The Archives Edit: A Workshop in Arranging Your Church's Archive

About this event

One of the core principles of archival theory is arrangement, the process by which archivists create physical and intellectual order out of a collection. Led by the CLA’s archivists, Zachary Bodnar and Billy McCarthy, this Church Stewardship Initiative workshop will introduce participants to the concepts of physically and intellectually arranging a church’s archive through a combination of instruction, demonstration, and hands-on activities. While intellectual and physical arrangement are separate tasks with different outcomes, they are inextricably linked together and form the backbone of archival processing and accessibility. Physical arrangement is the process of safely housing, labeling, and ordering physical materials, while intellectual arrangement is the process of creating an inventory that maintains connections among objects and logically orders them into a hierarchical list. The workshop has been designed for those tasked with keeping, preserving, and making accessible a church’s valuable records. Zachary and Billy will discuss core archival principles in detail and give examples of how those concepts may be applied to church records collections of all shapes and sizes. Topics they will cover include how to arrange a collection of seemingly disparate materials into useful broad categories, how to identify relationships among various items in your collection, and how to identify or recreate a collection’s original order. No previous knowledge of archiving is required–just an excitement to learn. Participants can expect to leave the workshop with an understanding of the principles of arrangement and concrete next steps for how they may apply those principles to their own collections. This program is part of our Church Stewardship Initiative (CSI). Find the videos of past workshops and free resources on our CSI webpage. The cost to attend is $50 for individual and church members and $60 for non-members, and lunch is included with your registration.…

Description from congregationallibrary.org