Two Words, One Answer.
Archives
 Developing and Maintaining Practical Archives: A How-To-Do-It Manual (How-to-Do-It Manuals for Libraries) $75.00 Great transaction with seller, first of all. Secondly, this text is wonderful. Intended for use at the graduate level, this book remembers that readers can't all see text smaller than size 10 pt. easily. The best thing about this book, however, lies in the epic margins. I'm buying this book as an aspiring archivist, and love that I can take as many notes as I need/want to right on the page. Thank you for not insulting our intelligence by filling the would-be huge margins with "did you know"'s and vocab words (as 90% of my undergraduate texts insisted upon).  Starting an Archives $42.00 Starting an Archives is a must have book for anyone who has the responsibility of caring for archive or manuscript collections yet has little experience. In less than one hundred pages, Elizabeth Yakel skillfully navigates the basic process for getting an archive up and running. She discusses planning for an archival program and offers insights regarding expenses, staffing, facilities, and consultants. She addresses many of the issues, such as collection development and appraisal, that archivists deal with prior to a collection being called a collection. Her discussions of arrangement and description are extremely helpful. She also covers issues that are sometimes overlooked, such as providing reference services and outreach. Especially helpful are her appendices, which offer models for deeds of gifts, procedure manuals, and user registration forms. This book should be on every archivist's shelf, but it should be especially helpful for small start-up archives that one might find in small towns, local libraries, or churches. It would help workers in such organizations to do no harm to their collections and to use terminology common to the archival profession. This would aid the workers greatly when they seek outside consultation. All in all, this book is a very helpful general resource. Most archivists at any level would need more information than this book includes. Issues such as arrangement, description, and preservation require longer, more detailed works to cover all the issues one encounters. Yakel's work, however, is a great beginner's guide that I recommend highly.  Walter Benjamin's Archive $27.95 Amazon's star rating system goes askew on this book. If you are a devoted fan of Walter Benjamin, then it is essential. On the other hand, if you are like me---who has never read Mr. Benjamin's works ---then it won't be such a useful purchase. Without a flowing textual narrative, this book provides detailed examples of the scraps and notes kept by Mr. Benjamin, who was a compulsive hoarder of all mundane things tied to his highly intellectual pursuits during most of the first half of the last century |
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