On October 5th, GMU Special Collections Research Center will be on Twitter with archivists around the country to answer any and all archives related questions. Sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, this day long event will give you the opportunity to ask the archivists at the Special Collections Research Center about our work, our collections, or anything archives-related!
As professional experts who do the exciting work of protecting and sharing important historic materials, our archivists have many stories to share about the work we do every day in preserving fascinating documents, photographs, audio and visual materials, and artifacts.
No question is too silly . . .
- What’s the craziest thing you’ve come across in your collections?
- If your archives had a soundtrack, what songs would be on it?
- What do archivists talk about around the water cooler?
. . . and no question is too practical!
- What should I do to be sure that my emails won’t get lost?
- I’ve got loads of digital images on my phone. How should I store them so I can access them later on?
- How do you decide which items to keep and which to weed out from a collection?
- As a teacher, how can I get my students more interested in using archives for projects?
So, how does it work?
#AskAnArchivist Day is open to everyone–all you need is a Twitter account. To participate, just tweet a question to @gmuscrc between 10 am and 4:00 pm on Wednesday, October 5 and include the hashtag #AskAnArchivist in your tweet. Your question will be seen instantly by archivists here at the Special Collections Research Center and around the country who will be standing by to respond directly to you. So if we’re not sure how to answer, we bet we can find someone who can! We also may not know every answer right away, but we’ll do some digging and get back to you ASAP. Even if you don’t have a question right away, we hope you’ll search Twitter for #AskAnArchivist and follow along as questions and answers are shared to get a better idea not just of what we do here at the Special Collections Research Center but what archivists are doing around the world.
