Yale University – Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Archivist
September 2023 – present
New Haven, CT
Arrange, describe, and process archival material in accordance with established standards and best practices, including implementing reparative description practices. Create and enhance descriptive, administrative, and technical metadata for collections using ArchivesSpace and Voyager. Contribute to Beinecke and Yale Library committees, advisory groups, and task forces to formulate and document unit and departmental policies and procedures, promote and facilitate staff professional development, and plan staff events.
Select finding aids:
Ed and Barbara Emberley papers
Edward V. Knight papers
Donald Whittaker collection of gay and lesbian ephemera
Skills: archival accessioning | archival appraisal | archival arrangement | archival description | archival processing | collections management | digital preservation | event planning | metadata standards | preservation assessment | project management | remote reference services | reparative archival description | supervising
Tools: Aeon | Alma | ArchivesSpace | LibApps | Oxygen XML Editor | Teams | Voyager ILS
NEDCC | Northeast Document Conservation Center
Associate Preservation Specialist
March – August 2023
Preservation Specialist
March 2021 – March 2023
Andover, MA
Provided training programs, assessments, consultations, and disaster assistance to libraries, archives, museums, universities, and historical societies nationwide.
I conducted fifteen preservation assessments for academic libraries and archives, historical societies, public library history collections, and town clerks, including one digital preservation assessment for a federal archives. I provided guidance on preservation standards and collection management for archival, special collection, and museum materials including rare books, documents, photographic prints, cased photographs, film and glass negatives, microforms, audio and video media, moving image film, architectural plans, maps, posters, art on paper, art on canvas, textiles, and 3-D objects comprised of organic and inorganic materials.
I taught over 120 hours of virtual and in-person workshops, webinars, and web courses on topics including physical collection preservation, digital preservation, audiovisual preservation, and emergency preparedness. See a full list under Instruction. I developed content for the webinar “10 Practical Steps for Getting Started with Digital Preservation,” and I have customized emergency preparedness workshops to include activities such as disaster plan review, collection wet salvage demonstrations, and disaster scenario tabletop exercises.
I represented NEDCC at conferences of local, regional, and national organizations, including the New England Archivists, Society of American Archivists, and the International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries, and Museums. I also served as a facilitator for NEDCC’s online digital preservation conference, Digital Directions, in November 2021, February 2022, and June 2023.
Skills: collections management | customer service | digital preservation | grant writing | instruction (virtual and in person) | metadata standards | outreach | preservation assessment | project management | reference services | technology support
Tools: Archivematica | Data Accessioner | DA Metadata Transformer | Exactly | Fixity | JHOVE | Preservica Starter | Quickbase | Zoom
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Assistant Archivist
October 2017 – August 2020
Boston, MA
Position at the Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives encompassing three years of progressively responsible archival work. Daily responsibilities include processing collections, providing reference and research services, digitizing on demand, maintaining digital assets in NetX DAMS and CONTENTdm, supervising interns and volunteers, managing projects as needed, and supporting the functions of the Archives Director and Associate Archivist for Digital Assets. Other activities include participating in triannual Archives Council meetings to report on user statistics and project progress and collaborating with the Archives team and Development Department to plan workflows, budgets, and timelines for grant-funded digitization projects.
Accession, arrange, describe, and process transfers of institutional records, donations of manuscript collections, and existing backlogs of archival collections. Enter DACS-compliant collection descriptions, box lists, and folder lists in InMagic db/Textworks. Assess preservation needs of collections and work with the Archives Director and Facilities Department to mitigate issues such as water damage, mold, and pests.
Provide reference and research services daily for staff, musicians, students, researchers, and the public. Train archives users in resource discovery including how to use the performance history search engine. Manage release forms and copyright information for documents, photographs, sounds recordings, and audiovisual media with Google Forms. Digitize on demand for internal and external requests. Monitor the security of materials while in use by in-house researchers.
Digitize documents, photographs, negatives, microfilm, and architectural plans. Upload digitized files to NetX digital asset management system and CONTENTdm content management system and create Dublin Core metadata. Train interns and volunteers in the use of databases and DAMS.
Supervise graduate student interns in semester-long processing and digitization projects, providing instructional documentation to help students achieve educational goals. Supervise volunteers in ongoing processing and digitization projects, providing instructional documentation to ensure the use of best practices in collections care, processing, scanning, and metadata creation.
Manage large-scale seasonal exhibits of archival materials at Symphony Hall and Tanglewood venues in collaboration with the Archives Director. Includes planning themes; designing layout; curating and researching materials; writing summaries, captions, and informational panels; and scanning materials for use in online companion exhibits.
Manage the transfer of 700+ boxes (1,000+ cubic feet) of materials from secondary archival storage to offsite storage at Iron Mountain over the course of three months in Fall 2019. Transfer involved surveying collections, determining the disposition of each collection, rehousing materials, updating box and folder lists as needed, deaccessioning records as necessary according to retention schedule, incorporating materials with immediate research value into the Archives on-site storage, and coordinating the transport of remaining boxes offsite.
