It is not uncommon for archival photographs to appear in multiple copies, versions, or formats. Photographs of the same provenance are often found in various locations or housed in several institutions. Format diversity, duplication, and dispersion pose profound challenges for archivists attempting to represent photographic images scattered across many institutions. This article identifies four dimensions of archival dispersion—geographical, temporal, provenancial, and material—that simultaneously act as barriers for providing consolidated representation of dispersed photographs. Understanding the context and nature of dispersion is key to effective representation of photographs in archival custody. "Archival Diaspora" explores the complicated nature of distributed collections.

The Northwest Archivists (NWA), a regional archival association in the Pacific Northwest, established a formal mentoring program in 2007. A pilot phase of the program ran for 2 years and included both formative and summative assessments from participants. This case study documents NWA's experiences designing and managing a mentoring program within a volunteer-run professional association, reflects on the program's successes and challenges, and recommends areas for future investigation.

For three decades, F. Gerald Ham was a forceful, energetic, incisive, and energizing presence at the annual meeting podium, in the pages of The American Archivist, and in the ranks of the Society's leadership. In all of these venues, he urged us to set aside our outdated custodial mindset, take more seriously our role in selecting an archival record for the future, implement strategies of planning and coordination, overcome our isolation and proprietary habits, and, above all, think critically and make the difficult decisions necessary in a new archival era. This article traces Ham's career and reviews his writings for insights into a critical time in our recent professional past, his contributions to the profession, and the ways his ideas remain relevant today.

Although finding, interpreting, and using archives is inherent in the study of history, no standard identifies the archival research competencies college history students should possess. The purpose of this study is to identify history faculty expectations of undergraduates regarding their archival research skills and, based on those expectations, to create a list of archival research competencies that could be incorporated into the history classroom or introduced by the archivist in archival literacy sessions. The study includes viewpoints of different stakeholders, a review of course syllabi, in-depth interviews with history department faculty at a large public research university, and comments from faculty and recent graduates on a draft list of archival competencies for history students. The practical recommendations encourage the implementation of the competencies for both history faculty as well as for archivists involved in teaching archival research skills to students. This article represents a preliminary report based on the authors' completion of the first phase of their research. In the second phase, currently underway, history faculty, university archivists, and selected academic librarians at a representative sample of other institutions will provide comments on the list of competencies developed in the first phase. These comments will be considered for a revised list of competencies that will be published at a later date.

The C-SPAN Archives is a successful video archives of primary public affairs programming created and aired by C-SPAN. Now in its twenty-sixth year, the archives has confronted the challenges of creating an off-satellite archives, developing an indexing and cataloging system, providing access, and implementing new technology. These are issues with which other news archives must deal. This case study demonstrates lessons learned and problems solved that can be valuable for others thinking about these issues. As a total electronic collection of two hundred thousand hours, it represents a modern digital archives and a model for other news networks.

This article posits that archivists are inspired by broad, grand, and even transcendent ideals that guide their work, but that those ideals are beyond their grasp. The inability to attain these ideals sets archivists up to experience frustration and disappointment. By developing a moderate disposition,¹ archivists can productively cope with disappointment and still be guided by their ideals to create great value through their work. The article focuses on three concepts or virtues of self-examination—enlarged thought, gratitude, and reverence—that can help archivists cultivate a moderate disposition.

In 2009, Arizona archivists determined that they wanted to tackle a statewide survey of collections to address collaborative collection development and documentation of underrepresented communities and subjects. This case study examines the Arizona Archives Matrix Project, a multi-institutional survey initiative that puts collaboration and collection development under a critical lens. The process entailed winnowing the state down to under 50 subject categories, developing a survey tool, and querying archivists about their collections. This article looks at some of the successes of an undertaking such as the Matrix, as well as the ethical and logistical issues of a metrics-based approach to understanding collections.

This case study documents how "More Product, Less Process" (MPLP) was used to process a large twentieth-century manuscript collection at Humboldt State University Library Special Collections. HSU is a small, publicly funded repository quite different from those previously discussed in the MPLP literature. In contrast to many published examples of MPLP in practice, MPLP was not used at HSU to address an overwhelming backlog through widespread minimal processing or by adopting a baseline processing metric. Instead, MPLP served more broadly as a framework for deciding how to allocate available resources to best fulfill the repository's mission and benefit the end users of the collections. This case study supports a nuanced understanding of MPLP as a decision-making framework (not a set of processing techniques) and the potential value of MPLP to a wide range of archival scenarios.

As American society becomes more diverse, archivists increasingly work with multilingual collections and patrons. In Arizona, this situation occurs most frequently with materials created by individuals and communities using Spanish as their primary language. This case study discusses Arizona State University's creation of English and Spanish finding aids for six collections processed as part of a Council on Library and Information Resources grant. It describes the process of creating a Spanish finding aid template; reviews the challenges encountered and solutions designed while translating, encoding, and publishing Spanish guides; and analyzes use of the final documents.

In 2011, Hosni Mubarak abdicated his position of president-for-life after peaceful protests across Egypt. Demonstrators in these protests used social media platforms like Twitter to communicate directly with a global audience, but tweets are ephemeral and there are no standards or best practices for their collection and preservation. Using the revolution in Egypt as a case study, this paper serves as a guide to collection developers who are interested in collecting subject-centered collections of tweets. We will discuss how to collect tweets using Twitter's application programming interface (API) as well as collection development issues related to Twitter's role in the Egyptian revolution. These issues include determining the scope of the collection, quantitative and qualitative collection methods, separating signal from noise, and navigating vernacular and formal languages. We will consider the Twitter platform from an archival perspective and discuss best practice in archiving a collection of tweets. To present the kinds of materials that a subject-centered collection of tweets might include, we will conclude with a brief examination of tweets collected during the eighteen-day revolution in Egypt.

Archival institutions are increasingly participating in social media as a form of digital outreach. The affordances of popular online platforms such as Twitter allow managers of institutional accounts to highlight digital content, publicize events, and interact with users who might not otherwise know about the institution. This article presents a picture of archival activity on Twitter, using data collected from 34 institutions during October 2011. The sample accounts range from formal broadcasting of information to a more informal, conversational style. This article seeks to understand current institutional behavior on the platform and asks, "What are archival institutions doing on Twitter?"

The bicentennial of the War of 1812 provided the Archives of Ontario (AO) with a unique opportunity to employ social media to reach new audiences while speaking to the value of the archival record. Over the course of a year, the AO posted the diary entries of Ely Playter, a farmer and officer of the Upper Canada militia on Twitter (@ElyPlayter1812). A dedicated observer and recorder of daily life, Playter left behind an eyewitness account of the war, thereby giving a real voice to its social, economic, political and personal impact. The Twitter feed provided its followers access to historical records on a daily basis and became a cornerstone of related institutional educational programming. This article includes analysis of the project's methodology and provides insight into the challenges and opportunities of using social media to promote the importance of archives and primary source records.