Connecting Archival Strategy to Daily Work

[Bradley Marshall] 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 Connecting Archival Strategy to Daily Work.

Before we start, I would like to provide some information about our company

today’s presenter. Lucidea is a software developing company specialized in museum and archival collections solutions as well as knowledge management and library automation systems. Our brands include ArchivEra, Argus, Presto, and SydneyDigital.

Now I would like to take a moment to introduce today’s presenter, Margot Note. Margot Note 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 and use them to tell stories to connect with people. She’s also a popular guest author for Lucidea’s Think Clearly blog and has provided us with many great webinars that are listed on our website. So please feel free to check those out after today’s session. Take it away, Margo.

[Margot Note] Thank you so much. So as we talk about connecting archival strategy to daily work, it’s really about strategy and the execution gap. A lot of times, well, I’ve speaking personally, I found that a lot of people appreciate archival work, but it is kind of a black box, as far as not really understanding the work that it entails or the type of thinking, and strategy that it needs to, that archivists need to have to get things done. So we want to make sure that we have, strategic plans that are linked to daily tasks and that the staff needs to see how goals connect to their roles.

I have found sometimes because archivists are in a very unique point of view in an organization, we think about the past. We’re considering the the the present, and we’re also thinking about the future about, let’s say, how digital files were will exist in the future or how we will, how things will preserve or how will we talk about the present time in the future.

And that’s very unique from a lot of different roles within organizations. Within companies, for example, or business like nonprofits, they’re thinking about what the next quarter will entail. You know, maybe that’s as far as they’re envisioning.

And so we really have a very unique role in the organization that we’re looking across all functions, all departments, and also all kind of phases and time. So that’s why I think when we do our work, which can be a little strange to those non archivists. We have to make sure that we’re tying it into the the the strategy and the the the vision that the organization has.

So that’s part of that is translating goals into action. So breaking objects and, objectives into tasks such as if you wanna enhance access, you know, what does that look like? That’s a very abstract statement. So that might look like digitization digitization of, let’s say, a very, well used, part of the collection, having finding aid updates that are more, explicit or more detailed or more granular, having IT upgrades, for example. Those are all kind of pieces of tasks that fit into an objective. We can use project charters, work plans, and task lists, and then, we can also assign ownership and accountability.

So there’s a great book I read years ago called the checkbook checklist manifesto, and it came out of, surgeons that were having difficulty, and remembering kind of the steps that they were doing in surgery, which which resulted in errors or, you know, patients not not healing as fast as they they usually were supposed to be healing. So, they in the operating room, they had a very simple kind of checklist that that kind of walked through each explicit step, and that was really helpful for them to make sure that they’re not, missing anything. And I did this kind of recently with a client of mine where we’re working with a backlog of images that are going into digital asset management system.

And this phase of the project, we’re talking about this kind of huge backlog of event photography and artwork. And so we had I created with them. I strategized kind of this multi-phase, backlog, strategy for them. And at the end of each phase, we had a checklist to make sure that they were that whoever was assigned this work was able to do everything before they moved on to the next phase.

We also did a RACI map, which is, responsibility, accountability, consultating consultative and, informing. And those are roles that we kind of, they were able to take those phases and create that map. So they were able to kind of see who was responsible for doing the work and then updating others within the organization on that work. And that was really helpful to get a lot of the assumptions that we had out of our head and really kind of discussing about what this work would actually look like before it before it started because it’s it’s gonna be a very complex two year project.

But I feel very confident that I helped that client get to where they needed to go by translating the goals that they wanted, which was to address the backlog into action steps.

We wanna measure what matters. And I think I’m always kinda hesitant to talk about metrics with archives because I think we start to get into the neoliberal world of everything is market based, everything must be efficient, We must have metrics to return on investment and everything. And, you know, for archives, which are basically a service based business, in my opinion, it and market logic doesn’t necessarily exist when something has research value. There’s a lot of fiscal value to archives, but we’re really talking about research value, which I think is much more important. But, obviously, it’s hard to put a, a dollar sign to research value. So I do have that all caveat to say that I think it is really important to have metrics with working with archives and having them tied to priorities.

