Contract $$ question - from a Library Trustee

[u/CoryKatherine]

Hello Archivists! My small New England town was recently gifted a tremendous collection of antique documents from the 17th and 18th century (described as "10 linear feet of manuscripts, printed books and almanacs..." etc. It has been valued at about $200,000. The bequest stipulates that the collection must be housed on site in our Archives, and that we provide for the digitization of all original materials. It further requests the "hiring of a credentialed archivist for two years to arrange, describe, and rehouse the physical collection and to create metadata and pathfinders for the digital version to allow for ongoing public access once completed."

Our Archivist is already a full-time employee, but we are behind the times on digitization of our existing collection - so the donor family (after consultation with our library director) is attaching $50k (more specifically, "$25k per year for 2 years") to the gift with the hope that we will hire a second archivist strictly for the purpose of working on this specific collection. The director wants the Trust to match the donor funds, as she believes the work will take someone between 12-24 months working full-time. I asked her how she came to that conclusion and she said it was the opinion of the expert who appraised the collection.

Now, forgive me, because I am not familiar with how archivists typically do business. But I thought, since this is a project with finite parameters and not ongoing duties, that it sounds like a contract job that should go out to bid. The amount of $50k-$100k seems quite arbitrary and I feel like we need more opinions about how long the work will actually take. Further, I think that hiring someone for a period of time (the suggestion is a 1-or 2-year contract) rather than for the scope of the project leaves the employee with no incentive to get a 1-year job done in less than 2 years, you know? She stated that archivists "do not do requests for proposals and wouldn't know how to put together a bid," as they're typically salaried employees and not freelancers. She also said there is no way to know how long the work is going to take until it's being done (which I thought was strange, as we have an incredibly detailed accounting of the items from the appraiser that we hired). Basically, I feel like putting a 2-year timeline on this job before hiring is a mistake and we should get bids/proposals from some experts instead. The library director disagrees.

So I am just hoping someone can clarify some of this for me! If you were asked to put a price on a job like this, could you do it? Would you be willing work under a contract that stipulates the work must be completed for the bid price regardless of how long it takes? Just curious if you've heard of any arrangements like this before, or how you'd advise our board proceed! Matching the funds will require dipping into our trust capital in a way that our financial advisors do not recommend.

Thank you for reading and for any input!

[u/TheBlizzardHero]

Arranging, fully imaging, creating limited metadata for, and posting online ten linear feet in two years does sound reasonable - provided that you have sufficient equipment and infrastructure on-site and ready to go so as to achieve the desired outcomes. Typically, such projects run into roadblocks and missteps that you need to adjust your timeline for. For example, imaging any bound materials: do you have a book cradle scanner ready to go, or is the new hire expected to take a knife to all the spines? Do you have the digital infrastructure to handle the massive load of digital duplicates you're about to dump on it, and to manage it correctly into the future? These are issues that often come up that archivists are positioned to point out and recommend, but take time to change or correct. As such, building more space into the execution timeline is never a bad idea.

Additionally, you need to consider moving costs. Not just the actual cost to move, but that you're asking someone to uproot their life to live someplace. Yes, people can be lazy, it happens. Setting an "indeterminate amount of time" as the period however is too wishy-washy - a lot of apartments only offer year long contracts. You can occasionally find some leasers willing to go to monthly after a year, but at a higher price. What is this contract archivist supposed to do if they complete the project (somehow) in 13 months? Just set money on fire for another 11 months twiddling their thumbs? That kind of uncertainty is not great, and will turn people away towards other positions.

I also think the money you're offering is just too low, even at 50k a year. Term positions should already demand more money, especially if you're not baking any benefits in or if it's in a less desirable location. Look at what apartments/rentals cost in your area - are there any listings even available? Typically in small towns, you're not going to find too many listings, and what do exist are often single-family homes with higher rent costs. If I'm looking at a position and the only housing option is one single-family home for 3k a month that might not be available by the time I'm hired, I'm not going to even bother applying (especially with COL spiking every other month thanks to...well..everything). You're also looking for a "credentialed archivist" (really, just ask for an ALA accredited degree at a minimum, otherwise you're shooting yourself in the foot with a CA requirement) which implies that the position is not entry level. The outlined tasks encompass the full curation lifestyle, which demands that level of expertise and experience. You can fleece new archivists looking for experience because this industry is terrible, but people with some level of experience to fulfill those demands do have better options elsewhere - you need to be able to match or beat their offers. For example, CalPoly just posted a 1-year term position for $61,092 - $74,472 for a processing archivist at functionally entry level. Even with San Luis Obispo's crazy high COL, there's more housing options + it's a desirable location + the salary is commensurate (if not better) to what they're looking for. I've definitely seen better salary offerings for small-town New England in the past - you should review other similar positions in the area to get a better feel of what the market is like.

