Moving Archives: The Experiences of Eleven Archivists

by John Newman (Editor), Walter Jones (Editor)

Moving an archive, historical society, or rare book library may occur only once in the career of a professional curator, archivist or librarian. Not only is each situation unique, but collections are irreplaceable and priceless. Moving Archives is a timely source of useful information by eleven archivists who have recent experience moving both collections and entire repositories. They describe their physical and administrative situations, details of their holdings, plans for their move, actual operations, successes, failures, and lessons learned.

Readers will enjoy the clear, systematic, rational and sometimes humorous accounts of how these professionals coped. Each archivist speaks in his or her own voice, often with considerable individuality about what was intended, what processes occurred, and what result, in terms of an organized collection in a new location, finally emerged.

Topics
- Planning
- Administrative coordination
- Staffing (both contract and institutional)
- Security preservation
- Transportation methods
- Boxing and shelving
- Accidents and natural disasters

You'll get pertinent advice
- How to plan for trouble
- How to avoid the well-meaning "assistance" of administrators and volunteers
- How to maintain control and good humor throughout.

134 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Jonathan Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

If someone approaches you and tells you that they found this book to make for interesting reading, start looking around for their twin who always tells the truth.

I'd hoped that reading this would provide some useful insights for the upcoming move next year of the archives I'm overseeing; but the purely case-study format of the eleven chapters presented here, while they mentioned some of the issues one might face in moving an archives, never quite rose to the challenge of explicitly drawing transferable lessons (with the exception of Lisa Backman's first chapter). In the end, the book is what it is: eleven archivists dryly telling the stories of their archival moves. Nonetheless, if you're in the target audience, read it - it may prove helpful when the time comes.

[Kristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since I'm going to be moving my archival repository from the basement to the third floor, I thought I might lean on the experiences of the 11 archivists detailed in this collection of case studies. The book is very readable, and I got some good tidbits from it, although it would have been nice to have some more easily digestible advice in addition to the case studies (checklists maybe?). Most of these repositories were undertaking moves that were much much larger than mine, but some of the advice should still apply. Worth reading if you are undertaking an archival (or even a library) move.