STEP 6: PRESERVE

Congratulations on your progress with archiving your collection. This section helps you to plan for growing your collection with contributions or repatriated content from other collections, and maintaining it to be sustainable into the future. This includes reviewing your Plans and policies, ensuring staff have the training and support they need, and reviewing your storage and disaster management plans. This section is still in development with more resources to be added over time.

Add new content

As new content is being produced, it saves a lot of time and effort if you archive it straight away. Develop or update workflows for filing, cataloguing and archiving of new content, and collecting any release forms or rights clearances, and ensure all staff are trained in the workflows. This will also make it easier to find media items for playout, sharing or re-purposing in new productions.

Source content from other collections

Once you have developed the archive with the organisation or community collection, you may wish to source relevant content from personal or institutional collections (eg AIATSIS, NFSA, national or state libraries, museums etc). Trove (trove.nla.gov.au) is a good place to start looking. FNMA can assist with processes for sourcing this content, including the Return of Materials process with AIATSIS. It is important to get as much metadata as possible with the records and to check about any known cultural or sensitive content.

Evaluate and review plans and policies

After working on your archive you will better understand the collection priorities and issues and access needs. It is timely to review your Cultural Plan, Collection Management Plan and policies with the Cultural Custodians or Collection Advisory group as an annual or biennial process. These will change over time and as the archive matures. If you need to develop a new policy, there are templates available in the Plan section of the Toolkit.

Manage risk to collection

Risk management is an ongoing process as conditions change and there is more use of the collection. After getting to better understand the potential risks or issues for your archive, it is advisable to review your risk policies and disaster plans annually and ensure everyone is aware of these. You should implement regular building and air conditioning checks & media storage maintenance (physical & digital), as well as regular disaster emergency drills. The Disaster Management planning guide and templates are attached if you need to develop or update your plans or policies.

Ongoing staff training

Training is an ongoing process to ensure current staff are developing the skills they need, new staff understand the collection management plans and archiving procedures, and archiving policies and workflows are understood by staff across the whole organisation. FNMA runs short courses occasionally and a Certificate 3 Archiving skillset for digitisation is now available. Contact FNMA for advice on other training or skills needs.