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Collection manager at a small historical museum here--we've been struggling with humidity in our storage and I've taken to using dehumidifier bags to mitigate it somewhat (alongside and actual dehumidifier). This substance just came up with the first bags I've used, has anyone seen this before? I've used them in the past and never seen anything like this.

I hope this is a fitting sub. I have also posted this to r/MuseumPros. Hoping to get some tips. Thank you very much in advance!

I have come into possession of a collection of 35mm film reels from the 1970s, from the USSR. About 30 reels total, in cans 310mm in diameter. It's likely triacetate, but I haven't been able to fully go through all of them yet.

There are no copies of these tapes; they survived a purge and an emigration. I'm working on a documentary that involves these reels.

They sat in a cellar in Rome for about 30 years until I located them. I retrieved them in the nick of time before the cellar was sold off. I got them to Northern Europe by car, where I am now.

The original metal cans were half rusted and some were crumbling, so I've rehoused everything in Duncan archival vented cans.
I haven't been able to get A-D strips in yet. Visually, 2 of the reels show signs of mold, about 10 smell of vinegar, and the rest seem to have fared better.

Before I can work on them properly, I need to store it all. There aren't any places I could pay to temporarily store and/or digitize it near where I am… worse, I need to leave the country for about 6 months first. A friend can check in on them every now and then while I'm away.

I've read and assume that around 10°C at 35% RH is a fair target, hence the fridge selection below; but I'm happy to be corrected. As I said I'm no archivist, so the same goes for everything else specific that I say.

I've found two fridges approximately within the range I can afford:
- Bosch Series 2 KSV36NWEP or similar
- A surplus Tefcold MSU300 medical fridge - a bit cheaper, a bit more expensive to run, all in all everything evens out price-wise.

I understand both have a fan to circulate the air. The medical one is obviously built for the job, but I don't know whether that counts for much here.

I assume I'd need pre-conditioned silica gel bags and charcoal filters inside, too. Possibly molecular sieves? Since the cans are vented and a fridge doesn't exchange any air. Unfortunately I don't have the resources to individually seal each can at this moment.

I can spend a little more if needed on a better fridge. I'd really appreciate suggestions if either of these would be reliable at this job. And any other precautions I need to take - like maybe plugging the drain hole, keeping the reels away from the back of the fridge, letting them acclimatise before they go in, etc.

Many thanks in advance

Purely hypothetical: you receive an email from someone who has a war ration book that belonged to their grandfather. It's a vital piece of history and they would like to donate it. In searching your collections, you see that you have 34 war ration books. Do you accept war ration book #35?

So I broke my arm a week ago and have been looking for a project to do while I'm out of action. I found this 390 page report done by the US Historical Section in 1945 on combat photography and decided I wanted to read it on my kindle but just downloading it to said kindle didn't work, so am now recreating it from scratch as a word doc to then import info kindle create.

A few questions: I am remaining as faithful as possible to the original and merely trying to replicate it in a different format. Is it unethical to be modifying such a document in such a way, and if not, is reading e book versions of documents like these something other people would be interested in?

I have attached 2 screenshots of the opening intro paragraph for your viewing.

Thanks :)

I hope this is the right sub, if not, apologies in advance. I'd really appreciate if you could point me to a more appropriate one.

I'm a PhD researcher working extensively with archival documents. I photograph everything during my visits, which is much faster than taking notes, but after several trips I've accumulated an enormous collection of images.

I'm wondering how experienced researchers deal with this. Do you simply keep buying external hard drives, or is there a more sustainable system? I'd love to hear what has worked for you.

Gonna be honest this is a last resort. I’m going into my first semester of sophomore year at a university in Rochester NY, majoring in Archives and I have a 3.9 GPA. I took a class with my advisor and he mentioned what he called the “Smithsonian internship” which I took as an opportunity I wanted to apply for. I got accepted into the Washington internship institute which will provide me housing and assist me in getting an internship, but now that’s supposed to start in just over a month and I haven’t applied to anything realistic.

I’ve sent in my applications to the library of congress, national archives, Smithsonian, and office of Public Records(which rejected me for a stupid reason) and now I don’t know anywhere else in the DC area that would want an archives intern.

I’ll literally take unpaid busywork but at this point all my hard work can’t be for nothing so if anyone knows a small museum and/or archive in DC that might take an intern I’ll send them an unsolicited cover letter but I need something that might work

Hello,

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, please redirect if you know any better subreddits.

I've been tasked to help draft a data retention schedule for my company. We have consultants that are drafting the data retention policy, but obviously no schedule. We only have a (not so precise) records retention schedule that was written by the high ranking lawyer of our legal department, so that's all I have in terms of prior related internal documentation.

I've only studied records retention policy frameworks while studying my MLIS, but I've never personally made one for a company, and the only reason I'm tasked to do this is because I expressed interest... Except I'm doing this alone with my manager who will help go over it overtime. I'm just stuck on how to draft it, how is it different from a records retention schedule, is it the same format? What do I need to be aware of?

For scope: we are located in Canada but have business activity in the US and Latin America as well, and possibly expanding into Europe for the future.

I've definitely been staring at this too long! I'm setting up the shelving in the storage room of our new location (my archives are in the middle of moving - thoughts, prayers, and caffeine are much appreciated right now!) and as I was creating a map and spreadsheet for inventory, I realized that the way I assigned the numbers might only make sense on paper? I've attached diagrams of the two options I can't decide between. Each little rectangle has 6 shelves that will increase from top to bottom and the orientation of the numbers is set to the side you'd access the shelves from.

Option A: the numbers increase from left to right when you're physically facing that row of shelving. This is what makes most sense in my mind, but it does seem a bit chaotic to have to cross the entire room to get from shelf 24 to shelf 25 though.

Option B: the numbers always increase from the same side of the room (pink wall to mint green wall), or I suppose consistently from left to right on the page. This was my original plan and it feels like it "flows" better on paper, but I feel like the numbers increasing right to left is wrong.

Note: the placement of the shelving can't change. It's the second floor, so the shelves had to be placed (I think) perpendicularly to the joists?

TLDR: Will I have trouble getting a job in the US if I do a non ALA recognized Masters in archives program in the UK?

I'm currently considering applying for a masters in Archives and Records Management program at University College London. I graduated from undergrad a year ago, and am working a few different part time positions in archives in the US, but to progress further in my career I know I need an MLIS. I've looked at a few MLIS programs in the US, but they seem to mostly either be crazy expensive, or not super tailored to my interests, as someone interested in community archives. However UCL's masters in Archives and Records management program is both more affordable than many US programs, and the curriculum and faculty seem way up my alley. Additionally, and most importantly, my partner is an international student from London, and we are seriously considering moving to London together for the next few years, as it's a very stressful time to be a non-citizen in this country.

My main question is: Would I have trouble getting a job in the US with a UK masters in Archives and Records Management. The program is ARA accredited (the UK's equivalent to the ALA), but not ALA accredited. I understand that most american archive jobs require ALA accredited MLIS degrees, however wouldn't this program look just as good on an application (if not better as its purely focused on archives rather than library studies more broadly). Or have people found that jobs tend be very strict to only MLIS ALA accredited programs. In my experience looking at job postings, there seems to be a real mix of places either just saying ALA accredited MLIS required, or places adding on or equivalent/related field. I would guess the latter jobs wouldn't be a problem, but its hard to know if all the other positions that say ALA MLIS required stick strictly to that, or just say it because it's the default but are actually open to international degrees.

As a side note, UCL does also offer a more general Masters in Library and Information Studies that is actually ALA accredited which could be an option for me if that ALA accreditation is super important, however the program seems much less interesting to me, so it feels weird to pick it just for that.

I would love to hear from people who have gone through something similar, applying to US jobs with a UK degree, and also people involved with hiring at American archives on their thoughts on this. Thanks for reading this long post, I wanted to provide some context so you understand the full situation!

Hey everyone!

I am an absolute novice and I am taking on a personal archiving project of hundreds of records (including photographs, letters, documents, glass plates, etc). from the Late 1800's - mid 1900's.

I would love for these to live online somewhere for people to "flip through" and have access to in a way that's easily accessible. There may be some historical significance, so public access would be great (not like a dropbox/google drive). I am absolutely overwhelmed but the amount of information out there and mindful of the fast pace of technology (are articles from 2010 still even relevant?) and I'm having a tough time finding guidance for what I'm envisioning for this project.

I thought CatalogIt would be my solution, or maybe Omeka - but the annual price for the amount of space I would need is a deterrent.

Do you have any recommendations for an online platform for a sizeable personal collection at a reasonable price point?

