Total Archives but actually do it

These days in the Market Basket zone if it snows, we have remote work. This is great, because my toddler loves working on spreadsheets when daycare is closed.

Apply via our Awards & Fellowships webpage. library.uconn.edu/location/asc...

Deadline: January 30.

Quick application, no letters needed.

Boosts appreciated!

Fellows must spend a minimum of five research days onsite and share their work through a blog post, podcast interview on d’Archive, or a staff colloquium.

Travel grants have no reporting requirement.

What’s available:

• 3 Research Fellowships — $4,000
• Travel-to-Collections Grants — $1,500
Designed to support focused, on-site research time.

Open to ALL researchers regardless of rank or affiliation.

We encourage projects that draw on under-researched collections (list available on website).

Community archives are just local historical societies with younger people. Everyone is broke. People are delaying retirement because they can’t find anyone who wants the job for 40K a year. This model is not working and it has not been working for a long time.

It sucks to work in a place that has no money and it makes people feel bad. Instead of finding a way to get those places resourced or finding another path, professional associations / ArchSci profs love to depict them as authentic, vaulted, noble. Impoverishment is not noble!

I need to understand why archivists are so uncomfortable with the idea that they have skills that not everyone can pick up on the first day and that most archival effectiveness comes from long-term stability.

So many collections from my former job came from feminist community archives that had been established in the 70s and 80s and everyone got tired and no one could see it anyway because it had the vibe of a snotty bike shop. And they definitely fucked UP those collections.

Teaching citation (among librarians) focuses on giving credit and avoiding plagiarism, which are only the baseline of engaging in scholarly conversation. I would love to see a larger focus on being a good scholarly listener (good-faith articulation of others' args, citing for reproducibility, etc.).

I am the highest paid person in my department. I make 40% more money than the lowest paid person in my department, who is a parapro. My job is probably 40% more annoying than his is and I have 15 years more experience. This seems appropriate! Thank you, union!

I just found out that if I want to order catering for an exhibit reception with privately-raised funds I need to have a sign-in sheet and pass on the guest list within 30 days of the event so that we can "gather metrics." I look forward to welcoming Erasmus B. Dragon and Seymour Butts.

archival repositories are full of bullshit that no one cares about because our job, fundamentally, is to talk people into letting the cat out of the bag. more people need to do that work! it's hard but it is basically the whole job.

treat your donors like adults. explain to them that anything they transfer will be public. explain why this is a good thing.

That sounds like way more fun than writing.