52 Weeks To Better Genealogy - Challenge #12

The 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy Challenge was written by Amy Coffin over at We Tree and is hosted each week by GeneaBloggers.  This week's challenge:

Check out the web sites for the Society of American Archivists (http://www.archivists.org/), ARMA International (http://www.arma.org/), and the American Library Association (http://ala.org/).  Genealogists can benefit from the educational opportunities and publications of other information-based organizations. You may not be an archivist, records manager or librarian, but you share the same interests. Look at the events these associations hold. Find the books they publish and see if you can request them through your library via Inter-Library Loan. You may also want to check out your state’s (or country’s) library association. If you’re a genealogy blogger, write about your impressions of one or more of these organizations.

This is a great activity since I am working on my own personal archive right now.  I primarily spent time on the Society of American Archivists website where I found a couple of really interesting things.

The first were back issues of Archival Outlook Newsletter. I randomly selected the September/October 2009 issue for a look and saw an article titled, "The Business of Archives:  Managing Time, People and Collections in the 21st Century," by Colleen McFarland and Courtney Yevich.  The point I took away from this article is that an archivist needs to do the best he or she can with what they've got available.  As an individual with my own small archive I took away that if I don't have the resources - either time or money - to do a perfect job, at least do something.  It will be better than doing nothing.  And it will be OK.

The other interesting item I found was under Publications (ePublications to be exact).  There is a Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology which looked like it could be handy for someone like me who isn't an archivist.

I hope you find something useful on one of these sites like I did.

© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum