Working Remotely, Working Effectively: Improving Collection Access During a Global Pandemic

Abstract

This article looks at how one college archive responded to the shutdown of its campus in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Archivist and Associate Archivist worked together to develop work assignments that could be done from home. While collection processing was halted, the tasks assigned to staff all aimed to improve informational access to the collections, through an expanded effort to convert PDF finding aids to EAD for placement in an ArchivesSpace site, a project to create a searchable listing of collections that includes a brief description of content and links to finding aids, and planning for digitization of frequently accessed content. The archive anticipates having plenty of work to keep staff working even if the campus shutdown continues in the spring, and to date has not had to cut any staff member.