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3. Enhancing awareness of archival holdings
Image-building
Awareness
Education
3.1 Over the years, archives have been severely criticized for their inactivity in the field of self-promotion and education. They have failed to foster, among the population at large, an appreciation for the importance of archives in society and for their relevance in individuals' daily lives. In too many cases, archives do not even anticipate interest in their holdings and services, preferring instead to wait for users to find them. This situation must change if archives are to play a greater social role, let alone maintain their resource levels in severe economic times. Three thrusts can help them achieve this objective: image-building, awareness, and education programmes.
3.2 The concept of image-building is the archival form of marketing. At the corporate level, institutional image is a vital part of ensuring that archives obtain sufficient resources to do the job they have been mandated to do. For cultural institutions that have not been accustomed to self-promotion, the challenge is to develop strategies that promote an image of archives as dynamic and vibrant organizations worthy of support and able to fulfill the informational and cultural needs of both sponsors and the general public. The goal is to make resource allocators conscious of the institution's worth to the collectivity by increasing knowledge and appreciation of archival activities in general, and of the institution in particular. Such initiatives, however, must be supported by solid awareness, education, and access programmes that can fulfil the raised expectations of the target public.
3.3 It is safe to assume that most citizens will never become active users of archives. In most cases, their curiosity will be limited to learning about the activities of archival institutions and of the general nature of the records they hold. Such interest can best be satisfied by offering programmes that promote knowledge of the function and mission of archives, and some basic familiarity with the material they hold. On the one hand, such awareness programmes are self-serving as they seek to increase support for the institution. On the other, they help explain and interpret archival information to the public at large.
3.4 The selection and development of awareness activities present great opportunities for imaginative uses of records. It must be realized that certain types of records - either because of their form or content - are more easily understood by occasional users than others. Public programmers in archives should consequently test their material with their target publics to ensure that it is properly understood and appreciated. The activities selected must also have wide public appeal. Exhibition and film series, for instance, can be highly effective tools with a general audience. As for school programmes, the focus must be on providing opportunities to work with the actual records themselves, as the purpose is to initiate students to archival research and increase their understanding of the value of archival records. Finally, the celebration of anniversaries and actual participation in local events will further expand the popular reach of archives.
3.5 The basic familiarity with archival operations that awareness activities provide are not sufficient to enable participants to become experienced users. It is not enough to know that there may be pertinent or interesting information in archives; potential users must learn in more detail what that information is and how to retrieve it. Archives therefore have a responsibility to teach, at least in a basic way, the central principles upon which archival work is based and upon which retrieval of archival records is dependent. In so doing, archives provide researchers with the intellectual tools with which to attack their research problems.
3.6 The chief objective of archival education programmes is to instruct actual and prospective users in research strategies and techniques. These can include introductory sessions or videos on archives and special "how to do archival research" seminars for advanced university students, to name just two, or may involve explanations of other archival functions, such as appraisal. Users should not only learn how to consult finding aids; they must understand the process by which records are created, organized, and find their way into a repository.
3.7 It is also crucial for users to know how to best select the information they need from among the multitude of sources available to them. Archival research must not only be inclusive but effective. After all, of what use is a CD-ROM containing a number of multi-media fonds if users do not know how to identify and retrieve the information they require? Education programmes, consequently, must be devised in such a fashion that they can feed the research process at its different stages and under different conditions. Products must not only be available to prospective users before they arrive at an archives, they must support them throughout their search in the institution and afterwards.
3.8 Image building, awareness, and educational programmes, consequently, help people learn of the usefulness of archives. Often, such a level of involvement in the archival process is sufficient as it provides adequate exposure to archival information and operations. And even though not all individuals will become regular archives users, they will have acquired an understanding of the role of archives and an appreciation of how archives may be of service to them. For others, however, these forms of indirect access are but a first step towards actual use of the holdings.