Again, because in a lot of organizations, we’re working with decision makers that do not understand the complexity of the work that we do.

Sometimes having those numbers in hand make make the argument more than just saying, this has research value, which to us, it’s obvious. But to, you know, a grumpy CFO, that might not be the case. So examples could be something like preservation, which would be how many rehoused items you have or outreach. How how much attendance engagement have you had in the archives?

How many published articles have come in the archives? Who has been the top notch researchers that have used or traveled to your archives. What kind of work are you doing? How are you reaching new audiences?

Reaching younger audiences, reaching more diverse audiences. And you can use dashboards for monitoring and review.

I always say, you know, we don’t want this just to be another step where we’re kind of bean counters and and counting counting heads. I I think it’s I think it’s more strategic to think more about automation, like, what are numbers that are what are metrics that you’re already counting in some ways, like web visitors, for example, that you can you don’t have to do any extra work to figure that out. But, again, we wanna measure what matters because something like research value does not really have a a monetary value in a neoliberal framework or a capitalistic framework, but that’s that’s where we find ourselves working in.

So we want to standardize workflows. So we’re thinking about, documenting processes for accessioning, cataloging, digitization, outreach that helps reduce errors, eases training, and ensures accountability, and it frees staff for higher level priorities. So what I have found, I mean, not every organization is like this, but I found either there’s, very little documentation at all about these processes or kind of rules of engagement for these types of work. For example, not having a collection policy, for example.

Or if there are workflows and and policies and procedures, they haven’t been reviewed in a while. I would say at maybe three years to five years would be where I would I mean, I would say, I think three years is pretty fair that you should be looking at your documentation, your policies and procedures, and updating them. And really asking yourself, you know, is are we still doing are we still doing this work? Do we still need to do this work? Whatever tasks that you’re given and, like, how can we make this more efficient? How can you make this easier?

How can we lighten our own workload as archivists so we’re not burnt out and we’re using our minds, our intelligent, beautiful brains for higher level priorities than things that that, let’s say, could be automated or just not done at all within the archives.

I’ve personally been on a huge decluttering mission lately, which is a lot of fun because once you start to declutter, you you start to see what you can get rid of. I’m doing this my personal life, and I do it in my professional life where I start to say, you know, what do I not wanna do anymore? What what gives no value to me by doing a particular work?

And it is really insightful, but it does it does take a bit of having kind of that thinking time to really think about, you know, what what is the best work what’s the best use of my time, my and my talents, and what can I do how can I make sure I’m doing meaningful work that’s not going to burn me out? Because I think that’s a huge thing that archivists deal with with burnout. Perhaps that would be a a blog topic I might I might write in the future. So we wanna balance flexibility and direction. So we wanna adjust to Grant’s leadership changes, and user needs while maintaining vision of the archives and using reviews and feedback loops to refine our strategy. So these three things I see, grants, leadership changes, and user needs, I think are the things that have the most effect on archives.

External funding is what I mean by grants. So look looking at that particular financial landscape and and making sure we’re having we’re not just depending on one funder, for example. Leadership changes have a big impact, and I can talk quite a while about my own experiences before consulting and during consulting with the organizations I work with about how a leadership change at the c suite can make a can make or break in archives depending on, you know, how they feel about if they see value in archives or not. And then user needs, so making sure that we’re serving our users. I mean, archives don’t exist just to look have, you know, pretty papers and boxes and files on a digital server. They’re meant to be used and researched and, you know, having having discoveries made all the time with these materials. And so looking at how, our users feel about things and and getting some feedback from users is particularly important to help refine our strategy.

And a big thing is budgets as tools. So I’m writing a book for a publisher right now about nonprofit finance for archives, and and budgets are political.

Budgets are because an organization is competing for a limited amount of funding because it’s not infinite infinite.

Budgeting is is a political it’s political with an organization’s it’s not rational.

I would say it it has a lot of people vying for kind of a small pot of money. And so in that way, we wanna make sure that we’re using resources strategically and not cutting costs. We don’t wanna get an organization does not wanna get so lean that they cannot do the work. And what I have found is that just because you’re cutting roles or cutting positions doesn’t mean the the the needs are cut anywhere or has any real effect.

