Strengthening Archives: Resilience for Today, Tomorrow, and Years to Come

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 Resilience for Today, Tomorrow, and Years to Come.

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 automations. Our brands include ArchivEra, Argus, Presto, and SydneyDigital.

I’d 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 a 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’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, Margot.

Thank you so much. So when I think about archives and sustainability of archives and resilience, I really think about the unique view that archivists have. We have this long term view. Most nonprofits, businesses, other types of organizations really think of their work in shorter terms, in quarters and in in years.

And maybe if they’re doing a a a strategic plan, maybe the longest they’ll go out is maybe five years. But archives outlast short term cycles, short term budget cycles, short term grant cycles. And so we have a very unique point of view as archivists. We look at the past, we look at the present, and we look far into the future.

And having this point of viewpoint and being in charge of archives really requires us to have resilience and adaptability to the challenges that we face.

There are, of course, a lot of risks working with archives that kind of get in the way of being resilient and having sustainable archives. So the first is obviously financial.

Archives tend to have an over-reliance on grants or single funding streams. This is problematic for a number of reasons. But if you only depend on a short kind of small pot of money for the work that you do, if for whatever reason your funder decides to change priorities or if you have a donor, if you work in a nonprofit that decides to stop giving or to change where they’re giving to, it can have a huge impact on the organization. I know in past organizations I’ve worked on, we had a major corporate sponsorship that would give it give us a significant grant, and they decided to completely change what they were funding, kind of without a lot of notice.

So it really, the organization really had to scramble to keep up and the archives were affected. And then with single funding streams, if you’re over-reliant on a very generous donor or a generous type of funding stream and it stops, that can have a a huge impact. I mean, I know that I was for example, I know that I was laid off because of a single donor that we had that was very generous up until the time that he stopped being generous and decided to stop funding things. So that has obviously, it has a huge impact.

There’s also operational risks, things like staff shortages, storage issues, workflow gaps.

Archives tend to be traditionally kind of understaffed. And because of that, if, let’s say, someone is promoted or moves on to another organization or retires, that staff shortage in another organization would have as much impact. But in the archives, it might have a significant impact.

And there’s also obviously, archives are always physically expanding, but their budget is not always expanding to keep track. So there’s always tends to be storage issues and then workflow gaps. There might be ways that archives have worked where maybe as they’ve added on more systems or more ways of doing things, there might be some the work might not be as efficient as it needs to be. There’s tactical risks, of course. There’s outdated systems, obsolete formats, weak weak infrastructure.

I know if you look at, let’s say, a digital preservation maturity model, you might, your organization might be lacking in some of what you should be doing for digital preservation, for example. And there’s also environmental risks, so disasters, climate changes.

If let’s say there’s a leaky pipe in your in your archives, if there’s an HVAC problem, if you tend to live in a or work in a climate that can be problematic, that can that can, have an effect too. I know I had a client that, they were in the south, and it was very humid. And they had bug problems and humidity problems and materials that were stored next to windows that were not properly sealed. And it just became a whole bunch of these problems just kind of piled upon each other and it was extremely risky for the materials that they held.

So we’re looking for funding for stability. So we wanna diversify revenue. We wanna look at grants, donors, memberships if you have a membership program, fees for services if you offer that as well, and endowments. Of course, it’s easier said than done. Diversifying revenue does take a period of time with your executive team to figure out, you know, all the different ways that you can, fund your organization.

But, again, it goes back to what I previously said about an over-reliance on a single stream of funding. You wanna be able to have different ways of getting money at a time. I know just for my own my own personal business, working as an archival consultant, I have I’m particularly very kind of broad in the offerings and the type of clients that I work with, and that’s helpful for me because then I’m not boxed into a single way of working. I think a normal way of doing business would just to have a specialty and just be the one that’s known for the one thing.

But I’ve I personally found that having a lot of diversity diversity helps me because I can offer a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And it does require a lot of spinning plates to keep up with everything, but I think it does over overall, it certainly keeps keeps me, resilient and sustainable. We wanna make sure that we align financial strategies with priorities. We wanna be funding what’s the most important thing.

