Managing Local Government Archives

Here is a comprehensive, authoritative introduction to the elements of day-to-day operations of local government archives, with special emphasis on best practices and practical solutions and strategies for establishing and improving such things as storage, environmental control, staffing, and intellectual control. It includes a chapter on general consideration for preservation of electronic archival records.

Local government records are the records that most directly touch the lives of U. S. residents: deeds and property records, marriage licenses, school transcripts, law suits, and more, yet these records are often the most neglected records in the country. This guide is designed to appeal both to trained archivists as well as to those without formal training but find they are dealing with the administration of an archives program in a municipality, county, parish, township or borough, or a quasi-governmental entity such as a water district or a regional transportation authority.

Managing Local Government Archives describes and prescribes the essential elements and best practices of a local government archives program. It is intended to be both a text for classroom instruction and a self-help tool for both professional and paraprofessional archivists. It is also intended to be helpful to local governments considering the planning and implementation of a formal archives program. Coverage encompasses the various domains of archival enterprise as practiced in a local government setting:

acquisition, appraisal, arrangement and description, preservation, access, relationship to the records management profession, and other topics.

Kaye Lanning Minchew served as Executive Director of the Troup County Historical Society in LaGrange, GA from 1985 until 2015. She oversaw operations of the Troup County Archives and Legacy Museum on Main. The University of Georgia press published her book, A President in Our Midst: Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Georgia in May, 2016. She is a member of the Academy of Certified Archivists and has degrees from the University of North Carolina at Asheville and Chapel Hill.

John H. Slate, CA is city archivist for the City of Dallas, where he has been responsible for historic city government records in the Dallas Municipal Archives since 2000. He is a member of the Academy of Certified Archivists and possesses a BS from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science, specializing in archival enterprise, from the same institution.