It’s not that simple, especially in archives. It’s like just because you cut something doesn’t mean, you’re gonna save money, unfortunately.

It’s much more complex than that.

And we wanna view finances as enablers of long term stability. So we wanna make sure that the archives is funded to its capacity, I would say almost overfunded. We want reserves within an organization, but we don’t want this precarity or this race to the bottom, as many archives seem to be seem to to like to do underfunded and understaffed because it’s not very it’s it doesn’t serve its purpose.

My business, I help a lot of people place archives, you know, people that wanna donate their archives or let’s say, they’re a widow or a widower and they want to place their archive their husband’s or wife’s archives in a repository, and they need me to be kind of the matchmaker to help them find places where these materials can go. And they and people are always kinda shocked at how, unfortunately, how slow archives work and how, you know, there’s a lot of restrictions.

And I try to explain, you know, I really wish that things were better funded or people could reply faster or archives could move faster, but that’s just the nature of the work that we do. We have to be very strategic about how we use our time, and, that’s all related to budgets as well.

We want to make the case for support, so linking archives to the institutional mission. So we’re pairing data with stories, so numbers with narrative.

Because archives kind of sit to the side of organizations, and they’re not necessarily they spend money rather than raise revenue, except for maybe a few high profile archives like the Coca Cola archives, for example. They they spend money. We really have to make sure that we’re we’re being very explicit about how we help an organization and how we help an organization fulfill its mission. And and we can use numbers and narrative to make that point, and we should always have some kind of talking points related to this so we can easily, you know, talk about the value that our archives brings to an organization.

Diversifying funding is really important, and this might be something that’s more an archivist working with, let’s say, advancement or development. But we wanna make sure that we have institutional support, external grants, individual donations, corporate sponsorships, and earned income if you have an organization that can, raise money in in that way. And so we don’t wanna depend on just one funder or a handful of funders. I’ve seen this, so much in my work where, let’s say you have a very generous individual donor and they decide that they no longer want to you know, they change their funding priorities, and and suddenly the organization is out millions of dollars of money that they thought they were going to get.

I’ve seen it with corporate sponsors where they have really decided that they’re going to switch directions. I had one corporate sponsor years ago, which is kinda funny. I’m sure they changed back, but they were very they really changed their funding priority to be more into DEI and really supporting that and being very gung ho about that. And I imagine now because of the political climate, they’ve probably went back.

So I think these funding priorities can change very quickly, and archives are not big corporations that can move that have the resources to move very nimbly.

So we have to make sure that we’re diversifying funding. Now this might be kind of above the pay grade of an archivist at an organization. It’s kind of a development role or a, you know, some type of finance role. But it I think it is important to think about where the funding is coming from and making sure that funding is diverse and as stable as possible.

So as archivists, we wanna build relationships. And, again, this is kind of how we connect archival strategy to daily work. We’re having our internal allies, which could be development or advancement, communications or marketing, administrators, the COO if you’re related to, institutional history, the legal team if you have anything related to records management, for example. There’s all different ways that we can, have these internal allies. We’re also looking for external relationships, so donors that are particularly generous and understand where we’re coming from, community leaders, professional networks, peer networks that we have.

We wanna nurture these ties consistently, but not just during funding drives. So we never wanna be there just with our begging bowl is the only time they hear from us. We wanna make sure that we’re communicating with people and building up building up a lot of good juju so when we when we do have, like, a need or an ask, it’s not a cold ask. It’s a very warm relationship.

And with with these relationships, we wanna practice transparency. We’re so we’re thinking about sharing budgets, reports, and outcomes. We wanna show the impact. So you’ve given funding or you’ve given your support of this initiative. This is what actually is the deliverable that has come out of it, like the tangible the tangible results of your, support.

And then having honest communication, especially during challenges, builds credibility. I think it’s really important to have honest, conversations and candid conversations with people. It’s difficult, but it’s really important. And I think people appreciate it when when you’re coming with to them with no surprises.

And we wanna leverage technology. So manual processes can’t scale. Now I love the analog. I love the physical. I’m I’m never not gonna be into that. Like, that’s the work that I do.

I I love it. But there’s a lot of automatic processes or ways that we we can use technology that we can help, with our software, the automation help with appraisal, outreach, and curation.

