Navigating the Challenges of Organizing Archives: Where Do I Put This?

No one really ever thinks about this stuff until you have to do it yourself. Now that I’m doing it, I’m starting to understand why there’s a whole graduate program built around the science of organizing libraries and archives (a master’s program, but also, one of the archivists I work with at Wake Forest University has a PhD in it. I haven’t asked him about it yet, but I’m really curious to know what he did his thesis on).

Collections management is … a thing, so I’ve learned, and unlike a lot of my cohort, I didn’t come to this with any museums or archives experience at all, so I have literally no knowledge whatsoever of any applicable organizational theories. So, at this point I’m relying on Google, my poor professor (who is also my advisor, mentor, and internship coordinator), and my innate Virgoan tendencies for organization as I develop a shelving system, update the finding aids, and process and organize heaps of random objects.

Am I panicking? Well yes, a little, because I’ve never been too sure how far I should take my own initiative. Questions get asked via email; they’re generally answered by telling me to email someone else. There’s a downside to everything, though, generally, and I suspect that this is the downside to “digging around and organizing old stuff.”