Publication Date
January 2013
Abstract
More and more, archivists find themselves having to be advocates for their own institutions, fellow archival institutions, and themselves. This is an especially complicated turn of events because of discrepancy among archivists as to what specifically constitutes archival advocacy. Over the past year, as a response to this, the Issues & Advocacy Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists has been conducting surveys on archival advocacy in the profession, designed to gauge the advocacy environment as it exists among today’s archivists and archival institutions. The ongoing goal of the project has been to create a dialogue about what advocacy is, how it is defined, and the ways in which advocacy (as well as outreach activities) form part of our professional activities. In doing so, the Roundtable hopes to understand how it can best engage and educate the profession about shaping future archival-related policies.