I know, for example, I was I was, again, working with a client, and we were, the materials are going to be hopefully accepted by a repository. And it was a very niche, a very like, the work that this professor did, the scientists, was just amazing. And it’s very niche and very complicated. He’s a research he had a research lab at a university.

And so I was going in having an inventory of these materials, and I I took images of the files, which are all very nicely, like, typewritten out. Like, this guy was obviously a scientist and very organized, but he was talking about, you know, terms that I just was not familiar with.

And I was able to take images, and using those images through, AI, I I was able to create an inventory list that basically need very little very little correction. And that saved me hours worth of time of working with very complicated files. So that’s just one example of how I used technology at the tip of my fingertips to to get a kind of basically an acquisition list for a potential repository.

And there’s a lot of interesting software tools like a CMS for batch editing, imports, preservation features, again, using AI for hand write writing recognition, image tagging, metadata generation, using cloud storage. And we wanna make sure that we’re matching tools to mission and priorities. I’ve also found AI very helpful for handwriting recognition, where in the past I have an example where I was working with a private private client, and it was the photographs from the nineteen fifties. And on the back, written in handwriting, was Spanish captions of people that were in a wedding.

And it was kind of messy handwriting, and there was also some looks some, like, some water damage or tears or something. So it was very difficult. I mean, I would have figured it out eventually. Was able to take a picture, was able to use AI to transcribe the captions or the the writing on the back, and then translate it in, like, two seconds.

It was really wonderful. And it gave me being able to have that capacity made me able to process process that collection much quicker because I’m not the the best Spanish reader.

I’m not the best handwriting reader.

But it gave me context right away. So when I was working with other photographs, I kind of could put them together and kind of basically build out a family based on what I learned through technology.

We also can scale digitization with technology, so thinking about high speed scanners and OCR for efficiency.

OCR, even though that’s kind of an old technology at this point, I find it very fascinating and very helpful for huge batches of information for finding, information. We can use AI for metadata, quality control, error detection, and then expands access while reducing manual work. So the work that would have taken us hours to do manually that’s a little tedious, for example, that could be done more quickly where we can really focus on more of the intellectual capacities that AI can’t do as as archivists.

And we can train for adoption. So using workshops, mentoring, and phase rollouts to ease transitions with the technology and using innovation experimentation with their archives to see, you know, how can we how can we do maybe a pilot project to use this a new type of technology to, let’s say, process a collection, quicker.

So we want to measure technology’s impact. So looking at metrics, again, cost savings, efficiency, error reduction, user satisfaction with the caveat that archives are service based. We’re not necessarily market driven. Thank goodness.

We care about research value. We we care about things that number we can’t really put numbers on. But I think it is important to have metrics using dashboards and reports to make that progress visible so we can see you can say, you know, this collection has been processed seventy five percent. But I think when you can visually show it, I think that has more of an impact, for, if we’re talking to higher level decision makers within our organizations that are processing a lot of different information.

I think if we have something visual or dashboard, I think that makes our case so much better. And then we’re also having ongoing evaluation to make sure that we’re being efficient. We’re connecting our strategy to our daily work, and that we’re we’re making it very obvious the the value of the work that we’re doing.

So with all that being said, if you’d like to learn more, I wrote a book for Licidia called Funding Your Archive’s Future, How to Secure Support and Budget for Success.

I love partnering with Licidia this way because I learn by writing and researching. That’s how I I I have certain things I wanna learn about, so I propose books to write. I learn about it. I get a tremendous amount of value out of that myself.

Lacidea has a great way to, give this book for free to anyone that’s avail that wants to avail themselves to it. They use it for their marketing, and then Archivists are able to get free information that they can immediately use in their work. And I love being able to offer this because some of the other publications that I’ve written for, let’s say, publishers are can be very expensive. So I love being able to give out free information and information that’s practical that people can put to use right away.

And so part of this this book is having nine chapters that talk about different ways of securing support and budgeting and funding.

