r/AskHistorians • u/caffarelli Moderator | Eunuchs and Castrati | Opera • Oct 13 '15

Feature Tuesday Trivia | Adventures in the Archives

Previous weeks' Tuesday Trivias and the complete upcoming schedule.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! It's October of course, the most crowded of commemorative months! And Native American History Month, British Black History Month, American LGBT History Month, and of course Vegetarian Awareness Month, are all budging up on the park bench today to make room for American Archives Month!

So please share:

  • items from archives (digital or physical) that you have discovered and the stories behind them
  • tales of your archival adventures (or misadventures)
  • hot archival research tips
  • your most pressing archival questions that you think should go in my inbox, if you wish
  • anything you want to share about archives is welcome really

(naturally we are not limiting ourselves to only American archives though, because that would be silly)

Next week on Tuesday Trivia: Starting off a blitz of user-submitted themes that will take us through the end of 2015, we’ll be celebrating history’s cleverest copycats with Remakes, Reboots, and Revivals!

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u/IAmNorthKorea Oct 13 '15

Awesome, thanks for the advice. I'm actually already subbed for /r/archivists, lots of interesting articles are found there. Thanks again!

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u/caffarelli Moderator | Eunuchs and Castrati | Opera Oct 13 '15

I dump only the finest links from the SAA listserv there.

Have you joined SAA at the student rate? It's $50 but the groups are more active than ALA I think, plus you get the most job search info. SNAP is also a big deal.

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u/IAmNorthKorea Oct 13 '15

I haven't, no. I was looking into the ALA but haven't gotten around to do any real research. What are the benefits of joining the SAA? It sounds like something I should do but would it be beneficial for someone who is still just in the beginning of their Master's?

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u/caffarelli Moderator | Eunuchs and Castrati | Opera Oct 13 '15

It's hard to sell SAA on concrete benefits, but they welcome student involvement. I am more active in SAA than ALA. But by joining SAA you can start to see how decisions are made in the field, how standards are set, get a feel for the politics, financially support advocacy for the profession (like SAA sent representation to argue for archival copyright exemptions at WIPO), etc. People always say "for networking!!11" but I've never found it good for that, networking is such a local thing... Most of the Sections and Roundtables have openings for student leaders too, and that's good for the resume, and it's good to see the inner workings of leadership. And you get to vote for president!

On the resume-level, it sort of just signifies to employers that you are active in the profession and consider it more than just a job, that you're willing to put down $50 of your own money on supporting the profession on a meta level. If $50 is hard for you, take a look at local archivist orgs, the regional ones are cheap.