obviously, these things don’t happen with some type of resource resources and labor. So how, you know, feasible is this?

How much time like, how much investment of time and and resources is it going to take to get these this return on investment. So for example, obviously, with more grant applications, it’s gonna require more research to figure out what’s the what are the type of grants we’re looking for in the proposal writing. The feasibility is probably high because, yes, that seems like a normal way of finding funding. But for example, something like service fees.

So if you have specialized services, like if you charge for digitization or, any type like research, fees, for example, your organization might be totally against that. So that might have low feasibility. It really depends on what your organization is comfortable doing. I think now we’re such in a period of, say, instability or, you know, we’re kind of questioning everything.

We’re starting things anew. Kind of the old systems might be crumbling a little bit.

I think it is important to take a look at your potential funding sources and just think about what that might look like if you were you were to pursue something like more corporate partnerships and sponsorships, what would that look like? Who would you have to contact in advancement?

How would you make that happen? What would that look like?

And then develop an action plan. So I think we’ve, you know, we thought about our current funding. We’ve brainstormed maybe other avenues to pursue. But then we can think about an action plan.

And, again, this is, looking at your SWOT analysis and your SMART goals. So it could be things like, you know, I’m going to apply for at least x new grants per year. So, you know, let let me just try for a little bit more, looking for more donors, seeking in kind donations for operational costs, equipment, and services. This is kind of interesting.

Maybe maybe you might have a someone on your board that is I don’t know, like, has storage or works at Iron Mountain, for example. Like, they might be able to do some surfaces. I mean, who knows? But I think it again, it’s being creative.

And some of this, of course, is kind of beyond the archival role. I mean, you’d speak to other people within your organization. You would be working with finance. And if you do have an advancement team and probably marketing and legal, but it is ways to kind of be creative about developing plan, like, to move forward and to really put some, again, some metrics on these goals.

And I think that’s really important to to think and be creative about especially for getting funding for your organization to make your archives more sustainable.

Thank You, Margot, for the wonderful presentation. And to our audience, if you have any more questions on any of our software or our company, our contact details are listed on the screen. And please stay tuned for more webinars and content related to this series.

On behalf of the Lucidea team, I thank you all for attending today, and until next time. Thank you.