And then at the end of each chapter each chapter is very bite sized, very easy to read, and I did that purposely because I wanted to give you something fast and practical. At the end of every chapter has five worksheets, and these are ways that you can kind of think through what’s the what the chapter talked about and see how you can apply it to your work by answering some questions that are put through these work worksheets. And that was my way of kind of giving something that could be more bespoke and more personalized, the work that you do, that I thought would make sense rather than just having a book about fundraising, for example. I wanted to give some practical tools. So I’m going to go over one of the worksheets. This is in the first worksheet in chapter eight, and it is about accessing assessing funding sources and identifying gaps.

So step one is thinking about your funding sources. So you can kind of grab your budget or whatever you use to kind of figure out how much money that you’re working with annually and thinking about, the funding source, amount, the purpose, the duration of the money, and the restrictions. So for example, it can be a local heritage grant that gives five thousand dollars.

It’s used for archival preservation. It’s for one year and only used for conservation supplies.

And here are some other examples. So I think with funding, we always wanna think about what can be unrestricted. An unrestricted dollar is, more usable than a restricted dollar. Donors, though, like to give restricted money, which I think can make sense for, let’s say, a corporate sponsorship, for example, that wants public programs and wants to be used for educational events, for example. They want that sponsorship to go into events versus paying for you know, for you to attend a annual conference, for example. That that makes sense. But we always are looking for unrestricted dollars because we can use them for, operational and ongoing work.

So when we look at these funding sources, we’re looking at stability and sustainability. So are these funding sources reoccurring or one time? Are any resources at risk of being reduced or eliminated? As I said before, you know, you never know when a funder is gonna change their point of view of what they want to fund. They might go back and forth, and it’s, you know, it’s basically, you’re kind of at their at their, will for if they wanna give money or not.

How dependent is the archives program on a single source funding source? This can be really scary if there’s only one one or two funding sources for your for your archives.

One question looking at this as well, how much administration effort is required to maintain each funding source? So let’s say you might have an individual donor that your executive director has, you know, has a relationship with. We you can always ask them for money. They’re very easy peasy.

You ask them to attend events or the gala or whatever you’re asking them for. That might be low effort versus, let’s say, a government grant that requires a lot of form filling out and reports and administrative overhead. You have to figure out, you know, what what is worth your effort Okay. Required to to get that funding source.

So here’s some questions that you can ask yourself.

And then we’re looking at, financial gaps. So are there activities, programs, or resources that you have that lack adequate funding that maybe it looks like you’re getting the funding on paper, but in real life, you have to use other funds to cover it? Can we be real with our funders about this how something really costs? How can we how can we fill this gap? Are there specific projects that need financial support?

Are there operational funding shortages? It’s one thing if you don’t have restricted or project based funding, but if you if an organization really is pretty precarious about their operational funding, that can close doors of organizations or have layoffs. So that’s a much more requires a lot more thinking and and much more urgent to fill that gap.

And then we wanna summarize the findings. So thinking about, you know, are there underutilized funding sources? Are there partnerships that can be explored to address the funding gaps?

Are there restrictions that are limiting financial flexibility?

What are the funding what are the big funding needs that we want to take care of? And then also identifying I think an important part is identifying the dependencies on single sources and their potential impact if that source decides not to support the archives anymore. We never wanna I mean, I don’t wanna be a negative Nancy, but I think we just have to think about kinda worst case scenarios and be and thinking about contingencies for for funding just in case we face a change in funding.

And then, again, thinking about being realistic about the administrative burden burdens of securing and maintaining funding. Are are we making sure that we are using our time wisely? There’s a great there’s a great movement called trust based philanthropy, and I hope it’s getting more headway. It it seems more it’s kind of more community based funding, but it’s really thinking about, you know, what can it’s it’s the funders are thinking about what can we do to make our grantees’ life easier.

Like, can there be can we give them unrestricted money? Can we reduce or minimize the funding, the reporting requirements? Like, what can we do that we trust them as a partner. We’re gonna give them money to do and use that money and effort to do what we want that money and effort to do, like, what they’re good at rather than filling in forms, giving them, you know, a lot of, like, red tape to go through.

And and I really hope this kind of thinking comes more to trust based philanthropy, comes more to archives and the cultural heritage realm because I I think we need it.

Yeah.

[Bradley Marshall] 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 for you. And please stay tuned for more content and webinars related to this series.

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