Cataloguing for Community Archives

Scottish Council on Archives are delighted to present archive skills sessions as part of the ‘Community Stories – Community Archives’ project. The project is focused on helping community groups across Scotland to manage and promote their archives through online and in-person training and support. A key element of the project will be the facility to upload catalogues to a new portal being developed by SCA called Your Scottish Archives, helping to increase accessibility to these diverse and important collections.

This session will help you to develop skills in cataloguing your collections. You’ll be introduced to what archivists call ‘elements’ of cataloguing, with examples, to help you recognize what these are and why they are useful. You’ll also see some examples of spreadsheets that you can use to catalogue your collections. By the end of this webinar you should have a good idea of what information goes where, and how this can help you.

The session will be led by Elspeth Reid. Elspeth is an experienced archivist who has worked in several different archive services in Canada and Scotland, including a long spell as archivist with Falkirk Community Trust and Falkirk Council from 1992 to 2018. She is a Fellow of the Archives and Records Association and an Honorary Teaching Fellow at the Centre for Archives and Information Studies, University of Dundee. Elspeth edits and provides content for SCA’s new Your Scottish Archives portal and also created much of the SCA Scottish Community Archives Toolkit:

https://www.scottisharchives.org.uk/community-archives/scottish-community-archives-toolkit/

The 'Community Stories - Community Archives' project is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.