Archives forum during the Coronavirus pandemic

Dear IASA (and BAS) members,

I wanted to give IASA members an opportunity to ask each other questions, give general updates, and share strategies and plans for keeping archives afloat during the COVID-19 crisis. Many of our countries are in different stages of planning, preparedness, and response to different levels of the outbreak; and probably our various organizations are handling the situation differently as well. Though we often think of broadcast archives as having unique and proprietary technologies and workflows, we might all stand to benefit from sharing what's working and what's not with each other. I am working from home myself, and have been tasked with coming up with potential projects for our colleagues in far-flung bureaus should they need to work from home as well.

I am starting to feel a bit isolated and disconnected as well and would love to hear updates from our fellow broadast archivists to boost morale and feelings of community. We rarely use these fora, and now seems like a good time to start. All replies to this thread are welcome as we give this a try--please let us know how you're doing and what challenges you are facing!

And if you for some reason do not want your post to be visible to the public and have a BAS-specific comment or question, please post on that members-only forum.

Jennifer Vaughn, BAS Chair, Radio Free Europe, Prague

Forums: 

Dear Jennifer,

Thank-you for broaching the topic of maintaining our archives and community during the COVID-19 crisis. We're all new to this particular crisis and most of us are just beginning to adapt. Today is only my second day working form home and already I am missing my work environment--not to mention my favorite espresso bar. So first and foremost we should learn to make a decent cup of coffee, if not a great espresso, which I must admit I have not yet achieved, and secondly, we should take this opportunity to develop new work skills and refresh those that are a bit rusty. There are lots of resources online. I can suggest edX as a good source for new skills. The crisis will pass eventually, and it behooves all our institutions to emerge from it with a workforce that is even stronger and better informed. Personally, I'm refreshing my knowledge of DaVinci Resolve and color correction but that accounts for only around 15 hours of instruction. However, I'm fairly confident that by the time I've finished, our IT folks will have facilitated remote access to production storage so we can get to more concrete tasks.

Keep a good thought, keep a good distance, and stay healthy.

-Bruce Gordon, Harvard Libary, Media Preservation Services

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share a few resources that might be of interest to those working from home, or transitioning in that direction.

Archivists at home, a guide from the Accessibility & Disability Section of the Society of American Archivists: https://tinyurl.com/slb84j3

Free Resources on Project MUSEhttps://about.muse.jhu.edu/resources/freeresourcescovid19/#covid19resources

List of publishers offering free access during the COVID-19 crisis: https://tinyurl.com/wq2w2yv

Best wishes,

Jennifer Vaughn