Administration

The goals of any historical records repository are to acquire, preserve and make available historical records.  However, acquisition, preservation and access do not occur in a vacuum; their success depends on a functioning administrative structure.    

It is tempting to treat your administrative policies and procedures as the products of a one time exercise that occupy an infrequently opened file drawer.  Neglecting your administrative structure threatens the sustainability of your repository.  Without a healthy budget, how can you purchase adequate processing supplies? Without a well defined mission, how will you know what to do with the records in your collection?  Without adequate recordkeeping, how will know what you have in your repository and where it came from? 

Regularly reviewing the administrative elements of your repository allows you to take a step back from the day-to-day activities of running your repository and assess it from a broader perspective.  A perspective that will improve your ability to balance and manage your core functions, make you more valuable to your governing body or parent organization and more credible in the eyes of funding agencies and donors. 

In the following video, Anne Ackerson, Executive Director of the Council of State Archivists, and Joy Houle, Executive Director of the Saratoga County Historical Society at Brookside Museum, discuss the benefits of strategic planning for historical records repositories.  

In this section you will assess the following: