Donor Relations

This week’s EAD progress was hampered by not having the current version of the software on the computer I was working on. The supervisor should have the right version installed by my next working day.

I began processing a new collection in the interim. It is a collection of mostly educational materials which the church used to teach about nuclear disarmament. It is pretty well organized I believe original order will be best in this case. I am mostly re-foldering and removing rusty clips and such.

On a different subject, I was able to spend some time talking with the Asst. Archivist about creating relationships with donors. We talked about how it often takes years to move from first contact to finally taking possession of records. It is not only convincing the donors of the institutions ability to care for the records, it is about the donor giving up their own responsibility for the records. They may have had possession of their records for 25 or 50 years. At that point the donor may be facing their own issues of mortality and immortality. Do they even want their records available after they are gone?