Outreach: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections

Outreach: Innovative Practices for Archives and Special Collections explores how archives of different sizes and types are reaching out to new potential users and increasing awareness of programs and collections. The book features twelve case studies that demonstrate ideas that can be transferred into many other settings. Some of the practices described in the case studies rely primarily on technology and the Web to interact with the public, while others are centered on face-to-face activities.

The case studies featured are

The Oregon Archives Crawl: Engaging New Users and AdvocatesMoved by the Spirit: Opportunistic Promotion of the Hamilton Family Séance CollectionWorking Within the Law: Public Programming and Continuing EducationStaying Connected: Engaging Alumni and Students to Digitize the Carl “Pappy” Fehr Choral Music Collection“Pin”pointing Success: Assessing the Value of Pinterest and Historypin for Special Collections OutreachCreating a New Learning Center: Designing a Space to Support Multiple Outreach Goals"Wikipedia is made of people!”: Revelations from Collaborating with the World's Most Popular Encyclopedia 21 Revolutions: New Art from Old ObjectsHappy Accidents and Unintended Consequences: How We Named Our TribbleNavigating Nightingale: Creating an App Out of ArchivesDIY History: Redesigning a Platform for a Transcription Crowdsourcing Initiative Taking Preservation to the People: Educating the Public About Personal Digital Archiving
All twelve case studies look at outreach as identifying the organization’s intended audience, building new ways of reaching them, and helping the organization achieve its mission. Each also reflects a philosophy of experimentation that is perhaps the most critical ingredient for any organization interested in developing its own “innovative” practices.

This volume will be useful to those working in archives and special collections as well as other cultural heritage organizations, and provides ideas ranging from those that require long-term planning and coordination to those that could be immediately implemented. It also provides students and educators in archives, library, and public history graduate programs a resource for understanding the variety of ways people conduct outreach in the field today and the kinds of strategies archivists are using to attract new users to collections.

Kate Theimer is the author of the popular blog ArchivesNext and a frequent writer, speaker and commentator on issues related to the future of archives. She is the author of Web 2.0 Tools and Strategies for Archives and Local History Collections and the editor of A Different Kind of Web: New Connections between Archives and Our Users, as well having contributed chapters to Many Happy Returns: Advocacy for Archives and Archivists, The Future of Archives and Recordkeeping, and the Encyclopedia of Archival Science. She has published articles in the American Archivist and the Journal of Digital Humanities.

Kate served on the Council of the Society of American Archivists from 2010 to 2013. Before starting her career as an independent writer and editor, she worked in the policy division of the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland. She holds an MSI with a specialization in archives and records management from the University of Michigan and an MA in art history from the University of Maryland.

Kate Theimer is the 2014 recipient of the Society of American Archivists’ Spotlight Award. The Spotlight Award recognizes the contributions of individuals who work for the good of the profession and archives collections―work that does not typically receive public recognition. Since 2011, Theimer has used Facebook, Twitter, and her blog to raise money for Spontaneous Scholarships that help unemployed, underemployed, and underfunded archivists to attend SAA’s Annual Meeting. The first year the scholarships were offered Theimer raised $5,504 to assist 18 students and 8 SAA members at the full registration rate; the program continued in 2012 and 2013 resulting in a total of more than $20,000 in donations and almost one hundred archivists assisted over the first three years. Theimer recently launched a campaign to raise funds for the 2014 scholarships.