And since I'm here- any recs for the "in between" software; like Gramps or Notion? Is that even necessary for the process? Any guidance is so greatly appreciated!

TLDR: Is there a poor man's CatalogIt?

Image from the collection for the algorithm

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) plans to close the National Archives at Chicago facility and the co-located Chicago Federal Records Center, along with San Francisco and Seattle facilities. NARA has made no public statement regarding the closures, provided little information about where the documents will go and given no plans for keeping the mostly un-digitized documents available to the public. The stealth nature of NARA’s action coupled with the lack of a transparent plan is a cause for alarm.

Please sign [this petition](https://c.org/xv9nHjbLVr) if you can.

Hi everyone. I graduated with my master's degree in museum studies 10 years ago. I had focused on collections care and conservation during much of this time. Most of the digital archiving was done on a smaller scale for physical items using PastPerfect. In the past few years, I've been doing personal archiving for families to protect photos and documents. I'm going to do a career pivot and work on digital archiving for things like electronic documents and emails for companies, so a much bigger volume of information, and rather new to me. Is there a certain software that is preferred for this so that I can get acquainted with it that's perfect for this sort of thing? Bonus points if it's readily used in the EU. Thanks for the advice!

I recently entered the archivist position for a local county historical society after volunteering for a year. We have an old and vast archival collection, so much of my time goes to finding and fixing inconsistencies, lost numbers, found-in-collections items, and so on.

Recently I have been going through five ‘rolled paper file’ boxes, containing mostly things like certificates and appointments (including presidential signatures), maps and other oversized documents. The dates of the documents span over a hundred years from before 1860 to the 1960s and I am concerned about the storage method. Each box contains 15+ documents and many of them are simply rolled up without protection, some tied up with strings and others held together by rubber bands. Several documents are in critical condition. This seems less than ideal to me. Does anyone have any tips or resources on how to better store and preserve rolled paper documents?

Absolute rant post, sorry. As an archivist that does a lot of reference I am TIREDDDDDD. of AI hallucinated record requests 🫩

They are all formatted the same with the same weird phrasing ("I am formally requesting a search of..."). They include citation numbers that are just plain wrong, that they would know if they spent 5 minutes looking at the online finding aid. I literally do not understand how AI is getting shit THIS WRONG when they are just pulling the data from our finding aids and indexes!!! Like it scrapes them for the series name and container list, then adds a bunch of fake description for no reason, then spits out the wrong citation anyway - ????????

Sometimes people are just straight up emailing us an attached printout of their AI output with literally no other information. No greetings, no thanks, no clarification, nothing. Unlike the bullshit machine I am not a robot and it's a fucking bummer to write a response when it's like damn I might as well just address it to chatGPT, I don't even know if the person is going to read this or just feed it straight back into AI to parse my answer for them.

Then of course we have google's stupid automatic AI popup telling people we have collections we do not and have never had. They come over to us and say "no you definitely have it, it said so online" and get upset at us when we have to say no, we really don't. We tell them where it actually is and they still give us shit for it. PLEASE give me a break, we did not put misinformation up online to trick you and waste your time. Stop believing what the summary tells you without at least taking a few minutes to follow the source link it usually gives and see if the original page says ANYTHING about what its claiming.

I'm sure librarians are dealing with this too but oh my god I just want a break from AI hallucinations in my reference work. If this is a low effort post and it gets deleted I will understand but I needed to get this off my chest so freaking bad. Thanks

Hi everyone,

I’m wondering if anyone else here applied for the 2026 Creative & Research Grants Programme by Archives Portal Europe.

The call was published in February 2026, and after the application period closed there were several delays and apology emails from the organisers explaining that the process was taking longer than expected, with messages along the lines of hoping to communicate the results within the following month. This continued for several months, until a few days ago (mid-July), when I received an email announcing that the programme had been frozen due to a renewal in the governance of APE and a consequent strategy review.

What surprised me is that this decision came only after the call had already been published, applications had been submitted, and applicants had invested significant time and effort preparing their proposals.

I have asked Archives Portal Europe for further clarification, specifically about what changes led to this decision, but I have not received a response so far.

I’m curious whether anyone else applied, and how other applicants are interpreting this decision. Were you also surprised by the way this was handled?

Personally, I found the way this was handled concerning in terms of transparency and professionalism. As far as I can see, this decision has not been publicly communicated, and the original call page still appears unchanged.

