Do I need to wear gloves in the archives during a pandemic? Close your archives, and save those gloves for the people who really need them.

Do I need to wear gloves in the archives? A helpful flow chart

Do you need an archives intern during a pandemic? This one is barely a flowchart. Pay your interns and send them home.

Do you need an archives intern? A helpful flow chart

Will digitization solve my problem during a pandemic? Not if you have people doing the digitizing! Use your time at home to plan for making your future digitization better.

Will digitization solve my problem? A helpful flow chart

Valentines for archivists

More valentines for archivists

More valentines for archivists

This cute cartoon animal asks: Do you like me? And you can answer: yes, no, or (every archivist’s favorite) it depends

“Say OAI-yes!” Love is complicated, so there’s a diagram that’s somehow even more so.

“Whatever future historians say, I know we’re more than friends.” That’s what these two historical dudes are saying while one sits in the other’s lap.

Photo credits:

Image taken from page 315 of ‘Lilliput Lyrics … 

OAIS Functional Entities

Vintage Gay and Lesbian Photos found by Homo History

Valentines for archivists

More valentines for archivists

“I’m AIP for you” over an old-timey picture of an ape.

“You’re just my (daguerreotype)”: Daguerreotype of two women sitting together, with very similar dresses and hairstyles

“You flip my bits”: screenshot of BitCurator in action

Photo credits:

“Image from page 475 of “Evolution and animal life…” from Internet Archive Book Images https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14773055432

“Portrait of two unidentified women” from the George Eastman Museum
https://www.flickr.com/photos/george_eastman_house/4419918921

“Viewing reports on a disk image in Bulk Extractor” from the Library of Congress
https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2013/12/bitcurators-open-source-approach-an-interview-with-cal-lee

MPLP (music from Rubber Duckie [lyrics, video])

MPLP, you’re the one
You make archives efficient
MPLP, I’ll process the fonds with you

MPLP, joy of joys
All those backlogs you destroy
MPLP, tell me, what would Greene and Meissner do?

Oh, every day when I
make my way through the folders
I leave those
little staples and
paperclips
in their corners
(but I don’t cut corners)

MPLP, you’re so fine
Findings aids done in no time
MPLP, I’ll process the fonds with you!

The Australians will tell you
that records exist
in a continuum

Time is an illusion
for boxes on shelves
data on drives

We humans
are not
so blessed
with
overlapping
existence

Turn me
around any axis
Stop the earth
from spinning
Anything to keep me
on the same side
of the world
as you.

Image credits:
Panel 1: “Christening of Bears” at Koala Park, September 1938 from the State Library of New South Wales collection
Panel 2: Files on Shelf by bandi399
Panel 3: AL77C-105 from the San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives
Panel 4: Image of the Earth recovered by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project from NASA/LOIRP

With thanks to @CassPF and @morethangrass

If you can’t provide professional experience with professional supervision…you probably don’t need an archives intern.

CC-licensed, sized for PowerPoint…I hope to see this flow chart in more places!

Unless you’re made of pancakes…you’re probably not a full-stack librarian.

I hope this clears things up.