Obviously, sometimes, depending on the funder, sometimes they can influence the priority a little bit too much where it’s like, because there’s money, we should be doing this this thing. But people in leadership and archives should really be sorting that relationship to make sure the money goes to where it’s most needed and the biggest priority. And then we wanna build reserves for long term security so that, there is some type of funding reserve that you have that you can dip into in, you know, in periods of of downturn. For example, I mean, the most recent and obvious one is the COVID nineteen pandemic where some organizations, obviously, they got PPP loans in the United States, but, they were some were also able to dip into the reserves that they built over time to keep things moving even if they couldn’t open their doors or they had limited limited ways of getting funding in other ways.

And I think that that really helped to have that kind of peace of mind to know that you have some type of liquid asset to dip into when you really need to. It gives you a good peace of mind.

So the human factor, core resource in archives are staff.

Archives don’t exist without archivists, and archivists are skilled professionals. They’re not well meaning people that don’t really know what they’re doing. They’re people that actually went to school and have the training.

We want to recruit for future skills, looking at metadata, digital curation, and IT. I think more than ever, we have to be have to be looking at these digital skills. What I found in a lot of reading and I think I was looking at one particular article in the professional literature that I think made a really good point. It was talking about digital preservation workers. And that there’s this idea that digital work, digital labor is kind of a young person’s game.

And in some ways, it’s not, I’m putting in quotes, intellectual the way that, let’s say, arranging and describing and writing a finding aid is. And I argue that the technical work, digital work is just as important, I’d say even more important in the in the current technological context that we’re we’re working in. And so I I think it’s just as intellectual, just as much skills that we need, I think even more important.

We wanna make sure that we retain our labor through support and fair compensation and that we train through professional development.

As an archivist, we’re always learning.

There’s always new skills to be learned. And I think the more you learn, the more you realize that you don’t know.

And that’s where imposter syndrome comes from. But I think that’s actually a good sign. You should be aware. The more you know, the more you’re aware of what you don’t know. I feel the more I learn about archives, the more I realize I have no idea about anything related to archives because there’s so much I don’t know.

And I do think that’s a good thing even though it can feel a little scary. So I’m always trying to train for professional development and learn new things.

We wanna stay agile. So when we think about kind of the future and changing, a particular future state of an archives, we can use something called scenario planning. So thinking through what that would look like to be able to kind of think and think through, scenarios and to see what would make the most sense.

We want to adopt technology strategically, with plans to end the technology too. I think tech certain technological platform should exist for a certain purpose. And then with anything, if it’s aging out, we should upgrade.

I think sometimes in archives, what I see and this is not I think this is very common is that there’s a bunch of different types of software being used that were purchased at different times. And there’s almost like a spaghetti like workflow that goes from each system because things were put in place over time that that would make sense.

But I think it’s really helpful to really, again, have that long view of technology and and really think about, you know, are all our systems making sense? Is this the best use of the software platform? And then embedding continuous improvement into the culture. So really thinking about what can we do better? I know I I mentioned this I feel like I mentioned this in every webinar, but thinking about what we should start doing and what should we should stop doing. What should we be focusing on and really prioritizing the archives that have the most impact for our researchers?

The role of metrics. So data builds credibility and turns, you know, stories that we have into evidence. So we want to kind of have narrative and also numbers. So we and we also wanna keep the metrics balanced, neither too many nor too few, kind of like the Goldilocks theory. I always harp on this because I think people do not understand what happens in archives. They don’t understand the labor that’s involved.

Think the assumption is that archives are anything digital or anything is almost like Google. Like, can just put it somewhere and suddenly it’s available. And so people understandably don’t really understand the labor behind it. So metrics are a way that we can put some numbers to the work that we’re doing to show and to make the labor visible.

I think when you do good work, it becomes invisible. I know that there’s plenty of times and old positions that I had where I was on top of things and other people I knew were on top of things and no one ever complained.

And so therefore, what we were doing was invisible. But once something happens, if there’s a problem becomes visible, that’s when people start to notice. Or when you stop, if you move on to another position and someone else takes that position and they they’re, you know, they’re having difficulty with it, that’s when you start to see how much labor is involved. And, the metrics kind of give a a way of explaining the work that we do as archivists in a way that people can understand, especially decision makers that are looking at numbers. They can they can get numbers, as well as the qualitative as well, but I think they really can get numbers, and you can show improvement, easily that way.

Getting metrics also is something that can be, in some ways, automated. So if you’re looking at, you know, how many hits you have to your website, how many Patreon requests that you have, there’s ways that you can figure this out without having to do a count of anything.

You can kind of build it into your workflows as well.

