Housing and Access at Repositories

Once you have selected a few repositories to contact, you should begin asking if the repositories have proper housing and storage for your materials. While most archival repositories do have professional housing and storage, not all of them have the same amount of resources, and the kinds of available space and equipment will vary from one institution to the next.

• The institution should have cool, dry, temperature- and humidity-controlled rooms with enough chemically stable folders and boxes to protect your materials. You should also think about the specific materials in your collection to determine what resources may be necessary to house them. For example, if your collection is mostly digital, it is important to know what software and digital storage the repository has available to ensure the best quality preservation for those files. Or, if you have lots of particularly fragile materials, you should ask an institution about their preservation and conservation resources.
• What kind of access can this institution provide to your donated collection? Think about the audience the institution serves, which can include students, faculty, researchers, or the general public who may be curious about historical topics. While archivists cannot dictate the purposes for which your donated collection will be used, each institution has different missions and values that serve certain groups of people on different levels.
• Some repositories are more available than others and may require fees or appointments to view collections. Sometimes a repository has an off-site storage location which means that certain materials will require more time and transportation to be accessed.
• Ask about physical accessibility parameters such as ramps and elevators; captions for videos to serve those that are deaf or hard-of-hearing; voice descriptions for those that are blind; and access options for online and digital resources for those that are vision-impaired. These are important for providing universal physical access to archival materials.
• Accessibility of finding aids and catalogs is also critical as they allow researchers and other users to know if a certain collection is relevant to their search. Think about and evaluate the finding aids format(s) and the language the repository uses to describe a collection. You might want to ask how long it typically takes to process and provide a finding aid at their institution, which is usually dictated by the number of staff members, including trained archivists and conservators; the institution’s budget for the archival supplies required for processing; and capacities for maintaining adequate housing environments. Collections are often not available to researchers right away, and it can take many months or even several years before they are open for research.
• What security measures does this repository have in place? When an institution houses valuable collections, they put security measures in place to ensure their safety and longevity. Some institutions hire security guards for their reading rooms; others keep track of visitors with registration forms requiring valid photo identification; and most repositories prohibit bringing backpacks into the reading room, providing lockers for personal items instead. However, it is important to note that these security measures will affect different groups of people in unique ways. Some university libraries are not open for use by people outside of their institutional community and may only be patronized by students, faculty, and staff. If access is prohibited to those in the broader community, they will be turned away. Consider whether the population most interested in your collection would be excluded, especially Black and Indigenous people of color. You should think about who you want to have access to your collection at the institution of your choice, and whether their security measures will prohibit or discourage access to some groups of people.

Once you are satisfied with knowing about resources each repository has, you can begin asking if your materials fit their collection scope and goals.