I asked a few of my colleagues who have institutional memory for how our consult program got started, so below is my summary. I am not sure if what we did will 100% work for your organization, but we can always hash that out in more discussion here.
Utah SHRAB's Consulting Archivist Program (formerly circuit rider archivist program) grew organically out of the agency visits conducted by the Utah Division of Archives and Records Service's Local Government Team (LGT). USHRAB is housed at the Utah State Archives, and USHRAB's support staff are sourced from the State Archives' LGT, who are legally mandated to provide training and support to government records keepers. Part of those responsibilities include doing visits to rural agencies to provide guidance on keeping and preserving their government records. What the Local Government Team found was that the Venn diagram of Utah's rural government agency records keepers and local history organizations is nearly a perfect circle, and that these folks were in need of advice on best practices for all historical records, not just government records. Additionally, USHRAB's Archival Project Grant application process was extremely difficult for these smaller rural organizations who did not have experienced grant writers nor the knowledge of archival good-better-best practices. As a result, rural organizations' applications were frequently rejected, so our grants were not reaching these places as much as USHRAB intended. We needed to address this gap in multiple ways, and the Consulting Archivist Program is one such approach. USHRAB now has an online consult request form so that any organization can request consults from USHRAB, but the LGT has done so much trust-building with local communities that USHRAB consults will come through their channels, too. Much of the costs of USHRAB's Consulting Archivist Program is covered by the State Archives budget (archivists' salaries, for example), so we can keep the vast majority of our NHPRC funds in grant programs.
I hope that is somewhat helpful. I am happy to answer anymore questions (to the best of my ability) here or via a call, if you would like.
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Gen Miller
Archivist/USHRAB Executive Secretary
Utah Division of Archives and Records Service
Salt Lake City UT
8015313845
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-11-2024 03:01 PM
From: Cathrine Giles
Subject: Traveling/Roving/Visiting Archivists
I would love more information about this program from those who have an active one -- did you do a needs assessment first, what activities does your program fund?, is this done by archives staff or a contractor, and anything else about the program!
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Cathrine Giles
State Records Branch Manager
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives
Frankfort KY
502.564.1702
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