So we want to align measures with goals. So we’re looking at things like accessibility, digitization, web traffic, user feedback.

Preservation could be rehousing or backlog reduction.

You know, we we process, you know, two hundred linear feet in two months, for example. Of engagement, pro program participation, representation. So thinking about what are, these metrics that you’re taking, like, how can you put it to the goals that the organization has? If you, for example, again, have a problem with backlog, people have maybe perhaps complained that things aren’t processed.

I mean, really focusing on that and really getting some members behind it, I think that’s really powerful to show that, okay. Yes. We have a backlog. Yes, we’re working on it.

Or we have a digitization grant. We are working on this number of digitized items that we’re making available on our website in this amount of time. I think it really does putting some numbers to that narrative, I think, is really helpful in making our case and having people see what we do.

We wanna use data effectively. So thinking about standardizing collection and analysis, ensure that there’s privacy and ethical use of the data that we’re using. We’re not capturing anything that we have, for example, PPI or anything that would we’re we’re being sensitive to the data that we’re collecting.

We’re adding context and trends for meaning. So we’re not just giving numbers. We’re actually saying, you know, this is an improvement. Because we got this x y z funding, we were able to do a b c.

So really saying, like, because we have this more money or because we have we hired this new staff member that we’ve been wanting to have for a while, we were able to do, you know, one, three, showing that that impact. One can buy numbers with stories. So, again, giving some context, giving some trends that we see for the meaning of the of the metrics, and then allowing that data to guide strategies, work flows, and decisions. If we know, for example, that we’re capturing metrics, we know that people are particularly asking about a collection, and we have the we have the numbers and the request behind those requests, then we know perhaps we should process that collection even more or parts of the collection should should be digitized or should be described more at a granular level so people can access it better.

We can use that data that we see to help make those decisions.

And there’s a huge power of partnerships. So archives thrive through collaboration. So it can be internally in your organization looking at IT, communications development.

If you were doing anything with records management, legal makes a lot of sense. Sometimes the COO would be the next stop that you would work in be working with too when it has to do more with admin or, like, the history of the organization.

And then externally, we’re looking at cultural institutions, university universities, grass groups, community groups, regional, national, and even local networks that you have, that can be a great way to partner the archival work that you’re doing with the community outside the organization.

And when you’re collaborating, you really wanna set goals and expectations. You wanna formalize with written agreements, maintain that steady communication with your partners, and to stay flexible.

I know sometimes, I can think of when this doesn’t happen well where I had a client with a university and a, cultural heritage group that they were using some they were closely tied, but not the university let them use university property to house this cultural heritage organization. But there was they were not affiliated in any way. But the university had made the university president, a past university president, made a lot of promises that he was not able to keep and frankly, to me, didn’t make a lot of sense. And so understandably, organization was very upset about promises that were given to them that the university didn’t uphold, and it really caused a really tense scene. So I was hired to try to figure out what to do.

And there was a lot of, I would say, co-dependence between these two organizations. So I was really saying, like, I think the power of partnerships I think what I’m trying to say is that the power of partnerships is not to be codependent, to be two individual organizations that are working together for a common goal.

And there’s boundaries. Boundaries are very important in your personal and professional life and in archives, where it’s like, this is where the community group ends and this is where the archive ends and we’re two separate entities working together and we’re communicating.

And we’re also making sure that anything that we communicate is written down in an agreement so that later on people don’t misremember things and we’re very clear on what we’re talking about. We’re both literally are on the same page.

So I always say, you know, start with pilots, especially for new types of work that you’re doing. So start small with low risk projects. What are certain things that you can do in your archives to be more resilient, more sustainable? Then scale up through trust and proven outcomes and celebrate early successes.

So make sure you’re building momentum. So I always, it’s kind of like the snowball theory where you start with the smallest thing. In some ways, people would say go big or go hard. I would, and there’s something to be said about that too, but I think it’s always good to start with the smaller successes and to build success and to, make sure you’re publicizing this, success as well with your projects, that people know that the archives is known for getting things done, and that’s easier to be said with kind of smaller projects that you can always build up.

So if you want to learn more about these subjects, I have a new book that I wrote for Lucidea called Funding Your Archive’s Future, How to Secure Support and Budget for Success.