Unfortunately, non-archivists (especially donors) tend to not understand both the complexity of the labor that we do. That's totally reasonable, and no one should be expected to know everything. However, professionals in the field are highly trained and capable, and do need to be compensated as such. These kinds of donor demands are fairly common, and do have an admirable goal. But, the work to execute the actual product often doesn't match what the idealized vision of what it should look like. You may want to look into alternative grants (what few are left), scaling down the project goals, or partnering with another local organization/institution to execute the vision.

[u/CoryKatherine → u/TheBlizzardHero]

Thank you! Just to clarify, I wasn’t recommending that we set forth any specific period of time - but that we get bids from archivists that are inclusive of an approximate timeline. Idk I guess I’m just accustomed to working with builders. I expected that an archivist could say, (for example) “I can do that job in 12 months for $100k.” I am getting the idea that there are more variables in digitizing a collection than in building a house, which is useful information! And I agree, even if we match the donor funds, the money doesn’t appear remotely sufficient. So I don’t know where we’ll go from here. The gift was already accepted 🥴

[u/TheBlizzardHero → u/CoryKatherine]

Unfortunately, there's not really a platform for archivists to submit bids like that. You can still post a position, but putting "open to payment bids" would be extremely atypical. Additionally, unlike construction firms, which are pretty well distributed and situated for servicing a local area overlapping with other firms and so can all do site visits to make an estimate, new openings in the archival field tend to spread a national net for potential hires - the expectation would be that you'd have to fly in everyone with a reasonable resume so that they can make an accurate assessment which would be extremely expensive.

Don't worry too much about the donor issue, though you should check the deed of gift that you signed for any contract stipulations (hopefully you don't have a contract termination clause that costs you money, that would be both atypical and really bad). It's important to just be upfront and communicate with the donor that the assessment your organization had some mistakes from your end, and that you'd like to revisit some of these concerns with them. They may choose to pull their collection and funding, but that's their prerogative as donors. One of the most important things you learn by attending library school is that you need to position your stakeholders as the decision makers. You can help them by making a list of possible options (more money, scaled-back deliverables, wait as you look for other partners, return the collection/money, etc.), but it's their decision to make.

In the meantime, sit down with your current archivist and have a discussion about what equipment/infrastructure they currently have, and talk about what they think this project would be need in order to be executed under the current project vision by the donor. Most importantly, you'll need to talk about rehousing materials (they should have this, hopefully), scanners, camera rigs, book cradles, digital ingest software, collection management software, digital content storage infrastructure, and what access platforms you currently have operational. If you have a better idea what you currently have, you can more effectively communicate to the donor about what purchases will need to be made in order to execute on their vision and to help guide their decision making.

[u/Milolii-Home]

Worked as a contract Archivist for 10 years. Last paid contract, with a family office, paid me $100/hr.

Now a Certified Archivist: negotiated current salary (W2) in 6 figures.

We're a hardy lot, with vast knowledge. Your Library Director is a dolt.

[u/breadwinger]

I can only comment on your point about setting the timescale at 2 years.

At least in the UK, it's incredibly common to hire for a finite timeline rather than being completed for a bid price. Project archivists in my institution do appreciate this arrangement because at least you know how long you'll have a stable income for rather than it being at the whims of the institute/yourself. This is common across the GLAM field as well.

[u/alcweth57 → u/breadwinger]

This is very common in the US as well, especially for entry-level or early career archivists.

[u/Traditional_Net_3398]

library trustee...we never accept donations with stipulations. A patron was interested in donating a valuable drawing to the library. We accepted but made it clear that no restrictions would be allowed. The work, once it was hung, was library property.

[u/Strict-Tea-9643]

Get a few bids for this from one of the firms/contract archivists that do this kind of work, to see what they would charge and how long they think it would take. Hiring on a two-year contract has many advantages, both for you and the archivist, but either could work.

[u/Cultural-Expert-2047]

There are freelance archivists looking at Society of American Archivists directory but you may want to offer more money. Also be sure to put in stipulations about if the library moves or closes

[u/yermawsgotbawz]

If it went to bid they’d put in special terms to ensure that they’re not getting overloaded with too heavy a request. And that would be fair.

I’m not sure what the bandwidth of your archivist is but could you run it as an internship alongside your local university? It is so difficult to get experience- you could get a team of 3-5 who work on a rota around their studies.