A prelude to Archives: Records and knowledge Management
As the natural conclusion of my contract coordinating the JPL-A’s programming and outreach activities approaches, I’m starting to tie off loose ends on projects. Having worked on 36 long-form newsletters, more than 20 rare book workshops, 16 exhibitions, a limited series podcast and numerous other activities, I am facing a plethora of presentations, photographs, and research to organise.
Screenshot of Archives Roadshow presenters, November 22, 2022. From left to right, top to bottom: Janice Rosen (Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives), Ellen Belshaw (JPL), Ezell Carter (JPL), Teigan Goldsmith (Ottawa Jewish Archives), Donna Bernardo-Ceriz (Ontario Jewish Archives), and Hannah Srour-Zackon (Congregation Shaar Hashomayim).
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Knowledge Management
When a work departure is planned, it is so important to ensure a transfer of knowledge takes place. Commonly, this entails the departing person writing a document that acts as a how-to guide for their job, and/or there are a series of exit interviews or training sessions carried out. I am focusing on written knowledge transfer, what we call transition documents, but other institutions may call a postmortem. In archiving school, we learned a simple rule of thumb for when to start preparing this: the amount of years you’ve been in the position is the amount of months ahead of time you should start preparing your knowledge transfer. Depending on how you work best, an afternoon a week dedicated to knowledge transfer and records management should help you get to the goal of an organised space by the time your last day rolls around.
Some examples of what I’m including in my transition document include:
Standards and templates for online events and marketing materials (ie image sizes for different platforms, MailChimp and JLive templates)
Timelines and best practices for exhibitions and events
Contact lists of collaborators, past and current
Exhibition schedule and lessons learned in programming the exhibition screen
Screenshot of internal archival outreach files for the JPL-A’s activities, 2022-2026.
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Records Management
If you’re like me, you have a lot of files in different places that make sense to you, but will be difficult to piece together by someone else. Organising these in a way that is designed for easy findability is key. What is easy or intuitive to you might be counter-intuitive to someone else, so ask a trusted colleague to look at your organized files, as they might notice quirks that you hadn’t.
A few records management tips:
Save for longevity: Use file formats that have the most chance of endurance as technology changes (PDF, RTF, ODF, WAV, MP4, TIFF, etc)
Avoid spaces in file names: spaces in file names are not readable with all programs, particularly legacy applications. Underscores, dashes or CamelCase are a safer bet for usability and compatibility
Include the date in the file title: If you use yyyy_mm, your files will be automatically organised by date. This could also help you if you end up with multiple versions of a file to figure out which one is the most up to date
Alphabetise or number folders: If you want your folders to self-organise in a specific order, consider putting letters or numbers at the start of folder titles
Save a Rich Text Format (RTF) file for each project in its folder with a quick project description and any relevant notes about what is contained in the folder. If the rest of your files become corrupted, an RTF has the best chance of being opened on different programs
Screenshot from JPLArchives.org of where the Archival Outreach files will eventually end up, alongside older programming.
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Eventually, Archives
In the future, when institutional records are no longer being actively accessed, they may be turned over to an archives. In my case, my records will end up in the Jewish Public Library’s Fonds in our Archives. So this organising work is equally for me, other staff, and researchers decades from now who want to know about the activities of the JPL Archives at this time in history. What they will discover is our desire to showcase a range of voices, identities, and perspectives, particularly those who are traditionally underrepresented within the community and the archives.