Initiate project to implement ArchivesSpace archival management software in Spring 2020 to improve intellectual control of collections, improve ease of access, and increase visibility of collections online. Project involved exporting legacy collections information from InMagic DB/TextWorks database, normalizing data in Excel and Open Refine, and following a Yale University workflow to transform Excel XML to EAD in Oxygen XML Editor and import EAD into ArchivesSpace. Project put on hold due to Covid-19-related furloughs.
Skills: archival accessioning | archival appraisal | archival arrangement | archival deaccessioning | archival description | archival processing | collections management | customer service | digital exhibits | digital preservation | digitization | exhibit management | grant planning | metadata standards | outreach | preservation assessment | project management | reference services | research | supervising | technology support
Tools: ArchivesSpace | Audacity | Bulk Rename Utility | CONTENTdm | Google Forms | InMagic DB/TextWorks | iSkysoft Video Converter | NetX DAMS | OpenRefine | Orchestra Planning and Administration System (OPAS) | Oxygen XML Editor
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Assistant Project Archivist
April 2017 – October 2017
June 2015 – August 2016
Boston, MA
Grant-funded project position with the Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives working on the Tanglewood Music Center audio digitization project. Initial duties (June 2015-August 2016) include preparing DATs and reel-to-reel tapes for transfer to third-party digitization vendor, conducting quality control of deliverables, parsing audio files with Audacity, importing metadata and 700+ audio files into CONTENTdm, and scanning concert programs for use online via Internet Archive. Duties in the second phase (April-October 2017) include remote work to enter performance information in the Orchestra Planning and Administration System (OPAS) database and link digitized audio and programs to database records for use in HENRY, the BSO Archives’ performance history search engine.
Skills: archival description | audio editing | data entry | digital preservation | digitization | exhibit management | metadata standards | project management | remote work | research
Tools: Audacity | CONTENTdm | Microsoft Excel | Orchestra Planning and Administration System (OPAS)
Links: Example Performance Metadata in HENRY via OPAS
City of Somerville
Contract Archivist
December 2016 – July 2017
Somerville, MA
Contract position with the City of Somerville Archives to arrange, describe, and rehouse 140 linear feet of municipal records as part of a Community Preservation Act Grant. Processed collections include Law Office closed case files, Somerville Redevelopment Authority records, Somerville Civil Defense records, and Board of Health records including records pertaining to administrative functions, public health initiatives, communicable disease control and prevention, health inspections, and social service Commissions. Duties include processing collections, addressing preservation concerns, deaccessioning records according to the records retention schedule, creating DACS-compliant finding aids with Archivists’ Toolkit archive management system, and editing EAD, HTML, XML, XSLT, and CSS in finding aid exports to present finding aids online.
Skills: archival arrangement | archival deaccessioning | archival description | archival processing | preservation assessment | project management | research
Tools: Archivists’ Toolkit | Oxygen XML Editor
Links: Somerville Civilian Defense Records Finding Aid
Boston Carmelite Monastery
Project Archivist
January 2015 – August 2017
Boston, MA
Project position to establish the Monastery’s Archives for its 125th anniversary by appraising, arranging, describing, and rehousing 100+ linear feet of institutional records including administrative records, personal papers, 10,000+ photographs and negatives, 1,300+ AV items, 2TB of digitized audio and video, born-digital records, and memorabilia. Activities include processing records, addressing preservation needs, creating a DACS-compliant finding aid for the collection, providing reference and research services for the Sisters, instructing the Sisters in archival best practices, creating instructional documentation for the continuation of the Archives.
Additional projects: managing an audio and video digitization project with George Blood Audio to reformat 2,000+ hours of audio and 30+ hours of video from audio cassette and VHS tape; installing and managing QNAP NAS device with RAID 5 redundancy for archival storage and daily use in the Monastery.
Skills: archival appraisal | archival arrangement | archival description | archival processing | collections management | digital preservation | outreach | preservation assessment | project management | reference services | research | technology support
Tools: BitCurator | QNAP NAS
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Archives Intern
January 2014 – July 2014
Pittsburgh, PA
Internship with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Archives to arrange, describe, and rehouse over 40 linear feet of audiovisual collections; create DACS-compliant finding aids with Archivists’ Toolkit archive management system; and conduct reference research.
Skills: archival arrangement | archival description | archival processing | research
Tools: Archivists’ Toolkit
Chatham University
Archives and Special Collections Assistant
September 2013 – July 2014
Pittsburgh, PA
Work study position at the Chatham University Library in Pittsburgh, PA. Archives projects: processing the Jerry L. Caplan papers (26.5 linear feet) a creating a DACS-compliant finding aid with Archon archive management system; reappraising and rehousing the University Newspaper collection; creating photographic image metadata with MODS standard; design, research, and implement exhibits of archival materials in the library. Special collections project: copy cataloging and editing 1,000+ MARC21 records in Millennium Integrated Library System using OCLC Connexion.
Skills: archival appraisal | archival arrangement | archival description | archival processing | copy cataloging | digital preservation | digitization | exhibit management | preservation assessment | project management | research | special collections cataloging
Tools: Archon | Millennium ILS | OCLC Connexion
Links: Jerry L. Caplan Papers Finding Aid
Alison Fulmer 