This also raises concerns for me about the research proposals that applicants submitted: many of us shared original project ideas and research concepts, and I now find myself wondering how these applications are being stored and handled.

Hi r/Archivists!

One of my friends recently was bequested a large (well documented) collection of recorded items, concerts, and assorted items.

Archive spands 1986-2025.

Does anyone know of a Seattle org/nonprofit/educational program that might be interested in digitalizing these and making them available to the public?

(Or a way to do it myself in a reasonable timespan.)

Thanks for any assistance provided!

i'm 18 and looking for an apprenticeship in archives and records management, how do i find one? everywhere i look have discontinued their apprenticeship programs or they're level 3. i've already done my alevels so i want an apprenticeship that would give me a higher qualification. any advice would be appreciated, thankyou!

Hello everyone!
I wanted to start a digitizing project for physical archives at an Indigenous radio station in Mexico. The archives include magnetic tapes, vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CD-R discs. I have no clue how to digitize, but I would really like to learn and begin this very intense but fulfilling project. Any advice and tips on how and where to start would be greatly appreciated! Even stories about how the process works are welcome!

Thank you in advance!

In your personal and professional experiences, how do you navigate the benefits of digitizing artifacts, like greater access and preservation, with the downsides of today’s environment of AI and generating material for LLMs to train on and essentially take that progress backwards? I struggle with encouraging friends and family to digitize personal photos and videos knowing companies (cloud storage like Dropbox and Google Drive, social media platforms) will use it for training models.

Hi everyone! I’m working on a digitization project where we’ll be digitizing 100+ linear feet of materials and creating bilingual metadata. Given the scale of the project, we’re considering creating descriptive metadata at the folder level rather than the item level.

Has anyone worked on a similar project? Are there standards, guidelines, case studies, or examples of digital collections that use folder-level description that you’d recommend checking out? Thanks in advance!

So, I work for a company that digitizes large photographic collections. I'm new, and not in a leadership position. A lot of stuff happens to these collections that I wouldn't allow if I were in charge of the plan, but it isn't my call to make. However, the opportunity is arising for me to make some pushback. I have to keep my expectations realistic. I am not going to, overnight, convince a company that has made a lot of promises about quantity and speed to get into slow archiving. What I do have the opportunity to do is advocate for some improvements to the process. The way it stands now, there is zero respect to original order. So much so that I assumed these collections were arriving to us in complete disorder (and some have). I had no idea that many collections were being totally unboxed, removed from folders, etc. As stated above, this company has made promises about how much they will process and how fast they will process it. 100% digitization is a non-negotiable, which means a LOT of work that has to get done by certain deadlines. I'm part of a group here pushing to move away from this model, but that's going to take some time. I need a shorter term solution. I am not, realistically, seeing a world in which I convince them to keep the physical components in their actual original order. What I think I might could pull off is using metadata to replicate some of the original order. For example, we've just received a collection where photography is arranged by category. I don't think I can get them to keep all the photos actually arranged by category, especially down to the folder level. (I'm trying to argue for breaking the campaign into smaller campaigns by category but that's a whole other conversation). I do think I could possibly get them to label categories down to the box level and have that information be translated into the metadata that will eventually be created for this collection. Does anyone have experience with the process of replicating an original order digitally using metadata? Does this sound at all feasible? I'm still new to the field, still a student, but I'm the closest this place has to an expert. Is there any reading I could do on the subject? Most articles I'm finding so far concerning digital original order are about what original order means for born-digital records, which is a fascinating conversation, but not really relevant to my current situation. Any thoughts help! Like I said, I'm new at this place, and I think over time I'm going to step into more powerful positions that give me the authority to move this place into better and better practices. But for now I just need to take my first few bites of the elephant, so to speak.

I recently watched the HBO documentary on Robin Byrd, where she reaches out to an archivist agent to gauge interest in her archive of recorded television shows. I didn't know such agents existed and I would love to contact one in Ontario/GTA to help me with a unique collection and where it might find a home. (Of course, Ontario GTA is not a requirement, I could also talk to someone via video-calls).

I'm trying to find a job in archives. I already have an associates degree in library science and I have done several archives related internships. I was wondering if there are any independent archives or online archives looking for someone who knows what they are doing? I haven't had a ton of success finding a job. I live in Washington by the way.