And it’s available for free at Lucidea’s website. And this is why I love partnering with Lucidea because I’m able to write about things that I care about, I learned through the writing process myself. Lucidea also has the ability to give free resources to people. I know that especially in past positions where I was a loan arranger and really struggling with funding and professional development funds, I was always looking for low cost or free resources to help me as an archivist, and this is a free resource. And so this is why I’m always excited to partner with the Lucidea and to create content for them that can be helpful for anyone that’s working in an archives.

And just to give a little bit of background about this book, there’s nine chapters and at the end of each chapter are five worksheets. And I did this because I just didn’t want to write a book about funding and budgeting that can be a little bit of a dry subject, I wanted to give people something that they could work with. And so the worksheets are using the ideas mentioned in the chapters and going into greater detail that you can work with. You can sit down and kind of work through a worksheet and really think about how can you take what’s written in this book and use it for your organization.

So I do wanna go through one of the worksheets, and this is just a partial part of one worksheet. But I wanna kind of talk through what a worksheet like this would look like. So this is the worksheet at the end of chapter five and it’s about using storytelling for archival advocacy.

And step one is identifying your audiences. So who needs to hear your archival story? So that could be people internally within your organization, like institutional leadership.

It could be people outside your organization, like donors if you’re a nonprofit, researchers, the general public that you’re dealing with, if there’s policymakers or administrators of maybe a state organization, a national organization, or other stakeholders like educators, students, journalists, cultural organizations, your audience really kind of identifying this audience to tell for storytelling really kind of gives you some context to work with. Know, if you’re speaking to a researcher, it’s gonna be different than, let’s say, internally, the institutional leadership. There’s gonna be different stories that you’re telling. And then step two is choosing an approach. So what storytelling technique is best to convey the message? So there’s several that you can work with. One is before and after, so showing the impact of the work.

Before digitization, users had to visit in person. Now collections are online. That’s kind of before and after.

User testimonials. So use stories from researchers or internal staff to highlight the value of the archives.

For example, like a researcher discovered a lost family history thanks to the collection.

Visual storytelling, so using things like infographic charts, photographs to be more engaging.

I know for me, love to write a huge block of text and I think sometimes, that doesn’t have the emotional impact that that may be a a chart or a dashboard of some, or even a photograph would have. Sometimes photographs especially are a lot more engaging. They can stop people in their tracks and really tell the story. And then comparative data, so contrasting past and present performance.

So last year, the archives had five hundred research requests. Now we handle two thousand. That’s an example of kind of comparative data. So step three that we have on the screen is creating a story framework.

So thinking about what every story has, so it has, a challenge, an action, a result in future steps. So the challenge could be what needs were addressed. So limited access requiring in person visits. This is something that’s always a challenge for archives when you’re dealing with physical or analog materials that people have to take the time to come when you’re operating to come visit.

It can require a lot of travel, a lot of money on their part, to visit. So maybe that’s limiting your audience because, you know, there’s that limited access.

The action is how do the archives address the challenge? That would be launch a digitization project in an online platform.

A lot easier said than done, but that’s a a great way to, you know, digitize your materials, make it available for people. And what’s the result? What was the impact?

So access increased, three thousand percent with ten thousand digitized documents. So again, we’re putting numbers to what the impact is.

Future steps are what are the plans for improvement, expanding collections and seeking more funding, and you already have shown us your success and what you’ve done. And then you kind of can draft this story, below.

And then we, step four would be to develop a communication plan. So thinking about what channels will the archives share the story. So it could be reports, blog posts, presentations, social media, newsletter, or email campaigns. It really depends on your audience and what you’re trying to convey. And then reviewing a schedule. So when will you publish and present the story?

Who will create and disseminate the story? And then how will archives again measure the effectiveness of the story? So this of course is just one example of how you can sit down and really go through these worksheets.

And to gain something out of of the book that’s very unique to your needs.

I think the challenge for me writing about archives is that every archives is different even if it’s the same type. Like, university archives is different, and they work differently. There’s different there’s best practices, of course, but there’s different staffing, different infrastructure, different priorities. And when you’re writing, kind of giving writing a book, for example, for funding and sustainability of archives, it can be there’s a limit to what you can say because it’s not gonna reach the whoever’s the reader’s point of view. So these worksheets I think what I’m trying to say in this long wind being long winded is that these worksheets are a way to really personalize some of what’s being saying in the book and to help you kind of work through some ways that you can help advocate for your archives.

Awesome, Margot. Thank you 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 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.