Hi Archivists, I've been doing a good amount of research into different programs and colleges for the last few months (for MILS), and I feel like I'm at a crossroads. My current two top choices, based on the programs' reputation and the curricula, are Alabama and Uni of Buffalo. Does anyone have any advice or experience with these two programs? I am definitely ready to hear it all at this point.

I'm also going into this Master's with an art background, mainly with no volunteer work just yet. I have about 12 years of customer service experience, so I'm hoping that'll help a little going into application season.

Hi folks, I’m looking for advice on moving into more ‘corporate‘ records roles, such as document controller, records manager, information management.

I qualified in Archives and Records Management in 2020, and have since done various project roles. These have mostly been either cataloging, or community focussed NHLF projects within small charities. Although I love the role, the lack of stability is getting difficult as my partner also works in heritage, and one of us ideally needs to have a more stable job to allow us to have kids, remortgage etc.

The city I live in has very few archivist roles pop up - however I often see adverts for records managers and document controllers. I feel like I have zero experience in either of these areas.

Has anyone switched over to records management and do you have any tips of things I could do in this year to learn to put me in a better position to apply to roles like this? Would it be advisable to look for entry level roles and take a hit on salary for better longterm prospects?

This has happened to duplicated microfilm from the 70s. It’s wet and smells like vinegar. The emulsion is coming off but not the images. Is this vinegar syndrome?

We recently moved my archive and our new vault has a bit of an odd layout as well as a mix of old shelves brought over from our old location and newly purchased shelves. I've figured out a numbering system to ID the shelves, but I'm having trouble labelling each shelf with its ID.

The new shelving has some sort of powder finish coating to it that I cannot get adhesive labels to stick to (the old shelves take the labels no problem). I tried ordering printable magnetic sheets and spent forever cutting each shelf label to size (~800 shelves!) just to learn that the magnets aren't strong enough when they're cut that small and are easily bumped off if you brush against the shelf walking by. Some of it is compact shelving, so I also had an issue when moving the carriages where the magnetic labels would stick to the shelves on the opposite carriage. I did do larger labels to ID each bay and those seem to be holding on fine.

Ideally, whatever we come up with works for both the old and new shelving so it can be consistent. I'm this close to taking a sharpie to every shelf and calling it a day (or, being more professional and using an IDentipen and Paraloid B-72), but I'm sure I'm missing a very obvious solution that won't leave me with writer's cramp! Please help!

Hi everyone,

I have a Bachelors of Fine Arts in photography and I am interested in transitioning to the Digital Asset Management field.

Would a certificate in Digital Asset Management prepare me enough to switch careers or should I consider an MLIS?

I’m in Detroit and I have familiarized myself with Wayne State University’s online MLIS program.

I understand that a photographers familiarity with image file formats, resolution, metadata, and editing software is highly transferable but I want to hear from others if an MLIS would be “too much” and a certificate program would prepare me enough for the career switch.

Any insight or information is appreciated!

Hi All,

I'm a member of a housing and dining co-op of ~360 members run almost entirely by undergrad students with the exception of 2.5 non-student employees. We have a physical archive which we are working on improving, but I'm looking into digitally archiving some things.

We have quite a lot of photos and manuals, but first and foremost we have ~weekly board packets, yearly board manuals, and yearly owners manuals going back to the 60s. Pretty much all organizational happenings are in our board packets, and our policy and general practice is in our owners/board manuals, so having the contents of these easily searchable would make looking for most information much, much easier than it currently is. I want these to be easily searchable and stored "in the cloud." I have enough knowledge to be more comfortable with storing them locally, but any way we can minimize chances for user error is good because of our 4 year (often more like 2 year) turnover. We had our own servers a few years back and lost the majority of the data in a migration.

I have been using CONTENTdm for another project and I've enjoyed it in some ways, but it feels rather clunky, particularly in the search function. I also just tested out catalogit, but was disappointed to find it's ability to search inside PDFs lackluster. In summary:

Need:

• Stores PDFs
• Cloud storage
• Easy to access and manage
• Good support team
• Robust search that looks inside PDFs

Want:

• Reasonably priced
• Support for other file types for future projects like scanning photos
• Access management (anyone can access without an account)
• Support for mobile access

Thanks All!